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Nielson DMCA Takedown

So I get a notification on my watchlist that Template:Miami TV and Template:WPB TV were removed by a bot: "Removing TV region templates per DMCA Takedown Notice from Nielsen Media Research, OTRS ticket #2008091610055854"

Now I may not be an expert an copyright, but my feeling is that this is completely ridiculous. If I remember correctly, all it was were a list of channels in the marketplace. This is common knowledge. Am I missing something here or has Nielsen become very desperate?--JEF (talk) 04:01, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

About to post about this myself. Is there anyway to see what OTRS ticket #2008091610055854 is? I am seriously confused on what the deletions are about and if there is some way around it (removing all Nielsen information, etc). - NeutralHomer • Talk 04:07, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand what the problem is here either. The only thing I see is that the templates contained a link to the Nielsen site. All the information in the template is public knowledge. Did someone actually talk to Mike? KnightLago (talk) 04:11, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I think the takedown should be submitted to Chilling Effects. BJ^Talk 04:12, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't know how to talk to Mike. I am just trying to find out the reasoning behind it. Because if it is removing market information and Nielsen linkage, we can do that. - NeutralHomer • Talk 04:14, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

The WMF Office was consulted on this matter and per an OTRS ticket indicating a DMCA takedown notice, the content was deleted. The entire categorization schema that was in place was copyrighted by Nielsen and could not be used under our GFDL license. SWATjester or Mike Godwin can probably clarify as they were the ones who handled the matter, but the material should NOT be restore by anyone prior to contacting them. By their nature OTRS tickets are private and cannot be released, but it has been confirmed by WMF staff that the ticket number in question is valid. MBisanz ^talk 04:28, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

See your talk page. - NeutralHomer • Talk 04:33, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

If people are looking for guidance as to how to define TV station areas, Cary Bass from the WMF office produced a copy-vio free version of TV station data at List_of_television_stations_in_North_America_by_media_market#United_States_of_America. MBisanz ^talk 04:45, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Request MBisanz, could you please look at User:Ckatz/US TV templates test and advise me as to if it should go? I had retrieved the contents of the deleted Seattle template before I found this thread; the one I linked to linked is a revised version minus any mention of Nielsen or their "proprietary" term for the Seattle area. Thanks. --Ckatz^chat_spy 04:48, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Before we go nuts and start "rebuilding" all these templates, we need to "rename" all 211 Nielsen Markets with the MSAs and go from there. Do a couple test templates, get Mike in here to "yea" or "nay" them and then go nuts. - NeutralHomer • Talk 04:55, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

As a complete aside, anyone else find it ridiculous that a template that is basically an alphabetical list of stations within a market could even be subject to a DCMA takedown notice? Statistics aren't copyrightable, and that is basically what a list of TV stations in a market defined by the people who measure such things is. Or, at least that would be the case in a sane world... Resolute 05:13, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I do. This is ridiculous. Nielson did not invent the areas that TV channels serve. This stuff existed before them and is common knowledge. It is not like the titles sport any creativity either. This feels like Amazon patenting "one-click" as if they created the idea of clicking on something once to get the desired product.--JEF (talk) 05:15, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

....and the certainly don't control the way we create templates on Wikipedia. They want their linkage off, fine...outside that, this is Wikipedia, not Nielsinpedia. - NeutralHomer • Talk 05:18, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Simple lists of items (in this case, television stations) can not be copyrighted. In fact, you can go to places such as the FCC site and get lists of all stations in a given area (all Florida stations are listed here, and any other list of stations can be found for any state within the US. I'm sure other country governments have similar public lists). Nelson's claim that they own a copyright to the list of stations is absurd (since that's all the navbox template was). Additionally, the Excel file linked to in the template doesn't even have the information contained in the infobox (other than perhaps the market mentioned in the title of the box itself: "Broadcast television in the South Florida (Miami / Fort Lauderdale / Key West) market"). Since that's the only possible claim Nelson has here, I don't see a problem with the templates being recreated if we just don't reference the idiots at Nelson. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 05:27, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I believe that in this situation, Nielsen Media Research claims copyright over the concept of the marketplace designation. Sure, the content was a list of television stations, but it was a list of television stations based on a designation set forth by Nielsen. We could, in all theory, recreate similar templates that do not utilize Nielsen's categories and instead the FCC's. Or this could be the lava lamp fiasco all over again.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 07:06, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

At this point, I got nothing. This whole thing has confused me to no end. - NeutralHomer • Talk 05:41, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

As a note: I was not involved in the removal of the templates. My actions were with the removal of certain content on the List page, and were at Mike's direction. ⇒SWATJester ^{Son of the Defender} 06:36, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

• Just to reiterate what is said above, this was a DMCA takedown notice, and the action was requested by Mike Godwin, foundation legal counsel, so there's probably no mileage in challenging the basis for it, even if we don't like it we probably can't afford to fight it - and we, as a bunch of barrack-room lawyers should not in any case be second-guessing Mike, who is a pro. Last night there were some comments which violated Godwin's Law, which is kind of ironic, but I don't see any mileage in complaining about it, and Cary's idea of rebuilding on the basis of a source which is in the public domain is the best approach, I think. Assuming good faith here, as we should, it's reasonable to interpret this not as a chilling effect but as the routine protection of intellectual property by a company whose IP is its stock-in-trade. Guy (Help!) 09:54, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

  I'm not a lawyer, but I think the best analogy would be Dewey_Decimal_System#Ownership_and_administration, if the Dewey decimal system of organizing libraries can be copyrighted, I suspect it is very conceivable that the system for classifying TV stations can be and is. MBisanz ^talk 09:59, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Honestly, I find it plausible based on numerous examples, but I freely acknowledge that I lack the expertise to judge, so I defer to Mike. It's noticeable that most of the work seems to have been done by one user, and there was some suggestion that this might have been a Primtime sock, I don't know if anything came of that. Guy (Help!) 10:22, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

• You'd be surprised what can and cannot be copyrighted. For example, if I run a website dedicated to my favourite English Premier League or Football League football team, I can't have a page listing their upcoming fixtures - or this happens. Black Kite 10:19, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

  I recall hearing of similar takedown threats regarding Australian Rules Football match schedules as well. Perhaps the laws or caselaw are different in Britain and Australia than in the USA; the American precedent (such as the Feist decision regarding telephone directories) is very much in favor of the non-copyrightability of purely factual listings not involving editorial creativity. *Dan T.* (talk) 14:53, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

  • • They've copyrighted the... upcoming game schedule. *facepalm* And we think the American system is overly litigious... Tony Fox (arf!) 19:08, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I'll attept to reconstruct what's going on here.

• One of the templates can, for now, be seen at [1]. Its format is:
  • (title) "Broadcast television in the South Florida (Miami / Fort Lauderdale / Key West) market (Nielsen DMA #16)" with links to the metropolitan areas and cities, and an external link to [2]
  • "local stations" sorted by channel number, for example "WPBT 2 (PBS)" with links to WPBT and PBS
  • "digital-only channels" in the same format
  • "local stations in Key West" with the note that "Most of these stations either serve Miami proper, or are repeaters of Miami stations." and the same format
  • "local cable channels" apparently sorted by name
  • links at the bottom to templates for other Florida markets, and to the Bahamas and Cuba
• Nielsen Media Research claims copyright over something here. I don't believe we (on WP:AN) hae been told exactly what they claim copyright over, but I would assume it's the lumping, for example, of Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Key West into one market. Looking at the FCC list, I see that they do not combine them in this way. However, some of these places are close enough (I think) that there will be interference if, for instance, a Miami company and a Fort Lauderdale company use the same station. I assume this is simply done on a case-by-case basis.

Here's my question: how well-known are the markets? This actually provides a good test case: Nielsen combines Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Key West, but separates West Palm Beach. On the other hand, the Census Bureau puts Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach together, but separates Key West. Is it generally known to the TV-watching public that West Palm Beach is a separate market, or is this something that only statisticians care about? If the latter, then there's no reason to use the Nielsen markets.

But if the former, we need to determine exactly what's copyrighted. Presumably I can say what I said above about West Palm Beach being in a separate market. But can this be said on a template? Can we have a template for all three cities (ignoring Key West for now) and a note that Nielsen separates West Palm Beach? I definitely do not understand exactly what is copyrighted here, and I hope someone can explain that. --NE2 11:03, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

There is indeed quite a bit of arbitrariness to the market divisions, when you get to the borderline. I'm a case in point myself... the condo complex in which I live is in Palm Beach County, but it is located right on the side of the canal that divides this county from Broward County; the houses on the other side of the canal are categorized as being in a separate Nielsen market from me. To some extent, there's some actual truth to this separation despite geographical proximity; people on the other side of the county line get a different set of cable channels from people on my side, and that can affect their perception of the world; when I watch the 11:00 news on TV, I see West Palm Beach channels that concentrate on events to the north of me, while people on the other side of the line see Fort Lauderdale channels that talk about events to the south, so there might be very different perceptions of what current events matter based on this arbitrary division. However, people socialize a lot with others who live across the county line; it's not a Berlin Wall. *Dan T.* (talk) 14:45, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Tend to agree with Resolute and NH ... it's pretty well established in American law (and I'm assuming Canadian law as well) that you can't copyright facts. Seems to me based on what has been discussed, this should be the way to go:

• Cull a list of stations that serve a particular metro from the FCC list. We at WP:TVS know what stations are part of what market, so this shouldn't be too much of a hassle.
• Use them to make new, non-copyvio tables along the lines of the Canadian station lists. I'm assuming the Canadian lists are based off the CRTC database, and if they're public domain like U.S. government documents are public domain, there's no issue there.
• Bounce them off Mike to make sure there's there isn't something we don't know about, and we're in business.

It may take a few days, but if Nielsen went berserk over a mere link and the list of market designations, it should be relatively simple. Blueboy96 12:49, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand how this can be allowed. The FCC uses Nielsen rankings in some of its own rules. Would a court uphold the use of such restricted data in FCC rules? (See 47CFR73.622(f)(5)) TripEricson (talk) 21:36, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

The FCC might well have specific permission from Neilsen to use those data in its own works. -- ChrisO (talk) 21:50, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

But how can they enforce their rules? If I run a station and choose not to pay Nielsen (some stations do choose not to), how am I supposed to know what market I am in to abide by FCC decisions? TripEricson (talk) 22:38, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I've got a question that might help us gain perspective into this matter later on. Fellow obsessive editors and admins: Given your experiences of the collaborative process of Wikipedia, how likely is it that we would've removed the offending material if Nielsen had asked politely before resorting to legal threats?
I'm being overly cynical, but someone has to. --Kizor 06:00, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

• Has anyone read this? http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080821-fair-use-gets-a-fair-shake-youtube-tot-to-get-day-in-court.html WiZZLa (talk) 16:59, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Someone needs to write a bot to undo that CydeBot damage and restore these articles, imo. Xizer (talk) 03:52, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Maybe http://www.fcc.gov/oet/info/maps/areas/notes.html answers everyone's questions. Specifically Television Market Areas are based on material copyrighted by Arbitron, Areas of Dominant Influence (ADI), and Nielsen Media Research, Designated Market Areas (DMA). They are reevaluated every 3 years. By grouping the listing, even remotely, by DMA runs afoul of their copyrights. FCC rules do not specifically quote any ADI/DMI information, they simply refer to them. (which makes sense as they change far more often than the rules.) -- Ricky 22:40, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Request for explanation

Office actions are based on policy set by, or consultations with, Wikimedia's legal staff. We here are not qualified to overrule them. It would help if those responsible for the policies or decisions would come here and post an explanation so we don't have to waste our time building templates that get taken down. Jehochman ^Talk 12:59, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Seconded--and I'm speaking as both an admin and a WP:TVS member. If my hunch is right, the only plausible explanation for this is that Nielsen objected to the use of their market designations as the basis of the templates. It should be relatively simple to fix, but is there something at play here that we don't know about? We need some guidance here. Blueboy96 13:10, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

• Am I missing something here? I thought there was an explanation? Guy (Help!) 13:41, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
  • Nope, no explanation as of yet. All we know is that Nielsen Media Research requested copyright takedown via OTRS ticket #2008091610055854. We don't know why (although presumably copyright) and what was the problem with it I believe. D.M.N. (talk) 13:45, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
    • In particular, we need to know exactly what they have a problem with. How much can we refer to these designations? --NE2 13:47, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
    • Er, right so the explanation that Nielsen issued a DMCA takedown notice, referenced in the OTRS ticket, is in some what not an explanation? Still not quite getting this one, mate. Guy (Help!) 14:53, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
      • See Rootology's comment below, almost an hour before this non-answer. --NE2 14:57, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
• I think everyone is looking for the specifics of what was asked to be taken down in the DMCA notice, which wouldn't be private, and without which there is no way to work around the problem so the replacement material doesn't just prompt another DMCA notice in a week. rootology (C)(T) 14:06, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
• I have OTRS access, to a fair number of queues. The ticket is said to be otrs:2008091610055854 so I figured I'd go read it and see if I could see what is being asked... either I'm not entering that right or I don't have permission to see it as I get a "No Permission!" warning. ++Lar: t/c 17:54, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

  It got directed over to the legal queue. --CBD 18:18, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

  It is in ::legal. The explanation of DMCA takedown and a ticket number is sufficient explanation. NonvocalScream (talk) 18:22, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

  @NVS: I think you misunderstood why I was trying to read the ticket (and if it's in Legal now, I don't have access to that queue...) It's not because I have any issue with abiding with the notice, or because I'm questioning that it exists or anything like that... I just want to know what it says to tell what it is exactly that has to be removed. A large number of people are wondering the same thing. None of them are saying "who cares"... just "what is it we need to remove so we can do so"... ++Lar: t/c 22:43, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

  It is sufficient explanation for why this action was taken. It is NOT sufficient information to understand what to do going forward. For instance, are the 136 pages still using {{Nielsen}} ok? --CBD 18:30, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

  (EC) It's not really a sufficient explanation, as I mentioned above. People need to know exactly what was infringing material so that the replacement edits don't just invoke a new DMCA next week or next month. It's "legal" isn't sufficient unless the OTRS legal admins want to recreate the new material to replace it themselves. rootology (C)(T) 18:31, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

• The explanation is not sufficient because the content creators don't understand what they have done wrong. We need an explanation so that their time won't be wasted by further notices. It is not fair to ask people to throw darts in the dart until they hit the target. Tell us please, specifically, what was the copyright problem with the content, and how can we avoid that in the future. Thanks. Jehochman ^Talk 18:33, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

  Does Mike work weekends (silly question, no lawyer works weekends)? Can someone email or call him and ask him to come over and explain this so we can know what the next step is? - NeutralHomer • Talk 18:35, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

• From what I can gather across various discussions - the DMCA notice included at least the use of Nielsen's 'Designated Market Area' (DMA) classification system. As our Media market article says, Nielsen coined the term and holds a trademark on it. The takedown notice may have included more, but I think it is fairly clear that much at least was an issue. Hence the removal of the DMA classifiactions from List of television stations in North America by media market. --CBD 18:49, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

So...could we say "Broadcast Television Stations in New York City" or "Digital Television Stations in Washington, DC" and then create the templates with the same general layout we had before (so they look the same) and just not use any Nielsen terminology? - NeutralHomer • Talk 19:01, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't know. For now I'd say remove anything which is clearly derived from (or directly using) Nielsen's DMAs. Other than that we'll need to wait for more guidance from Mike or someone else in the know. --CBD 19:04, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I've been reading up on Nielsen a bit. They spend alot of money doing research and then sell that data to advertisers and others looking for information on television viewership. Ergo, they'd undoubtedly be concerned if Wikipedia were to make the results of their research available to everyone for free. One aspect of that research is the classification of their DMAs... these are defined based on the amount of viewership various stations get by people in various US counties. I would therefor not be at all surprised if they consider the list of stations they classify as 'within a given DMA' proprietary information. Advertisers looking to get more customers from people in Dubuque are going to want to know which TV stations to buy advertising from. Right now they pay Nielsen to get a list of the top stations. If we copy Nielsen's list or recreate it based on their individual station viewership data and make it available for free they are out of money. If we were to use a different criteria, such as 'stations which can be viewed in a given area' (regardless of how many people actually do so) then I'd think we would be ok... but I am not a lawyer. --CBD 19:19, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

The templates I am familiar with are not based on viewing patterns at all; they are based on channel availability. Recognizing that Miami and Broward County tend to get the same channels is common knowledge...not something that requires research.--JEF (talk) 20:59, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Rebuild templates

I think we should start rebuilding the templates now. Here's what i think the Phoenix tv template should look like

when it is remade Powergate92 (talk) 19:36, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I still think we should wait, in case there's something going on that we don't know about. Like I said, the only plausible objections I can think of on Nielsen's part are the use of their designations as the basis for the lists. Alternatively, is there any way to cite Nielsen in the templates? Blueboy96 20:42, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I still think we should start rebuilding the templates now. Has long as we don't include a DMA number or a Neilsen link. Powergate92 (talk) 22:04, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

That seems a bad idea to me. Why not wait until it is clarified what is covered by the request? There is no rush ++Lar: t/c 22:43, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I think we all want to get the templates (revised or completely changed) back on the pages as quickly as possible. - NeutralHomer • Talk 22:44, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I notice that RingtailedFox has started rebuilding the templates. he has rebuilt the following.

Powergate92 (talk) 23:07, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Again, why? What is the rush. What bad thing will happen if these are not rebuilt before Monday? ++Lar: t/c 01:29, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

At the same time, copyright paranoia is no good reason to stop improving the encyclopedia today. We already have a working guideline in the Canadian templates. If there was a concern there, Mike would have had them deleted as well. Simply put, we can look in our TV guides to see what stations are available where. Nielsen can't copyright that, and can't legitimately seek to suppress such information. There is no harm in rebuilding the templates now. Resolute 05:03, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Why 60 miles from Detroit or Toldeo? If your answer is: "That's the traditional size of metropolitan Detroit and suburbs", then good. If your answer is: "That's the sub-unit Nielsen has chosen to use", then you are still copying their organizational structure, which is probably not a good idea. Dragons flight (talk) 05:31, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

The obvious reason why Mike did not delete the Canadian templates is that it falls under a different set of copyright laws (perhaps a more rational, more clear, and less prone to frivolous lawsuits system). We can't take this as acceptance of the Canadian templates. Also, I do not think that any of the templates are based on anything but common knowledge, and even if an editor did use Nielson, it would be nearly impossible to prove, which further demonstrates the general knowledge nature of the "media markets".--JEF (talk) 05:42, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Except for a select few of the very largest markets (Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver), the Canadian templates are organized strictly by province. For provinces with a larger number of stations, the station breakdowns are by standard geographic regions, not by Nielsen markets, and they list only stations that originate in that region, not necessarily the entire range of television stations that broadcast there. Bearcat (talk) 19:25, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

As near as I can tell, "60 miles" is a benchmark that was chosen to look arbitrary, while still giving the template a wide enough geographic scope that it would essentially reconstruct the original Nielsen market template otherwise unchanged. Bearcat (talk) 19:29, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I rebuilt the Phoenix tv template here's what it look like.

