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Pages recently put under extended confirmed protection (37 out of 7748 total) () WATCH Page Protected Expiry Type Summary Admin Category:Hamas 2024-05-13 23:01 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement Izno Sde Teiman detention camp 2024-05-13 20:49 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: WP:ARBPIA Ymblanter Çankaya Mansion 2024-05-13 14:18 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement, WP:GS/AA Rosguill Second Battle of Latakia 2024-05-13 13:39 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement ScottishFinnishRadish Alien 2024-05-13 13:23 indefinite move lower to semi, time heals; requested at WP:RfPP The Night Watch Shays' Rebellion 2024-05-13 08:08 2025-05-13 08:08 move dang it. Not used to move protection, I guess.... Dennis Brown Chuck Buchanan Jr. 2024-05-13 02:01 indefinite create Repeatedly recreated; requested at WP:RfPP Daniel Quinlan Animal stereotypes of Jews in Palestinian discourse 2024-05-13 01:24 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: per ARBPIA Daniel Case Michael Ealy 2024-05-13 01:22 2025-05-13 01:22 edit,move Persistent vandalism: racist swinery Drmies Template:Nelson, New Zealand 2024-05-13 00:51 indefinite move Highly visible template that is vulnerable to macron vandalism Schwede66 Hebrew University of Jerusalem 2024-05-12 21:47 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: per ARBPIA Daniel Case Interracial marriage 2024-05-12 19:14 2024-11-12 19:14 edit,move Persistent sockpuppetry RoySmith Template:FAQ/FAQ 2024-05-12 10:48 indefinite create Repeatedly recreated Justlettersandnumbers User:Arjayay/Rang HD 2024-05-12 10:46 indefinite edit,move Persistent sockpuppetry: WP:Sockpuppet investigations/Rang HD -- requested at WP:RFPP Favonian Rangiya 2024-05-12 09:27 2024-10-16 06:56 edit,move Persistent sockpuppetry: confirmed socks edit the article Ymblanter Vaush 2024-05-12 07:35 indefinite edit,move per WP:CT/BLP Primefac Timeline of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in January–June 2015 2024-05-12 04:52 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement Johnuniq Later-no-harm criterion 2024-05-12 03:07 2024-06-12 03:07 edit,move Edit warring / content dispute: Protected per a complaint at WP:AN3 EdJohnston Draft:Lewis Raymond Taylor 2024-05-11 20:41 2024-08-11 20:41 edit,move Persistent sock puppetry; requested at WP:RfPP Daniel Quinlan Lewis Raymond Taylor 2024-05-11 20:35 indefinite create Persistent sockpuppetry JJMC89 2024 Kharkiv offensive 2024-05-11 12:11 indefinite edit,move Community sanctions enforcement: WP:GS/RUSUKR --requested at WP:RFPP Favonian Drake (musician) 2024-05-11 09:32 indefinite edit,move Contentious topics enforcement for WP:CT/BLP; requested at WP:RfPP Daniel Quinlan Slovenia 2024-05-11 09:29 2024-05-18 09:29 edit edit wars on the page Tone Timeline of the Israel–Hamas war (7 May 2024 – present) 2024-05-11 03:48 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: per RFPP and ARBPIA Daniel Case Czech Republic 2024-05-11 02:43 indefinite edit Persistent disruptive editing: per RFPP and WP:ARBEE Daniel Case Ben Shapiro 2024-05-11 02:24 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: per RFPP and ARBAP2 Daniel Case Eden Golan 2024-05-11 02:03 2025-05-11 02:03 edit Persistent disruptive editing from (auto)confirmed accounts ScottishFinnishRadish Nguyễn Văn Hùng (martial artist) 2024-05-10 20:21 2027-05-10 20:21 edit Persistent sockpuppetry: User:Nipponese Dog Calvero Favonian Nguyen Van Hung 2024-05-10 20:21 indefinite edit,move Persistent sockpuppetry: User:Nipponese Dog Calvero Favonian Phan Bội Châu 2024-05-10 20:21 2027-05-10 20:21 edit Persistent sockpuppetry: User:Nipponese Dog Calvero Favonian Nguyễn Kim Hồng 2024-05-10 20:21 2027-05-10 20:21 edit,move Persistent sockpuppetry: User:Nipponese Dog Calvero Favonian Vietnamese people in Taiwan 2024-05-10 20:21 2027-05-10 20:21 edit,move Persistent sockpuppetry: User:Nipponese Dog Calvero Favonian McGill University pro-Palestinian encampment 2024-05-10 19:18 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: per RFPP and ARBPIA Daniel Case England 2024-05-10 13:52 indefinite edit Persistent sockpuppetry: request at WP:RFPP Ymblanter Nemo (rapper) 2024-05-10 01:56 indefinite edit,move Persistent disruptive editing: per RFPP; will also log as CTOPS action Daniel Case The Eras Tour 2024-05-10 01:48 2025-01-29 23:36 edit,move Addition of unsourced or poorly sourced content: raise protection to ECP for duration to cut back on fan edits Daniel Case Kim Jae-joong 2024-05-09 23:16 2024-08-09 23:16 edit,move Persistent sock puppetry ToBeFree

