User talk:Iridescent

The arbitration committee "assuming good faith" with an editor.

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Admin expert full-content copy/paste replacement?

Hey. If I may ask a question, do you know any admin who knows the ins and outs of full content copy/paste replacement of article text, etc.? In about a week or so I'm gonna replace the entire content of Bengal famine of 1943 with User:Lingzhi/sandbox. Yes I know that bickering and perhaps even edit warring will ensure, but that's a later hitch in the road. I need to know if I need someone to do a history merge, or can I just skip that bit? And what about the relevant text on my sandbox's talk page? [I know I need to leave a relevant explanation on article Talk and use a descriptive edit summary too. Those are easy enough.] Thanks!  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 08:27, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

@Lingzhi:Can't do a history merge on this case as the history of your sandbox does not neatly fit into the history of the target page, because that page was edited after you started editing your sandbox (the WP:PARALLELHISTORIES issue). The edits look substantive enough to merit attribution though, which you can do either by listing the authors (here) in the merger edit summary or by moving your sandbox and its history to Talk:Bengal famine of 1943/attribution, converting it in a redirect to the article and keep it around for attribution only (I can perform this procedure if you so like). No opinion on the suitability of your text. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:06, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. My question would be, is there any reason why I would have to choose one option over the other? Or would it disadvantage me in any way? If it were up to me, of course I'd just settle for the easiest way – writing a descriptive edit summary. But would anyone argue etc. over that option? i wouldn't want different troubles down the road. If an edit summary will be OK, then that's easiest I think.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 22:24, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Well, did you ever use User:Lingzhi/sandbox for anything else? If no, the redirect for attribution solution should work. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:08, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes I used it as a sandbox to work on 3 or 4 articles, maybe more, before Bengal...  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 15:17, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Depending on when you did, I presume that I could split off the history of the s-box text that pertains to your version and use it in an attribution redirect. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:28, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Belatedly, agreeing with JJE's solution. Sandboxes are great for working in without having to worry about edit summaries and NPOV, but they can be a serious pain if more than one person has contributed substantively to the sandbox. ‑ Iridescent 12:58, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Ping

Letting you know I replied on my talk page. I take the problem seriously, and I'm working on it ... if we make significant headway, I'll let you know. - Dank (push to talk) 18:34, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

@Dank: Noted, thanks. As I've said elsewhere in the more meta-level "main page redesign" discussions, the more I think about it the more I think a serious conversation needs to be had about deprecating TFA altogether. Back in 2004 when the elements of the MP were created, there were clear purposes to all the sections—DYK to demonstrate that the project was growing, ITN to demonstrate that the project was current, OTD to demonstrate that the project wasn't recentist and TFA/TFP to demonstrate that not everything on the project was as shitty as the contents of DYK, ITN and OTD. Nowadays, every reader is aware of what Wikipedia is, and that some articles are very good and some of them are terrible.

Whenever Guy Macon proposes his Simple Main Page idea he gets shouted down, but there's a lot of validity to the idea—the visitors to the Main Page nowadays aren't thinking "I'm curious as to what this Wikipedia thing I've heard about is", they're people who are looking for information on something specific and just want to find the quickest way to navigate to it. If you consider that the MP gets 20 million views per day, then even an ultra-high-traffic TFA like Youth and Pleasure is only getting 1⁄200 of those readers (even assuming that all those readers are following through from the blurb, and not people retweeting or redditing links to it). TFA seems important to those involved in it, as it creates a lot of work for all those involved, but as far as the readers are concerned it appears they generally don't care. ‑ Iridescent 15:43, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

I get that, but there's another problem that nothing else on the Main Page solves. I've asked Google to give me Wikipedia-related articles on the news feed for years, and one thing that comes through loud and clear is ... even people who are writing an article about Wikipedia know nothing about Wikipedia. Many people assume it's just another part of the social web. If people click through to the articles at ITN, DYK or OTD, then they'll get the idea ... but as you say, we're getting 20M hits per day, and only a small fraction click through. If all people see is the Main Page, I wonder if they'd really get the message "this is an encyclopedia, this is what an encyclopedia looks like" if they didn't see TFA ... those other 3 columns don't look anything like encyclopedia articles (until you click through). TFA is meant to demonstrate by example that encyclopedia articles can be better than what's generally out there on Web 2.0: they're accurate, the writing is good, we know how to get to the point, the language is precise without being too technical, we use links well, we deal well with controversial and difficult subjects ... the list goes on. A good example beats, and defeats, the hand-waving I generally see in things written about us. - Dank (push to talk) 17:05, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

TFA

Hi, I saw your comment on Dan's page, sorry to see that you aren't happy with the discussions there, I can understand why. I've just done a provisional spreadsheet for May's TFAs, and I've put Wood Siding railway station for 19 May. Is it OK to run that still? If not, could you please let me know as soon as possible so I can put in something else, thanks Jimfbleak - talk to me? 19:26, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Jimfbleak, I don't have any particular objection to it although you might want to leave it a bit longer. Westcott railway station ran at the end of February, and the two articles are very similar, which may generate legitimate complaints from readers about repetition. (Per my comments when Westcott was scheduled, Wikipedia's "every station needs a separate article" policy really doesn't make a great deal of sense for these rural branch lines where the history, architecture and significant dates are identical for every station on the line, as it means the articles share so many elements they look like cut-and-paste jobs. ‑ Iridescent 15:49, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

It's three months since I scheduled Westcott, which I think is a decent gap. There are some categories like fungi that run at least as often as that. Might be just as well to remind me if I schedule another station in September though Jimfbleak - talk to me? 18:38, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

By-election question

Random question, but would you know when the last time was that a by-election writ was (or had the potential) to be superseded by the calling of a snap general election? This relates to Manchester Gorton by-election, 2017 (possibly there will be a WP:LAME edit war over whether to keep the page or redirect it). I suppose another way of looking at it is to ask what the shortest period is that an MP elected in a by-election had before having to stand again in a general election? Actually, there is a records page somewhere. A whole category in fact: Category:Parliamentary records of the United Kingdom. And, here is the answer: United Kingdom by-election records#Shortest-serving by-election victors. Nice to know Wikipedia can still come up trumps. Goodness. 1998 was the only year in British history without any parliamentary election. Never knew that! Ah, and this talk page discussion leads me to United Kingdom by-election records#Countermanded Poll (which I had managed to miss when skimming that page earlier). Sorted. :-) Carcharoth (talk) 20:26, 18 April 2017 (UTC) PS. I know the answer is in the lead section of the by-election article, but that was the last article I read, which was silly of me as the answer was there all along. Carcharoth (talk) 20:29, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

@Carcharoth: This subject was actually mentioned in the House yesterday. See Angela Smith's question and the response. Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:48, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

Assuming United Kingdom by-election records#Countermanded Poll is correct (a big if, given that it's completely unsourced), the answer in Hansard is actually wrong and the most recent one was in 1924 not 1923. For what that's worth. BrownHairedGirl is the one you want to talk to about elections and by-elections. ‑ Iridescent 15:54, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps the 1924 precedent is being distinguished because in that case the writ was issued by the Speaker during vacation rather than, as in 1923 and this year, by order of the House. (Or perhaps whoever did the research for Mr. Lidington just missed it.) Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:00, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

Plus the 1924 one was for a university constituency, and I suspect every (establishment) party would prefer to gloss over the fact that they ever thought such a thing was a good idea. ‑ Iridescent 16:07, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

True, but anything that brought A.P. Herbert to parliament couldn't have been all bad. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:16, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, both. The Hansard link was a useful reminder of the variable standard of debate carried out by politicians, contemporary UK ones at least. On a completely different matter, this edit from 2004 by Opus33 reminds me of how people used to write articles back then (have pinged Opus33, in case they may want to comment). Today's version of that article is here. I came across that passage (including the rather idiosyncratic passage beginning 'From all this it is tempting to imagine the invention of the bow') when researching musical bows today. Made me smile a lot, as well as wondering where that text came from. Didn't think it would date back all the way to 2004! The joys of wiki-archaeology. Carcharoth (talk) 16:37, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

On the subject of bows, it's not that long since this article was promoted to FA. (Not to be cynical, like, but that promotion may possibly have had something to do with the fact that some guy called "Larry Sanger" wrote the original.) ‑ Iridescent 16:45, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

@Carcharoth: FYI, for an update, see Manchester Gorton by-election, 2017#Cancellation, based upon today's action in the House. Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:41, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Lenin

I saw your note that you'd be disabling Echo because of the TFA discussions, so this is just to make you aware of this discussion, since you were a reviewer. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:34, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

@WP:TFA coordinators , Mike Christie, quite aside from any issues in that thread I'd really strongly suggest pulling Lenin from the queue. November 7 this year will be the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, and (unless Soviet Union itself can be worked up to FA in the meantime, which ain't gonna happen), it's totally perverse for Wikipedia to have an FA on Lenin and not to run it on that date. As you know, I'm not a big fan of the liturgical calendar approach to FA scheduling, but this was arguably the most influential event in modern history and every TV station and newspaper in the world will be running huge features on Lenin and his impact. ‑ Iridescent 15:49, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Gotta agree with Iri here - save Lenin for 7 November. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:02, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

No objections to pulling it but I can't till this evening when I get home from work. Midnightblueowl, comments? I'll leave a note on the article talk page too; or if one of you would I'd appreciate it as I'm at work. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:08, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Firing of Bill O'Reilly

Hi. Yesterday was one of those days that led me to visit WP:ITN/C. After browsing the day's headlines and stories on my phone, I wanted to at least skim the discussion regarding the firing of Bill O'Reilly. I was surprised to discover that nobody had even proposed a blurb. While it's probably not major news internationally, it's the top-half of the front page of the New York Times today. The story is certainly "in the news" and notable by objective standards, though perhaps not rising to the level of a mention on the English Wikipedia's main page? --MZMcBride (talk) 14:03, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Was an item on BBC Radio national news in UK this morning. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:08, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

I'd oppose a blurb were it suggested, as it would set a horrible precedent; "Bill O'Reilly is a creepy asshole" isn't really world-shaking news. The story ultimately boils down to "TV presenter who hasn't been convicted of anything is nonetheless fired to prevent employer being brought into disrepute", which isn't particularly unusual, even at the kind of high-profile level at which O'Reilly operates. (Cosby was something of a special case as he was a genuinely iconic global figure; I doubt one person in 20 in the US and one person in 10,000 elsewhere would recognise Bill O'Reilly if he were standing next to them.) If we included a blurb for this, we'd also need to include things like Sachsgate, the Jian Ghomeshi affair, the fallout from Suicide of Jacintha Saldanha, and whatever the Kiwi, Irish, South African etc equivalents are. ‑ Iridescent 15:41, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Sure. I guess in some ways I was surprised that it hadn't even been brought up for discussion given the wide coverage in the outlets I happen to read. It also happens to be, in this case, that the Times was involved in his ouster (by reporting about the cumulative settlements), so they may be covering it more heavily than they would for another individual.

While I agree that we don't typically include CEO ousters or equivalent, Mr. O'Reilly is a pretty big figure in U.S. media. If it were a prime minister or any other head official of a government, I imagine we'd automatically include a blurb if they resigned amid scandal. What we consider notable/newsworthy continues to fascinate me in some ways. I feel like someone will one day write an interesting dissertation about the English Wikipedia's "In the news" section. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:07, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, but O'Reilly isn't equivalent to a prime minister or president, as he didn't have the power to actually make decisions even within Fox, let alone that affected the outside world; had Rupert Murdoch been fired, that would be a story.