Powergate92 (talk) 05:21, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Request for expedited review and bot-rebuild

I know lawyers take weekends off, but first thing Monday, someone from Legal needs to look at this.

• Templates which contain no copyrightable elements other than trademarked names need to be identified and bulk-restored, stripped of their trademarked names and edit history, but with the previous editors credited for GFDL-compliance. Since the Nielson-defined market areas seem to be the issue, it should be easy enough to separate the list into 3 groups: Stand-alone cities where the Nielson market area obviously corresponds to the city or metropolitan area name, those whose Nielson-defined market area might be creative, and those whose Nielson-defined is known to be creative.
• Those in the first group can be bulk-restored by eliminating the phrase "Nielson DMA# and replacing "in the XYZ market" with "in the XYZ area".
• Those in the 3rd group should be identified so re-creation from scratch can begin as soon as possible, with explicit instructions to redraw the geographical boundaries. A "list of stations lost to DMCA action" should be maintained so the stations can be added as new templates are created or old ones are restored.
• Those in the 2nd group should be investigated and moved to group 1 or 3 as soon as possible.

davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:02, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I keep reading here that I don't work weekends, which is news to me, and that lawyers don't work weekends, which is also news. MikeGodwin (talk) 22:27, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

It looks as if everything in Category:Nielsen market by state navbox templates was deleted. I have looked at the prior contents of several of those and saw many correspondences between the market areas defined by Nielsen and those on Wikipedia... which seems to have been rather the intent given the category name. While there is some logic to saying, 'Of course Dallas and Fort Worth would be considered one market area'... when we come up with the same 210 geographical groupings that Nielsen has, or nearly the same, it isn't just 'common sense'. If we did a separate TV template for each and every county in the US then that'd be a public source... but if we are going to group counties together to define markets we likely should not be using the markets Nielsen has defined. One template per state would result in some huge and convoluted templates. One per county would yield thousands of small templates. Something in between makes sense... maybe congressional districts? That'd be 435 'markets' instead of 210, but it certainly wouldn't be a proprietary classification. --CBD 11:57, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

No, counties would create excessive duplication, and state would be useless at differentiating local stations. The fact is that "media markets" is the simplest yet most detailed dichotomous scheme there is (thus the use of it). The South Florida markets can be broken down by your local news station. Miami-Dade and Broward get the same news, and West Palm Beach and Key West both have their separate stations. Copyright requires creativity (its purpose is to protect that), and this scheme demonstrates none. Darrell v. Joe Morris Music Co. (1940) and Arnstein v. Marks Music Corporation (1936) back up that the "media markets" I have seen are not copyrighted even though a more specific "media market" could be.--JEF (talk) 16:33, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, Wikimedia Foundation has not received a DMCA takedown notice, but we typically act "conservatively" when confronted with claims of copyright violation because we're not a large enough organization (in terms of legal and financial resources) to hash out the nuances of every copyright claim. My own view is that the community should look at the information in question, try to make a guess as to what Nielsen thinks was wholesale copied from its content, and try to reproduce non-copyrighted information it can on restructured, retemplated pages. In general, lists of information that are not produced with any kind of creativity and judgment (e.g., an alphabetical list of American broadcasting stations by call letter) would not be copyrightable, per Feist v. Rural Telephone (1991). But a list that does entail creativity and/or judgment could well be considered copyrightable. Is Nielsen right to think its information is copyrightable? I can't say for certain how a court would answer that question. But the point of DMCA compliance is to prevent us from having to guess what a court would say -- we simply comply with a DMCA notice (or with a complaint that seems likely to give rise to a formal DMCA notice), and our statutory protections under the DMCA kick in. MikeGodwin (talk) 22:27, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Finally, the Mike we have heard of speaks. So if I have this straight, Nielson claims copyright infingement but hasn't given a DMCA takedown notice.--JEF (talk) 23:19, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

They divided the country into 211 regions based on commercial data. It's utterly unlike census zones, and it seems like there are lots of plausible ways they could have divided areas, which would have called for many discretionary decisions. Wouldn't these areas (and associated names and numbers) be copyrightable?

What, exactly, did they claim in their OTRS request? That would give us some clues. Cool Hand Luke 22:39, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

As it is, the templates didn't seem to define the boundaries of each region (which would be proprietary), and without the numbers, they just represent stations that one could receive from some particular city. Wouldn't that be public domain? We could even improve things by adding templates for small intermediate cities that receive signals from more than one Nielson market. That would avoid conflation with their proprietary areas, while adding more information into Wikipedia based directly on PD fact. Cool Hand Luke 22:58, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

That was my point. I agreed that a more specific area would be copyrightable, but vague ones like Miami-Dade and Broward are not. I like your general idea, however, to make the market's more specific in name (like naming the Miami-Dade and Broward one the Homestead/Miami/Hialeah/Ft. Lauderdale market area). It makes it clear that the templates are not based on Nielson but common knowledge.--JEF (talk) 23:19, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

So let me ask this question again. If I created a Las Vegas broadcast TV template that only contained the signals I could receive from my antenna and did not mention any type of ranking organization, would that be OK? Vegaswikian (talk) 22:53, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

That would be common knowledge which is not copyrightable as I have been arguing this entire time.--JEF (talk) 23:19, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

So this one should be OK? Vegaswikian (talk) 20:55, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Could we actually see their notice. A notice shouldn't be copyright, and to the extent to which it's posted so that the creators of the allegedly infringing content can respond to it, it's obviously fair use. I can understand why they didn't issue a DMCA takedown because, to the extent to which they'r claiming trademark violations, they're not DMCA issues. On the other hand, there's a lot less need to be brutal in response to a trademark question (it does, though, still need to be responded to in a reasonable timeframe). Issuing a DMCA notice on stuff that's not copyrightable would also expose them to costs, etc.--User:darkonc (talk) 23:19, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Nielsen triggers AfDs?

Longstanding articles listing the affiliates for ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, The CW, The WB, and UPN have been batch nominated for deletion here. It appears as though the alleged "copyright violation" culprit is simply the "DMA" column in the tables on those articles. I believe simply removing that column on each of those articles should resolve the concerns, no?   user:j    (aka justen)   06:24, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I want to note that those articles were NOT, I repeat, NOT referenced anywhere in the ticket. If people want to delete them for various reasons, that's their business, but the ticket had nothing to do directly with those articles. ⇒SWATJester ^{Son of the Defender} 06:56, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

The AfD has been speedily closed as keep. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 07:09, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

• List of ABC television affiliates (table) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• List of CW affiliates (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• List of CBS television affiliates (table) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• List of Fox television affiliates (table) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• List of NBC television affiliates (table) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• List of UPN affiliates (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• List of WB affiliates (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

The articles that were nominated for deletion do still contain tables with apparently "proprietary" Nielsen data (with DMA numbers, which I presume are assigned by Nielsen). Should we proactively remove that column and the phrase "DMA" from each of these articles, so as to prevent the problem (rather than wait for it to visit us with mass deletions next Friday)? I'm listing the articles here, for reference.   user:j    (aka justen)   16:07, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I think that's a good idea. We can always add it back later if it turns out there's no problem with it. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 22:33, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

(Removed stupid comment).--JEF (talk) 21:07, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Look, you're not WMF counsel.

At any rate, their argument would be that they made creative decisions in defining which cities should be in which market. They necessarily did. There's a lot of arbitrariness, as the discussion above about Florida shows. Whether we should remove this column (and indeed this ordering) depends on exactly what they're claiming. Cool Hand Luke 19:23, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

My mistake (I removed the above comment because I made it without looking at the articles)...the lists need to be based alphabetically as Nielson would have full rights to a number that is based on their "proprietary system" (just as ESPN has rights to the numbers generated from their NFL "power rankings").--JEF (talk) 21:22, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Nielsenless affiliates table

I've begun updating the table in List of CW affiliates to be based on metropolitan statistical areas, rather than Nielsen Media Research designated market areas. For now, I'm listing the city in which the affiliate is primarily headquartered in. I still have a ways to go, filling in the metro area population ranking numbers, and eventually linking to the new media market articles as they are rebuilt. I've created a StarOffice spreadsheet, which has the basic wiki table markup; I'm working from that. When I want to try out the code, I just save as csv with the save filter set to no field and no text delimiter. Unless somebody else wants to beat me to it (please, I'm begging you), I'll finish with The CW and then go on to ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC...   user:j    (aka justen)   07:35, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

What else does this affect?

There may be similar cases of using copyrighted divisions, such as rail lines or even census divisions in countries that copyright their works. We need to find out exactly what Nielsen's beef is, and determine where the line is. It seems like referring to these divisions when talking about the authority that assigns them (as with rail lines, since the owning or operating company names them) should not be a problem, while, with Nielsen, we are talking about TV stations, not Nielsen. Can we please discuss this? --NE2 11:43, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

If you are talking about America, census divisions are NOT COPYRIGHTED. The census is done by the national government which essentially requires all its works be public domain (now there are exceptions like confidential documents but that is the gist). Rail line names cannot be copyrighted either in America. As I said above, trite objects (like names) are not copyrighted as held by Darrell v. Joe Morris Music Co. (1940) and Arnstein v. Marks Music Corporation (1936).--JEF (talk) 16:40, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I did say "in countries that copyright their works". And how is a rail line ineligible? The company that owns and operates the line chooses the division points along a longer line and names each segment. Sounds a lot like Nielsen choosing and naming markets. --NE2 17:14, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Setting aside the legal question for a moment; A rail company may well have done research on commuter populations to determine where to place their stations... but they would derive no benefit in restricting access to that information. Once the stations are built the more people who know where they are located, the better it is for the rail company. The situation with Nielsen is completely different. Their research identified various geographic regions which were served in common by specific TV stations. That information is valuable to advertisers and thus they make money by selling it. The more of that information which is copied onto Wikipedia the less return Nielsen gets on their investment in the original research. So yes, a claim might be made that placement of rail lines, transit schedules, and the like are 'original creations' by rail companies... but they would have to be complete fools to seek to impede the spread of that information. If we want to get into, 'well but they theoretically COULD... and therefor we should not have such things', I don't think that holds up either. Back in the day one of the major 'hacking' cases fell apart largely because it turned out that the 'top secret AT&T documents worth millions of dollars' which had been 'hacked' were, in fact, available for public purchase for something like twenty dollars. The information did not have the value which was being claimed for it. Rail lines and schedules are given away... for free. Precisely because wide release of that information is beneficial to the rail companies. IANAL, but based on my understanding of past cases it would be impossible for someone to sue over 'copyright infringement' on information they themselves give away at no cost... even if doing so were not completely against their own interests. --CBD 19:17, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Nielsen does give away the DMA names at no cost: [3] --NE2 19:27, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

It is not the naming of the market that Nielsen seems to be claiming as the Miami-Dade and Broward area for example is no doubt a common designation, it is the area of the market of itself and the name simply designates that. If they are drawing up boundaries like that of gerrymandering based on their research then they would have every right to copyright that area, but none of the templates I have seen do that; instead they refer to the general areas that receive certain channels. On the immediately above distribution comment, just because a company "gives away" something does not means they do not reserve intellectual property rights on it. Most Youtube videos are copyrighted even though they are being distributed "freely".--JEF (talk) 19:32, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

The "immediately above comment" was in response to CBD; you should read what he said. --NE2 20:17, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Corrected it.--JEF (talk) 21:13, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Question for Swat or other legal OTRS

I asked Swat on his talk page who can tell us what was in the takedown. It's impossible, unfair, and quite dumb for us to do a single thing for this until the OTRS/office/whomever tells us what was in the take down, or tells us who to ask. DMCA takedowns, specific to the content of "what" was claimed, shouldn't and honestly can't be priviledged information, as trying to keep that quiet may offer no protection to the WMF itself, and makes it more likely that subsequent similar takedowns will just come through. I've worked with DMCA takedowns in the past in a professional capacity. Unless we know what was in there, we're just going to be back here again shortly. Can someone please tell us? rootology (C)(T) 17:13, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

For privacy reasons we cannot. OTRS tickets are emails to the foundation, and for privacy reasons, we don't disclose the contents of emails people send to the foundation. I understand that makes things difficult, but tickets are meant to be private; legal tickets even more so. If someone from the foundation wants to agree to disclose the contents, that's one thing, but for a volunteer to do so is inappropriate.⇒SWATJester ^{Son of the Defender} 01:35, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I understand it's private, as does anyone else... I simply asked who we ask for the information. :) The OTRS people, Godwin? rootology (C)(T) 03:58, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I know, I answered that in my last paragraph. It'd have to be someone from the foundation; as far as I'm aware no OTRS volunteers are authorized to disclose ticket information publicly. ⇒SWATJester ^{Son of the Defender} 04:24, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

A Simple Solution

If you believe Neilson's DMCA notice to be invalid, all you have to do is send a counter-notice to the Wikimedia Foundation. They are then required by law to restore the deleted content, just as they were required by law to remove it when they received the DMCA notice. Complaining about it here won't do you any good. I've done this myself regarding bogus DMCA notices sent to Wikipedia and it's worked quite well. The only catch is that by sending the counter-notice you are assuming liability for any actual copyright infringements that are restored. So basically, it means you have to put your money where your mouth is. Any takers? Kaldari (talk) 19:05, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

The thing is that this goes against the entire premise of Wikipedia. No one user is or should be responsible for all the content on a page at any given time (unless he has created the entire page as it stand by himself). The Digital Millennium Copyright Act shows its age in its failure to address this (as far as I am aware). The Wikipedia Foundation is taken as representing the entire community and should (as well as is powerful enough) to act against the frivolous claims of other parties.--JEF (talk) 19:38, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I suggest people just chill until the office opens on Monday. I'm completely unwilling to dedicate my day off on Sunday to straightening out this mess. There's so much incorrect information going on in this thread; the actions originating from the office were Dan's deletion and my restoration. I'm still trying to figure out who first said, "DMCA"; for that matter, any DMCA removal should be done by an office staff member or someone specifically directed by the office to do the removal.

The only thing removed under the auspices of OFFICE was a list of cities in a single article derived from an American corporation's copyrighted material (Neilsen). Anything else is from the community.

Also, if there's a lack of communication on my part about this, I will accept responsibility. I do reiterate that the only content to remain deleted under those auspices is the list of markets in the United States by Neilsen rank on the original article. If you've already replaced it with a non-Neilsen originated list, then that's certainly acceptable. Bastique ^demandez 20:35, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Wait...so the template deletions are a result of a possibly inappropriate use of speedy deletion by User:Cyde?--JEF (talk) 22:02, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

None of us know what was involved in the ticket, so Cyde and the other admins are bound to make some errors here and there. So cut him some slack, please. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 22:18, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Set your sights elsewhere. I made no decisions here; all I did was run the bot on the list of items I was told. --Cyde Weys 00:13, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Who told you, if I may ask? --Conti|✉ 00:16, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

See my talk page. --Cyde Weys 01:19, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I may be dense, but I don't see anything other than you saying that Nielsen sent a DMCA takedown notice to OTRS. --NE2 06:37, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

"I'm going to have to refer you to Jredmond or MBisanz on this one." Cyde seems to claim he got it from staff which would contradict what Bastique said (...and the plot thickens).--JEF (talk) 20:43, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

So, basically, it's up to the community to decide what to do with the templates, and we could just as well restore them? --Conti|✉ 00:14, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

All this is is another reason why I believe these corporate overlords are controlling our lives. Capitalism has enabled corporations to get more rights than human beings - publicly available information should be able to be compiled without all this bullsh*t from corporations saying that we have no right to knowledge. Mnmazur (talk) 20:57, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

• I would strongly suggest that any new templates created have *no* reference to Nielsen at all, and for that matter, remove Nielsen from the external links for any TV station or network listing. If they want to play hardball, cut them off at the knees. I seriously doubt that I am the only person who has clicked on the links to Nielsen that existed on the old templates, and if they want to claim the market names are theirs, fine. There's no reason at all to send traffic their way if they are going to use legal threats against WMF; we block users who do the same, and we should blacklist them. Horologium (talk) 21:30, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
  • Revenge is in nobody's best interest. --NE2 06:40, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

• • You are too difficult to talk/post to, see my post in [4] LaoziSailor 02:27, 23 September 2008 (GMT)
    • Just because something is freely available does not make it public domain. The first page of the excel document makes it clear that result of "their proprietary system" are copyrighted. Nielson has as much right to their data as Gallup does for Gallup Polls. If all the companies that have such data pursue this, this will be disastrous to Wikipedia, and Wikipedia will have to start having section be simply fair use fight in court in order to be a complete encyclopedia. I don't like it as much as you, but it is perfectly legal. What would not be illegal is the use of "Wikipedia market areas" that are based on common knowledge. It cannot use the ranking system of Nielson though.--JEF (talk) 02:00, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
    • I don't see how it would be any different from citing a book (page & paragraph) available in the public library, no copyright infringement, at least that was the way it was done when I went to school. BTW, at school we also did cover the Copyright Act of 1976, Title 17 U.S.C. Also, FWIW the spreadsheet makes no reference to a "proprietary system", furthermore they should have updated the copyright to include 2008 instead of just stating "Copyright © 2007 The Nielsen Company".--LaoziSailor 03:18, 23 September 2008 (GMT)
      • Well, when you cite a book, most often you are just presenting facts, describing something trite, or copying public domain literature (Charles Dickens for example) which are not copyrightable, and some of the time you are using fair use (like if you used gallup poll information). However, Wikipedia utilizes GFDL unless fair use is absolutely necessary, since fair use presents risk of litigation when Wikipedia can avoid the issue all together. As you can see by Mike's comments above, the Wikipedia foundation is avoiding litigation if possible (as frivolous as it may be). You can be sued as a student for copyright infringement, especially if you quote large lines of text. Also, I realize that the system does not state anything about a proprietary system, but most things that have copyright symbols don't give explanations in the same location; I am sure that this is what they would argue in court to defend their copyright. Finally, if this document is from last year, we would expect the copyright to be 2007.--JEF (talk) 05:02, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Proposal