Help cleaning up bot-mangled citations

This came up last month, but there hasn't been much movement on it since, and I'm not sure where else I can raise a signal about it. Use of the ReferenceExpander bot without manually checking its output has led to references being contracted instead. For example, the bot sometimes follows a link that now redirects to a new, uninformative place, but since the link technically "works" the auto-generated citation omits the archive-URL and creates a footnote that is nicely templated but completely useless. It also removes all sorts of ancillary information included in manually-formatted citations, like quotations. If multiple citations were gathered into the same footnote, it creates a replacement based on only the first of them. It can see a citation to a chapter in an edited collection and replace the authors' names with the editors of the volume. It can see a URL for a news story and create a {{cite web}} footnote that omits the byline which had been manually included. A list of potentially affected pages is available here.

It's frankly a slog to deal with, and there doesn't seem to be any other option than manually looking at each item.

(Per the big orange box, I have notified the editor whose actions prompted all this, but they are both retired and indeffed.) XOR'easter (talk) 02:13, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Hey @XOR'easter sorry. I was going to try working through at least a few of these a bit at a time, but I've been busy with a lot of other stuff. Is anyone here interested in gathering together a crew to tackle some of these as a group? It feels pretty daunting for just a few people. –jacobolus (t) 02:43, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

I can help. --JBL (talk) 18:35, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

I started reviewing the list, and fyi, in the 1853 or so citations affected here [1], I noticed https urls were occasionally converted to http. Beccaynr (talk) 03:08, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Wow, I hadn't even thought to check for that. XOR'easter (talk) 04:46, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Have you asked the WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors for help? They are also having a copy-editing drive this month, and maybe something like this could be added to that project. Beccaynr (talk) 05:05, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

I did ask, as it happens; apparently it's not in their wheelhouse. XOR'easter (talk) 16:44, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

WikiFaerie are not as well-organized, so I am not sure how to conduct outreach, but I will try to work through the list you have developed when possible. Thank you for calling attention to this. Beccaynr (talk) 17:48, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

@XOR'easter: Perhaps WP:WikiProject Citation cleanup? Not the most active of projects, I think, though. AddWittyNameHere 21:41, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion; I've commented over there.

What gets me is that these are not all obscure pages. DNA, for example, is a Featured Article with almost 2,000 watchers, and yet nobody seems to have noticed when citations were modified to have a last name "Bank", first name "RCSB Protein Data". XOR'easter (talk) 00:10, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

There are so many bots and bot-like gnomes running around making so many hundreds of thousands of minor cleanups to citations on articles, 99% of which are fine, that it makes it very tiresome to consistently check all edits appearing on one's watchlist and notice the thousands of edits that fall into the 1% of cases where the software totally screws up the citation. And yet, these supposed cleanups happen so often and so repetitively to the same articles that it seems that, eventually, all citations will be garbaged by bots. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:44, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

I've been very slowly working my way through one of the more severely damaged articles, Falun Gong (a CTOP I've never edited before). Out of the numerous affected references, I have yet to see the ReferenceExpander script suggest a correct citation. 04:43, 20 May 2023 (UTC) Updating to add that I have now found a correct citation produced by this tool, giving a success rate in my sample around 10%. Even ignoring the information lost from the manually formatted references that are not converted into the cite templates, I'm seeing the tool assign incorrect titles and incorrect dates, leave out authors when a byline is clearly evident at the top of the article, confuse archives with live urls, and associated basic errors.