As a comparator, everyone in the world except Arsène Wenger knows that Wenger is on the verge of being fired. I guarantee that Wenger is a more recognizable figure worldwide than O'Reilly (other than spikes for O'Reilly on inauguration day and when the scandal started to break Wenger consistently gets significantly higher views, and when you look at views in other languages O'Reilly's views barely rise above background noise even in Spanish where you'd expect there to be at least some interest from Mexicans and Hispanic-Americans in what he has to say, while there's still consistent interest in Wenger) and when the hammer drops it will be front page news in Britain and France and the main back page story in every country globally other than the US, but there's no chance that when it happens it will make it to ITN.

Realistically, when you strip away the froth O'Reilly's dismissal was a straightforward "media outlet decides that one of their presenters is unpopular enough to be costing them viewers and advertising" decision of the type that gets made every day. There is a more significant meta-story here, in that Fox is currently engaged in a multi-billion-dollar takeover bid for Sky which will probably fall through if it's proved the Fox management were paying hush-money to a level that would constitute racketeering, but that's a slow-burning story which will likely take months to work its way through assorted courts and regulators. ‑ Iridescent 09:17, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

Wikimedia Strategy 2017

Randomly came across Wikipedia talk:Wikimedia Strategy 2017, which has some interesting thoughts. More here. That looks organised (it is certainly ambitious), but is it more impressive than it looks? (If you or anyone reading this wants to actually suggest ideas, probably best done over there, rather than here.) The pros and cons of trying to establish a strategy in this way, is more what I was thinking about here. Is it possible? I suppose this may trigger a recent potted history of the WMF... :-) Carcharoth (talk) 20:29, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

"What do we want to build or achieve together over the next 15 years?" sounds a bit optimistic on a project where the average editor only lasts a couple of years at most, especially given that when it comes to the internet anyone who claims they can predict five years into the future is a charlatan or an idiot. I imagine that whatever the good intentions, this will just become yet another talking shop for the pondlife that hangs around on Jimmy Wales's talkpage to posture about how visionary they are (the names so far are wearily familiar).

The best recent history of the WMF is this one by GorillaWarfare, of whom I have to admit my opinion has risen steadily recently. Unfortunately, it fizzles out in early 2016—I don't know if that's because she got bored, or just because Katherine Maher has been so low-key that the WMF may as well not exist.

In the unlikely event they want my answers:

1. What will guide our work together over the next 15 years?

   Nothing; Wikipedia has got by fine for 15 years without the WMF "guiding" it, and every time they've ever tried to do so it's without fail been a complete fiasco.

2. What impact or change do we want to have on the world over the next 15 years?

   None—the idea that the WMF has to be a force for change is one of the more pernicious legacies of the Free Culture element from the early days. The reason Wikipedia works is that it doesn't try to anticipate peoples' needs; it's just there for readers and reusers to use as they see fit.

3. What is the single most important thing we can do together over the next 15 years?

   See 2 above. Quit trying to create Happy Shopper knock-offs of Google or Facebook, and just concentrate on providing a framework within which both the WMF projects and everyone else who uses MediaWiki software can operate.

4. What will unite and inspire us as a movement for the next 15 years?

   Tracking down people who write guff like this and giving them a shoeing? Seriously, does anyone except Jeremy Corbyn and the kind of right-wing fruitcakes who cut out their favourite pages from Atlas Shrugged and pin them over their beds actually talk like this?

5. What will accelerate our progress over the next 15 years?

   Why would we want to? Wikipedia is the embodiment of slow and steady incremental change, and every time the WMF tries to "accelerate progress" from outside it's led to fiascos like MediaViewer, the Knowledge Engine and WikiVoyage. The fact that the asker presupposes that "accelerating our progress" is unquestionably desirable just shows how detached from reality the WMF is.

6. What will we be known for in the next 15 years?

   'The one that finally knocked Napster, Jennicam and Boo.com off the top spots in "most influential defunct websites" lists.' Probably with a paragraph explaining how Wikipedia worked fine for a decade but then got derailed by a few people at the top pissing money and goodwill away on their pet projects.

You're welcome. ‑ Iridescent 22:33, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

I was invited to this shindig and had a happy few days in Berlin. I must admit I thought there'd be discussion about enwiki but was pretty mistaken. my main reason for going was to look at ways to preserve/improve content but that went nowhere. It was way more global, and really focussed on looking at worldwide coverage and input from the third world etc. The morale seems to have improved dramatically in the past year. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:30, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

A bit beside your actual point, but just wanted to reply to Unfortunately, it fizzles out in early 2016—I don't know if that's because she got bored, or just because Katherine Maher has been so low-key that the WMF may as well not exist. I've intentionally left it be more or less since Lila's departure, mostly because it was intended to document the fiasco that was her tenure and the Knowledge Engine project. I've been meaning to update it to indicate that it is more of a historical record than anything; I'll do that now. GorillaWarfare (talk) 03:00, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

@GorillaWarfare: "It was The Greatest Show On Earth"... Well, I for one would look forward to Part Two; although, unless they sorted out their retention problems, I imagine it'll be pretty short :D — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 05:56, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

+1 when it comes to wanting a Part 2. If you don't do it, then when the history comes to be written we'll end up with either yet another Andrew Lih style hagiography, or the usual suspects from Wikipedia Review and whatever remains of Larry Sanger's posse rambling about how everything that goes right would have happened anyway and everything that goes wrong was the fault of whoever they currently happen to be in dispute with. ‑ Iridescent 14:23, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

@Iridescent: there was some discussion about Lila era in Berlin, so I do feel a bit more enlightened now (not that there were any surprises really). Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 04:50, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

@Iridescent, apologies in advance, but I pinged you accidentally- I had just read GW's timeline above, and it was on my mind. Sorry about distracting you. Right, carry on. — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 11:36, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

No problem—I have Echo turned off, so pings don't have any effect on me anyway. I've replied to the comment in question at some length. ‑ Iridescent 14:19, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

WP:Requests for Angry Mobs

I sense a humorous essay being written in my near future... Thanks for the idea. :) ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 14:49, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

About the inadequacy of ANI in resolving non-trivial disagreements? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:02, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks

Iri,

Thanks for reclosing; I'm fairly sure doing it myself would have been a Bad Idea. --Floquenbeam (talk) 15:05, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Looking at Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard#Closing - is it really always necessary?, it appears we've inadvertently stumbled into the release of bees from bonnets. As far as I'm concerned, if the two people whining about "premature closure" really feel the urge to keep it up, despite neither of the actual people the thread was about appearing to have any problem with a close first time round, they can do so on their own talkpages rather than on a page where every comment anyone makes wastes the time of multiple people. ‑ Iridescent 15:10, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

The confusion about when to close threads doesn't suffer from a lack of enough rules, it suffers from a lack of clueful people doing it. I've seen them closed too quickly, to slowly, unhelpfully re-opened, and helpfully re-opened. The problem is there's no way to legislate wisdom. --Floquenbeam (talk) 15:21, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

ANI is one of the very few instances I can think of where the introduction of Flow would actually be a positive. If people could watchlist individual threads, we could just quietly untransclude them from the main page and let the participants bitch and whine at each other until one or the other got bored. (Looking at that thread more closely, I see that one of the people demanding it be reopened so everyone has a chance to kvetch, despite no-one actually requesting any admin action, is yet another legacy admin from the early days who's made a couple of token edits each year to keep the bit. At some point, "reconfirmation" is going to have to become a thing.) ‑ Iridescent 15:32, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm not going to go back and find the discussion(s?), but I've proposed before that every new ANI thread be on a new subpage, transcluded on ANI. Kind of like AFD. Rather than just have ANI watchlisted, the drama hyenas would at least have to watchlist each thread they were interested in. Might slow them down some. And if a thread gets too stupid for words, you can just unwatchlist the one thread. The idea was shot down as unworkable, unfortunately. --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:41, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Not sure why that would be unworkable; that's exactly the system FA uses at WP:FAC and WP:TFAR, and that Wikipedia as a whole uses at WP:AFD, to allow people to only watchlist the discussions in which they're interested without either having their watchlist clogged with posts to threads in which they have no interest, or to risk missing an important change because someone subsequently makes a minor edit to something else which hides the substantive change in the watchlist. It leads to a proliferation of subpages, but it's not like we're suffering from acute subpage shortages. Besides, being forced to come up with a new name each time would force people to stop creating threads with stupid meaningless titles like "Discussion of interest to regulars", "Abusive image usage" and "Trolling talk pages" (all of which are genuine ANI threads as I write this). ‑ Iridescent 16:04, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

Sounds eminently sensible to me too. Where was the discussion where it was shot down before? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:12, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for April 22

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Have you been on the gin today, bot? The only edit I've ever made to that page was correcting the capitalization of "Malayalam". In 2015. ‑ Iridescent 10:01, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

Bizarre! :) -a bottle of gin, presumably... — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 11:26, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

The bot was confused by the pagemoves, presumably. JaGa might know why. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 11:30, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

Repeated vandalism by IP Addresses on Air India article. Request for protection on the article.

Hello Iridescent, I saw that you protected Dhaka Airport's page because of repeated vandalism by unregistered users or IP Addresses. I'm very thankful to you as you protected the page because it was being highly vandalized. Can you please do the same for Air India's page too? as this article is also getting vandalized by IP Addresses. Hoping for a quick reply. Thank You! FlyJet777 (talk) 16:24, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Normally, this is asked for at WP:RFPP but the latest edits do not look like vandalism to me. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:45, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

As per my comments when I protected the airport, I'm very reluctant to protect airport and airline articles for any significant length of time unless they're obviously being overwhelmed with inappropriate edits, which doesn't appear to be the case on Air India. Transport articles are one of the traditional entry routes for new editors joining Wikipedia, as the information changes so frequently and is usually well-publicised so is easy to source. Consequently, when protecting an article like this one has to take into account that potential new editors who have something useful to offer are being confronted with a rather off-putting warning, which has a reasonable chance of driving them away from Wikipedia altogether, so one needs to factor whether the potential damage caused by leaving the article unprotected is outweighed by the potential loss of editors.

As established editors, we never see just how unwelcoming Wikipedia is to new editors. This is what a new editor attempting to edit Shahjalal International Airport currently sees:

While of that wall-of-text is there for the best of purposes, in trying to make it as transparent as possible why the editor can't edit the article and what they need to do, imagine how off-putting it would be to someone unfamiliar with Wikipedia, who's only trying to make a minor edit like standardising "Puducherry" and "Pondicherry". If they're genuinely good-faith, they'll presumably try to follow the instructions, which will entail them reading the entire talkpage (itself likely to be full of incomprehensible-to-newcomers WP:AGF WP:BRD WP:DAB jargon), then clicking the "edit request" button which will take them to this equally incomprehensible page filled with gibberish like {{subst:^|Write your request ABOVE this line and do not remove the tildes and curly brackets below. }}}} ~~~~. And then bear in mind that many editors on Ind/Pak/Bang articles have only a limited grasp of English and are probably unlikely to know what words like "tilde" and "verbatim" mean. Yes, protection is a vital tool for holding back the tide of grey goo, but some admins dole it out far too frequently—even semi-protection should be a last resort when negotiation, blocking and rangeblocking have all failed, not the first stage in dispute resolution which too many admins seem to think it is. ‑ Iridescent 15:30, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Interesting; do you thnk, then, that actually blocks should be distributed sooner than protections? Because, as you know, I think that's almost the opposite to cutrrent thinking. But- a block only hurts one editor, but protection can deter many? — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 17:01, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Absolutely. Subject to significant but temporary vandalism or disruption (for example, due to media attention) when blocking individual users is not a feasible option (my emphasis) is the formal policy regarding when admins can apply semi-protection, and has been ever since semiprotection was introduced back in 2005–06; the fact that certain admins dish out protection at the drop of a hat (only a small handful are responsible for the vast majority of protections) even when only a few people are involved is an artefact of (1) the "legacy admin" problem meaning there are a lot of admins who've been admins for a decade or so and feel that the rules no longer apply to them, and (2) the fact that slapping protection on a page and driving off into the sunset is a lot easier than having to get one's delicate admin hands dirty either talking to the peasants about what they're disputing and trying to negotiate a solution, or blocking someone who happens to have a vocal friend and risking having the "you're suppressing the editor's god-given right to edit Wikipedia!" whiners all come out of the woodwork screeching at you. Wikipedia has always had a problem with admins who either feel policy doesn't apply to them, or that they can ignore policy and just do what they feel is right, but IMO the problem is steadily getting worse. ‑ Iridescent 17:44, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