I think, since really no one knows what is the in the OTRS ticket and what seems to be (not placing blame) a "jumping the gun" by Cyde and the speedy delete button, I think we should revert all changes (bring back all deleted templates) until a complete explanation of what is in the OTRS ticket is given. Cause right now, this is just silly and possibly in violation of WP:CRYSTAL (we ain't mind readers, ya know). - NeutralHomer • Talk 16:40, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

No. You're not going to get a complete explanation, as has been mentioned multiple times; OTRS tickets are private emails, and they're not going to be disclosed. Simply mass-reverting an action that a volunteer takes after discussion, in good faith, because of something that he is privy to and you are not, is as pure a violation of WP:POINT as I've ever seen. Take a presumption that the deletion was proper. If you bring it back, you're bringing back copyright-violations. That's obviously a no-no. Since you don't know whether the deletion is proper, and you don't know whether the content was a copy-vio, you should not be reverting it back in until it can be clearly determined that it is in fact not a copyright violation. Then, and ONLY then, should you be mass-reverting anything. ⇒SWATJester ^{Son of the Defender} 19:51, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

This is a non-starter for essentially why Swat said. However, if we are going to make a specific serious proposal could the OTRS people maybe talk to the Nielsen people who sent the OTRS comment and see if we can get permission from them to make part of the message public? That might help matters and I see little reason why they would object. JoshuaZ (talk) 20:01, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

@Swattie: You need to provide some guidance. "Look at what I deleted and puzzle it out from that", as you suggested to me, doesn't cut it, frankly. I asked you to share the contents of the ticket with me, promising it would go no further, and you refused. If I'm not trustworthy enough to see it, I'm really at a loss. If you won't give guidance, then you really can't complain if people are unsure of what exactly is at issue here. I don't think restoring everything is quite the WP:POINT violation you think it is, (although I nevertheless oppose that idea strongly) but I'd say this... are you absolutely certain you got everything that is covered, and nothing that isn't? Are you willing to commit to keep watch over these areas, whatever they are, in lieu of giving the guidance that has been asked for over and over? If not, I think maybe you should share this ticket with other trustworthy folk who are willing to do that. Or ... hope for the best, I guess. But stop hampering the community's efforts to deal with this. Provide guidance, or don't complain. ++Lar: t/c 20:05, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I explained to you why I was not willing to share the contents with you, at the present time, having reasons nothing at all to do with your trustworthiness, and everything to do with the circumstances surrounding this ticket. But yes. I am absolutely certain that I got everything that was covered within the ticket. It may be that there are other copyvios involving DMA stuff out there, but I got everything that had mentioned with the ticket. Anything else is the community's responsibility to deal with, or the the ticket author's responsibility to identify what it is that we're violating and notify us of it. ⇒SWATJester ^{Son of the Defender} 00:52, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

You know, it's really hard to complain when there's no one taking responsibility for what happened. Cyde said he just did what he was told to, Bastique said that the deletions were not an OFFICE action.. So, who issued the deletion of the templates, if not the WMF office? Jredmond? MBisanz? Swatjester? Who can we complain to if we disagree with the deletions? --Conti|✉ 20:17, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I asked Cyde, and he clarified to my satisfaction. --NE2 20:21, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, that's useful indeed. --Conti|✉ 20:32, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Nielsen's major complaints were that the image File:TvDMAmap.gif and the regions and rankings on List of television stations in North America by media market both violated their copyrights. (They also objected to our use of the term "DMA" for Canadian markets, but that's a different matter.) Cary, MBisanz, and I felt it would be prudent to remove market information from other pages as well because Nielsen was so insistent about removing their data from the list article. Outside that list article, that information appeared most on the templates, so the templates had to go.

It's unfair to harass Cyde about the bot deletions — we asked him to help because his bot has done a lot of template-related work and because it doesn't leave a lot of loose ends. He was assuming good faith, as more Wikipedians should. Leave him and his bot alone, please.

In any case, because this all stems from a legal complaint, it would be foolish to mass-undelete those templates right now. Let's examine the potential copyvio status more closely first, and in the meantime let's work on improving encyclopedic content rather than enhancing the latest drama. - Jredmond (talk) 20:37, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

So which of these, exactly, was the problem with the templates?

1. The name of the market
2. The DMA number
3. A list of stations in the market

--NE2 20:51, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

We were most concerned about the name and number of each DMA region, since that's what Nielsen specifically mentioned. They did not appear to be too concerned with the list of stations in each market, though it would be rather difficult to list stations without mentioning somehow where they are. - Jredmond (talk) 21:10, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

OK, so would it be fine to have the same templates but with, instead of "Broadcast television in the South Florida (Miami / Fort Lauderdale / Key West) market", something like "Broadcast television in South Florida" or "Broadcast television in the Miami area"? If so, could they be undeleted as long as someone is willing to quickly edit the titles? --NE2 21:19, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, yes. Bastique already re-created List of television stations in North America by media market to reflect Census Bureau MSAs, so "Broadcast television in South Florida" would probably work the best there. - Jredmond (talk) 21:26, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Specifically for South Florida, though, I feel Homestead/Miami/Hialeah/Ft. Lauderdale is better (which I used in the changed Template:Miami TV) because the term South Florida includes West Palm Beach (which has different local news which is reflected in its different "market area").--JEF (talk) 23:24, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the explanation, Jredmond, it is much appreciated. I just wish it would've come right after those templates were deleted, and not three days later. Anyhow, better late than never, I suppose. :) --Conti|✉ 21:16, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I thought a few others were doing an admirable job explaining things above. I hope this clears up any further (answerable) questions, though. - Jredmond (talk) 21:29, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

The initial explanations were confusing because they apparently were about List of television stations in North America by media market, while people asked about the deleted templates instead. It took a while (at least it took me a while) to figure out that one was an office action and the other a community decision. --Conti|✉ 21:52, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I'd suggest giving the office and the people who actually authorized the deletions one more day to explain. If they don't, given that the office has explicitly said these deletions are not WP:OFFICE actions, and given that the original claim of a DMCA request was not correct, it's reasonable enough to recreate the pages. There is a mechanism for OTRS requests to be resolved without explanation, community discussion, or consensus, and that is the WP:OFFICE procedure. OTRS actions apart from OFFICE actions require explanation and consensus, subject to the requirement that that private information may not be publicly disclosed. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:37, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

And before anyone goes all "ZOMG admin bot", I'd like to point out that no decisions were made by a computer. I ran category.py to generate the list of templates and categories to delete, which I verified personally, then used template.py to unlink all of the templates and delete.py to delete everything. So, yes, technically a program was executing the deletions, but it was doing so in an entirely human-assisted way — really just a mechanism of saving me the hassle of having to go through and delete the entire list manually. --Cyde Weys 21:16, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

As far as I can tell you carried out the deletions in a perfectly reasonable way, in response to a good-faith request. It's not unheard of for bot operators to assist OTRS with large tasks on request, and nobody can fault you for helping out. Moreover, if the templates are undeleted or recreated after discussion, that does not mean the deletions were inappropriate as a temporary measure pending discussion. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:39, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree; it would, however, have been nice if this were made clear from the beginning. --NE2 23:14, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Looking at the cache of one of the templates, I feel that the templates could be recreated if the bot removed the Nielson DMA # in the top right, the Nielson category on the bottom, and removed the name of the title so that editors would immediately have to change it to a name that is more specific than the one Nielson has (such as I have done with Template:Miami TV).--JEF (talk) 21:32, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Procedural question - admins recovering deleted article content...

Resolved

 – No harm, no foul

...if they are "involved"? What is the policy on this? This is specific to this question here. The Prem Rawat Foundation was deleted through AFD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Prem Rawat Foundation. I noticed Talk:Prem Rawat/TPRF had been created by User:Jossi, who !voted on the AFD, and is certainly "involved" on any Rawat articles. I moved it over to Jossi's userspace here, as I didn't think it should be over in article or article talk space without having gone through DRV... it was only literally deleted hours ago. It appears that Jossi recovered and re-posted the deleted materials himself outside of user space.

Is this OK? If it is, please just archive this section. I'm not sure what the policy is on using admin tools to recover validly deleted materials and repost them without DRV outside of user space when you're an involved editor as well. Thanks. I left Jossi that note, but I wanted outside eyes here and all that since he and I are arguably involved too deeply right now, with the pending Wheel War arbitration and the evidence I put in against him. I'd rather just leave this for all of you if theres anything or nothing to worry about. rootology (C)(T) 05:45, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I'd say who the admin is is irrelevant. Re-posting an article deleted at AFD in substantially the same form is not okay, involved admin or not. Userfying a deleted article that doesn't include copyvios, BLP issues, or other problematic content, is fine, involved admin or not (assuming it's not being userfied to just lurk there indefinitely, that is). I'm not sure what Jossi was trying to do in this case; probably best let him explain it. Kudos to you, though, for userfying and asking him rather than just tagging it as a G4, which probably would have been unhelpful. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 05:51, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I'd assume it was a mistake. going to echo the praise above about asking/userifying rather than nuking from orbit. Protonk (talk) 06:14, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Ditto. Good move too, since userspace can be used as a holding pen so with Jossi's track record I agf as well. Keegan^talk 07:06, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Note: to comply with Wikipedia's GFDL, the deleted article's history should be merged with Jossi's userfied version, so the contributors to it are properly credited if/when he moves it back to mainspace when he's finished working on it. Steve ^{T • C} 07:47, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely ridiculous. Having material that was deleted in a AfD to a sandbox in article talk page is entirely appropriate as editors may want to use some of the sources in the deleted article, and has nothing to do with DRV procedures. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 14:57, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

The article was deleted on the grounds of lack of notability, but the material and sources in the article could be useful to expand related articles. We have a dozen or more sandboxes under Talk:Prem Rawat as placeholders for such material, and there is nothing wrong in having that short article and its sources there for consultation by active editors there. Rootology as the nom of this AfD, should know better than raise hackles in this instance, and stop raiding my contrib list. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:07, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Please retract the allegation of stalking, as you might be seen to be harassing me in retaliation for posting evidence against you in RFAR about abuse of your admin tools. We've never, ever had any interatction before all of this. I nominated an article for deletion, which I am allowed to do, as it had virtually no sourcing, and there was--except for one person and a few SPA accounts, nearly unanimous consensus to delete it. I noticed it recreated in a portion of article space several hours later--I had clicked on your contributions after noticing the deletion to see if it had been perhaps DRV'd, which I am allowed to do. I noticed you had recreated it, and on top of that, using your own admin tools out of line as an involved editor, AND you may have violated copyright and GFDL attribution by falsely claiming sole authorship of the article. As a courtesy I moved it to your userspace--I could have G4'd it as someone said and validly had it blown immediately away as a speedy delete, but I didn't as a courtesy and because I'm not a dick. Once I realized this was a little over my head, I asked on AN. Everyone said, "No big, lets move on," until you come here with a false and malicious accusation of stalking. You are out of line, and this is a very sensitive area for me, having been falsely accused of this in the past. Jossi, stop harassing anyone who disagrees with you, and stop using your admin tools in any way in anything you have a COI in, such as being an admitted acolyte of Prem Rawat. rootology (C)(T) 15:10, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I suggest adding the details of this incident to the current Palin ArbCom case and also to the Arb notification board as a possible violation of the Prem Rawat ArbCom case decision. Cla68 (talk) 15:16, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I'd rather someone else do it. If I'm going to be hit with the usual charges he levels at others that disagree with him now of stalking and harassing him (which applies to most folks that disagree, it seems based on the recent evidence), I'm going in self-imposed hands off from him for a few months at the minimum. I don't need to be harassed, when I have articles to write. rootology (C)(T) 15:20, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm about to board a plane for a 13-hour trip back to my country of residence. Could an uninvolved admin or editor please report this to the Arb enforcement board, including Jossi's personal attack on Rootology? Cla68 (talk) 15:26, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

This seems to fly in the face of Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Prem Rawat#Jossi has a self-imposed restriction a bit IMHO. At the time, he vowed not to edit the articles - now he's going as far as re-creating a deleted version of one of them? —Wknight94 (talk) 15:14, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I have deleted the copy of the article, and listed the sources used in that article in a related talk page. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:33, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I've already reported it [5]. Cla68 (talk) 15:42, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I have compared the deleted article with what Jossi posted to "Talk:Prem Rawat/TPRF", now at "Special:Undelete/User:Jossi/TPRF", and it is an exact copy of the deleted article sans infobox, and including additional sources (presumably found during the Afd?); it is worth noting that the recreated copy includes changes made to the article made during the AfD. The typical practise at Afd is for people to opine that they would like the article to be moved to userspace if they intend to salvage/reuse it, or ask the deleting admin to do so if the Afd is closed as delete. Otherwise, it stays deleted. Whether or not Jossi obtained the text from his own disk or via Special:Undelete/The Prem Rawat Foundation, the recreation in article talk space is very unusual, and it is not surprising that rootology thought that it should be userfied. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 00:08, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Additional question, Jossi = Momento?

Jossi claimed that he was the original author of The Prem Rawat Foundation. How is that? Jossi, are you claiming YOU are the editor Momento (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)? He is the original author, as I just noticed here. rootology (C)(T) 15:26, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Is that enough evidence to support a checkuser request? Cla68 (talk) 15:28, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

You have got to be kidding... By all means do a checkuser if that is what you want to do. LOL! ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:32, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

So were you the original author of The Prem Rawat Foundation as you claimed? That's all I'm asking. rootology (C)(T) 15:34, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I contributed a large amount of the content. If all you wanted was to ask, you could. Instead you make an allegation of Jossi = Momento. You have some chutzpah. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:37, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

No, that's not chutzpah, that's asking why you claimed to be the author who was Momento and not you, broke GFDL and copyright by reposting it with no history using your admin tools if you're not Momento and that's not his original draft, and that's it. Again, I'm done with this, and leave it to others to sort out and post to the various RFARs if required. And please leave me alone and stop lobbing accusations of harassment at anyone who disagrees with you. It's a civility violation. rootology (C)(T) 15:40, 20 September 2008

If I feel harassed, I feel harassed. So please stop this silliness. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:43, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Another silly allegation: I do not need to use my "admin tools" to keep a copy of an article on my file system. See what I mean by feeling harassed by you? ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 16:03, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Everyone needs to slow down here, take a deep breath. Its Saturday. According to the (admin only) [article history], Jossi was a major contributor to the article, (and moved it at one point from Prem Rewat Foundation to The Prem Rewat Foundation. I'd be very hard pressed to conclude that Jossi is under any reasonable suspicion of socking, merely a major contributor to the article. Nothing wrong with having a userfied copy to "prepare" for recreation/DRV. Rootology did the right thing moving it from Talk:Prem... to User:Jossi/Prem..., as is customary for userfied copies. Keeper ǀ 76 15:41, 20 September 2008 (UTC)(UTC)

The article was deleted for failing notability. Jossi restored the material and sources to a sandbox in talk space. Steve's right about the history merge. That's pretty mundane stuff, doesn't violate Jossi's self-imposed restriction as far as I can see, and is something anyone would do on request for an established editor. Moving it to userspace was fine too, though if there's as much enmity as there seems to be it might have been better to ask someone else to do it. Trying to find any wrongdoing in this, let alone justification for a checkuser, seems like a stretch. Tom Harrison ^Talk 16:43, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Jossi says "I had a copy of the material on-disk, before the AfD (I was the author)." In that context it is a simple leap of reason to see he is explaining why he has it on disk - he had been involved in the authoring of the article. The article was created on January 14, 2006 by Momento, edited by Jossi on January 20 and February 7 in 2006, and January 9, February 1 and March 14 in 2007. It is a very strange point that Jossi is making, as his on-disk copy is irrelevant, and he wasnt neither the initial or a recent author; but, he is the primary author of the article The Prem Rawat Foundation. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 23:07, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Back on topic

Ignoring the rambling discussion on individual editor's merits, behaviors, and so on, and back to the topic of is it OK to use admin tools to recover deleted content in that fashion:

In my opinion yes. There is no harm here, involved administrator or otherwise. Article deletion does not mean "wiped off the face of wikipedia." It means "This article doesn't need to be here" unless there is copyright violation incidents in which case its "this content cannot be here." In otherwords, its just an article talk page he moved it to. No big deal. Its substantially the same thing as watching an article about to be deleted, copying and pasting the content onto an article talk page in preparation for merging the content.--Tznkai (talk) 15:06, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

As an admin, users have asked me for copies of pages that have been deleted, either for private circulation or in their userspace. So long as there is no BLP, threats or other major problem with the content, I have always done so. If they attempt to move this into mainspace and dodge the AfD by stealth, any admin (including the one who restored it) can use the "already deleted" speedy criterion to blat it. As I see it, if it can potentially improve the encyclopaedia or is at worst harmless, then there is no risk to the project. Orderinchaos 07:04, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, no big deal, perfectly normal practice to give out deleted content in response to good-faith requests, and no need for any silly bureaucratic restriction stopping admins from doing it for themselves. If it's not ready for primetime in a month or so I am sure Jossi will quietly nuke it. Guy (Help!) 20:12, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Oprah hoax - Block-on-sight policy

Not really. Take a look at n:Rumors of Oprah Winfrey's death a hoax and keep an eye out for edits like this one. Giggy (talk) 08:06, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Over 9,000 penises, and they're all raping children? My god. They must be stopped! Seriously, expect significant damage to Oprah related articles, revolving around typical /b/tardery.⇒SWATJester ^{Son of the Defender} 11:51, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