At this point I'm extremely suspect of any edits performed using this script, since its parsing both of the existing reference and of retrieved webpages is, in the general case, objectively inadequate. It might be faster to batch undo as many of these edits as is technically feasible, and I'm sadly wondering if we should formally encourage the maintainer to disable the script pending improvement. Courtesy ping User:BrandonXLF. Folly Mox (talk) 03:29, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Yesterday I found that the ReferenceExpander script also removed Template:pd-notice from every article it had touched in Category:Human trafficking by country, which all incorporate text in the public domain in the US. Not sure how big a problem regarding copyright and attribution that is, but it's definitely an unwanted behaviour. The query User:XOR'easter and them ran back in April returned over 2600 rows. It's dog's work fixing these, but if people could just scroll around a bit and find a couple articles that interest them, we could repair the damage a lot quicklier. The bottom tables, where the script has added in byte size, seem to be pretty low hanging fruit, since action is not always needed. Folly Mox (talk) 13:57, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Seconding this: it's very much at the stage where having a bunch of people click on five random links and fix or mark as ok the obvious easy ones would be a huge help. --JBL (talk) 18:34, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

I've come across ReferenceExpander in a few of the articles I watch and similarly find it to have an extraordinarily low rate of success. If it's to remain available its users must not only check the output very carefully indeed but also actually understand how our citation templates work. XAM2175 ^(T) 16:54, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

I finally found one that wasn't a problem! This edit to Penguin looks fine. XOR'easter (talk) 15:00, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Nope. Both citations had archive URLs that were deleted by the script leaving only a dead URL in the new cite, and in the first one the script also commits the grossly stupid error of cramming two different corporate publishers into a single set of |first= and |last= fields. XAM2175 ^(T) 15:19, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Wow. OK, back to 0% success in those I've examined, then. XOR'easter (talk) 16:15, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

I started checking History of Wikipedia and just had to give up. Lost content restored up through line 108, but I need to lie down now. XOR'easter (talk) 23:00, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Fair. I've definitely had two or three repairs that took me multiple hours of work and required a break or a night's sleep. For a single diff. Smh. Folly Mox (talk) 03:55, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

It has to get easier after Zionism, right? Right? XOR'easter (talk) 18:55, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

I've mostly been backing out of the articles where the size has been reduced by multiple kilobytes unless I have a whole day available to devote to reference repair, and I appreciate that you've been tackling the top of the list while I've been scrolling arbitrarily and repairing whatever.

Perhaps the most egregious behaviour I saw yesterday was at Mead, where ReferenceExpander took a properly formatted book citation, already in a template, and discarded the page= parameter. I cannot pretend to understand why this functionality would be programmed in. Folly Mox (talk) 12:13, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Having been on Sub-Saharan Africa for the past few days, I can safely say: Prolly not. ~Judy _{(job requests)} 15:40, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

I am having to take Left-libertarianism in tiny morsels. XOR'easter (talk) 19:18, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

I discovered while workin' on Hilaree Nelson (which XOR'easter beat me to fixin' with their rollback powers, haha) that this script's also a real problem when an article has a web page title and a news headline that don't match up, and given its propensity for getting rid of author names, it can really bungle a citation to where it takes a few second looks to make sure you've got it right when handling them manually. ~Judy _{(job requests)} 20:16, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