FWIW, according to this I've averaged roughly 20 protection per year in the period I've been active as an admin, and I've been one of the more active ones. If you take away the dozen or so trigger-happy admins, protection is really not very common. ‑ Iridescent 17:47, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Of course: what you highlighted there, on consideration, must rarely be the case- I mean, how often is it that blocking the parties to disruption isn't feasible? Slightly bizarre sentence that actually. — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 18:00, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

More often than you'd think, particularly when it comes to anything high-profile (if you can work out a way to pre-emptively block everyone who plans to vandalise Donald Trump or Lion, do suggest it). Take the Dhaka airport protection that sparked this; if you look at the history the rangeblock required to catch all the IPs involved would literally knock Asia off of Wikipedia. ‑ Iridescent 18:09, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Fair point: I was thinking of registered editors, and circumstances in which it would never be feasible to block one. But IPs, and their ranges, do make en masse rangeblocks problematic perhaps. I seem to remember there was discussion some time ago of blocking Australia; it seemed to come to nothing, mind you  ;) — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 18:37, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

IIRC, back in the days of Awbrey and Moulton (if you need to ask, you're happier not knowing) at one point we had Massachusetts and Illinois both under permanent rangeblocks. Qatar would regularly be collectively banned from Wikipedia back in the days, until they abandoned the practice of routing every connection in the country through a single IP address. ‑ Iridescent 18:55, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

*Imagines a vista in which the whole of South London was range-blocked* <g>

(talk page stalker) The problem I've got is that the tools we've got are too over-reaching. Often, all you really need to do is block one person from one article, and that's it. But your only options are to block them from every article (and have a side dish of abuse if you're really lucky) or protect the article and lock everybody out, stopping any improvements. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. I did put in a "Block per article" feature request on Meta some time back (can't find the link) and it was very popular, but didn't make it high enough up the priority list. I think if we had that, we could solve a lot of grief we have over blocks, as then editors could still get on with unrelated work elsewhere. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 20:14, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

@Ritchie333: While the "block per article" would be another useful tool, I doubt it would make much of a dent in the number of protects. Only a small amount of full protects are issued. The significant majority are semis to stop disruption from multiple IPs/throwaway accounts/socks. One or two uncontroversial blocks doesn't stop the disruption. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:45, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

You're welcome to get more involved at RFPP. Not every admin response has to be "protect" or "decline". --NeilN ^{talk to me} 18:04, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

I dip in and out of RFPP when the backlog builds up (hence this thread), but when I'm clearing backlogs I tend to focus on the deletion queues. When something isn't protected that ought to be it's a nuisance; when something isn't deleted that ought to be it can cause genuine issues. ‑ Iridescent 18:09, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

20 protections per year or this does not seem to be dipping in and out of RFPP. I'm not trying to be snarky here. You made some strong statements above and I'm wondering if you would still make them if you worked at RFPP on a much more frequent basis. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 18:25, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm not "making some strong statements", I'm quoting the protection policy verbatim. That when blocking users individually is not a feasible option has been a part of the protection policy since the protection policy in its current form was created over a decade ago (before that, semi-ing was governed by WP:SPP which phrased is as "if it is the only reasonable option left"). If the RFPP clique feel that Wikipedia's policies no longer apply to them, then we should be looking at the future either of the policies or of RFPP. ‑ Iridescent 18:55, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Or you could roll up your sleeves, actually work at RFPP, and show how you think policy should be applied. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 19:20, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

If there's a backlog, then I would take a guess that, like at e.g. UAA, it is at least in part caused by editors filing unnecessary reports. So, like there, Education, education, education! Improve the quality of the reports, and the numbers go down (how much, is the question I guess). Although we must admit an element of logic to Iridescent's basic point- that if the editors whose actions were causing the need to protect were blocked, then protection wouldn't be required (or asked for, even?). Interesting discussion, thanks both. None of my business, of course, apoologies. Happy Fridays all round! — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 10:31, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Dancing Monkey

It's been a year. May I put it back? 81.98.14.109 (talk) 21:55, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Question

Hello Iridescent,

Do you think that users would name themselves from the person they are trying to write about? That's what I thought when I nominated Sonu sinha for speedy, and because that was their only contribution, besides one edit to their sandbox. -- 1989 18:43, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Why do you think he's trying to write about himself? User:Sonu sinha just looks like a straightforward "hello, I'm new on Wikipedia, this is who I am", of the type we encourage new editors to write. (There are some Wikipedia editors who have userpage autobiographies the size of small novels.) If he were to write a great long spiel about how great he is, or a long ramble with no relation to Wikipedia, that would obviously be a violation of WP:WEBHOST (as you've presumably noticed owing to your watchlist turning red, I've just deleted a huge stack of these), and if he were to start writing an autobiography that wouldn't be forbidden but would warrant a quiet word about WP:COI, but I can't see anything problematic about Devendra​ prasad sadan is located at oriawan ,nalanda bhiar.In this sadan owner is late davendra prasad.. he born in oriawan.at 1945. Mr Sonu sinha is great personality even a Mr. Amitabh bachan ..So he works on as programming developer...And he also help in social activities..In oriawan Mr. Sonu Sinha as popular person... other than the usual ESL grammatical mistakes. ‑ Iridescent 18:57, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Here's the issue. The user is not using I in the text, referring "himself", it's saying he. What made you come up with the conclusion that the user is talking about "himself"? -- 1989 19:08, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

In my experience that's fairly common with Ind/Pak editors—I assume pronouns work differently there, but I've often seen "I", "you" and "he/she" transposed. Even if that's not the case here, people writing about themselves in the third person on their userpages isn't particularly unusual—User:Acdixon is one who springs to mind. As I say, if the editor starts writing puffery, giving out their phone number, or any of the other things spammers do then by all means it will be deletable, but given that we're explicitly telling new users "usually one's user page has something about oneself", it seems rather harsh to then start tagging them once they try to put something about themselves on their user page. ‑ Iridescent 19:29, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

I see. My apologies. -- 1989 19:31, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

CSD Pontus Åhman

Hi Iridescent , hope you well. I noticed that you have reverted my CSD for Pontus Åhman. That's ok. But I would suggest you to participate in this discussion about sportspeople here:Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#The criteria of WP:NSPORT here are too inclusive. I believe that Pontus Åhman fails notability on multiple levels. Junior driver, no significant achievements, no winnings, no significant media coverage/references. The fact that he is competing, does not make him significant or notable. In the near future I will do PROD so others can join the discussion re deleting this page. I would highly appreciate your feedback, thanks Jone Rohne Nester (talk) 19:19, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

The A7 speedy deletion criterion is credible claim of significance and has nothing to do with notability. The subject can be the most non-notable person around, but if there's an indication that anyone considers them important—which is the case here by definition, since he has a podium finish—then it's not speedyable unless it meets another speedy deletion criterion (spam, coypvio, etc). I know it seems bureaucratic, but it's worded this strictly for a reason; speedy deletion is only appropriate for those circumstances when an article is unambiguously and incontrovertibly inappropriate for inclusion on Wikipedia. ‑ Iridescent 19:33, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Peer review

Hi, I see you are one of the regular writers of art-related FAs. I have recently been working on Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, an interesting topic because of the image itself, and the history of the portrait (stolen by the Nazis and the subject of a long law suit before restitution and sale for $135 million). Would you have the time or inclination to pay a visit to the new peer review for any comments? Many thanks if you are able to have a read through. Thank you, and all the best, The Bounder (talk) 19:28, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

I'll have a look (may not be for a couple of days) but I'll warn you that I absolutely loathe Klimt so might be a bit uncharitable. If you haven't already, you probably want to gently prod Victoriaearle, Ceoil and Wehwalt for this one. You also want to rustle up at least one German speaker from somewhere (probably the authors of de:Adele Bloch-Bauer I—I assume at least some of them will speak at least basic English), as I wouldn't be surprised if this is a case where German/Austrian opinion isn't necessarily going to match the views of the English and American press. ‑ Iridescent 19:39, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

If memory serves, @Gerda Arendt: speaks that language. I do so as well but art is not a subject I have much knowledge in. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:47, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

I will look, but not before next week. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:16, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Probably would be about the same time span for me. Although I don't think that Maoist painting gives me credentials in art ...--Wehwalt (talk) 01:12, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

I wasn't thinking of you so much in art terms, as in terms of who's best placed to pick nits. (If I were thinking in terms of "who knows about artwork" Johnbod would probably be top of the list.) For a topic like Klimt I imagine there are enough fans out there reading it that outright errors are unlikely to be an issue, but I know from experience that when writing about individual artworks it's very easy to slip into jargon or to presume readers will be familiar with a particular piece of background, and it needs reviewers who aren't familiar with the jargon to spot the bits that won't make sense to general readers. ‑ Iridescent 08:41, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

• That is very kind of all of you for your offers. There is no rush on this (I have only just opened the PR), so it will be open for a while. All the best, The Bounder (talk) 10:25, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

I can look now. - Iridescent, thank you for the supply of images about disagreement ;) - Let your friends know that I will not agree nor disagree on John Gielgud, - not interested. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:19, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Belatedly ✓ Done ‑ Iridescent 18:57, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Wood Siding railway station scheduled for TFA

As per our discussion above, this is to let you know that the Wood Siding railway station article has been scheduled as today's featured article for May 19, 2017. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/May 19, 2017, but note that a coordinator will trim the lead to around 1100 characters anyway, so you aren't obliged to do so. Thanks! Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:48, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Trimmed to 1168 characters. I've changed the image as that picture of the locomotive was used last time, but feel free to change it back if you think it works better. I've also quietly 'lost' {{TFATOPIC}}, which IMO is one of the most worthless templates ever invented—anyone who finds the topic interesting will follow the wikilinks and read the related articles whether it's a "featured topic" or not, while anyone who doesn't find the topic interesting isn't going to be tempted by the offer of "would you like to read more articles like this?". ‑ Iridescent 09:29, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Is that the lot then? No more Brill Tramway for TFA? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:31, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Yup, when it comes to the existing articles, although Infrastructure of the Brill Tramway could probably be taken through FAC (or maybe FLC) with minimal effort. Theoretically one could write Church Siding railway station—it was listed in the passenger timetable for a few months, so technically qualifies for a stand-alone article. Given that it was just a heap of mud at the trackside where the trains stopped briefly in the morning to pick up full milk cans and in the evening to drop off empties, and I doubt any passenger ever actually got on or off there (it was only about 200 yards from Wotton railway station which actually had such fripperies as platforms and buildings), I really don't feel it warrants any more than the couple of lines it gets at Infrastructure of the Brill Tramway. Brill Tramway is in the OTD rotation for April 1—a day on which for obvious reasons anything on the Main Page gets increased scrutiny—so it will continue to get periodic spikes in visitors after the TFAs have gone. ‑ Iridescent 20:41, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Just pinging Dank so he is aware of why {{TFATOPIC}} is absent, thanks Jimfbleak - talk to me? 10:12, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

*Ouch*

...upgraded your Millais to something more colourful eh :) — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 16:52, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

File:Donkey punch.png

Which picture you get is randomized—the Millais My First/Second Sermon is still in the mix. If you purge the page it will start showing you a fresh one, of varying degrees of offensiveness. ‑ Iridescent 17:00, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

(adding) This piece of Commons's finest is probably my personal favorite at the moment, for embodying everything there is to say about Commons in a single image. ‑ Iridescent 17:15, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Discussion