"The rumors started after a statement Winfrey made on a recent show, defending a United States Senate bill against pedophiles and child rapists saying a pedophile group has "over 9,000 penises" harming children." Okay, I LOL'ed at that quote. Tis' a shame the vandalism didn't somehow incorporate the 9,000 penises bit, I'm disappointed. seicer | talk | contribs 13:59, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Reminds me of a band name. Gwen Gale (talk) 14:05, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

When are we going to make "participating in a 4chan hoax" a block-on-sight event? After the Miley Cyrus debacle, we basically had a list of a dozen editors that are willing to vandalize on 4chan's request, and did nothing. There's another list now. Do we just let these people proceed as editors in good standing?Kww (talk) 14:43, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Forgive my intrusion, but Would it not be a sensible course of action to look at what those Cyrus accounts got up to after they were identified as willing to do the bidding of 4chan, and judge the decision to "do nothing" on the results of that action instead of supposition and rhetorical questions? the skomorokh 15:42, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

No. 4chan hoaxes are now rising to the level of pissing people off, it's not funny, it makes work for people who are not paid to do it, and vandalising WP:BLPs is absolutely unacceptable. So blocking these hoaxers is not especially controversial, it's just a question of how long. Guy (Help!) 20:15, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I go for three months nowadays due to harassment of other users and the "Edit Vandalized Revision" forced memes. -Jéské ^{(v^_^v Kacheek!)} 19:21, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Should be block on sight. Disruptive editing is a blockable offense. Immediate indef for those trolling, if I had my say. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 20:22, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

While mass participation in Wikiality is deplorable, I still wonder what happened to WP:BITE... VG ☎ 16:28, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

If someone is coming to troll, they deserve to be bitten, immediately and hard. While not being harsh on legitimate newcomers is good, trolls and other disruptors can be shown the door without a welcome. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 18:10, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

If someone comes here for the sole reason of creating a disruption, then we don't need to issue a warning. We block on sight. BITE? They are getting no-less then what they are already expecting to happen. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 01:02, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Block long-term or indef, but to reduce WP:BITE just a little bit, someone create a new template advising that they will get ONE chance at an unblock after say one week if they promise to edit properly. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:09, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Template:Blocked-spate (Template:Blocked-spate). Thoughts? ~ User:Ameliorate! ^{(with the !) (talk)} 03:13, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not a big fan of the one-week thing being baked in. On the Cyrus event, we had what appeared to be a mix of people that were participating (about 90% of the problem) and those that were duped (about 10%). There's going to be some false blocking of the duped. It's inevitable, and I'm not sure that a one-week block for gullibility has a lot of consensus going for it (I think it's a great idea, personally, but I'm not known for suffering fools gladly). Why not let unblocking by request proceed as normal, with an agreement that the response for "I'm sorry for going along with the 4chan crew" is "wait a week", but a convincing "I heard the rumor, and I was just asking on the talk page if it was true" can be treated a bit more leniently.Kww (talk) 03:25, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I say, leave the template as it is, but administrators have the option of unblocking sooner if they feel there is a good reason. Leniency options that are undocumented may help prevent gaming. Jehochman ^Talk 03:29, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. Some of these users who come over genuinely don't know what we're about, then actually learn and are sorry for their earlier actions. I've seen that before. Orderinchaos 07:09, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't think you realise just how disruptive they've become. Ottre 13:17, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

This template must not be used. It violates about 6 policies. Firstly saying what WILL happen ignores the fact that admins have discretion. Secondly, some blankers may have good reasons and should not be lumped in and assumed bad faith. (See WP:DOLT) This is just more of the regular vandal paranoia, we get it every so often and the wiki doesn't blow up. If the vandals are getting to you, go write an article.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 21:43, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I really don't understand what blanking has to do with participating in a 4chan hoax and claiming that a targeted celebrity is dead. Can you elucidate?Kww (talk) 21:48, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism only accounts doing that should just be indefblocked. period. (They can create another account once the autoblocker trips off.) Unfortunately, if you allow a template liek that to exist, it will simply be used more generally. The template mentions things like blanking, so it will get used for that.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 21:52, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

We aren't talking only about vandalism only accounts. We are talking about accounts like Geoking66 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), who has been an established account for some time, who suddenly inserts a death hoax, edit wars to keep it in, and then says a dog ate his homework.Kww (talk) 21:58, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Then make a template that is far more specific. This one is not. And can you link me to the new "block on site" policy it refers to.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 22:01, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

What would you like to see in place of The edits you have made are associated with common spates of attacks? As for making this a policy, we are in the midst of discussing it, right here.Kww (talk) 22:03, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't know. But blanking is a "common spate of attacks" - so it needs to be something a lot more specific. And the problem with creating a template like that, before there is an agreed policy is that people start using it - and it refers to an agreed policy. I also object to any template that says what WILL happen - the fact is that the next admin will use his/her judgement.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 22:08, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

On the one week bit, I tend to agree ... see my comments above. Would Your edits seem to be associated with an orchestrated attack on Wikipedia be better?Kww (talk) 22:11, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Outdenting. Based on Scott's and my concerns, I propose the following, which can be found at User:Kww/Template:Blocked-Orchestrated