I checked several diffs; will try to check more later. The edit to Toki Pona seems to have been good, as far as how it formatted the reference, although the entire reference was subsequently removed for being a random youtube video. -sche (talk) 19:25, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Here's an odd one: as far as I can tell, everything here was fine except that it dropped a space which was present between two of the words in the title, smooshing them together. (Am I missing any other issues?) I'm surprised a script that causes as many problems as have been discussed here, and as many different kinds of problems, doesn't seem(?) to have been disabled yet. -sche (talk) 22:23, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Would it be improper (or even possible) to propose that it be disabled by community consensus? XAM2175 ^(T) 22:47, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Is there a bot? Philoserf (talk · contribs) is indefinitely blocked. Is any other user running User:BrandonXLF/ReferenceExpander in a problematic way? If ReferenceExpander is thought to have problems, BrandonXLF can be asked for a fix but there would need to be a list of, say, five examples of a problem with a brief explanation. If the script produces more problems than it solves, it could easily be disabled. Johnuniq (talk) 01:17, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

There are definitely other users running it, but not on anywhere near the same scale. Their edits typically have the same kinds of issues, but they are more likely to self-censor the most egregious ones. In my opinion the script creates a lot of big problems and doesn't really solve anything at all. YMMV. –jacobolus (t) 04:06, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

The script seems to run as intended if the source is the New York Times or if it has a doi number. I've also seen it take a bare url reference and create a citation that was pretty good except for one field filled out naively but not incorrectly. For online news sources, it tends not to make things worse, although it sometimes does.

Edits from users other than Philoserf are consistently less worse, because they look at the proposed output and choose not to apply the obviously incorrect updates, but the script has so many problems (way more than five) and gets so many different things wrong and discards so much information present in existing citations that I would never feel comfortable not double checking an edit made using it.

Having looked briefly at the code, I think the bugs might actually be upstream in dependency libraries, but disabling the interface is probably the safest move. BrandonXLF has added a warning that editors are responsible for edits made using the script, but has otherwise been silent on the issue. I suppose we could take it to MfD. Folly Mox (talk) 11:08, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

I went ahead and nominated it. — SamX [talk · contribs] 20:04, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

• More than 450 edits have been checked, reverted, or repaired; that's still less than 20% of the total. Let me again suggest to people who like gnoming that a lot of this is pretty straightforward (one or two references per edit to check to make sure no information was lost) and that's just a matter of hands on deck. --JBL (talk) 17:46, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

  People will want to click through to the target page to ensure the script hasn't – for example – credited editors as authors or put the name of the author or website into the title= parameter. I usually go in with the goal of making the citation reasonably complete, since I'm checking it anyway, which often involves adding parameters like author and publication date, but the tactic of making sure the reference is not worse than before the script touched it is also viable. It is indeed reasonably straightforward, and one hardly ever needs to assess source quality, relevance, or whether it supports the prose. It's easy enough that it's what I've been doing when my brain is done for the day. There's just a lot. Folly Mox (talk) 08:46, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  Is there any reason to retain the other 1800+ edits while they're being checked? I'm not familiar with this tool at all, but it sounds as if the bot's edits are detrimental, and the project would be better off if we just reverted en masse. Is that correct, or is it better to check before reverting the bot? Nyttend (talk) 21:08, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  @Nyttend: I'm not a technically apt editor and I haven't done as much repairing as some others so I might not be the best person to answer this question, but I'll share my two cents here anyway. It's impossible to revert many of the edits using Undo, Twinkle, etc. because most were several months ago, and multiple edits to many of the pages have occurred since then. A minority of the citations, particularly to the New York Times, were actually improved by ReferenceExpander. Some of them aren't too bad, and only require something straightforward like adding |archive-url=, |archive-date=, and url-status= to the citation templates or correcting the author paramaters. Some of them are in pretty bad shape, but were already poorly formatted before ReferenceExpander and require quite a bit more work. Most of them can be manually reverted by copying and pasting the wikitext of the citations from the pre-ReferenceExpander revision, although creating a new citation template from scratch is often an improvement over the old revision. There are enough weird behaviors and edge cases that simply reverting them all with a bot or script probably wouldn't be a good option IMO, but others may disagree with me on that point. — SamX [talk · contribs] 04:32, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

  User:Nyttend, when I come across edits that are the most recent revision during the cleanup, typically I'll straight revert them (sometimes I'll improve them; it depends on how sleepy and grumpy I'm feeling), and I see other editors contributing to this task doing the same, but usually there are intervening edits. If we had a query of all the ReferenceExpander edits where they were the most recent revision, I feel it would be safe to bulk revert the lot and then go back and unrevert any that were genuine improvements, which do occur.