Hello, Iridescent. You have new messages at Talk:P.D. Jain Homoeopathic Medical College.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

—usernamekiran(talk) 23:31, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

(Replying here as this is more a meta-issue regarding your conduct, than an issue affecting a particular article.) I agree entirely with JJMC89's comments at Talk:P.D. Jain Homoeopathic Medical College#Sources, and urge you to actually take in what's being said here; you seem to have completely misunderstood what the non-negotiable requirement that Wikipedia articles be sourced to independent, non-trivial, reliable, secondary sources means. A directory listing can serve as confirmation that something exists but if the secondary sources don't exist on a topic then it doesn't get a Wikipedia article, and if you feel a topic should be included on Wikipedia it's down to you to find the sources beforehand, not to write unsourced articles and then demand other people find sources because you can't be bothered. (While editcountitis should be taken with an extreme pinch of salt owing to the way automated scripts can distort the counts, in Boleyn, JJMC89 and myself you're edit-warring single-handedly against editors with over half a million edits between them and a combined total of 22 years experience on Wikipedia—you may want to consider that it's possibly you who is misunderstanding Wikipedia's policies here.) ‑ Iridescent 16:08, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Requesting guidance

Hi
I would like to redirect my userpage to talkpage. How i can do that? Like you did. Thanks. :-)
—usernamekiran(talk) 23:53, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

@Usernamekiran: Greetings, you just need to replace the content on User:Usernamekiran with #REDIRECT [[User talk:Usernamekiran]] Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 08:58, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

@Jo-Jo Eumerus: thanks a lot for the reply. This is just like the article redirects. :-) —usernamekiran(talk) 12:51, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Museums criterion

No need to reply, I simply wanted to note Wikipedia:Notability_(people)#Creative_professionals actually makes it clear "museum collections" is in fact a notability factor and it's one that has been included for as long as the page has existed. SwisterTwister talk 05:32, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

"Represented within the permanent collections of several notable galleries or museums" can make an artist notable, but the lack of such isn't an indication of non-notability. (To be honest, I think this is an even stupider SNG than WP:NFOOTY—because of the means by which reception pieces function and the fact that big galleries tend to operate archives, someone can be utterly insignificant and still have their works held in the collections of multiple major institutions—the V&A alone has over two million items in its collection. If I were in charge, every SNG would be abolished and be replaced by "either the independent sources exist, or they don't".) ‑ Iridescent 16:08, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for being one of Wikipedia's top medical contributors!

please help translate this message into your local language via meta

The 2016 Cure Award

In 2016 you were one of the top ~200 medical editors across any language of Wikipedia. Thank you from Wiki Project Med Foundation for helping bring free, complete, accurate, up-to-date health information to the public. We really appreciate you and the vital work you do! Wiki Project Med Foundation is a user group whose mission is to improve our health content. Consider joining here, there are no associated costs.

Thanks again :-) -- Doc James along with the rest of the team at Wiki Project Med Foundation 18:08, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Good lord, am I? I'm not sure my (few) medical articles are really what the creators of WP:MED had in mind, as they're all oddities like Biddenden Maids rather than anything any reader could ever possibly find useful. ‑ Iridescent 23:10, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

We are a small community of editors. Being broad in scope is also important :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:48, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Just when I think wikidata can't get weirder....

I see this diff. It relates to this help page and this "about" page. While cool - it's just yet another agregator of data without any great deal of indication of where the information comes from. Oi, vey. Ealdgyth - Talk 18:01, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

IMO Commons has re-gained its place from Wikidata as the WMF's most fucked-up project, especially now everyone's favorite creepy sex-case Neelix has taken his disrupt-o-bot over there in the wake of his unpleasantness on en-wiki and is enthusiastically spraying loopy categories around like a machine-gunner. (I know that when I think of "Freedom from Want", my first thought is "Norman Rockwell's painting by the same name included a stick of celery", or "The Destroying Angel and Daemons of Evil Interrupting the Orgies of the Vicious and Intemperate really needs its own category which in turn should be a subcategory of Category:Back Hugs in art".) ‑ Iridescent 16:16, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

I notice that commons:User talk:Neelix has a few complaints over the cat work already on it. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 18:14, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

I wish that Wikidata would do proper edit summaries. Recently I split off a few interwikis from 1257 Samalas eruption (Q15830869) because they were referring to a different topic, but you can't tell that it wasn't vandalism from the edit summary. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 18:14, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Neelix is like a terminator—he'll just keep going until someone actually takes action to stop him. (The history of his en-wiki talkpage—which has nine enormous dedicated archives just to hold the deletion notices regarding pages he created by mistake—could politely be described as "striking".) Regarding Wikidata, I imagine their refusal to allow edit summaries is like their refusal to demand reliable sources—a conscious decision, intended to differentiate themselves from Wikipedia. ‑ Iridescent 18:21, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Or apparently we are supposed to be able to. Through an API, not through the interface. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 18:58, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm sure that makes sense to someone. (I've said it before and I'll say it again; unless and until WD gets their act together, their data should be blocked completely from appearing on WP. If they're not willing to commit within a reasonable timeframe to at least making token efforts towards sourcing and accuracy, the WMF should call their bluff and cut them loose. If they're really providing such a valuable service as they like to pretend they are, I'm sure Google will snap them up and they can all become immensely rich.) ‑ Iridescent 22:24, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
Quote of the day: "I try to maintain both speed and precision, but with a preference for speed". And he still wonders why he was shown the door. ‑ Iridescent 22:27, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

[[Category:Sitting with legs crossed (knee-on-ankle)]]... unbelievable. — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 13:39, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Despite it having been here for a while now, I still don't understand what WD's purpose even is.—CYBERPOWER (Message) 01:41, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

The cynic in me says that the the WMF is well aware that Wikidata has failed, and is keeping it on life support as it serves a useful social function in keeping the hardcore cranks and obsessives somewhere relatively small where their activities can easily be monitored. Wikiversity traditionally had this function. ‑ Iridescent 08:21, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Neelix is still at it, incidentally. If there are any Commons admins reading this, you may want to put a stop to this now—because he works at such high speed and such low competence, as en-wiki learned the hard way it can literally take months to clean up the mess he leaves. We had to invent a new deletion criterion to cover him. ‑ Iridescent 08:21, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

I don't know if it was the original purpose or not, but the original use of Wikidata was as a central place for interlanguage links (ILLs), so that we didn't need to have bots running around updating dozens of pages in different languages.

It was easy to link a page in one language to all the equivalents on the other languages. Let's say that you found that a page had no ILLs, but there was an equivalent in six other languages, which were mutually linked. You just needed to create one ILL on your page to just one of the others - or vice versa - and sooner or later a fleet of bots would sail in and add all the missing ones in a pattern like this; there are 21 lines here, but each is bidirectional - so there are 42 ILLs, six each on seven pages. The main problem with this method was that if you made a mistake, and didn't notice until the bots had visited, it was difficult to de-link - if you removed one of those 42 links, a bot would simply add it back in - you needed to remove at least twelve (six on your page, and one on each of the other six), and do so quickly enough that the bots weren't undoing you soon after.

With Wikidata, you have one page with seven entries, and if one is an error, you just need to remove that one - no need to go to lots of other Wikis, no need for bots. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:09, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Or to put it the other way, an error introduced in one Wikipedia is now picked up by Wikidata and propagated to every other Wikipedia, without anyone on any of those other Wikipedia's being made aware of the fact. Yes, I know the official answer is "check the 'show Wikidata edits' box" in your watchlist preferences, but that results in your Wikipedia watchlist degenerating into an incomprehensible flood of garbage.

Before anyone accuses me of engaging in hyperbole, I just checked the "show Wikidata edits" box to test it. This is what my watchlist currently looks like with that option selected:

 ‑ Iridescent 11:21, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Yea, I have mine turned off too. I'm a botop, and I can't comprehend this. To each their own I suppose.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 11:53, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Even when Wikidata-related edits take place on Wikipedia, they can still be unintentionally funny. Here someone is trying to add Wikidata to the portalbar at the bottom of Battle of Hastings. But... instead of linking direct to the [page on the battle on Wikidata], the link takes you to a [search page]. WHY? We'll leave aside that the Wikidata page on the battle has the battle occurring on two different days (having apparantly gotten some Spanish information with the wrong date at some point in time). I'll be correcting the date on Wikidata but I'm going to remove the portal bar link. At least Commons has some utility for the everyday user, I don't see any utility to pointing out Wikidata to our readers. If they even have an idea of Wikidata, they'll be able to find it through other means. Ealdgyth - Talk 12:49, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

I suppose the theoretical utility of pointing out Wikidata to our readers is the hope that they'll go there and fix the errors. As things stand, as documented ad nauseam when a reader sees something wrong in a Wikidata-generated field, there's no obvious way to fix it. ‑ Iridescent 16:28, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

arbitrary break: Neelix

Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi, regarding your comments above (but replying here as the indentation on this thread is getting too tangled) I'll just put this here to give a very limited glimpse into what cleaning up after Neelix was like (if you think I'm cherry-picking, any admin can click this link to confirm it's a direct screen-shot with no tweaking or fakery). This is a snapshot of his final 100 or so of them; bear in mind he created literally tens of thousands of these things. (The full list is here, but is well over a megabyte long and will crash your browser if your computer can't handle it.)

 ‑ Iridescent 23:08, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Where is he getting these titles from? "Construction of the boob"? Really?—CYBERPOWER (Message) 02:01, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

• Grimbledon Down. Xanthomelanoussprog (talk) 07:44, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Yeah I remember that feller. Sounds like a schoolboy's sniggering behind a desk / toilet wall wisdom. At least now he has found a new home to kicked out from. With any luck he'll end up at Wikidata Iridescent :) — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 07:57, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Damnit, Booby doesnt have a section on nesting, I wanted to redirect 'Constructions of the Booby' to that... Time to break out the missus' seabird books. Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:54, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

(And I cut off this list before it got to the Breast cancer redirects, which were what eventually drew admin attention and got him desysopped—Tumorous titties, anyone?) It isn't schoolboy sniggering that drives him, just an obsession with creating pages, so he'd take every possible synonym in every possible combination and end up creating sequences like Selfeducation / Self-educating / Selfeducating / Self educating / Self-educate / Selfeducate / Self educate / Self-educates / Selfeducates / Self educates / Selfeducated / Self educated / Self-educator / Selfeducator / Self educator / Self-educators / Selfeducators / Self educators / Self-educational / Selfeducational / Self educational / Self-educationally / Selfeducationally / Self educationally / Self-taught learner / Self taught learner / Selftaught learner / Self-taught learners / Selftaught learners / Self taught learners / Self-taught learning / Selftaught learning / Self taught learning / Self-taught learnings / Selftaught learnings / Self taught learnings / Selftaught / Self-teaching / Selfteaching / Self teaching / Self-teachings / Selfteachings / Self teachings.