Blocked
You have been indefinitely blocked from editing Wikipedia as a result of your disruptive edits. The edits you have made appear to be part of an orchestrated attack on Wikipedia. To contest this block, add the text {{unblock|your reason here}} on this page, replacing your reason here with an explanation of why you believe this block to be unjustified. You can also email the blocking administrator or any administrator from this list. Please be sure to include your username (if you have one) and IP address in your email.

~~~~

Kww (talk) 01:14, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

User:Kww/Template:Blocked-Orchestrated

Approval of FA Template Protection Bot

A discussion has been underway for some time at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval regarding a proposed adminbot - FA Template Protection Bot. Following the recent RfC on adminbots, an addition was made to the Bot policy which was felt to reflect the consensus of that discussion: Wikipedia:BOT#Bots with administrative rights. The crux of this addition is to allow the approval of adminbots without the need for the operator to run a separate RfA. Instead, both the technical merits of the task and community consensus for it will be determined at WP:RFBOT and final approval is subject to bureaucrat (rather than BAG) discretion. As ever, as a bureaucrat asked to consider granting rights I need to consider community consensus. The RfC on these bots does suggest that there is no longer a general acceptance that RfA should be needed for such bots, however some form of community approval remains expected. Opposition to this addition to the Bot policy has so far come from existing operators of adminbots on their own accounts, who are unwilling to subject themselves to even this lesser approval process, rather than from those unhappy with rights being granted outside RfA. The change has been fairly well advertised.

This post is intended as a notification that I am minded to approve an adminbot based on the addition to WP:BOT that resulted from the RfC provided that I am satisfied:

1. That sufficient scrutiny of the code has occurred
2. That the potential approval was brought to the attention of the community
3. That there is a general consensus that the approval of the adminbot is beneficial
4. That the bot operator accepts that, should a bureaucrat later determine that the consensus for the bot to run no longer exists, they may request that a steward removes its admin rights

Should anyone be unhappy with adminbots being approved in this manner, please state so here or at the relevant discussion at WT:BOT. WJBscribe (talk) 00:29, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I think this is workable. I think there's sufficient support for admin bots to be approved by BAG, with concurrence and +bot flag from a crat. And yes, the question of what to do with the pre-existing admin bots, especially those that aren't well-written is a stickier issue. — Rlevse • Talk • 01:00, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

For the record, I do not have any objections to this bot receiving the +sysop without an RfA. I don;t know if me saying that matters or no.... J.delanoy^gabs_adds 04:04, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

It does matter, thank you for expressing your opinion. There's nothing worse than making a bold pronouncement and finding that the response is pure silence. WJBscribe (talk) 04:12, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I for one support this bot being approved per the consensus regarding the implementation of adminbots at the RFC. It has been running on trial for a month without any problems, the BRFA was advertised at numerous forums (WT:RFA, AN etc.), the task is very beneficial as the bot saves the hassle of not only an admin having to add the templates to the protection page but having to find each template in an article and prevents the possibility that a template is missed. Admittedly, there has been very little community response but the RFC itself makes up for that. This is a very uncontroversial task so I feel it would be better to give it the bit and see what happens; my bet is no one will even notice that this is now being done by a bot rather than by the operator's own account. ~ User:Ameliorate! ^{(with the !) (talk)} 07:34, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I have a query for #1: sufficient scrutiny of the code has occurred. Could you elaborate on this? Does the code need to be open? =Nichalp «Talk»= 09:03, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

And further to that, what do you have in mind re #2? --Dweller (talk) 09:59, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I anticipated that, as in other areas, bureaucrats may form different views on these matters and so didn't want to be too prescriptive. As to #1, I personally would not approve such a bot on the say so of a single BAG member. I would expect to see a number of users - BAG or others with experience as to coding - endorsing the scripts the bot will run off. I would not require the code to be in the open, provided that there remains a community consensus for the task to run in spite of any secrecy regarding the code. As to #2, I would expect sufficient publicity to ensure a fair spread of opinion - posts to the relevant noticeboards etc. WJBscribe (talk) 23:31, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Here's my view on it:

1. That can be arranged easily. It appears that the code is working well, and it has been looked over. If it's not enough, there's always Cobi over there.
2. Is crossposting to WP:VPM, WP:BN, ad WP:AN enough?
3. Aside from general concerns for "SkyNet" incidents, and concerns that are no longer valid, there is very little opposition.
4. I believe that anyone filing for an adminbot already understands this, and if it was shown they didn't, I'd be surprised if someone doesn't rase opposition.

Xclamation point 10:57, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Just a note on point 1, the code is on svn for anyone who wants to see it --Chris 13:09, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Very Serious Concern. I'm not pleased to see the bot operator diminishing concern over Nuclear Holocaust Skynet; Just one mistake and boom - it's "Come with me if you want to live" time, which I don't find appealing. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 17:10, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

That statement confused me, what do you mean? Xclamation point 19:36, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

The operator is User:Chris G, the dude dismissing the concerns on skynet is User:X!, please don't hold X!'s comments against Chris :) MBisanz ^talk 19:47, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Not at all; I've already supported, below. I simply found the comparison between an admin-bot and An Artificial Intelligence that takes control of our Nuclear weapons and nearly annihilates humanity to be interesting, and tried to make light of it. Given that I apparently can't read, it ended up as a moderate fail - but meh, it's Monday. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 19:53, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

• Make it so. HiDrNick! 16:43, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
• No Objection. I had one concern on point, and have inquired with Chris, but it's not a bot issue per se. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 16:59, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
• Let's do this thing! MBisanz ^talk 17:05, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

WJBScribe, could you hold on to closing this? I have some fresh concerns that I need allayed about adminbots. As I am heading off to sleep right now, I'll post them in about 18 hours from now, when I log on next. =Nichalp «Talk»= 20:23, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, lets prove that the admin bot approval system works, so that all the unauthorized ones can be approved... or blocked. Prodego ^talk 20:29, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Nichalp: Of course, I had intended to wait several days to ensure that there was a consensus that approving admin bots in this manner was appropriate. WJBscribe (talk) 23:25, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Risk analysis

I'm not against adminbots, but there are a few things that I thought of that needs closer scrutiny.

Now, as we know, with admin privileges, a user account can skim a block, edit protected pages, block users. With a bot flag, edits by a user account do not show up on recent changes. Now integrate both. You now have a super account that can do all the above without human intelligence. Now if you have a bot that malfunctions, its going to be difficult to do something about it. We can't block an adminbot, as it's just going to skim over the block. With a bot, or automated script to be precise, the bot can operate much faster than a human. A human can edit at most say, ten pages a minute, but a bot can well do over sixty. Now as we know with coding, nothing can be assumed to be bug-free. So, assuming a bot goes beserk or rogue, edits at a higher rate, or makes junk edits; what mechanisms are there in place to pull the plug on the bot immediately? Remember, we cannot effectively block an admin bot. Also, as the edits do not appear on the recent changes list, its going to be quite sometime before someone notices a beserk bot. The only way I see it be stopped is by removing the +sysop flag, and then blocking it. For that to happen, one needs to flag the attention of a steward, for which there will be a lag. In the meantime the bot may have marred some 2,000 pages. Another scenario: We have had rogue admins in the past. Similarly, what operator trust levels are needed before we approve an adminbot? A skillful programmer, but "non-admin material", may write a very useful bot. Once that is approved, all s/he needs to do is to change to code to do something malicious. I think the trust of an operator should also play a key role in approving adminbots. As I said above, I'm not against adminbots, but a thorough risk-analysis needs to be carried out to mitigate the occurrence of unimaginable scenarios. =Nichalp «Talk»= 13:53, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

In theory this is an issue. But the FA protection bot is not editing thousands of pages, it is simply protecting a few pages each day. More generally, it's hard to see why a bot that needs to edit thousands of pages would be an adminbot in the first place - the admin features could be separated from the editing features, and run under a different username. I would favor that system in general, where the adminbot part performs relatively few non-privileged actions, and relies on a non-adminbot helper for any large-scale editing.

A mitigating factor is that anything that an adminbot can do, another bot can undo in about the same amount of time. There's no permanent damage an adminbot can do that a malicious admin couldn't already do, and we are comfortable with the risk analysis for malicious admins. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:12, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree. All administrative actions can be undone except page history merges. I don't have any concerns for FA bot, it's scope is limited and well defined, code is open, and the operator has provided an "off" switch. So things seem good. To answer the revert part: a bot can undo the damage, but then will we have the service of an undobot to do such a thing when it happens? =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:29, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Assuming the only damage is a large amount of edits to revert then yes --Chris 10:27, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) I don't know much about bots and their running but, as a general comment, it seems to me that the broader proposal would result in bots with greater power being scrutinized less. Not, in general, a good way to go about things. --Regents Park (one for sorrow) 18:27, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

What's being scrutinized less? From what I see, this is about 3 times the scrutinization that a regular bot gets. Xclamation point 20:57, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I guess I misunderstood this. Does final approval is subject to bureaucrat (rather than BAG) discretion mean that the bot does not go to BAG, or does it mean that it does but a bureaucrat has to approve it? --Regents Park (one for sorrow) 21:10, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Idealy the bot will have three approvals:

1. The bag member who approved it for trial
2. The bag member who approved it after the trial
3. The crat who gave it +sysop and +bot flags --Chris g (talk) 09:42, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Got it. Thanks. Objection withdrawn. --Regents Park (one for sorrow) 17:27, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

My main concern is that, like other 'bots, adminbots should run on separate 'bot accounts. That makes them easier to audit, stop, or undo when necessary. So the approval of a new adminbot should include the creation of a 'bot account, with administrator privileges. Over the next few months, existing adminbots should be migrated to their own 'bot accounts. --John Nagle (talk) 15:59, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Strange editing by IP account

I've encountered a user editing from an IP account (see Special:Contributions/82.109.91.181), and I'm having some trouble figuring out the account's edits. For example:

• inserting a reference to a "Guillermo Roy Fearon" [6]
• inserting a reference to a "John William Fearon" [7]
  • moments later changing it to "Guillermo Roy Fearon" [8]
• changing the name of a person from "Martin" to "Todd" [9]
  • changing it back a minute later [10]
• inserting a reference to a "Guillermo Roy Fearon" [11]
• inserting a reference to a "Guillermo Roy Fearon" [12]
• changing the date of birth to an incorrect year [13]
  • changing it back two minutes later, but with a loss of other information [14]
• inserting a reference to a "William F Fearon" [15]
  • changing it to "James D Fearon" a minute later [16]
• inserting a reference to a "Guillermo Roy Fearon" [17]
• removing a link from a disambiguation page [18]
• inserting a reference to a "Guillermo Roy Fearon" [19]

Despite the 'claims to fame' made in some of these diffs ([20][21]), there seems to be no online information at all about Guillermo Roy Fearon (see Google results). In addition, some of the edits (e.g. changing names/dates back and forth) can only be justified as testing, but this doesn't seem to be the case here.

I started a discussion with the user on just one of the issues (I noticed the other issues only later), but s/he seems to have stopped responding. My first instinct was to rollback all edits by the IP (all of the edits are essentially variations on the examples above), give a warning, and keep an eye on future editing by the account, but I would like a second opinion before I do that. In the event that these are legitimate contributions by a new user (perhaps writing about himself), I don't want to jump to the wrong conclusion and unnecessarily bite him/her. Thoughts? –Black Falcon ^(Talk) 00:53, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

This IP editor has already been blocked once for 24 hours, on 20 September, but here may still be hope of educating him about our policies. I notified him that he's being discussed here. From the Fearon DAB page, he removed a link to a real article about the criminal Brendon Fearon, and added an entry to the 'Fearon' song which has no article. Sounds like he's trying to burnish the reputation of the Fearons of the world. He seems to never add sources. If there is no appropriate reply from him, I'd agree with reverting all his edits. Some of them look quite strange. ('Martin' to 'Todd' where the article is clearly about Martin). EdJohnston (talk) 01:59, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

There isn't a single mention in either JSTOR or LexisNexis of Guillermo Roy Fearon (I tried multiple search variations), so I'm fairly convinced that this is either exaggerated self-promotion ([22]) or a hoax. Someone who has supposedly had two islands ([23][24]) and a football stadium ([25]) named after him would surely be mentioned somewhere.

In light of WP:BURDEN, is it worth waiting for yet another response before reverting the edits? –Black Falcon ^(Talk) 16:46, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

It's time to revert all the edits. EdJohnston (talk) 14:50, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Done. I posted an explanation/warning/invitation on his/her talk page. Thanks, –Black Falcon ^(Talk) 20:54, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

The user continued making the same edits as before, with no effort to communicate with anyone, using another IP address. I have blocked 82.109.91.180‎ (talk · contribs · WHOIS) and 82.109.91.181‎ (talk · contribs · WHOIS) for two weeks. –Black Falcon ^(Talk) 18:04, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Democratic Party

It seems if on September 18 User:Duuude007 decided to rename a slew of political parties with the words "democrat" in their name them to read "democratic." I've moved the titles of a bunch of them back to where they are supposed to be, but now I see that he's also changed the text of the articles themselves. I just don't have the time to go back and correct this guy's mess. Maybe some of you do. --Visitweak (talk) 01:19, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

This is a symptom of petty partisan bullshit going on elsewhere on the internet. Revert and block as neccesary and hopefully that will take care of it. Jtrainor (talk) 02:48, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

A lot of these are translations of foreign language names (so I've no idea if it's a noun or adjective in that context). However, at least New Zealand Democrat Party (1934) is called "Democrat Party" here. However, the google results for Christian Democrat Party of Canada, indicate Democratic is right. (This is all assuming that the organization's name for itself is the right name.) What's the grounds for this claim about partisanship, Jtrainor?--chaser - t 03:04, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Lately there have been people getting pissy about the US's Democratic Party being referred to as the Democrat Party instead of Democratic Party. I don't really feel like going into detail as it's utterly retarded and banal. Jtrainor (talk) 04:00, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

It is petty and banal, but Republicans use "Democrat" instead of the party's preferred terminology, just to be petty and banal. Democratic is right, Democrat is wrong. Corvus cornix_talk 05:19, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

That may be true for the United States Democratic Party, but it certainly doesn't apply to the vast majority of parties elsewhere moved by User:Duuude007. For example, the [[Democrat Party (Thailand)) really is "Democrat Party", and there are even references aplenty on the talk page to attest to this. Jpatokal (talk) 11:50, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Please note that I was responding to Lately there have been people getting pissy about the US's Democratic Party being referred to as the Democrat Party. It seems pretty clear that I was discussing a US context, especially since I was also discussing the "Republican Party" as well. Corvus cornix_talk 18:21, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Why was Social Democratic Party (UK) moved? That was the party's name (see the bibliography). This feels like two way pettiness on the whole "Democrat as adjective" issue. (And in the UK no-one ever gets worked up about it being used that way.) Timrollpickering (talk) 09:34, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

The word Democrat can exist on its own, in the English language; When it is used as an adjective, it is grammatically meant to have an "ic" on the end. People have begun to drop the ic out of laziness, not out of grammar improvement. It is proper english, not partisanship. See Democrat Party (phrase). And by the way, the moment someone sent me a message asking me to stop making changes, I did stop, so I do not very much apprecciate the attacks. Duuude007 (talk) 14:31, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

However, some parties, such as the Democrat Party (Thailand), have "Democrat" as part of their name, not "Democratic". One shouldn't correct proper names for grammar. -- ArglebargleIV (talk) 14:46, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

It is not just "laziness" but a growing trend in linguistics to use the same word as both a proper noun and the derived adjective. Hence you get terms like "Iraq War", "Alaska Governor" (including on the position's website), "Ontario Liberal Party", "Liberal Democrat leader" and so forth. Even when it doesn't make a lot of sense it still happens - for instance the Australian Democrats' website appears to use "Democrats" as the adjective for the party itself. See also this piece on the trend: http://blogs.csmonitor.com/verbal_energy/2005/01/index.html#entry-3357788 Timrollpickering (talk) 17:04, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Uhm, I think you are misinterpreting the word's noun-verb usage. The very examples you provided actually use the words democrat, democrats, and democratic in the proper syntax. There is nothing wrong with saying "Liberal Democrats" Party or "Australian Democrats" Party. They added the s, which makes the grammar acceptable. If you drop the s, the proper alternative is -ic, not leaving it as-is but again, I havent made any more changes... Duuude007 (talk) 17:25, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

No the British party are the "Liberal Democrats" (plural; and never "Liberal Democrats Party"), an individual member is a "Liberal Democrat" (singular) and the adjective used is "Liberal Democrat" not "Liberal Democratic". Similarly for a party normally called "the Democrats" the instinctive adjective is "Democrat". Timrollpickering (talk) 18:50, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

My point is, the word "liberal" is the modifier (aka the adjective), and the word Democrat becomes the noun in the context they provided. It would be wrong in this context to add ic, (they aren't the Liberal Democratics). Hence they used the term correctly. On the other hand, when you speak of the term "Democrat" as a modifier instead of the noun, it needs -ic on the end. Just like we don't call the other party the "Repub Party" (I was tempted to use "Republic" as an example, but then realized it has an -ic in it too. That wouldn't pass in this new grammar you are suggesting). Duuude007 (talk) 19:03, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Sigh, this thread is soo off track. The proper conclusion is simple - we use 1) the name a group is most commonly known by in reliable sources and 2) their official name, each in the appropriate place. We don't care whether or not either of those names is grammatically correct. We no more grammatically correct something's official name than we would change a centuries old quote to make it conform to modern spelling and grammar. All the discussion about trying to be gramatically correct is irrelevant - we don't make such changes. GRBerry 19:31, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Echoing and spell checking GRberry's point. Seriously though folks, go find out what the reliable sources and the parties call themselves, and let that be your guide.--Tznkai (talk) 19:36, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Out Attempt

User Longchenpa attempted to out user zulupapa5 on talk longchenpa. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.66.75.123 (talk) 03:37, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

User Longchenpa attempted to out user Gyrovague108 on talk jetsunma_ahkon_lhamo. 72.66.75.123 (talk) 03:43, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Please provide diffs so we can see what you're talking about. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:45, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I've removed what I think is an attempt to out, or at the very least, bait a user. Comment on content, not the contributor. I believe there are three diffs that are problematic: [26], [27] and [28]. x42bn6 Talk Mess 13:42, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Diffs [29] [30] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.188.250.60 (talk) 13:37, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

"Pete" is not identifying information.

As for Gyrovague, he makes it clear here that he is not hiding his identity, which he isn't. Longchenpa (talk) 20:19, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Question: I've asked this elsewhere, but I'll ask here, too. ZuluPapa attempted an outing of me a few months back: ZuluPapa's attempt at outing. It didn't bother me much because it's not me. But should I have reported it? Longchenpa (talk) 20:45, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

While he/she says it will not be hard to find his/her identity, it does not mean you go round trying to dig it up. ZuluPapa appears to be uncomfortable with this despite the statement, for good reason. I believe ZuluPapa disclosed his/her COI there anyway - is there any need to find out any more information? x42bn6 Talk Mess 21:28, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

ZuluPapa and Gyrovague are two entirely different people.

Gyrovague has stated clearly that he has no interest in hiding his identity. He makes it clear on his User Page: "I have been a Buddhist practitioner in the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism and a member of the Kunzang Palyul Choling[31] temple in Poolesville, MD, since 1990. I received novice ordination as a Buddhist monk in 1993, and full ordination in 1995. Since early 2005, my home base has been Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, where I serve as Director of KPC's Mongolian Buddhism Revival Project[32]." That link from him goes directly to his name.

ZuluPapa is the one who's voiced concerns (207.188.250.60 is ZuluPapa), yet has made an attempt to out me in the past, and has a consistent history of wikilawyering on the Talk page and using policy to attempt to bludgeon other editors.

Bottom line: ZuluPapa doesn't like my editing the Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo page at all. There's a biography by Random House about JAL that I've used that ZuluPapa didn't want in the article because it has some pretty negative information. The biography has a blurb from Bob Woodward. JAL is a Buddhist Lama who was arrested 1996 for beating a monk and nun, has a swimming pool, three houses, and a salary of $100k a year.

Last December, ZuluPapa started with a veiled threat: "I haven't investigated, however there are wiki procedure to exclude folks from contributing to articles".

ZuluPapa followed it up with an RfC insisting that JAL is not a public figure, and thus this biography should not be included. Eventually Mike Godwin weighed in on the subject: The book is in.

ZuluPapa went to the Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons page to work to get this book removed there, as well as to the Biographies Noticeboard, pressing a for policy changes that could get this information removed. ZuluPapa asked Protonk to weigh in. Protonk did, and also found that JAL was a public figure.

Then ZuluPapa did sweeping edits on the article, removing anything negative that was from that book -- but kept everything that was positive from it. Then, ZuluPapa preemptively cited me for a 3RR before I'd made a single change. My changes were normal edits. ZuluPapa was informed by Blanchardb that "None of these edits can be even remotely regarded as reverts."

But ZuluPapa accused me elsewhere of multiple reverts, even though this was not true.

More recently, ZuluPapa accused me on the Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo Talk page of being a biased editor that only edited JAL's page. When I provided proof that was quite untrue (I can be accurately described as a pro-Tibet editor), ZuluPapa accused me of "boasting."

ZuluPapa's own edit history is a combination of writing the Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo page, and minor edits to link to JAL. There are a few edits to prostate pages that began after ZuluPapa first threatened to try have me removed from editing the article.

1) ZuluPapa should not attempt to out me if he finds it so disturbing, 2) a first name is not identifying information, 3) ZuluPapa should stop using policy to bludgeon the other editors, should stop baiting and flinging accusations at me on the [Talk Page] (I count an average of two per comment) and instead focus on writing the article. It's been an interesting tour of every avenue of complaint, but when it comes down to brass tacks, that book is solid. And whether ZuluPapa likes it or not, I'm not going anywhere. Longchenpa (talk) 22:09, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I should add that no one here has been outed. ZuluPapa's attempt to out me was way off. ZuluPapa has not been outed (unless a first name is a problem, which I'll be happy to remove from our conversation on my Talk page if so). And Gyrovague has not only not complained, he linked to his own name. Longchenpa (talk) 22:37, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