  Based on my experience with the cleanup, possibly between 10 and 20 per cent of ReferenceExpander edits are net-zero or net-positive, to give a very rough estimate. We've been prioritising the more damaged articles, but the edits which increase the byte size are usually much less worse. The issue, for my brain anyway, is that they're still mostly incomplete and naive, so if I'm in there anyway I'll try to leave it better than ReferenceExpander found it. Folly Mox (talk) 20:37, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Also it might be good to run the same query for older edits. I think the ReferenceExpander script has been around for a while and I would expect it probably had roughly similar behavior through its life. There are probably at least some older ones that should be checked/fixed (though hopefully not nearly so many). –jacobolus (t) 04:56, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. If we do that, I think we should also run a query if the script is deleted or disabled after the MFD is closed. — SamX [talk · contribs] 18:59, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

It is probably safest to check every edit ever committed using this tool. Something that worries me is that the entire core functionality seems to hinge on a function in mediawiki's own Citoid.js library, and I happened upon some citations earlier today or yesterday, not created by ReferenceExpander, that had publication dates in the author-first= field. I'm not sure how many scripts will take anything other than a bare URL as input before creating a citation, which is by far the biggest problem with the ReferenceExpander edits, but once this cleanup is a bit more buttoned up it might be wise to find out which team is responsible for maintaining Citoid.js and see if we can't get them to implement some improvements and add warning messages to editors that the output may not be correct and double checking should be performed. Folly Mox (talk) 20:44, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

For those keeping score at home, we recently passed 25% completion (by number of edits): about 650 out of 2500 have been checked or corrected. The most recent one I fixed was a real doozie. --JBL (talk) 00:27, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

I've seen that same failure mode before. I can't put my finger on where exactly it was, but it definitely did show up in one of the other articles I've fixed. XOR'easter (talk) 15:22, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Ah, it was in Ballistic movement [2]. XOR'easter (talk) 19:03, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

And it's the same replacement chosen for the two (otherwise unrelated) references! So bizarre. --JBL (talk) 19:22, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Neither of the references prior to Philoserf's ReferenceExpander edits contained a URL, so it might have something to do with their device's behaviour when it's asked to fetch a URL but only given numeric input data. Just a hunch.

I repaired one which I cannot for the life of me track down, where the author fields had been populated |first=Not |last=Anonymous, which is client-side behaviour when redirecting to an unencrypted address on a certain browser, so the "leave SMS voice" thing may have the same tenor as an error message. Folly Mox (talk) 08:02, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Oh, it was Huldar saga. And it was |first=Not |title=Anonymous. And it was the source that says "unpublished" "do not cite". Good times. Folly Mox (talk) 08:11, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

And it was my saltiest edit summary ever. Not super proud of that. Oops. Anyway we're almost to 800 matches for Template:y on the cleanup page. Folly Mox (talk) 09:01, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Looks like we crossed 1000 some time today. One thing this is bringing home for me is that there are a lot of poor citations in this encyclopedia. But honestly the people who drop a bare url that points somewhere relevant inside ref tags are doing a lot more good than the people who formatted obviously ridiculous references using this tool (even when the formatting was not itself bad). --JBL (talk) 21:38, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Half-way done. JBL (talk) 17:38, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't know what happened on Michael Faraday; usually it screws up because an old URL redirects to a useless place, like a "search this site" page, but the given URL still works in this case [3]. And Gilded Age provides an example of how even when the bot script infernal contraption makes the article bigger, it can lead to lost information [4]. The article cited different pages from the same book, ReferenceExpander converted those manual footnotes to (badly formatted) templates, and then reFill blindly merged them because ReferenceExpander had omitted the page numbers. XOR'easter (talk) 22:14, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

The more I learn about the whole infrastructure in play here the more concerned I become. The actual Zotero hooks, which will convert DOIs and PMIDs etc into perfectly formatted citations via Citoid, are extremely reliable. I'm not sure where in the stack the "google books" processor is, but it consistently throws out page numbers, never identifies editors, and discards chapter contributions. I hope it's somewhere in a mediawiki library so it can be improved instead of rewritten from scratch to avoid the current serious bugs.