I very much doubt Commons will do anything to stop him; it takes a hell of a lot to be kicked out of Commons, who generally take a degree of pride in their reputation as Wikipedia's Island of Banned Users. ‑ Iridescent 11:09, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Constructions of the booby

@OID, boobies are beloved by every schoolchild not just for the name, but because they don't construct nests but instead paint out a circle on the ground in their own shit. ‑ Iridescent 11:37, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

To be fair, it is quite easy for some of the types that edit Wikipedia to disappear down this rabbit hole at times. I just made this edit, which is categorising a redirect as a misspelling. The trouble comes when someone then tries to list and redirect all possible misspellings and variants. Where do you draw the line? There are currently 27,334 redirects in Category:Redirects from misspellings, and many times more than that which no-one has ever bothered to categorise. I remember creating Wikipedia:Categorizing redirects in May 2007 (initial version) and wondering where that would end up (the concept was around long before I wrote that page). I am slightly worried that it has gone from being intuitive categorising to now having 'shell templates' to "help" people categorise correctly (do you remember when WikiProject banners were pulled inside a shell banner?). That seems overkill, though at Template:Redirect category shell, it does say "Manifold sort: If help is needed to determine appropriate categories, then this redirect populates Category:Miscellaneous redirects. Monitors of that category will check this redirect and add or remove rcats as needed.". Phew, that's OK then! (mild sarcasm mixed with genuine relief and worry that people actually monitor such things). Carcharoth (talk) 10:44, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Well, eleven people monitor it, and one of those is going to be somewhat less involved with redirects from now on. (Neelix's obsession wasn't just with creating redirects, remember, even though they were what was most visible—there's also the bizarre shrine to Tara Teng he built, and the walled garden he created of pages relating to her.) ‑ Iridescent 11:10, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

musings on consensus and dispute resolution

True. Though I am unimpressed with how the Si Trew incident has developed. There was (and is) a problem there, but those participating in that thread seem unable to step back and see what the evolution of that thread looks like with a bit of perspective. There was an initial topic ban proposed, but somehow it seems to have evolved into discussion of a site ban/indefinite block, with not a huge amount of justification (and far less participation, so only a small number of people are now discussing that option). I get what the people there are saying, but the process feels wrong. Feels like people are trying to see how far they can go to get what they want, and moving the goalposts at the same time. But then looking at the current headings at ANI it looks like it has become RfC/U mark 2.0. Carcharoth (talk) 15:30, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Without commenting on that specific case or any other, there is a reason that I've always asserted that community sanctions imposed at AN or ANI should be appealable to ArbCom. Not that the Committee would have an appetite to second-guess the outcomes the vast majority of the time, but there needs to be a safety valve if a discussion goes off the rails completely. Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:41, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm sure everyone would agree that there need to be some checks and balances on what happens at ANI, but ArbCom isn't the answer. It was set up to handle cases that the Community couldn't settle, not to become the Supreme Court of Wikipedia, with a mandate to overrule Community decisions. If you really want a legalistic appeal mechanism from ANI, you should suggest setting up a panel of eligible editors as jurors, and every time there's a genuine appeal of an ANI decision, ask a 'Crat to assemble an anonymous 'jury' of half-a-dozen or so of those who agree to decide the appeal via email or a private forum. No fuss, no dramah, no names, no extra stress on ArbCom (or using it for a purpose it wasn't intended for). --RexxS (talk) 18:05, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean by "should"—are you saying that once these restrictions could not be appealed to the Arbitration Committee, or that there have been discussions to remove the ability to appeal? Community-imposed restrictions are indeed appealable to the Arbitration Committee to question the validity of the restriction. isaacl (talk) 18:18, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

In principle I believe that restrictions from AN or ANI (including bans) are still appealable to ArbCom, but there hasn't been a successful appeal that I can remember in a long time, partly due to the discontinuance of BASC. Newyorkbrad (talk) 18:44, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Frankly, sometimes I think that consensus based processes are inherently unsuitable for handling user conduct issues when the process relies on a self-selecting group as ANI is. Such groups tend to favour the most obsessed and loud voices and are prone to manifesting both Gresham's law and the Dunning-Kruger effect. It isn't the same thing with content issues as they are not people-based usually. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 18:31, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Way back before the dawn of time I proposed a plan to split Arbcom, with a separate Govcom (with different membership) empowered to issue binding conclusions to content RFCs ("should {{infobox person}} include a |religion= parameter?"), leaving Arbcom itself free to act as the arbiters of user conduct and the issuers/repealers of bans and topic bans, as Strippers of Rights, and as a final court of appeal should decisions of the Govcom be deemed inappropriate. It never got anywhere, but I still think it would work; yes, it creates an extra layer of bureaucracy, but it would sweep away a huge swath of largely moribund existing bureaucracies and petty fiefdoms (Category:Wikipedia dispute resolution contains 273 different pages, and while some of them would need to be kept an awful lot more wouldn't), it would give long-term editors who for whatever reason aren't considered appropriate for adminship a genuine degree of significant influence on Wikipedia's decision-making processes, and it would prevent Arbcom itself being such a hell-hole.

@Carcharoth, I agree entirely about the way the Si Trew case has panned out. While I agree wholeheartedly with the topic ban—Wikipedia has been far too tolerant, for too long, of people who take ownership of a particular Wikipedia process and use it as their personal soapbox (cough cough cough)—the general glee with which an angry mob is trying to hound him out altogether, rather than just steer someone who's obviously acting in good faith away from the problem area, is unseemly. ‑ Iridescent 23:26, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Is it just me, or is the "angry mob is trying to hound him out altogether" a more common phenomenon these days? Maybe I just didn't spend enough time on the drama boards back in the day. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:14, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

It certainly happened back in the day—Jimmy whipping up an angry mob to hound Thekohser off is probably the most high-profile example. (I know it's flogging a long-dead horse, but it's worth pointing out again that the MWB proposal, which Jimmy loathed so much it led to mass blockings and a decade of squabbling, was "articles written by people with a potential COI should be written in a noindexed draft space and not sent live until moved to the mainspace by a neutral third party", and is now standard WP practice.) You probably didn't see it so much because the mobs used to form at WP:RFC/U rather than on the highly-visible boards. We also had a very serious problem back then with people whipping up angry mobs off-wiki on IRC or mailing lists, who would then all descend on a discussion at once to give the impression of an overwhelming consensus before anyone else had the chance to comment—I get the impression that this doesn't happen anywhere near as often as it did. ‑ Iridescent 08:29, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Since I can compare 2006-07 to 2016-17 without the distraction of actually remembering much in between, I'm of the impression that the internal dynamics of the angry mob have changed, but angry mobs are forever. Of course, my memory may be bad and perceptions may vary - I wasn't too into the politics back then. But I always thought that old-school angry mobs tended to form off-wiki and to get their internal cohesiveness from the preexisting interpersonal relationships of the mob members (and their preexisting quarrels with whoever they were mobbing), whereas a lot of modern mob formation involves people who aren't necessarily specifically interested in each other's wikipolitical fortunes, but just make it part of their regular Wikipedia task list to hang out on the noticeboards and "help form community consensus", which obviously is way more interesting if you get to use pitchforks. Opabinia regalis (talk) 00:51, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

I don't have quite that luxury, but I can compare pre-2011 and post-2015 without the distraction of having witnessed the intervening change. I agree about the decline of off-wiki coordination; the type of people who hang round on IRC appear to have moved on from Wikipedia to Reddit and Twitter, and while the old Wikipedia Review was an ever-present constant in the life of anyone even remotely active on Wikipedia, even if they never actually visited it, its modern incarnation as Wikipediocracy has dwindled to little more than a social club for blocked users to kvetch about how it's Just Not Fair. (That said, the spirit of the Golden Age Of Off-Wiki Co-ordinating Of On-Wiki POV-Pushing hasn't totally died—the old Encyclopedia Dramatica nutjobs or the EEML clique would certainly have recognised kindred spirits in the GGTF.) Whether it's actually a sign of strength or of malaise that people no longer bother targeting Wikipedia is another question altogether. ‑ Iridescent 19:24, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

arbitrary ease-of-scrolling break

Consensus doesn't scale upwards for any decision making, and the way consensus is evaluated on English Wikipedia is not well-suited for the task and contrary to how it's done in the real world. But it's a catch-22: absent the WMF dictating a change, the current consensus process would have to be used to agree upon a different decision-making process. isaacl (talk) 03:51, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

@Isaacl, consensus can scale up, in "silent majority" situations where bringing large numbers of people into the process can make it obvious that one position has overwhelming support. One of the traditional problems with Wikipedia's model is that a small handful of vocal individuals with a particular view can make it appear that a point is disputed and consequently waste a lot of time of a lot of people, whereas bringing in a large number of people with enough knowledge of the subject to offer informed opinions can make it clear right away that the vocal minority have no broader backing for their opinions. Where consensus (in the Wikipedia sense) falls over is in those cases where there are both good arguments, and significant numbers of people, supporting opposing views, and there isn't an obvious compromise solution; these are the cases where a Wikipedia Civil Court empowered to impose binding solutions to RFCs would cut through the crap and put an end to the "the discussions on WT:MED and WP:FTN came to different conclusions on what was appropriate to include in Goat Yoga,* which of these two different consensuses is the 'actual' consensus?" issues. ‑ Iridescent 08:18, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
*Real article, real discussions. This version in particular is one of the most unintentionally hilarious things I've ever seen on Wikipedia.

As I mentioned in my link, true consensus decision making only works when the group in question is strongly aligned in its goals. This becomes increasingly unlikely as the group grows in size, which results in the situation you describe: none of the points of view are wrong, they just follow from different objectives. For example, some people think every article should explain the basic background concepts underlying its subject at a certain reading level, to make them more self-contained, whereas others think that background context can be deferred to separate articles. I too believe that binding content arbitration would be more effective, but enacting it would mean editors having to give up their effective veto on edits they don't like, and there has been no apparent appetite for this amongst those who participate in such discussions. (Which is another issue that I discussed in my link with how Wikipedia's version of consensus decision-making doesn't scale upwards: it doesn't really capture a true consensus of the entire editing population, who might well be happy with having a final arbiter on content.) isaacl (talk) 14:34, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

There are ways it could be imposed; the existing Arbcom writes a new "constitution" and puts it to a public vote, and if approved it's then ratified by Arbcom and becomes binding on the whole community through the WMF's rarely-used but still extant Crown-in-Parliament status with regards to Arbcom. It's been done in the past. The impetus would need to come from either the Board or Arbcom, and neither is going to do it unless there's clear evidence either that the existing system has failed completely or that there's a clear groundswell in support of change. (With Roger gone, the only person who could write a formal constitution for Wikipedia is probably NYB, and I very much doubt he wants the job.) ‑ Iridescent 16:36, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

The most likely route I see to change is for the stalemate on process change to be get bad enough that the makeup of the population shifts, allowing for a vote to pass with a sufficiently high threshold. isaacl (talk) 17:26, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

@Isaacl, to be honest I wouldn't be surprised if the population has shifted to that extent, although the Wikipedia Uncertainty Principle applies in that (as the conjunction of this and this is making uncharacteristically clear) it's very difficult to gauge how any discussion will go without actually having a full discussion. Although it looks like Wikipedia is dominated by the 2006–07 intake, IMO that's an artefact of so many admins coming from that generation and consequently that the names one sees over and over tend to be of that group. (With the exception of Kirill Lokshin (2005) and Callanecc (2009), every single member of Arbcom joined Wikipedia in 2006–07) In reality there's been quite substantive churn—using the highly inaccurate method of looking over Special:RecentChanges with popups enabled, more than half of current non-IP non-automated edits are being made by editors who signed up in the last couple of years. Someone at the WMF (WAID I assume it's you) probably has the exact figures, as that's such a key indicator I can't believe they don't monitor it like hawks. I wouldn't be in the least surprised if there were actually quite strong support for a "Congress of People's Deputies" proposal, provided it were presented as "a way to ensure decisions are made by a group that genuinely represents the community rather than the usual superannuated has-beens who dominate Wikipedia's decision-making and dispute-resolution processes". ‑ Iridescent 23:00, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Every time I've raised the idea of binding mediation, as far as I recall, no comments have ensued. My proposals for trying to evaluate consensus by weighing pros and cons instead of taking a straw poll have not garnered much support, either. I don't think English Wikipedia is there yet amongst those likely to participate in a consensus discussion on the matter. isaacl (talk) 23:11, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

tangent about editor retention and the dominance of the 2006–07 intake

Iridescent, a certain founding member of ArbCom is the staff member most likely to watch those numbers, and since he's only made two edits on wiki today, I'm going to go along with his pretense that he doesn't work seven days a week. I'll ask him tomorrow.