My view: He was wrong to attempt to out you or something and a first name is identifying information as it is still personal information. I have no opinion on the article except that there could be a need for some more eyes. x42bn6 Talk Mess 15:34, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the notification to this discussion x42bn6. I am concerned about Longchenpa's outing (this user has demonstrated little regard for privacy and human rights in a living person biography [33]) and I view this outing as a provocative effort aimed at me after I gave warning about Gyrovague108 [34]. Now the presumed provocateur rant cries foul to this ANI and has yet to correct themselves, even defiantly stating "no one here has been outed" shows further contempt for WP:OUTING as if to fish for validation. Regarding my accused outing attempt, I'll say I was interested in the POV, there was not a real request for personal information and I apologize if it was interpreted as such. Zulu Papa 5 (talk) 18:57, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Longchenpa's other Outing Attempts to invade privacy. [35] [36] [37] [38] These and more, demonstrate a pervasive history, with warning, that now must be corrected: Zulu Papa 5 (talk) 20:03, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

• I've not yet made up my mind about this, but want to give you full credit, ZuluPapa, for a great belly laugh in asserting that Mike Godwin might somehow have a COI in giving an opinion when he was asked for one! That is his job, you know. Guy (Help!) 20:26, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

• Thanks, it might be best to ask Mike what his job is, to represent Wiki or to represent users or BLP article subjects? An analogy might be, would a management attorney represent labor? He's the one most able to declare a COI, not me. COI's should be disclosed. I don't believe it's beyond Mike's duty to bring law on a user on behalf of wiki. Does this bias his editorial input, well that's a bigger question. Honestly, I was dismayed by the weasel works in his response. This issue might be better discussed elsewhere than this out attempt article. Zulu Papa 5 (talk) 13:31, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

• Mike's job is foundation legal counsel, i.e. providing legal counsel to the Wikimedia Foundation. Because Mike is a nice guy, and wise i the ways of the law, he is also very helpful in answering questions about how content hosted on Wikimedia Foundation servers might affect the liability of the users of those servers. I think you are tying yourself in unnecessary mental knots about something which has vastly less significance than you seem to think. Guy (Help!) 19:44, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
• Could be knots? It's not worth it here. see: [39] After Longchenpa has repeated the first name out attempt on this article and on their talk page, in spit of warning and policy notification ... Right now I am losing faith in Wiki to protect personal info and privacy no mater Mike's job. Zulu Papa 5 (talk) 20:49, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

(UK) Telegraph rips-off Wikipedia article, verbatim

I don't suppose there's anything that can be done about it, but this obituary for James Crumley, which appeared in the (UK) Telegraph, is almost entirely a verbatim rip-off of an earlier version of our article on Crumley. I recognize it because I've been working fairly extensively on the article since Crumley died, and had a hand in shaping it before that. With a little work, I could probably pin down the version used fairly well, from what was included and what wasn't.

Too bad some of our journalists are so adverse to doing their own work, and don't even have the decency to credit their sources! Ed Fitzgerald ^{t / c} 06:15, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Wow, new journalistic lows. You should e-mail that journalist and demand compensation! L'Aquatique[talk] 06:19, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

*Mumble something about the sincerest form of flattery*. Protonk (talk) 06:32, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

In all seriousness, though... even though it's not a copyright violation (at least I don't think it is, you might have to check the wording of the GFDL) that journalist's supervisors would probably be none too happy with this information... L'Aquatique[talk] 06:52, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I went ahead and wrote an email to the Telegraph to point out the similarities. It's not good for a newspaper's reputation for them to be copying the structure of multiple paragraphs from Wikipedia. Dragons flight (talk) 06:57, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Loosing reputation should not be much of a problem for the Telegraph, of course... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:12, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

It's not the first time and it won't be the last. A more insipid example of this is Alternative theories of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 which was quoted verbatim by The Scotsman, then promptly "referenced" by the original Wiki author, who had created it here as COI OR. Socrates2008 (Talk) 07:11, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Any chance that this was picked up elsewhere in the media? Would be nice to have a reliable secondary source for it, such that sticking it in the Torygraph article would be acceptable. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 08:55, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

You serious? How on earth is "British journo cribs article from Wikipedia" noteworthy? ;) --Bsnowball (talk) 11:39, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

On my reading of Wikipedia:Copyright#Reusers.27_rights_and_obligations, the Telegraph are required, amongst other things, to make the article GFDL. Regards, Ben Aveling 11:52, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

All told, this tale sounds kinda cool to me. Gwen Gale (talk) 12:01, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Contact the newspaper. Any serious newspaper will take this kind of thing quite seriously. MastCell ^Talk 15:37, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

IANAL(Yet) but as I recall, GDFL requires all future material to be freely distributable as well, else copyright infringement. That would be a matter get OTRS and WMF involved I think. There is a second issue however, of plagiarism which is a big journalistic ethics no no.--Tznkai (talk) 15:43, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't know for a fact, but I find it quite easy to believe that encyclopedia-makers, the writers, editors and publishers of print encyclopedias, have seen this many times down the years. I wonder how they handled it? Did they shrug it off, as one of the hazards of the business, or did they act to protect their intellectual property? I can see either course as defensible.

If there's a communication to the Telegraph, I would prefer that it came from the rank-and-file and not from the Foundation, but that's just me. Ed Fitzgerald ^{t / c} 17:08, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

• I'd be interested in looking more into this for Wikinews. Can people email me any contacts/information they have on this? brian.mcneil at wikinewsie.org. --Brian McNeil /^talk 08:23, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I would really appreciate if people could help nail down the specific revision copied and provide more details on The Scotsman incident. --Brian McNeil /^talk 08:55, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

You should also notify Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost. This should be in our news. Kingturtle (talk) 17:10, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

It appears the Telegraph has pulled their obituary (the link now hits some "File Not Found" page). However, I thus far haven't gotten any response to the email I sent pointing out the problem. Dragons flight (talk) 17:18, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I got a response. :D The obit has been pulled pending an investigation. --Brian McNeil /^talk 18:04, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and I have a saved copy of the Telegraph obit text if anyone wants it. --Brian McNeil /^talk 18:08, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

CSD templates still fully-protected?

Per discussion on Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion I have broadened G8 and would like to begin work on updating templates. As the changes are really only an expansion, it is not vitally-important, though it should happen soon. Can they can be moved to semi-protection now? ~ JohnnyMrNinja 06:38, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

If that is the case, wouldn't it be easier to use {{editprotected}} or asking at WP:RFPP? Regards SoWhy 09:25, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry if this is confusing, the rest of this conversation had just gotten archived as I was commenting (literally it was an edit conflict) so I started a new section. I was unable to reply in 48hrs. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 09:37, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

So this follows on from Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive169#CSD Template Protections? EDVERS is repressed but remarkably dressed 09:40, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Exactly. The last comment was that there was no consensus to protect, and it would be lowered to semi on all templates. I can wait until this is done, but anyone can update G8 and redirect R1 if they wish. At this point I am too tired to trust myself phrasing it tonight anyways. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 10:00, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

You could raise this with User:Hersfold. He did the cascading protection on {{db-g8}} and he is the logical admin to undo it, if that's now the consensus. EdJohnston (talk) 03:52, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I will be working on this in just a moment. Thanks for the reminder. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 04:05, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

 Done Twinkle says it did the job right this time - all CSD templates and their associated redirects should now be semi-edit-protected and full-move-protected indefinitely. The only one I left alone was {{db-meta}} because it was locked up before I got to it and should be as the parent template for all the rest. If anyone notices that I (or Twinkle) has missed any others, please go ahead and fix them or give me a poke if you don't have the tools. By my count, there are 344 of these things, so it's very likely one of them got missed somewhere. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 04:27, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! ~ JohnnyMrNinja 04:35, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Would someone mind terribly moving the current {{db-g8}} to {{db-talk}} (as a special instance of G8), and then moving {{db-g8a}} to {{db-g8}}? I am asking here as the second move would need to made quickly to avoid possible problems or confusion. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 06:16, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

 Done Bencherlite^Talk 06:23, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Very quick, thanks! ~ JohnnyMrNinja 06:25, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Site ban of Karmaisking

The de facto "community ban" of Karmaisking (block log) seems uncontroverted, but I wanted to give notice that I have marked it as an official “site ban” both here and here.

For those of you unfamiliar, Karmaisking is an "Austrian school" POV-pusher who has now used 25+ sockpuppets to edit war on economics articles and harass other editors. Please see Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Karmaisking. Since this user is still very active in violation of WP:EVADE and WP:SOCK, et al., consideration and confirmation of this site ban is requested. Thanks. — Satori Son 14:40, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I support the ban. There has been a long history of abuse. EdJohnston (talk) 03:54, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I also support. The history of abuse is ongoing and extensive. As User:Lagrandebanquesucre he went out of his way to deceive other editors, attacking Karmaisking while sockpuppeteering. On my talk page, I at one point suggested he make a formal request to be reinstated if he cannot stay away; his response was to attack another editor (who he has subsequently been harassing). In short, no redeeming features and a colossal waste of time for editors that would like to spend time editing, not dealing with checkusers for those who have openly admitted using multiple accounts/sockpuppets to avoid indefinite blocks. (Checkuser page and my talk page and archive have documented, open admissions of doing so, specifically outlining that this is his strategy).--Gregalton (talk) 15:55, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

UninvitedCompany (talk · contribs) resignation from Arbitration Committee

See WP:RFAC. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 15:20, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Relocated here --01:43, 24 September 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by InkSplotch (talk • contribs)

Block of IPs

I have blocked IP 90.196.195.161 and 212.49.225.226 for two week for persistent harassment of an individual and would welcome review (particularly due to the length of the block and to the fact that they are my first blocks!). An inactive editor Phoenix45000 has been subjected to a string of derogatory comments on his user page, particularly from the end of July 2008, by a number of IPs, possibly the same individual; see Phoenix45000's user page history[40].

I came across this when Phoenix45000 attempted to create an abuse report (I am not fully conversant with abuse reports so I do not know if he has done this correctly or if it has been acted upon). I semi-protected the user page for one month and removed the derogatory comments. The IP 90.196.195.161 then placed a derogatory comment on the user talk page, which was removed by another editor, and I semi-protected that for one month[41]. I left a warning not to harass users on the IPs talk page[42].

Today, derogatory comments clearly about the same individual were made on the abuse report page by IP 212.49.225.226[43] and IP 90.196.195.161[44] (these would appear to be a work IP and a personal IP). IP 212.49.225.226 has previously posted a derogatory comment to Phoenix45000's user page[45].

This kind of harassment of an individual is unacceptable in my view and I have thus blocked both IPs for two weeks without further warning. I intend to ask for posts where an individual has been named to be oversighted. I would be grateful for views on my actions and what further action(s) might be appropriate. Thanks. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 20:44, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Seeing that in one case there has been no edits other than those which are remarked upon, and in the other one other edit of around a year ago, then there is unlikely to be any collateral damage contained by the length of block. Therefore I think the sanction is within the executing sysops remit. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:04, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

< Edits naming an individual now oversighted. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 00:18, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

• Endorse block - looks good to me. --Kralizec! (talk) 22:05, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

User_talk:Paaulinho

I was blocked all be it only for an hour after two images that violated copyright, which i'm now taking this opportunity to sincerely apolagise and clarify that i won't upload anymore questionable images. I'm just thankful i'm not blocked but User:Paaulinho seems to have uploaded at least ten faulty images and made several dodgy contributes to wikipedia and hasn't even been warned. If i was blocked for two then letting User:Paaulinho off is ridiculous.I don't know how he hasn't been found out yet. Ogioh (talk) 21:35, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

"User account "Paaulihno" is not registered." --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 21:37, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

User talk:Paaulinho -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 21:39, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

sorry i made a mistake when writing this but FisherQueen corrected it just before me

It has been two days since the user has uploaded any images. I've left a warning. Gwen Gale (talk) 21:50, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

WP:BUTTHEYDIDITTOO,ANDTHEYWEREN'TBLOCKED-IT'SNOTFAIR? LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:25, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't dont know what u mean by that LessHeard? Ogioh (talk) 06:10, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

He's referencing the various semi-sarcastic "shortcuts" that policy pages (especially Arguments to avoid) often are given. Bluntly put, the implication is that you're coming across as whiny. More cordially, we can only enforce the rules when we notice there's a problem, so if nobody's noticed Paaulinho upload bad images then of course he hasn't been blocked. Thank you for bringing it to our attention. --erachima talk 07:05, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

LessHeard all i can say is... immature much?

i'm not saying it isn't fair i was blocked and he wasn't i'm saying its absolutely ridiculous and a little bit fishy that the admins editing his talk page did't notice or act upon the amount of violations on his talkpage. Ogioh (talk) 17:33, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I should say so; I've had decades of practice... LessHeard vanU (likely one of those same...) ((abusive admins!) 20:35, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/C68-FM-SV

This arbitration case has been closed and the final decision is available at the link above. FeloniousMonk (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) administrative privileges are revoked. FeloniousMonk may apply to have them reinstated at any time, either through the usual means or by appeal to the Committee.

The parties are instructed to carefully review the principles and findings contained in the decision. Each of the parties is strongly urged to conform his or her future behavior to the principles set forth in this decision. Each of the parties is admonished for having engaged in the problematic user conduct described in the findings of fact, and is instructed to avoid any further instances of such conduct. The Committee provides a list of six behavioural issues (click to read) which the parties in the case are "specifically instructed" to ensure that their future editing complies with. The Committee will impose substantial additional sanctions, which may include desysopping in the case of parties who are administrators, without further warnings in the event of significant violations. If necessary, additional findings may be made and sanctions imposed either by motion or after a formal reopening of the case, depending on the circumstances.

The Committee also notes that editors who have been directly or indirectly involved in the disputes giving rise to this Arbitration case, or similar or related disputes, are counseled to review the principles set forth in this Arbitration case and to use their best efforts to conduct themselves in accordance with the principles. Furthermore, the Committee acknowledges the extraordinary duration of this case. Whilst there have been reasons for this to arise, an overall apology is due, and given.

For the Arbitration Committee,
Daniel (talk) 01:00, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity, one of the things FM is described as having done wrong in that case is protecting Phyllis Schlafly, but the logs (wrong link deleted, see below for correct one) of that page say it has never been protected. Not that I think that alone would change the outcome, but what gives? --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 01:57, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Err. You sure about that diff?--Tznkai (talk) 02:04, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Here [46] are the logs for Phyllis Schlafy, and indeed, no instances of protection shewing. DuncanHill (talk) 02:07, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Also see FeloniousMonk's list of protects: [47] (this one I got right). Do search on the page for "Phyllis". It's not there. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 02:14, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Monk blocked Schlafly (talk · contribs) [48] even though they had interacted in a number of talk page disputes, [49]. Thatcher 02:45, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I know that. That's not what I'm asking. The arbcom findings say that Monk protected Phyllis Schlafly (an article, not a user). This seems to be incorrect. I'm asking for an explanation. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 02:51, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

That part of the finding can be eliminated by motion if its untrue. I'd bring it up on the talk page: Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/C68-FM-SV.--Tznkai (talk) 03:05, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps we should re-open the case from scratch. It would then finally be concluded at about the time human beings colonize Alpha Centauri. Let it die already. Kelly ^hi! 02:53, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

As I said, I'm not interested in re-opening the case, just curious about how it happened. I'm also quickly becoming sorry I asked. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 03:07, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I've asked for the arbitrator who drafted this to comment here.--chaser - t 04:51, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm just the messenger. Maybe it was meant to be Discovery Institute (which he protected here)? Daniel (talk) 02:57, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Or maybe it was 'Felonious Monk was a horrifically bad admin and thank God he's finally been desysopped'. But I could be mistaken. Kelly ^hi! 03:00, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Personal attacks are not tolerated. Nor is verbally kicking editors just because they're desysopped. Remove your comments.--Tznkai (talk) 03:05, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

How is it possible that JzG has been subject to several RfCs which decry his behavior and abusive admin actions, formally admonished by ArbCom for a whole host is issues (including abuse admin actions) and WP:BITEing the newbies yet he is still an admin? Bstone (talk) 03:02, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like a good candidate question in the next ArbCom elections. I know I'll be asking it. Kelly ^hi! 03:03, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Bstone, please don't exaggerate things. JzG has been the subject of two RfC's, one of which was subsequently deleted at the request of its author. So, he has one RfC and one ArbCom decision. If he, or any other party in that ArbCom decision, including me, does something in the future that merits additional action, then take it to the ArbCom enforcement board. Otherwise, please leave him alone. Cla68 (talk) 03:23, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

"Please leave him alone." As opposed to what I have been doing which is...leaving him alone. Certainly there is nothing wrong with talking about JzG's RfC and now ArbCom rulings which clearly demonstrate he is not suited to be an admin and is an extremely poor representative of the en.wp community. If I was going to his talk page and jabbing at him then I think your might have a point, but unless this is suddenly a taboo topic or I am being topic banned then I see absolutely nothing wrong in making the observation that by continuing to allow JzG to be an admin brings disgrace and discredit to the English Wikipedia. Bstone (talk) 03:44, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Ok. Cla68 (talk) 03:46, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

(More). I didn't mean to snap at you. I guess I'm hoping that we can get along better now that the case is closed. Cla68 (talk) 03:49, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

• I invie Bstone to add his gripes to the Wikipedia:List of grudges against JzG - that should be a nice long list, and, Bstone, for completeness, don't forget to include the fact that your grudge stems from a dispute over the St Christopher Iba Mar Diop College of Medicine article, as discussed in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/St Christopher; you might want to reference the number of times you've made complaints about my "abusive" actions on that article, every one of which has been dismissed at every venue where you have brought it up. Perfect? Hell no, and I'd never pretend it, but certainly not abusive, according to the judgment of - well, everyone else you've asked thus far. Interestingly, there does not seem to be any willingness from anybody to consider any kind of limit on the number of times a refuted allegation against an administrator can be brought up. Maybe that should form the basis of an ArbCom case. Lighten up, Bstone. Maybe take a wikibreak. It might result in "meaningful improvements" in your constant rehashing of this dispute. Cla68 is right: the intention of that ArbCom resolution is to draw a line under a series of incidents in which a significant number of long-standing Wikipedians acted in ways which more or less entirely failed to cover them with glory. Axes should be buried at this point, not ground. Guy (Help!) 08:14, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

• Wow, that didn't take long. JzG, I shall remind you that ArbCom has indicated your behavior has been unacceptable. Your above post is as well. I will not comment on it materially but suffice to say that your formal admonishment and warnings from ArbCom are still in place and you may want to count to ten before you click save. Bstone (talk) 15:04, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

• Do point out where the ArbCom finding says I am not allowed to respond when people repeatedly bring up grudges. Guy (Help!) 19:16, 24 September 2008 (UTC) On second thoughts, forget it. As I said before, this is supposed to be a time to draw a line under past events and move on, axes should be buried not ground. Guy (Help!) 22:29, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

We will fix the erroneous citation in one of the findings. As the scrivener of much (not all) of this decision, I apologize for the error. I am a little surprised that none of the dozens of people who commented on this case spotted the incorrect link before the case closed, but this is what happens when we rush cases through at breakneck speed as we did here, but please be assured that the correction does not affect the analysis or the results of the case. Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:21, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

There is truth in sarcasm more often than not, Brad. The sudden change of pace did catch everyone off-guard. Centered on the behavior of three named users, their friends, lovers, extended families, and pet poodles, from the beginning of time to date, this case will remain for years to come the pinnacle of excessively broad scope. I think I speak for everyone when I say I'm glad it's over and done with, though I doubt any sane person bothered to read over 9000 diffs of purported evidence (1248 numbered ones but who's counting). Carry on. — CharlotteWebb 15:27, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Quentin Elias and User:Electroboyinc‎

When I was doing my anti vandalism patrol yesterday I noticed this article and this particular user Electroboyinc (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log), had been editing in ways that seemed to engaging in WP:COI editing so I reported him however I am beginning to think that admin action may be needed here? NanohaA'sYuri^{Talk, My master} 02:48, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

The latest edits are undone, and I left an additional talk message. Pretty obvious POV and COI, the record company should not be editing the article. Keegan^talk 05:14, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

User talk:House1090 followed request for time off, asking for unblock

See:[50]. He seems to be genuinely asking for a second chance. The consensus at the prior discussion at AN: [51] was that he was not far enough removed from his most recent bad actions to consider an unblock at that time. Given that its been seven weeks, and I have not seen any evidence of sockpuppetry or other problems in all that time, perhaps its time to reconsider an unblock. What does everyone else think? --Jayron32.talk.contribs 05:10, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

For more background, see:

• House1090 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (blocked since November 2007)
• House10902 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (blocked since December 2007)
• Wikipedia:Suspected_sock_puppets/House1090 (filed November 2007)
• Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive159#User:House1090 (unblock requested, and declined, in August 2008)
• Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of House1090
• Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive119#Silly people (January 2008)
• Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Redspork Friend001 (December 2007)
• Wikipedia:List of banned users#House1090