BTW, have I ever told you about one of my fantasy projects, phab:T89970? Imagine that if you had a relatively simple question, you could just ask a representative sample of registered editors for a quick response.

(One of my own long-term fantasies is being able to figure out whether editors are feeling better or worse over time, and to be able to determine whether there are characteristics that predict this, such as account age, year that you started [and therefore your idea of how Wikipedia 'should' operate], admin status, etc.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:30, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

While I'm thinking about it, here's a few facts (if memory serves/full disclaimers apply):

• If you compare editors who started around 2007-ish against editors who started around 2012-ish, the recent editors tended to stop editing more quickly now. The main culprit seemed to be automation: (semi-)automated, near-instant reverting, automated warnings, automated unfriendliness. Apparently things like Huggle use (by experienced editors) and editor retention (by newbies) are inversely correlated.
• Once an editor reaches a couple thousand edits, they're pretty much here for life, or at least "until life intervenes" (finishing college/getting a job/having kids – but the opposite is also true: we pick up high-volume editors when people lose jobs/retire/get divorced). But you have to get to the couple thousand edits range, and we have trouble getting completely new editors to, say, five or ten. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:31, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

James takes a "decide what we want the conclusion to be and then find some figures to support it" approach, so I'm not sure he's really the best person to ask. I can predict with a reasonable degree of confidence that to him, the numbers will show "direct correlation between editor satisfaction/productivity and their usage of MediaViewer and VisualEditor".

I suspect that a lot of the problem with keeping new recruits is actually the converse of the low-hanging fruit problem. An editor starting out now is much more likely than in former days to find that whatever they want to write about has a WP:OWNer camped out on the page; experienced editors know how to deal with someone taking a "I've written 3 FAs and that gives me a license to revert without explanation any changes you make" line, but it must be fairly intimidating for new editors. ‑ Iridescent 08:41, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

He says that this is not something he tracks systematically, but that you're welcome to file a request for a query, because it should be possible to determine whether there are more post-2007 active editors than pre-2008 ones.

I don't think that OWNership and unexplained reversions are the opposite of the low-hanging fruit problem. "We've already got a reasonably decent and reasonably well-sourced article at Cancer, so the odds of your edit improving it are lower now than the odds of anybody being able to make an improvement in 2003, when it was largely a collection of unsourced and half-wrong paragraphs" is the low-hanging fruit problem. The examples you give sound more like the "pulling up the ladder after me" problem. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:49, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Regarding active editors, this isn't much, but the registration-year distribution of a convenience sample (people who bothered to vote for arbcom) is here.

I know I've seen the data before on how "automation" is apparently off-putting to newbies, but I always have a hard time believing it. Maybe I'm just an asocial weirdo, but if I were just starting to learn how to do something and I screwed it up, I would prefer by about fifteen orders of magnitude to get an impersonal, automated notice about what was wrong and how to fix it than to get an actual real person on my talk page.

My pet theory for new-editor engagement has been that automated fixing of small errors like typos has reduced the number of opportunities for new editors to make small-stakes early edits that are unambiguously positive. But I think I floated that idea on this talk page before, and Iridescent, fixer of many typos, thought I was wrong, and is probably right. Opabinia regalis (talk) 00:51, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

"People who bothered to vote for Arbcom" is actually quite a good sample in this context, if we're looking at the people who'd care enough to have an opinion on any future restructuring of Wikipedia's governance. I can't be fagged to add up the numbers, but at a glance it looks like we've reached the point where "2010 or later" outnumbers "2007 or earlier" among those who are engaged enough to care. I'm entirely in agreement with you about automation; if I were to sign up for a website, I'd not bat an eyelash at an automated "you did this incorrectly" message (anyone who's used a computer at any point in the last decade is used to those), but I'd be mortified if one of the site's moderators were to take the time to address me personally, as I'd assume it meant I'd made a serious error. (Because we're so used to Wikipedia's internal jargon, it's easy to forget that to the rest of the world, every editor on Wikipedia is "an administrator".) ‑ Iridescent 19:14, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Registration year	Number of ACE2016 voters
2001	3
2002	5
2003	28
2004	82
2005	204
2006	321
2007	188
2008	147
2009	126
2010	101
2011	134
2012	111
2013	116
2014	134
2015	131
2016	80

The actual numbers, if you want them (minus 30ish valid voters whose queries didn't work for various reasons, mostly because I was an idiot when I collected the data and forgot to account for special characters in usernames). Your "2007 or earlier" and "2010 or later" categories are almost exactly equal.

Of course it's not too hard to mash some buttons to vote for or against candidates running for a defined position, even if it's a position you think shouldn't exist. Defining a new set of positions is a harder sell. Obviously I wasn't around to have an opinion, but from reading old tea leaves it seems to me that the moment for governance-restructuring came (I dunno, five years ago or thereabouts?) and has passed us by. There are lots of annoyances about the current state of the project, but nothing bad enough to motivate anyone to take on that kind of task. At the same time, there's very little interesting small-scale experimentation going on that could be offered as a test case ready for scale-up. It seems like the current reaction to any problem is to say it's because there are too many users involved who are inexperienced/clueless/not sufficiently Serious Business about the job, and the best solution is to create a new user right or otherwise impose an access control mechanism to keep out the riffraff. (I actually don't think this has much to do with the new-editor stats - people have passed the handful-of-edits threshold by the time they run into these gatekeeping exercises - but I'm sure it's a problem with respect to the issue I originally collected these stats for, which is increasingly and absurdly lengthy pre-RfA tenure expectations and whether that means anything for newer editors' sense of commitment to the project.) For really new newbies, I have to suspect that the rise in automated communications and the fall of new-editor retention rates have a correlation but little underlying causative relationship, unless there's more to the data that I'm aware of. There's now a much broader range of alternative places online to dispose of your cognitive surplus than there was in 2006, so a decline in the rate of transition from newly registered account to committed community member seems somewhat unavoidable. Opabinia regalis (talk) 23:08, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Indeed. As with so much of Wikipedia, until there's an actual crisis "this is how we've always done it" always dominates. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; when the WMF have tried to impose alleged 'necessary progress' by fiat it hasn't exactly been a great success. ‑ Iridescent 13:50, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

arbitrary break: Wikidata

"... the WMF should call their bluff and cut them loose" -- I'm curious: why would this be something we'd expect the WMF to do? Wouldn't this be something each language wikipedia would decide independently, as Fram has suggested? I was surprised to see that conversation peter out, since it looked like there were quite legitimate reasons to re-open discussions on the use of Wikidata. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:13, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Mike Christie, I'm talking about cutting off the funding and free hosting the WMF provides, rather than the individual Wikipedias (Wikipediae?) breaking the data connections. The WD hardliners always insist that the reason it needs to be kept on life-support, despite its benefits to Wikipedia being questionable, is that it's providing an essential service on which major multinational corporations and in particular search engines and data-mining operations rely to operate effectively. If that is the case, then Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo would be glad to pay for it were it a stand-alone project, rather than have it be a constant drain on the WMF's relatively limited funds. If any given Wikipedia still found its data useful they could use it just as easily, whether it's funded by the WMF or not, and if any given Wikipedia didn't find its data useful the donors of that country—who are reasonably assuming that their donations are going to help Wikipedia (and to a lesser extent Commons)—aren't funding something that isn't providing them any service. (This is exactly the relationship the WMF currently has with OpenStreetMap, before anyone starts objecting that it couldn't possibly work.) Besides, if Wikidata were no longer able to shelter under the apron of WMF Legal, they might be forced to ask themselves those long hard questions about accuracy and data integrity they've been ignoring for five years. ‑ Iridescent 11:29, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm still thinking of starting an RfC about Wikidata on enwiki, but had too much things to handle at once and didn't find the time yet to tackle this one, which will be contentious. Last week, thanks to Wikidata, a number of other language wikis claimed for 1 1/2 day that Kurt Cobain was born in Denmark and died from anal sex. Apparently not a single one of the 800+ page viewers here had a) Wikidata changes enabled, b) noticed the vandal edit and c) cared enough about Wikidata to correct it. And of course on Wikidata hardly anyone cares about vandalism. Getting the death count of the Holocaust corrected from "0" only took an hour though[1]. That figure is unsourced (of course), but luckily the page has a link to the "Identifier" Freebase, which is this. Yep, a Google box taken from Wikipedia is apparently an "identifier" for Wikidata subjects. They have no BLP policy, so no one has a problem with having an unsourced Wikidata page for a 12 year old boy[2]. I notice recent vandalism here, and see that of the three items on that page, two are completely wrong (is an list of ?). This has been the case since August 2015... Extremely blatant vandalism (the one that is immediately obvious on "recent changes" and doesn't need any knowledge) gets uncorrected for at least half an hour [3]. Their test pages are uindistuingishable from real pages[4]. Since more than 1 hour, Robert Pattinson is now known to the Wikidata world as "Robert Pattinson Cock face"[5]. Since 2013, Wikidata has a totally unsourced page on a Spanish politician without any local wiki page. He is now described as an animal who lives on the moon and has the occupation "dumbass". The page has been edited by 11 bots and 3 non-bots. He is apparently the mayor of a village with 84 inhabitants.

I don't think using Wikidata for any biographies (at least) is totally unacceptable until they have and enforce a BLP policy (including something like our BLP unsourced, for all persons without a source or without a wikipage). Fram (talk) 12:00, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

I can't imagine the WMF would pull funding while there is apparent consensus among the main language wikipedias to use Wikidata, and on en-wiki, at least, the last time consensus was tested it was in favour. So I would think the RfC would have to come first. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:37, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

@TheDJ: hi! Fram (talk) 12:48, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

That RfC should also consider more nuanced restrictions, such as "no Wikidata info other than interwikis in BLPs", not just a blanket ban. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 14:50, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

I proposed this structure, and I think something along those lines would be best, if not exactly that. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:09, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Paging RexxS as a courtesy at this point to avoid the appearance of a backroom stitch-up, and as the person most likely to mount a credible defense of WD rather than just spewing abuse in the hope everyone else will get tired and go away. ‑ Iridescent 23:12, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that. I'd add Izno to that list. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:26, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Fram and Iridescent, unless we ask very clear questions/offer clear options, we'll end up with split consensus or an RfC that won't be closed properly. Suggestions for options: (1) "Do not use Wikidata anywhere at this time on English Wikipedia." (2) "Do not use Wikidata in biographies of living persons." SarahSV ^(talk) 00:33, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

The only reason for (2) above is if folks can be confident that some wikidata fumbling does not impact on a BLP indirectly. See if I look here I can see that it is easy to add names of any people, so theoretically someone could (for instance) and names of people to pornographic movies, far-right political parties (actually I can't see a link to insert a person here or here, or some crime list pages (I can't see any list places to slot people in here, which is a good thing I guess) Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:44, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

I'd vehemently oppose it, but there also has to be option (3) on the table as well: "Lower Wikipedia's standards to match or approach Wikidata's". I think it would be the single biggest HTD step ever taken, causing the immediate departure of a substantial proportion of the editor base and the probable collapse of Wikipedia within a few months, but the continued existence of Wikidata and Commons implies that there's a not-insignificant faction who would like to repeal WP:V and BLP, and the fact that compliance hasn't been forced on Wikidata implies that this faction has at least some sympathy in the highest echelons of the WMF; there's only so long we can keep assuming the lack of WMF action is lethargy rather than intentional inactivity. ‑ Iridescent 01:02, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Generally, the RfC wording has to be a collaborative effort between people who are fans and people who aren't. I think Fram's page was useful in gathering together the issues, but there's a lot of work left to do on organizing the issues so the options are not considered to be misleading, or biased, and so they cover all the ground. These sorts of RfCs are exhausting and if one is run that misses key points it won't be easy to do it again any time soon. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:13, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Mike, I hope we can have a non-exhausting one. When RfCs are exhausting, we often fail to gain consensus. We should aim for a short list of very clearly written questions or options. SarahSV ^(talk) 02:14, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

break: thoughts about flaws and solutions

The problem is that "NO WIKIDATA" will fail. Keeping interwikilinks will get 99% support probably. Keeping authority control will get what, 80% support, no matter the flaws in it and the uselessness for most readers. Keeping Wikidata lists outside of the mainspace will get a lot of support as well (the redlink lists created by some projects like women in red). Other things (like Listeriabot in mainspace or even worse, the suggested Placeholder articles) will get lots of opposes. The greay area is inbetween: which infoboxes may take data (and what data) from Wikidata? There will be a lot of support for very exact, static ones (like chembox), considerable (but perhaps not sufficient) support for things like communities (population, area, ...), some support for infoboxes on dead people, and probably very little support for infoboxes on living people. To capture this in one or two simple, straight questions will be hard. Restricting the RfC to the mainspace only seems wise (and probably what you all had in mind), but beyond that? Fram (talk) 08:13, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. I'm really not the person to mount a defence of Wikidata, as I'm not involved much over there. My main focus has always been – given that Wikidata exists – on the practicalities of how we might make use of it as a resource. And by "we", I mean the Wikipedias in various languages, because I sincerely believe that Wikidata has far more potential to be a useful resource to the Welsh Wikipedia (for example) than it ever will be to the English Wikipedia. I'm grateful to Mike Christie for those questions at Wikipedia talk:Wikidata/2017 State of affairs #Suggested structure for RfC questions, as they encapsulate quite well, IMHO, the thinking that is going to have to be done if we are to make use of Wikidata beyond the interlanguage links. Several of the questions beg technical solutions, such as filtering out data whose sourcing is no better than "Imported from Xyz Wikipedia" and the creation of an in-place editor capable of editing a Wikidata entry from within a language Wikipedia. The former I think I've solved (see Module:WikidataIB); the latter is as far away now as it ever was. We will need to gain an understanding of what can be feasibly accomplished by volunteers and what is not going to be done because it needs developer time which the WMF has no inclination to provide – have you all voted in the Board elections, btw?

The only thing I can sensibly add is that some examples already exist (mainly in infoboxes) of how Wikidata can be used and misused, and the lessons we can take away from those examples. For those who like reading, I'd recommend the following:

• Template talk:Infobox book #Wikidata (long)
• Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 128 #RfC: Wikidata in infoboxes, opt-in or opt-out? (long)
• Template:Infobox telescope/doc (short)
• Template talk:Infobox telescope #Caption in another language (short)
• Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2017 January 24 #Template:Infobox person/Wikidata (long)
• Module talk:Infobox gene #Seriously, how do we suppress individual fields
• User talk:RexxS/Archive 32 #Wikidata... (short) and Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 138 #Rfc: Remove description taken from Wikidata from mobile view of en-WP (long)

That's a selection of the good, the bad and the downright ugly debates. You'd have to be really dedicated to get through all of them, though. Personally, I'd prefer we learn from mistakes and try to solve the problems that arise, rather than trying to make simplistic solutions like "ban all Wikidata from BLPs". As usual, article categories are by no means a good predictor of whether something is useful in an infobox – the Module:Gene discussion shows how problems can arise even in "dry" scientific subjects (the database imported into Wikidata contained biomedical claims that failed WP:MEDRS). You might want to ping Mike Peel into the debate, as he's had both good and bad experiences with building infoboxes that incorporate Wikidata. --RexxS (talk) 15:42, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Actually unless Wikidata adopts policies comparable to our BLP policy and the guidelines on reliable sourcing, it flat out should be banned from live BLP articles. We (at ENWP) literally cannot trust anything on wikidata because it is currently not being run in line with what we require. Some Wiki's have very different standards, so it would be more useful for them, because wikidata being a load of unreliable data doesnt actually conflict with their internal policies. Ultimately to make wikidata useable on ENWP, Wikidata will need to have comparable reliability policies. Now that can be imposed by the WMF, or everyone here can go there and impose it on the wikidata community by majority rule. Either way, until that happens, its a liability for ENWP. Only in death does duty end (talk) 16:08, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

There you go. That's exactly the sort of uninformed commentary that causes folks to throw up their hands in exasperation. Wikipedia has policies on sourcing. Does that stop articles being badly sourced? No it doesn't. Is there a problem with all of the data being unreliable on Wikidata? No, that's not the case. Is there a problem with some of the data being unreliable on Wikidata? Yes, there is a genuine problem. But nobody need care what policies Wikidata does or doesn't adopt if we filter out the unsourced or badly sourced stuff, because the stuff that's actually sourced on Wikidata is likely as well sourced as most articles on Wikipedia. Try clicking [Random article] a few times if you don't believe me. So what do we get proposed as a solution: "unless Wikidata adopts policies comparable to our BLP policy and the guidelines on reliable sourcing, it flat out should be banned from live BLP articles" and the rest of the hyperbole. "We (at ENWP) literally cannot trust anything on wikidata" How can anybody take you seriously? Go and look at Bobby Charlton (Q171583) and tell me what you find there that's unreliable? The only thing that I'd be uncertain about is that he won the Ballon d'Or. That is problematical for me because it's unreferenced on Wikidata – but it's also unreferenced at our article on Bobby Charlton ! so there's bugger-all point in trying to pretend ENWP has all the answers. --RexxS (talk) 17:48, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

"Wikipedia has policies on sourcing. Does that stop articles being badly sourced?" No but it places a massive barrier in the way. Wikidata has no such barrier. "the stuff that's actually sourced on Wikidata is likely as well sourced as most articles on Wikipedia." This has been demonstrated repeatedly to not be true. "Go and look at Bobby Charlton (Q171583) and tell me what you find there that's unreliable?" Given that everything on that page is imported from a variety of other language wikipedia's, with difference standards of quality, to actually check the reliability I would have to go to each of them and confirm the source used is compliant with our policies. If wikidata's policies matched ours, I could trust the data contained on wikidata was compliant regardless its ultimate source. So if your plan is to "filter out the unsourced or badly sourced stuff" from ENWP's end, my response is 'We should not have to'. Wikidata needs to conform to ENWP to be useful. If it doesnt, then its not useful and should be prohibited in high-risk areas. Only in death does duty end (talk) 19:03, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

At least when it comes to English Wikipedia, I have to agree with OID. Wikipedia has the critical mass of editors that means errors have at least a fighting chance of being spotted, whereas Wikidata doesn't have the volunteers or the culture to clean up the mess; it's not so much a case of the policies being problematic, as of how spottily the policies are enforced. I suspect that if (1) the software could be changed such that a "show Wikidata edits if they affect the appearance of the en-wiki article" option were available in the watchlist, (2) Wikidata ruthlessly enforced that edit summaries had to be along the lines of (changed "gender" from "unspecified" to "female") rather than the current (‎Created claim: Property:P21: Q6581072, #quickstatements) and (3) it were possible to edit Wikidata directly from Wikipedia without having to learn WD's incomprehensible private language, much of the opposition, and the general "tanks on the lawn" ill-feeling, would vanish overnight. ‑ Iridescent 23:48, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

break: Donald Trump and Bobby Charlton

• I was interested in the mention of Bobby Charlton and so looked through his Wikidata entry as suggested by RexxS (Bobby Charlton (Q171583)). the entries about the BBC Sport Personality of the year are rather ropey. They say that he was nominated in 1958 and 1959. He came second in those years but the entry fails to mention that he won their Lifetime award in 2008. And it fails to mention a bunch of other things he was nominated for. I then took a quick look at his article on Wikipedia. From my own memory, I decided to see what it said about his famous comb over. Nothing. It doesn't seem to mention his hair at all; the closest we seem to get is a brief query on the talk page. I then thought to contrast this with Donald Trump and am amazed to find that that says nothing about his hair either. If you want information about that you have to go to Donald Trump's hair, where it is confined to some sort of purdah. Other things poorly covered in Trump's article include his catchphrase, "you're fired", and the extent to which he uses Twitter. Wikipedia has bigger problems than Wikidata... Andrew D. (talk) 19:43, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

I agree that I'd expect Donald Trump's appearance to be covered in his article—his unusual appearance plays far more of a part in his public image than is the case for most politicians—but the current situation is the result of the discussion from hell, and I doubt anyone wants to go through that again for the sake of something so trivial. (It's not as if anyone reading Donald Trump is going to be unfamiliar with what the man looks like.) On Bobby Charlton, I'm not so sure—this may be something everyone from the UK is aware of, but while I'm well aware of who he is it's only on Googling it now to see what you were talking about that I find out he used to have a ridiculous haircut for which he was mocked in the 1960s, so I'm not sure if it's as integral a part of his story as Trump's. (With Trump, the distinctive appearance plays an explicit part in recognizability and hence in his career in TV and politics, whereas an athlete's success or failure is based on their athletic ability, not on their appearance.) ‑ Iridescent 23:36, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

"Wikipedia has bigger problems than Wikidata..." Yes, and? I wouldn't say that the mention or not of the hairdo of Charlton or Trump is really "a bigger problem", but YMMV. Feel free to discuss these problems and present solutions. How is that relevant though for a discussion about Wikidata, which is slowly becoming a bigger and bigger problem (even though it indeed probably isn't our biggest problem yet)? "You are not allowed to discuss X, because unrelated Y is an even bigger problem"? No? Then what do you really mean with this section? Fram (talk) 13:41, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

@Fram: Not to put words in his mouth, but as I read Andrew D.'s comments he's saying that complaining about Wikidata's data integrity is missing the point as Wikipedia itself contains such a high volume of errors and omissions that whatever problems are imported from Wikidata are relatively small in comparison. This isn't an argument I agree with, but it's certainly not a lone voice in the wilderness—it's the argument the old Wikipedia Review brigade were making a decade ago.

There's certainly some validity to one aspect of the "bigger fish to fry" argument; Wikipedia already has serious issues with people dumping data en masse from dubious sources, and that will continue even if Wikidata were to be switched off tomorrow. See the mess I've just revdeleted from Cholmondeley (surname) for example (complete with home addresses of non-notable living people)—this was a fairly obvious scrape from www.thepeerage.com, as dubious-looking a source as I've ever seen. One could certainly make the argument that with a properly-functioning Wikidata, this kind of thing would be less common as those importing such things would be bringing it in from a site with at least a modicum of quality control. ‑ Iridescent 16:26, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

One could make that argument, but it would be bogus. A site which considers Quora, findagrave, google search (the Freebase ID), ... and of course Wikipedia as goud sources, is not a source with " a modicum of quality control" but a site like Wikipedia, but with lower standards. We should raise our standards, not go the other way. Fram (talk) 19:22, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm certainly not saying I agree with the argument—if you look a bit further up this thread you'll see me saying that [en-wiki accepting Wikidata's current standards on sourcing] would be the single biggest HTD step ever taken, causing the immediate departure of a substantial proportion of the editor base and the probable collapse of Wikipedia within a few months—just pointing out that "Wikipedia has more serious problems than Wikidata and should concentrate on addressing those" (which I think is what Andrew's trying to say) is a relatively mainstream point of view not some lone voice in the wilderness. Indeed, I suspect it's a view many of the board themselves share; they can try to pin the blame for the Knowledge Engine fiasco on Lila going rogue, but a decision with that much potential impact on spending and direction would been signed off well above her pay grade, and KE and WD are two sides of the same coin. ‑ Iridescent 19:36, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm not trying to present a full-developed thesis as I prefer to look at the details and examples. If there's a pattern or conclusion then it may emerge from this. But, if you want some organising principle, please consider Sturgeon's Law. The open nature of wiki projects means that this is quite applicable. Linus's Law is supposed to be the operational answer to this but there's obviously a significant lag. Wikidata may make matters worse or, by consolidating facts, it may make matters better. The answer is probably a bit of both and so we should keep an open mind. Andrew D. (talk) 07:49, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