Those who argued against lifting the block in the last WP:AN discussion (Archive159) had some powerful arguments. If some of those editors familiar with the case, such as User:Amerique and User:Alanraywiki, were to change their view then I'd consider supporting an unblock. EdJohnston (talk) 16:40, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Provided Alanray is ok with it, i would be ok. i don't have a lot of time for editing WP these days, but i still check my watchlist daily so if/when he messes up in So. Cal. mainspace areas again i'll be aware of it. I appreciate him asking through an old account instead of starting up a new round of socks. Amerique^dialectics 17:25, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I am willing to give House a second chance. However, he should probably be required to stay away from articles involving the Inland Empire and related articles, like San Bernardino, California, Riverside, California, and other cities in that area. Almost all of his edits in those areas were disruptive. Those are my thoughts. Alanraywiki (talk) 19:37, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

As checkuser, I was involved in a number of his sock cases already. I've been asked to comment here by an involved party. Per Alanraywiki, I've no problems with a conditional unblock, as he's kept his promise of late and seems genuine in his wishes to return 'properly'. However, I'd recommend that he be adopted/mentored by an experienced editor for a period of time, if that's at all possible - Alison ^❤ 21:17, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I tried informally mentoring one of his accounts before that "Redspork" incident, but that clearly didn't work. He seems to have shown some maturity since then in his work through "Nelity," [52]. He hadn't apparently broken any rules through that account before it was blocked per AN consensus. I don't have time to mentor this guy, but if i see him messing up again I'll be sure to let him know about it. As far as I can tell he hasn't been using multiple socks to game 3rr or create a false impression of consensus on articles, so i would think ordinary alertness on the pages he edits would be enough for a normal consensus to counter any outrageous incidents of POV, bad formatting or grammatical errors on his part. So, if we are to let him back, I think it would be better to let him without restriction so he can prove that he is capable of working within consensus on all articles, rather than make some articles more tempting for him to edit via socks. Amerique^dialectics 22:37, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Based on these recommendations, I am prepared to unblock his account. I will let him know that he is on a short leash, and that if he returns to any more of the problematic editing and/or sockpuppetry that led to the prior block, he will see it return post-haste and that it will be less likely for anyone to unblock him again. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 00:26, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

CSD vs. PROD in a possible hoax

I nominated Aubrey giplin for CSD on the basis of db-bio, since it was completely unsupported and seemed to be completely fabricated (the author was similarly named). XSG came in behind me, and said it wasn't A7 and nominated it for PROD here [53]. After looking at the article and googling the subject, I'm almost certain it's a hoax, and probably just an attack page by a new user pretending to be the subject. However, I'm not sure of the next step I should take. If it stays up as a PROD, it could stay for days before being taken down, and if it's a hoax/attack, it should come down immediately as per WP:BLP. Should I just let it stay as a PROD, or remove the prod and tag it with a hoax/attack tag? I appreciate the advice. Dayewalker (talk) 06:43, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

if it's BLP and it's uniformly negative, Nuke it. SirFozzie (talk) 06:45, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

After reading it, I have deleted it under the clauses of BLP (Unsourced, negative information, no good version to revert back to). SirFozzie (talk) 06:49, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

For the naïve this may create an existential dilemma, as you cannot confirm that "BLP" applies until you know that it's not a hoax. This is one of the reasons I've always suggested that we pick one set of content standards and apply them everywhere. On a somewhat humorous tangent I recall one of my early experiences with deletion process, where I replaced a "prod" tag with a "speedy" tag. After an admin declined the speedy tag, I reverted back to the prod tag. But the admin said something to the effect of I couldn't do that because "you [Charlotte] contested the prod tag by removing it, so you must now open an AFD for it to be deleted". I wish I could say I was making this up, but I'm not. I'm not trying to complain about anyone in particular, in fact I can't even remember the admin's name, but from this lesson I learned early on to view highly structured processes cynically and with deep suspicion. Thank you, whoever you were. — CharlotteWebb 15:46, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Support. An unsourced biography article is either a BLP vio or a hoax. In deleting the article, SirFozzie either applied the do no harm principle, or improved the encyclopaedia by deleting unsourced nonsense. I defy anyone to say "you should not have deleted that article, it was a hoax!" SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 18:13, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

You should not have deleted that article, it was a hoax!!!. I love to defy people. Great story btw, charlotte. It is so damn true its sickening. Keeper ǀ 76 18:17, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, luckily I'm not so coy about naming-and-shaming… – iridescent 18:30, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

AFD was closed speedy delete (A7 according to log). 160.83.73.26 (talk) 22:18, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

If it is only "negative information", it can be deleted under G10 as an attack page, and a hoax G3 as vandalism. G10 does not require that the attacked be a real person. It could be Kermit the Frog. I thought common practice was to choose the correct CSD if the first one didn't fit?~ JohnnyMrNinja 18:31, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Chiropractic

• Chiropractic (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

I've been watching a fair amount of disruption at this article for several weeks now, and believe it could be helped by the general sanctions laid out by the Arbitration Committee, specifically the discretionary sanctions which would allow uninvolved admins to take measures to reduce disruption to the project. The scope of the Pseudoscience case, "interpreted broadly", is said to include but not be limited to all articles in Category:Pseudoscience and its subcategories. Although Chiropractic is not specifically categorized (by us) as a pseudoscience topic, it seems fairly obvious that Chiropractic does contain some ideas that are at least "pseudoscientific". For example, see this article,[54] titled "Chiropractic: science and antiscience and pseudoscience side by side". In fact, I'd say that the "pseudoscience" aspect of the topic, is one of the key sources of the problems leading to the disruption. So, I'm thinking that the authority from the case's discretionary sanctions would be an appropriate way to address the dispute. Anyone have strong objections? --Elonka 07:14, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Chiropractic is pretty mainstream anymore; I'd be pretty hesitant to call it "fringe" given its level of acceptance by pretty conservative groups, like insurance companies and government health programs. There are pseudoscientific elements within mainstream medicine as well. The editing issues in this article are reminiscent of those seen on psychiatric articles. While there is something to be said for helping this article get into shape, I think it's stretching things a fair bit to say this should be considered pseudoscience. Risker (talk) 07:22, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Risker, I think you are confusing generic "mainstream" with "scientific mainstream", which is what is generally meant in this type of discussion. Insurance coverage and legal registration are notable for being influenced by political and economic pressures unrelated to the scientific legitimacy or illegitimacy of the subject. Even the most pseudoscientific of all alternative medicine subjects - homeopathy - is protected by special legal exceptions in the USA. If enough voters will sign a petition or write letters to their Congressman, or if an insurance company will earn money by it, anything can get "recognition". Chiropractic is at the crossroads of mainstream and alternative medicine. It has characteristics of both, or as some reform chiropractors jokingly put it: "Chiropractors are alternative, but are pretending to be doctors." (Said in the context of how scripts are used in practice building, some of which have been leaked to the outside world as the manipulative things they are. They are normally used only by actors, but are also used by many chiropractors, showing how both professions are pretending (acting) to be something they're not.)

The profession is a blend of obvious CAM, and yet has some mainstream characteristics, so it's "at the crossroads." "Chiropractic still maintains some vestiges of an alternative health care profession in image, attitude, and practice." The last two paragraphs in this article deal with this, as summarized in the introduction: "The medical establishment has not yet fully accepted chiropractic as a mainstream form of care. The next decade should determine whether chiropractic maintains the trappings of an alternative health care profession or becomes fully integrated into all health care systems." The implication is obvious: if the "trappings of an alternative health care profession" are dropped, acceptance and integration may follow. Many notable chiropractors have pointed the profession in the direction of dropping belief in the fictive vertebral subluxation and overreliance on spinal adjustments, and seeking acceptance as a back care specialty, akin to dentistry and podiatry. -- Fyslee / talk 14:22, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

In my opinion - while chiropractic is a topic with some mainstream acceptance, in looking at what's going on on that page, it's being treated as another battleground for the pseudoscience wars between editors who are already under restrictions elsewhere. I think for the purposes of applying the discretionary sanctions it can be included, since it is being included in the same edit wars. This does not reflect any judgment on the classification of the subject matter but rather the classification of the nature of the dispute and its participants. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 07:42, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I've been involved in many of the disputes at Chiropractic, and have some comments.

• Whether chiropractic is "pretty mainstream" depends on what one means by the word "mainstream". Although there's a strong consensus among reliable sources that chiropractic is not "mainstream medicine", there's no agreement about what category it should be in. To quote Chiropractic #Scope of practice: "Mainstream health care and governmental organizations such as the World Health Organization consider chiropractic to be complementary and alternative medicine (CAM); however, a 2008 study reported that 31% of surveyed chiropractors categorized chiropractic as CAM, 27% as integrated medicine, and 12% as mainstream medicine."
• Chiropractic is an unusual profession in that so many of its practitioners are clearly WP:FRINGE, and at the same time so many practitioners are just as clearly mainstream (for some definition of "mainstream"). For more on this subject, please see Murphy et al. 2008 (PMID 18759966), entitled "How can chiropractic become a respected mainstream profession? The example of podiatry".
• With the above in mind, I expect that it will take some expertise in the area to know whether a series of edits to Chiropractic is about the "mainstream" or the "fringe" parts of chiropractic, and that it will therefore be relatively difficult for uninvolved administrators to decide the best action for a dispute.
• I should mention that User:Elonka and I had a discussion in July about the contents of Chiropractic, with respect to a relatively-minor formatting issue; see Talk:Chiropractic/Archive 25 #Speedy deletion of former red link. After discussion, we ended up doing things Elonka's way. During the discussion, successive comments by Elonka on Talk:Chiropractic accused me of WP:CIVIL[55], WP:POINT[56], and WP:OWN[57] violations. These accusations were not helpful to the discussion or to Chiropractic, and if this is the sort of oversight that's being proposed here, then we should not do it.

Eubulides (talk) 09:06, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Whether or not chiropractic itself is "mainstream" may not affect whether the wikipedia disputes about its article have a lot in common with the pseudoscience disputes, and whether the user/s in the dispute are those seen engaging in other disputes on fringe and pseudoscience articles. So I would not look whether the topic is mainstream, but more whether the nature of dispute is similar to the pseudoscience disputes. If it contains a fringe/pseudoscience element or associations, then it is quite possible those same kinds of aspects and issues are at the heart of the dispute here too. On the last point, perhaps a lighter touch in some ways would lead to less contention, but that's a separate matter. Brief comment only on application of a sanction. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 10:47, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Largely per FT2, I notice a strong correlation between the dispute over chiropractic and that over homeopathy and other examples of alternative medicine. The same people are involved and the same arguments used, although chiropractic is probably closer to the mainstream medicine side. There is a pending legal action in Britain between the British Chiropractic Association and an author who disputed the benefits of their craft - see Simon Singh - so be careful. My view is that articles about chiropractic do fall within the ambit of the Pseodoscience case. Sam Blacketer (talk) 11:25, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

• I suspect this belongs on WP:AE but I agree that while the content overlap is not 100%, the editor overlap is pretty high, especially if you consider those editors who are making a lot of noise. So it makes sense. In fact, I think that sanction is a sound and pragmatic approach to any long-running content dispute. Guy (Help!) 12:16, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

The presence of expert editors like Eubulides and Fyslee has helped keep the article balanced. Elonka's summary seems not to recognize this. Ludwigs2 has recently showed up on the talk page; Elonka champions him [58] very much like Jagz/161.243.114.45/Fat Cigar. Mathsci (talk) 22:56, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Chiropractic is mainstream, the sources even say so. This one is a no brainer. AtticusLecter (talk) 00:30, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Bye now. [59] Thatcher 00:41, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I just want to add that I agree with Mathsci comments. There are regular editors there that work hard to have everyone follow the guidelines for editing that article to try to keep it balanced. Eubulides works especially hard to listen to all comments and writes what they all want to put into the article on the talk page to let everyone edit it there until they reach a consensus to put it into the main article. It's actually very impressive to watch this routine they have set up. I don't think that Elonka needs to step in at this time. My personal opinion on this is that she is not 'uninvolved' since she did have the situation with Eubulides which wasn't pretty plus she has already been involved with a few of the editors there with her restrictions at other articles and isn't really received that well. This is just my opinion that I felt I should share from being mostly a watcher of this article. Thank you for listening, --CrohnieGal^Talk 10:58, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

We operate by consensus. Arbitrators and administrators are nothing special. Their opinions here count no more than those of regular editors. Several involved editors have expressed doubts about Elonka's perceived neutrality in this area. I agree that the article can be covered by the pseudoscience case, and encourage her to make a request for sanctions at WP:AE, but to leave enforcement to other administrators. It is best if the parties to a dispute view the referee as a neutral party. Jehochman ^Talk 16:58, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

That's a decision anyone can make, who wishes to act as an uninvolved admin. Looking at this thread, some brief observations:

1. Elonka as I understand it, is not asking to sanction any editor. She is asking for guidance whether or not topic X may reasonably be construed to fall under Arbcom sanction/remedy Y. That is something anyone could ask, involved, uninvolved, anyone. There is no restriction on checking for views or suggesting it. In fact if a user were involved this would be where to bring the idea for consideration. Its a fair reasonable question.
2. Elonka clearly feels that if allowable, the general sanctions would help the disputes on this page. If she has significant "history" (ie, roughly, bad blood) with any editor, of a non-admin nature (ie beyond that she has been an admin on issues related to them in the past) or would not be seen as neutral in warning, tools, or sanctions on them, then she has to weigh that up before making a decision related to that editor. And others may want to comment, or she may wish to ask another admin to review it instead of her. That's normal. but it's not salient for the question she's asking here.
3. Elonka's main involvement as evidenced by QuackGuru's diffs, does seem to be of an administrative nature. This one is about civility, editors' roles and some content issues others need to attend to, and this one and this one about editor conduct. None of these three shows any significant involvement in the topic beyond that of an administrative nature.

Hope that helps. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 19:46, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Three arbs have commented on this routine WP:AN thread. You don't see that very often! In any case, please review this conversion, and then this one for full cluefulness about why Elonka might not be the best before choosing an administrator to manage sanctions at chiropractic. Jehochman ^Talk 19:55, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Jehochman, are you ever going to let Elonka get on with it without critiquing her approach? How many times have you declared an intention to "avoid Elonka" and yet continued to spring up to comment on threads that involve her? You disapprove of her conduct, the whole wiki probably is aware of that by now - we don't need periodic reminders... WJBscribe (talk) 20:00, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Please comment on the merits of what I said. Did you read the links? It is not appropriate for you to attack me because of who I am. Please look at what I said and evaluate it objectively. You will see that I am pointing out an actual issue, citing evidence, and making my remarks in the correct forum, with perfect civility. I wish you would uphold those same standards. I have been active in both Homeopathy and Chiropractic. It is not necessary for me to run and hide when Elonka appears at a locus where I am already active. Jehochman ^Talk 20:05, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Of course you are not required to, bar your own undertakings (e.g. [60]). You could have stuck to just commenting on whether the article fell within the scope of the Arbitration remedy being decided, but apparently couldn't resist needling an administrator you have been a perennial critic of. I don't see an attack in what I posted and my reason for commenting is nothing to do with who you are but rather your attitude with regard to this particular admin. WJBscribe (talk) 20:10, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

As you mentioned once yourself, Elonka and I both operate in the same areas of Wikipedia and will inevitably bump into each other quite often. I very much want to avoid strife for the good of Wikipedia. FT2's comment above seems not to be fully informed, which is why I posted the follow up, including links. There is history surrounding chiropractic that is not obvious. I agree with the approach being proposed, but suggest we recruit an administrator who does not have a history of disagreement with one, or two, of the main contributors to the article. Thanks for your input. I have edited my remark above to make it less personal. Jehochman ^Talk 20:34, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Striking while the iron is hot- not having read every bit of this thread: I think there are only three editors at that article who are likely to get sanctioned. I won't name them, but I think that since the main source of disruption is so limited, but quite pervasive, it would be a good idea to apply the sanctions. ——Martin^phi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 20:56, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

If the number is so small, why don't you present evidence at WP:AE and then those particular editors can be warned or sanctioned individually. That way other editors need not be inconvenienced. We should aim to use the minimum force necessary to resolve a problem. Jehochman ^Talk 21:01, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Not suicidal, myself. It isn't an article where I have a lot of interest or involvement, and so I don't want to cause myself so much hassle. Further, it isn't as good a solution, because the problem is so totally about only a few of the editors who edit war and argue per IDIDNTHEARTHAT on the talk page, the sanctions won't have any effect on the other editors. This is a good way to make it not about particular editors: just apply it, and whoever falls into the net, those are the ones who should be caught. So, the sanction is the minimum force. ——Martin^phi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 21:11, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

The disruption at the Chiropractic article appears to be fairly complex. On the one hand, there does appear to be a lot of drive-by POV pushing, so some editors there have been doing good work in standing guard over the article and keeping it free of cruft. However, based on what I've seen of the history, I think that at times the article may be being guarded a bit overzealously. I have sometimes seen what appear to be reasonable edits from established contributors, added in good faith and with reliable sources, but the changes are still reverted within minutes. Edit summaries on the reverts range from things like "rvv" to "added without discussion" or "rv to consensus version". However, there does not appear to be an obvious consensus at the talkpage. Indeed, I could probably point out a few places where people in the discussion are saying that there's a consensus, but I think that other reasonable editors might disagree as to whether a true consensus existed or not. At times, some editors seem to be confusing the idea of "consensus" with "majority", which is definitely not in accordance with Wikipedia:Consensus. So with strong opinions on either side, the article appears to be in the middle of a large game of tug of war, being yanked this way and that.

Another conflict at the article has to do with the sequence of edits. Some editors seem to be of the camp of "Discuss controversial edits before they can go into the article," and others are more following WP:BRD, meaning they're going to make controversial edits until/unless someone reverts them. And of course it's always problematic when an editor uses one method for themselves, but insists on something different from everyone else ("I can add anything I want at any time, but you have to get permission first before you can post something ...")

In order to try and get the article back to a state of healthy editing via discretionary sanctions, this could proceed in one of two ways:

• Sanctions focused on editors, meaning identify a few editors whose presence might be causing more disruption than it's resolving, and asking them to stay away from the article for a certain period of time to see if that helps stabilize things.
• Sanctions focused on the article, such as to put it under a revert limitation, or other editing conditions such as, "Do not delete citations without discussion".

My own feeling (which others may disagree with), is that one of the first things that needs to be done is to get people away from using the Revert button as an editing tool. So a revert restriction might help to calm things down a bit. I tend to like a "0RR except for vandalism/unsourced" restriction, but others may disagree. In my experience though, once an article's atmosphere can be changed to a style of, "Don't delete other people's edits, change them", that it can help get past the kind of roadblocks that this article is experiencing.

What do others think? --Elonka 21:25, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Has there been an extensive history of edit warring and protection? If so, I think we should allow a single revert (1RR) followed by discussion. We may need to ban A-B-C-D type revert wars where each editor does one revert. The problem with 0RR is that it puts good faith editors on par with tendentious editors. If something goes in, there needs to be an ability to take it out, and then follow up with discussion. That is the natural state of things. Ordinary dispute resolution and noticeboards can be used to help resolve disagreements, even when general sanctions are in effect.

If there are limited number of editors who have been causing problems, can we identify them and apply warnings or restrictions? If so, I would very much support that idea. This article does fall under Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience. Lastly, I recommend starting with the least intrusive sanctions, and then increasing the restrictions as needed until the problem resolves. Jehochman ^Talk 21:38, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, some combination: something like 1RR, plus sanctions on disruptive editors. The problem with 0RR is that one can put in or delete anything, and no one can do anything about it. You could take out a whole section, and to put it back, an editor would have to re-write the whole section. Also, one can put in information which just should not be there- and no one can do much about it. So I don't think focusing on the article that way is a good idea: you are dealing with clever people here. However, a 1RR per day on the article coupled with editor banning for disruption or other violations might help a lot. (1RR helps because editors are much more conservative with their one revert, being as it's golden). The "Do not delete citations without discussion" might help. However, what you say about consensus- Is that true? My reading of it is that consensus = supermajority, between 75 and 90 percent, as I interpret it myself. ——Martin^phi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 21:46, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

As Martinphi says, 1RR coupled with article banning for disruption should work. Jayjg ^(talk) 00:03, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Following request

Hello. I made very unconfortable contributions to Wikipedia where I added my personal informations to several talk pages. Please don't think that I got blocked for vandalism. That's namely not the case. I have to contact an oversight for this. Please leave me a message on my talk page. It should be discussed privately on my talk page. Retrinko (talk) 11:11, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Oversight requests are done via e-mail, which is about as private as it gets. :) See Wikipedia:Requests for oversight for procedure. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:14, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Unless it's very serious don't expect a quick response, I made a request September 12 and the edit is still there and no reply - so I'd hate for it to be something completely outing on a highly frequented page ... but I've found that it's better to let something blow over rather than to draw attention to it. ~ User:Ameliorate! ^{(with the !) (talk)} 13:50, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I've never had to wait more than a few hours, perhaps your request isn't actually worth being oversighted. John Reaves 16:27, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I wrote another message on my talk page. I would let my contributions from my other user account blow but I added a message on a famous talk page where million of users can see it. Retrinko (talk) 19:10, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

If you want to e-mail me, I might be able to delete it. John Reaves 19:33, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

User:Bilodeauzx

I'm looking for someone to overview the recent actions of User:Bilodeauzx, and give me an outside opinion here on whether there's a problem, or it's just my own overactive imagination at work.

User:Bilodeauzx is a new user who registered on 21 September. In that time, he/she has:

• Created Mwynyw, an article whos truthfulness has been questioned, and seems to be on its way to deletion at AfD
• Created Mynyddawg Mwynfawr, another article that makes some dubious claims about this supposed medieval realm, including the delightful section "Mynyddawg Mwynfawr was very tolerant of it, and included rampant homosexuals in the ranks of his warriors. Aneirin told that the king was not himself above occaisonal indulgence in sodomy as well, perhaps due to his legendary libido." Sources are provided, but are not readily available to actually verify this rather far-fetched sounding story.
• Nominated Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Burragubba, with a rather bitey deletion rationale. The article was speedy kept.
• Created Template:Meth lab, which was nominated for deletion and then speedied. In response, the user simply recreated the deleted content in hardcode on his user page.
• With respect to the above template, also removed an earlier speedy tag from it with the edit summary "nope".
• Made some rather absurd arguments on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Danny Augustine.
• Added a veritable cavalcade of (often contradictory) tags to Danny Augustine, possibly in an attempt to disrupt the ongoing AfD discussion concerning that article.

None of this is completely over the line about what we consider acceptable behaviour, but it's skirting close enough often enough to be of concern. In addition, the user seems to have taken rather quickly to various procedures like AfD and the like, I'm not sure I was that good with templates and userboxes in my first fifty or so edits. Certainly not a hanging offense, but pretty suspicious I think.

It would be amiss of me not to point out that the user has also created some decent stub articles like West End Airport. However, I do consider it possible that those articles are just chaff to distract us from some subtle, yet unconstructive behaviour on this user's part. However, given that I have become rather involved in this user's behaviour, I thought it best to bring this here for uninvolved editors to take a look, before taking any action. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 12:18, 24 September 2008 (UTC).

Agreed (I've commented on several of these, having picked up his trail at The Danny Augustine AFD); "subtle, yet unconstructive behaviour" puts it well. Johnbod (talk) 12:33, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

All the user's articles look like hoaxes to me and most of his contribs are pretty dodgy. Also, Enaidmawr suggests at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Mwynyw that he's using sockpuppets. He reminds me of Andy Bjornovich, although this is probably pretty tenuous. I'd support a final warning or something; I doubt he is going to stay away from being disruptive. Tombomp (talk/contribs) 14:06, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

We should compare contribs of Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of Tom Sayle. — Satori Son 05:09, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

And a lovely comment too. Tombomp (talk/contribs) 14:18, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry! Bilodeauzx (talk) 02:52, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Someone will probably want to check out this page Eight-ball_jacket created after this thread started. It is a little to late for me to pursue it right now. Also be aware of this situation at AN/I Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#User_page_rights. It looks like someone is having fun messing around. One day perhaps they will want to contribute to the project in a positive manner - but I fear it will not be this day. MarnetteD | Talk 05:06, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

• Mynyddawg Mwynfawr has been prod'ed. seicer | talk | contribs 13:06, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I removed the prod - whilst I fully share concerns about the original author (see above), as cleaned up by Enaidmawr, Angus McLellan etc the article is fine & notable, and should be moved to the more usual spelling of Mynyddog Mwynfawr, which is on a missing articles hotlist & has at least one incoming link. I've started a survey on this at the talk. I suspect the mispelling may have been deliberate, to avoid detection. Johnbod (talk) 13:38, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

WTH?

Does anybody know who Andrei Volkonsky is? This is a non-notable person. I asked some user who he was and he gave me a message in Russian. I don't understand Russian. I think this article should be deleted. Fclass (talk) 16:31, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Fclass, AN is not the place to suggest an article for AfD. Moreover, the bibliography at Andrei Volkonsky clearly shows he has been covered by reliable, independent sources and that he scored a number of Sov era films. You might think about spending less time trying to get articles and images deleted by posting here and on talk pages (rather than on the fitting XfD project pages) and more time learning about Wikipedia policies whilst adding sourced content the the encyclopedia. Gwen Gale (talk) 16:48, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Not that I'm being deliberately obtuse or anything, but he "was a Russian composer of classical music, conductor and harpsichordist" and "is the key figure in Early Music Revival in Russia." Looks fine to me. If you would like to have an article discussed for deletion, try using the steps outlined at WP:AFD instead of bringing it here, but please be sure that deletion is the only option first. Cheers. lifebaka++ 17:18, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, not the easiest subject to verify in English, but not the hardest either. Guy (Help!) 19:12, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

A few problematic edits

Resolved

 – Indefblocked.

Hassanjbeil (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

Hello. Over the past few days there this user has made a few edits ([61], [62]) made to an article and to my personal talk page. The edits are offensive and I think should be looked at. Thank you. E_dog95' ^{Hi '} 17:15, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

User has no productive contributions and has been given a warning already before the latest edit. Indefblocked. And next time, please click "save page" only once. —kurykh 17:30, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

• Comment Concerning the duplicate postings. For the past fifteen minutes I've encountered a "Wikipedia is experiencing technical difficulties" error message when trying to post the message. It was only after this period of time that I discovered the traffic was successfully being passed to Wikipedia. I have not encountered this before, but I do apologize. E_dog95' ^{Hi '} 17:32, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

If you get the Wikipedia timeout screen when you are trying to save something, hit the 'Back' button and then 'Preview' before you hit 'Save page' again. That way if it's actually gone through successfully you won't do it twice. EdJohnston (talk) 20:28, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

.бг unauthorised

I was looking to create .бг, given the Bulgarian government has specifically announced its intention to register this internationalised country-code top-level domain (see [63] and [64]), but the article is unauthorised. Any chance it could be excused from the blacklist? — OwenBlacker 22:05, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Worked fine for me, try this link if you want to create it. I didn't think admins could overide the black list, but I could be wrong. Ryan Postlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 22:08, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I think admins can override the title blacklist. Protonk (talk) 22:45, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, admins can override most (if not all) local blacklists. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 22:50, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Try it now, hopefully it should work. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 22:53, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I signed in as my alternate account and created the page, so it is working fine. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 23:00, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Awesome. Thanks, guys; I'll go do some work on that article over the next few days then! :o) — OwenBlacker 07:43, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Arbitration Committee CheckUser appointments

As announced last month, the Arbitration Committee is currently looking to appoint new CheckUsers. Applications have been received, and a shortlist has now been posted. There is now an opportunity for members of the community to provide comment to the Committee on the candidates. For the shortlist and information on the commenting process, please see Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee CheckUser appointments August 2008.

For the Arbitration Committee,

--bainer (talk) 23:22, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

WOO! About time! Tiptoety ^talk 23:39, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Breyer State University OTRS

What is the status of the OTRS regarding Breyer State University see [65] Can I delete the OTRS template on the talk page? (Note: I don't really understand what OTRS means.) Thanks, TallMagic (talk) 01:29, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

For your benefit, WP:OTRS. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 01:31, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

That template is just for reference I believe. No need to delete it. John Reaves 01:53, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

The ticket is long since resolved. The OTRS template on the page is a historical record. ⇒SWATJester ^{Son of the Defender} 02:39, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you much, you guys are great!! TallMagic (talk) 02:50, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Possible image violation

Image:King Charles Spaniels on Great South Bay Long Island.jpg needs to be resized or removed ASAP. The image is in such a high resolution that the dogs' owner's telephone number is legible. Most of the number is legible on the left dog and what's not legible the left dog's tag is visible on the dog on the right.--Ted-m (talk) 04:43, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Um, the image is at commons. There is no local copy. You would need to inform them or perhaps just tell David about it. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 04:52, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I upped a new version of the image and will look for a Commons admin to delete it. east718 // talk // email // 05:08, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Done. Giggy (talk) 05:25, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Images on Main Page

Resolved

I suppose I'm violating WP:Beans now, but most of the images on Main Page do not appear to be locally uploaded and are not protected on Commons. Or has something changed, and the images on the Main Page are now automagically protected? – Sadalmelik ☎ 07:26, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Nevermind, the are cascade protected on Commons :) – Sadalmelik ☎ 07:38, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Muhammad in Hinduism again (again)

I am reposting this from the Incidents archive since, as predicted, the problem has simply reemerged again as new sockpuppets have been created: user:CMJTHY, [66] and doubtless others. I don't know whether there is any technical meams to deal with this, but I think that page protection will only be temporary, since there is no possibility of meaningful discussion with this guy and that the particular edit (the specific claim he makes repeatedly) should simply be eliminated on sigh and repeatedly reverted as vandalism. Paul B (talk) 09:25, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

We have had a repeated problem on numerous articles with a virulent sockpuppeteer who is continuing to get way with misrepresentation of facts and is now acting almost entirely openly as an edit warrior repeatedly reinserting the same content - which has been repeatedly rejected - in articles. He is continuing to get away with it because of his unrelenting sockpuppetry and persistence. I am sick of reverting and sick of raising the same issue over and over and over. Essentially this editor wishes to assert that Muhammad was "predicted" in the Hindu scriptures and has assembled a text which superficially looks to be well cited, but is in fact a compendium of ultra-fringe sources which completely ignore mainsteream scholarship. See See Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/DWhiskaZ Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/RajivLal (2nd).

This editor, now under the names of User:.alchin007 and User:RedMonkey39 is no longer even bothering to conceal his sockpuppetry, as his edits summary clearly indicates. Making Sockpuppet and checkuser requests is time consuming and pointlerss when this indivisdual can apparently recreate himself so persistently. I think that this particular edit (he makes the same assertions over and over) should be recognised and treated as vandalism. Paul B (talk) 12:27, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

User:.alchin007 and User:RedMonkey39 indefblocked. Perhaps you might have a case for requesting full page-protection (see WP:RFPP)? EyeSerene^talk 14:52, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

User:Thunderstruck45

This account was supposed to be blocked by the ruling at Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Crashingthewaves but apparently the block has not happened. I put a note over at WP:sockpuppetry several weeks ago but nobody responded. The account is now up to no good again. Could somebody please fix this. Thank you.Nrswanson (talk) 11:32, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

The user was blocked back in August, however blocks do not normally apply to user talk pages. Removing warnings and notices from user talk pages is frowned upon, but it is not forbidden. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 11:50, 25 September 2008 (UTC).

Utc-100 sockpuppetry – blocked for one month

• Utc-100 (talk · contribs)
• Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of Utc-100

I have come across a vast sockpuppet farm centred around Utc-100. There are quite literally dozens of socks, all showing similar characteristics (e.g. relationship to various Scandinavian countries, peculiar user-space sub-page setups) and a similar point-of-view and editing focus. There are also some copyright issues, though they generally seem to have been dealt with.

As there has been no small amount of good editing despite the huge amount of sockpuppeting, I have only blocked Utc-100 for a month. The socks are all blocked indefinitely.

Sam Korn ^(smoddy) 12:31, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Suicide announcement?

Suicide announcement?

I don't know if this is serious or just a hoax: [67]. But you never know. The IP is registered to St. John's Memorial University, St. John's, NFL, Canada. De728631 (talk) 13:09, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I think we have some framework in place to deal with these things but I can't remember what it is. Perhaps someone in the area should phone the uni, just in case. — ^.^ ^{[citation needed]} 13:16, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

In most cases WP:RBI. D.M.N. (talk) 13:17, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I suggest the possibly less harmful and lifesaving Wikipedia:Responding to threats of harm. — ^.^ ^{[citation needed]} 13:20, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I found that too, sent an email to the NFL Constabulary, maybe that helps. De728631 (talk) 13:30, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

That likely wraps it up. Nothing more we can do here except move on. Cheers, guys, and good work. lifebaka++ 14:31, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

We probably want the edit deleted from non admin viewable history, but we'll probably need an oversighter to do it.--Tznkai (talk) 15:51, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Sent an email to stewards AT wikimedia.org, so it'll either get taken care of or not. Cheers. lifebaka++ 16:10, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely to NOT WP:RBI this. There has been a specific threat of violence made and pursuant to WP:TOV this should be taken seriously and reported to the authorities. I am currently on a bus from Boston to New York so cannot do this. Can someone please take point on this? Bstone (talk) 16:03, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Give me a moment to set up a subpage, with two active threads this is getting to damned confusing.

FYI, action has already been taken - Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Suicide_threat_-_cross_posted_from_WP:AIV. Cirt (talk) 16:08, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I would not suggest to use RBI, instead contacting local users so effective measures can be taken. Caulde 16:09, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

This may be helfpul: Wikipedia:Responding to suicidal individuals --Flewis^(talk) 03:46, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Suicide threat - cross posted from WP:AIV

Resolved

 – authorities notified Toddst1 (talk) 15:36, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

134.153.184.17 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) has threatened to commit suicide. The Whois look up indicates the address is registered to a university in Newfoundland. I've emailed the university and the Wikimedia foundation, however I'm not based in North America, and would be grateful if someone could phone the Canadian emergency services. PhilKnight (talk) 13:48, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Per WP:TOV, if anyone finds these threats of suicide credible, please feel free to contact the relevant authorities. I have blocked the IP for the vandalism, but have not taken any additional action myself. -- Ed (Edgar181) 13:49, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I reported this one level above on this noticeboard. An email was sent to the Newfoundland Constabulary and to the Wikimedia foundation (who just replied that they're going to monitor this). De728631 (talk) 13:55, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

The AN thread resulted in the local government being emailed, so there's nothing else we can do here. Cheers. lifebaka++ 14:33, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I also followed up via email with the IT department at that university. Toddst1 (talk) 15:36, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

See dup thread: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Suicide_announcement.3F. Cirt (talk) 16:09, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Unified

This is now a transcluded so both pages are up to date simulatiniously--Tznkai (talk) 16:10, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Oversight

I have been asked to oversight the revision concerned here. I have declined to do so, with the advice of some other Oversighters, on the grounds that it may be helpful for ISP/authorities to see the revision. Sam Korn ^(smoddy) 16:24, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Should we have it deleted/oversighted sometime in the future? --Tznkai (talk) 16:50, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

No point, I think. Stifle (talk) 18:27, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I cannot see why this should ever be oversighted. If blatant vandalism is not oversighted or deleted than things which the authorities may need access to should certainly not be oversighted. Bstone (talk) 22:38, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

To clarify, the Threats of harm essay above suggests deleting, not oversighting the offending edit. Usually to avoid people doing something really stupid misguided with a potentially suicidal person.--Tznkai (talk) 04:06, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Proposed change of confusing jargon

Why do we call it oversight? Oversight usually means some sort of independent review or process, often to try to keep people honest. Wikipedia usage of oversight really means "Removal", "Content deletion" or "Censor" (censorship doesn't need to be bad; some countries have a censorship board). Propose making Wikipedia more user friendly and less jargon by renaming the term "oversight" to "content removal" or "remove". So the first sentence of this section would read "I have been asked to do content removal of the revision concerned here" or "I have been asked to remove the revision concerned here". 903M (talk) 03:56, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Not meaning to seem like I'm muting discussion here or anything, but you probably should head over to WP:VPP for things like this. You'll get a much wider group of editors there. Cheers. lifebaka++ 03:59, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

I forget where I read this, but IIRC, the name came from the fact that all members can hide revisions and also see those hidden revisions, thereby providing oversight of each other to ensure that no one is hiding revisions that don't need to be hidden or hiding them for ulterior motives. Or it may have been that a narrow group had that oversight role and more could hide revisions, but now the groups are congruent and inseparable.--chaser - t 05:00, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

The way I've always looked at it is since the GFDL requires attribution of all edits, exercising this tool is sort of "overlooking" that license, as we're deleting part of the history. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 19:04, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

That doesn't have anything to do with it (admins can do that with deletion and selective diff restoraton).--chaser - t 06:04, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

The GFDL also only requires us to have the major contributors. Almost universally when we oversight whatever is left has little to no contribution from the edits in question. JoshuaZ (talk) 22:10, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

A persistent user is creating new articles with material from existing articles.

User:Slikkidrajs is creating articles with different variations of misspelling of the dinosaur Rajasaurus: Rajsaurus Narmadensis‎, S. Rajsaurus Narmadensis‎ and S.Rajasaurus Narmadensis‎ with basicly the same content as Rajasaurus. I have tried to communicate with him on his talk page but is met with silence. I have placed a template box at his Rajsaurus Narmadensis‎ article [68] which was deleted without an explanation.
After a warning on his talk page he has begun to replicate material in new dog articles Cane Corso versus CC.Italian Mastiff, Cane Corso versus IM .Corso (w. another image). I don't know if this is an advanced type of vandalism or what? Please help. --Regards, Necessary Evil (talk) 16:50, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

You can just redirect them to whatever they're a copy of, if it seems like a searchable term. Otherwise, they're not terribly useful, and should likely be deleted. Cheers. lifebaka++ 16:58, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Instead of a whole army of administrators and users redirecting and deleting Slikkidrajs' unnecessary articles and keeping him under surveillance, it would be better to send him a signal. If he and his IP address are blocked he can still write on his talk page. Then he can explain his intentions and if it's a green user he can be unblocked. If it's some kind of bet regarding creating as many articles as possible - Wikipedia's resources could be better spend. --Regards, Necessary Evil (talk) 17:16, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Instead of harsh measures, you could see if the education efforts and redirects above have the desired effect. Maybe he just didn't know how to make redirects? You dn't appear to have told him how, either. I will leave a note for him. Guy (Help!) 19:34, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Having had a look at the pre-redirect versions, I suspect that the spelling "Rajsaurus" is not necessarily an error. The only substantial change from the real Rajasaurus article is the substitution of "Raj et al. 2000" as the authors. Perhaps these are attempts at combination spoof/vanity articles by a person either named Raj ("slikkidrajs"=Slik Kid Raj S."?) or associated with someone named Raj? In any case, I would support deleting all of these redirects, particularly the redirects that start with "S.", which are extremely unlikely search terms as they have no obvious connection with Rajasaurus. J. Spencer (talk) 21:45, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Good point on those two, they've been nuked appropriately. I'm leaving the other, as I believe it's a typo people might actually make. Cheers. lifebaka++ 23:38, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

User talk: Olivia Bush

Resolved

 – cpyright violater blocked Ogioh (talk) 21:44, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Another violater who has had about 10 images uploaded and deleted without any kind of warning, for editors who constantly violate like this, is more than a warning not needed? will someone please delete her latest upload Image:womanizersleeve.jpg Ogioh (talk) 20:23, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh the irony of you reporting someone for misusing fair use... Go to WP:PUI and follow the instructions at the top. This isn't the place to report this. – iridescent 20:27, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

(adding) I've fixed the fair use rationale. This looks perfectly valid to me, she'd just misspelled the song title in the FUR. – iridescent 20:29, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I really don't take well to insults this is the place evryone else goes to report copyright violaters. And please Irisdescent get over the britney image I uploaded two copyright violations is deifferent to 10 or more. Ogioh (talk) 20:49, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I think saying "these type of people" is more of a personal attack than referring to someone's earlier contributions. It might be best to just let it go, eh? SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 20:59, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I have changed my comment so that it is maybe less offensive. I have let go of the past but evidently Irisdecent and a couple of others aren't willing to. Ogioh (talk) 21:13, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I see the above image is listed at Possibly unfree images. Shall we call this one resolved? SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 21:19, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Oddly, this isn't actually the place to report copyvios. The header at the top seems to say the place to do that is WP:CP. So, please take these things there in the future. Cheers. lifebaka++ 21:21, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up, i only came here because it's where i was taken but now i know where to go. If the user gets a block warning i'd say we can call it resolved have you taken a look at their talkpage! Ogioh (talk) 21:27, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

The user has had a block warning. Issue resolved. Ogioh (talk) 21:39, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Womanizer (song) - Photo trouble

Hi traffic article, crazed Britney fans are uploading many many many fake single covers. Admin assistance needed to watchlist articles, remove unsourced material and delete fake images. — Realist² 22:09, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't know how many pictures iv flagged in the past hour. It's ridiculous. I'm not sure of you time-zone but i can only stay up for another hour at max, i've school in the morning and need to get up at half 6 Ogioh (talk) 22:25, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm sure education is more important than Wikipedia. x42bn6 Talk Mess 22:27, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes i know but i do take wikipedia seriously and i don't have a problem with being a ittle tired for school just once. Not to mention i'm an avid fan of britney Ogioh (talk) 22:31, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm having a look through now. I personally consider the uploading of (knowingly) fake album/single/DVD cover images to be vandalism of the most sneaky kind. It also happens far too often for me to believe that everyone who does it is doing so in honest good faith, after having seen the pic on a fansite or something. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 22:43, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Nobody could have simplyfied it in finer words. Ogioh (talk) 22:47, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

In relation to all this about half an hour ago i put a copyright vio notice on Image:Womanizer Cover.jpg and left a message on User: Superpop's page yet she removed this notice and put it on the page again. Will somebody please give her a block warning. Ogioh (talk) 22:59, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

(after edit conflict) The image currently in the article (the purple, black and gold text-y one) - whichever version of it is there (heh) when you next check back is definitely real. See here for confirmation. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 23:03, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Superpop's upload looks fine to me now, considering that I have now established that this is actually the real cover... --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 23:12, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

yes i removed the copyright tag and apolagised. According to the site there'll be a surprise in a couple of hours so expect an unprecedented amount of traffic. But, now i need sleep so you'll have to deal with it on your own maybe. Goodnight Ogioh (talk) 23:20, 25 September 2008 (UTC)