WP:CANVASS; Closure

Can you help me to understand, please? I already(!) saw multiple complaints about an existing local consensus. Getting a neutral expert opinion is a good idea in general, but if you risk getting an undue number of fan opinions instead, then the notification is probably not appropiate, in my opinion. I asked myself: Does posting an issue about sports notability criteria on sports wikiprojects risk getting significantly more biased people involved in the discussion? My answer was yes. So tell me, how does a notification of interested local projects, under these circumstances, not go against the word and the spirit of WP:CANVASS?Burning Pillar (talk) 00:12, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

As every other person you have spoken to has told you, you're seriously misunderstanding how Wikipedia operates. If you propose something that is going to affect pages covered by a particular project, you're supposed to notify the members of that project, since they're the people by definition best placed to know what the issues will be. Primefac wasn't canvassing, he was rectifying your incompetence in failing to notify the projects in question. If you really want, I can re-open the thread, but you're highly likely to regret it if I do; you won't find any support for your position, and Wikipedia in general takes an extremely dim view of people who refuse to abide by consensus when that consensus is clearly against them. I'd also strongly advise withdrawing this trainwreck before it starts and pretending it never happened; the likelihood of Wikipedia deciding to overturn multiple long-standing guidelines on the insistence of someone with twelve mainspace edits in their entire career—one of which was this—is not high. ‑ Iridescent 00:28, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

A hishap of words in old post of mine

Hi, months ago I sent you a post saying that you sent me and email, and what I really meant was a post, so sorry for the mishap of words. Also Wikipedia has just thanked me for my ten thousandth edit and have spent countless hours writing for Wikipedia as I am valuable to your cause so I hope that you can understand that I take being an editor very seriously. Also I have a question about a disambiguation page that I created about a month ago about need to ask you something about it and it's content. Davidgoodheart (talk) 06:16, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Assuming you mean Sloppy (disambiguation), all I'd say is 'lose the "all articles whose titles include the word sloppy"' link, which is about as useful as feet on a fish—dab pages are meant to disambiguate multiple items with the same name, not to be directories of everything no matter how tangentially related, and nobody searching for Lonely Christmas (Sloppy Seconds EP) or Sloppy Meateaters is just going to enter "Sloppy" as their search term. ‑ Iridescent 19:13, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

"feet on a fish" - must remember this formulation. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:26, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Questions regarding my ability

Sorry to bother your weekend, but this is in about a response to one my NAC's on AN/I. I find Cassianto's comment: Firstly, who are [you] to close a discussion at ANI? annoying at best, seeing as a) there was an informal request at the bottom, b) anyone can close any discussion within reason, c) I have been doing a whole bunch of NACs and archiving to help keep the bloated AN/I usable. What answer should I give? Is there an answer? "Well you see, I'm just a brand new plebe who doesn't know what they are doing and who disrupts AN/I just for fun" probably won't go over well. I don't mind a disgruntled IP demanding my boss's name right before I sign off, but Cass is a big boy with 30k edits since 2009, not a drive-by. Thanks for helping, d.g. L3X1 (distant write) 19:28, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Butting in here - but Cass said "Please mind your own business. Your stupid comments are not helping the situation." You took that to mean Cass called someone stupid. Do you see how that's not quite the same? Yeah, Cass shouldn't have said it anyway, but it doesn't help with people jump to an assumption about what was said that isn't quite correct. Ealdgyth - Talk 19:40, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Ealdgyth, I apologised for jumping to conclusions, even though his latest reply is worse than the first. d.g. L3X1 (distant write) 20:04, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Note before this very long reply: This is all my personal opinion, not any kind of formal warning or even a formal statement of Wikipedia policy, there are numerous precedents for topic-banning overenthusiastic editors from particular internal processes of Wikipedia, but you're certainly not at that stage yet. As you can probably tell from the above threads, this page is watched by quite a few people with a very wide variety of philosophies towards Wikipedia and Wikipedia editing, and I'm certainly not arrogant enough to assume that my interpretations of Wikipedia's policies and unwritten custom are automatically the correct ones. If any TPW does feel I'm being unduly harsh here—or has any other advice for either L3X1 or myself—do feel free to chime in.

I'm not entirely clear why you're asking me about this, given that I've AFAIK never had any interaction with you and had no input on the NAC in question, but I'll do my best.

Firstly, as Ealdgyth says above your reaction appears to be based largely on a misapprehension; saying that a comment is stupid isn't (necessarily an attack on the person making the comment.

This is going to sound harsh, but having looked through your recent contribution history while I'm not seeing a smoking gun I'm seeing a lot of things that raise concerns to me. Looking at recent edits to ANI, you have made twice as many edits as any other editor; indeed, over your entire Wikipedia history you have more edits to ANI alone than you have to all article talk pages combined. (To put the figures in perspective, at the time of writing you've made 470 edits to ANI in a little less than a year. In a decade as one of Wikipedia's more active admins, I've made 702 edits to the same page. Even Newyorkbrad, who has a decent claim to be the anthropomorphic personification of Wikipedia's bureaucracy, has only 1300 edits to it.)

Additionally, a lot of your edits are unilateral thread closures. While it's not forbidden to close threads, and indeed it can occasionally be helpful for a thread to be closed so those reading the page know to skip it, it's never uncontroversial since by closing a thread you're explicitly saying "nobody else's opinions on this matter are appropriate" (see this thread for some recent discussion on the matter); the only time you should be closing threads rather than just marking them resolved is when there's no realistic possibility that anyone will have anything further to add to the discussion and the thread is so long that a {{resolved}} tag has the potential to be missed by readers. (There's another circumstance when it's appropriate to close threads, when a discussion is getting so heated that an admin feels that it's in the interests of those involved to choke off the discussion and force it either into a less public forum, or to formal dispute resolution, but that's always going to be extremely contentious and should be left to experienced admins or very experienced editors who have the standing to force a contentious decision to stick and know how to deal with the inevitable fallout.) To hover over noticeboards unilaterally closing discussions regardless of the wishes of the participants in the discussions, which is what you appear to be doing, just makes you look officious and obnoxious, regardless of your intentions. I'm also seeing you doing a hell of a lot of inappropriate archiving of threads from noticeboards; the reason the archive bot waits 72 hours before archiving is intentional, to ensure as many of those as possible who potentially have an interest in the topic have the chance to see it. Again, there are rare examples where it's appropriate to archive a thread early, but doing it routinely, as you appear to be doing, just gives the impression that you feel your opinion is the only one that matters.

Further to that, a lot of your recent comments (both on ANI and elsewhere) to me appear to be in what comes across as an aggressive, belittling and arrogant tone. (I hate to use buzzwords, particularly one as contentious as this, but "microaggression" actually does seem to be a pretty good descriptor.) I'm not (necessarily) saying you are aggressive and arrogant, and I know from experience that Wikipedia is an environment in which it's very easy to slip into an inappropriate tone without realizing how you're coming across, but in your case it's very clear and consistent and you really need to stop, or you're very likely to find yourself on the receiving end of a warning block at best and a community ban at worst. Take the example of your initial post in this thread; you're an editor with less than a year's experience and (as far as I can tell) no substantive writing experience, calling one of Wikipedia's most experienced writers "a big boy" in a thread about you complaining about other peoples' perceived rudeness. If it were a one-off I'd just put it down to frustration, but there's a clear pattern both of you making unnecessarily rude comments, and of making inappropriate jokes.

Remember, while you may feel a dispute is trivial, every one of those posters at noticeboards is a real person with what they perceive to be a real problem. Wikipedia already has a serious problem with outsiders feeling that it's dominated by a clique of insiders who just sneer at and belittle anyone who isn't part of the gang, and while I realize you didn't start it in this particular instance crap like this is never appropriate. Wikipedia/Wikimedia's only asset is its contributor base, and every person who walks out because they feel it's a toxic environment or that they're not being taken seriously, is another person Wikipedia can't afford to lose.

Just looking over your Wikipedia-space edits from the past seven days (and leaving aside the numerous inappropriate closures and early-archivings, and the assorted pointless drive-by comments in AFDs) we have:

1. Inappropriate edit summary (whatever your opinion of an article, it's something someone has devoted a significant chunk of time to; except in the case of obviously unconstructive edits, language like "nuke n pave" is never going to be appropriate; likewise the "disgracing Wikipedia" and "unfit for human consumption" in the same thread);
2. Sneering edit summary belittling someone else's language skills;
3. A bizarre and disruptive aside which I assume was an attempt at comedy (in a discussion about Nazism in the United States, for god's sake!);
4. I don't know what the hell this edit summary is, but I can't imagine it's appropriate;
5. The (not insulting/belittling this time, but certainly odd) creation of one pointless redirect to another pointless redirect which in turn points to a pointless page;
6. Possibly the single most pointlessly spiteful comment and edit summary I've ever seen; again, these are real people you're talking about, not targets in a video game or "the enemy" who from whom Wikipedia needs to be defended at all costs;
7. Inappropriate NAC complete with your own personal opinions, rather than an explanation of why the thread has been closed, in the reason field;
8. This comment isn't prima facie inappropriate (albeit fairly pointless), but given the high number of "per GNG" and "per nom" comments in your history there's certainly some mote/beam issues here, especially given that the very next edit you made was this;
9. This ridiculous overreaction in which you spotted someone writing a short story on their userpage; yes, this is inappropriate use of Wikipedia and the page was rightly deleted, but you slapped a warning on her userpage for "creating an attack page", which appears to have cost us an editor (you then boasted that "user has not edited since", as if driving someone off Wikipedia is some kind of achievement);
10. Referring for no apparent reason to a good-faith editor as "bro"; followed up a few minutes later by "my bet: you're gonna get the indef bro" in an edit summary, and a few minutes after that by yet another inappropriate edit summary. The editor in question wasn't even a drive-by vandal (in which case your aggressiveness would still be inappropriate, but would be less of an issue as the editor's loss wouldn't unduly trouble us) but one of Wikipedia's most experienced editors with over 200,000 edits since 2005;
11. The NAC your original report relates to—I assume by now you're aware of on how many levels this was inappropriate, but if you're not I strongly suggest staying clear of all noticeboards for the foreseeable future;
12. Complaining about someone else making what you consider overly-hasty closures on ANI (!!!);
13. A completely inappropriate edit summary ("if he comes back (big if) and resumes his ways it will be an indef")—this decision isn't yours to make, and indef blocking is a last resort when all else fails, not a shortcut to make a problem go away when we can't be bothered to discuss it.

Bear in mind that these are just from a single week. I know it's cherry-picking to some extent—and 13 problematic edits out of ≈150 edits is a rate of less than one in ten—but it's enough to be of concern. Particularly with regards to AFD and ANI, remember that these are the two most unpleasant environments most editors are ever going to encounter on Wikipedia, and consequently are the stress points at which Wikipedia is most likely to lose editors. While I think I speak for all admins in saying that non-admin input is both welcome and necessary, that welcome doesn't extend to having someone hovering around the noticeboards pot-stirring, regardless of how good that editor's intentions are.

I know the above looks harsh—it's always a bit unpleasant having someone go through your contributions—but I really do recommend toning it down several notches, and unwatchlisting ANI and avoiding it altogether unless you actually have a specific reason to visit it that can't be addressed elsewhere. A general rule of editing on Wikipedia is "only make edits if they're an improvement", and that's a rule which is especially pertinent in high-stress environments like the admin noticeboards where you're dealing with individuals with knowledge, experience and cultural backgrounds that are often wildly different from your own, and who are often under a great deal of stress. Although you're clearly operating in good faith, and I've only looked at your very recent history so this may just be a blip, at present your improvement/nonimprovement ratio in admin and admin-related areas appears to me to be far too high. ‑ Iridescent 18:45, 14 May 2017 (UTC)