I contacted one of the maintainers of ReFill about some improvements that could be made downstream of Citoid, but they've got too much going on to invest more deeply in maintaining other people's code. Someone commented at the MfD that they could likely improve on ReferenceExpander's code, and as much as I've enjoyed the silly bursts of absurdity during this long cleanup effort, it can't feel good for BrandonXLF when most of the errors we're describing – outside of the fundamental design flaw of overwriting existing references – are not even his fault, except insofar as he trusted Citoid to parse pages intelligently, which does happen in some cases.

I think my eventual point is that although we're dealing with the fallout of an overlap of some serious mistrusts, script-assisted referencing is not going to become less popular because of one tool, and we really need to commit to the followthrough of improving its reliability as far up the stack as we have access to, so this dark portent can be averted. Folly Mox (talk) 00:03, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Trying to handle DOIs, news websites, books, etc., all in the same script is biting off an awful lot, maybe more than any single script can actually chew. I think the balance might tip back to the positive if the scope of the tool were less ambitious. XOR'easter (talk) 05:26, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

I think the main thing is that any script author should before releasing their script gather a wide variety of test cases and make sure that they aren't making disimprovements to any of them, and when told about bugs should add additional test cases. For something that is going to run across thousands of pages, the standard has to be very high. Even 1% mistakes is not good enough. But in this case, we are talking about a script that is making something like 75% mistakes, 25% cosmetic changes without significant benefit, and 0% substantial improvements. That should never get past the testing phase. –jacobolus (t) 05:57, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

At detailed logarithmic timeline, it replaced a template that someone had done correctly with a different template that it populated incorrectly, replacing the author's name (Christopher Kemp) with #author.fullName} [5]. There are currently 26 examples of #author.fullName} in articles; I wonder how many this program is responsible for. XOR'easter (talk) 20:55, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

OK, heat pump is not on the list of ReferenceExpander-affected pages, and the errant #author.fullName} was apparently inserted in this edit. So, in this case, it looks like some routine which is upstream from ReferenceExpander and which the citation tool in the Visual Editor also relies upon failed. XOR'easter (talk) 21:03, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Yeah that's what I'm trying to say: apart from URLs garbled by escaping special characters, and apart from overwriting existing references with worse ones, every error – filling author fields with "Contact Us", parsing the root of a usurped domain, not finding authors with a byline at the top of the page, identifying editors as authors – everything, is attributable to Citoid and whatever is upstream of it. The visual editor's automated references and ReFill at least rely on the exact same library. I don't see Citation bot making the same mistakes, but there's a lot that does depend and will continue to depend on Citoid, which is turning out to be not particularly reliable in many cases.

I said in the MfD that the way forward for not wrecking citations is to start out by calling getCitoidRef on the input, but it doesn't have a hook for arbitrary text, so it's a pretty big step to get to a script that never disimproves existing references.

Throwing up warnings all over the place to instill a culture of double-checking when it comes to script-assisted referencing is a step we can take, but people have a tendency to trust code. Someone said somewhere there's a general issue of ownership with Citoid, which is a pretty big problem since there's so much work that apparently needs to be done with it. Folly Mox (talk) 00:08, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Here's Reflinks (an predecessor to ReFill) filling an author field with "Comments have been closed on this article." Worse still, the IP editor who accepted that garbage is the one who put the bare URL into the article in the first place.

I'm beginning to feel that all forms of script-assisted referencing should be restricted to trusted users only, if not dumped entirely, on the grounds that bare URLs that might one day be expanded correctly are preferable to bare URLs being "filled" badly today. XAM2175 ^(T) 01:11, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

On The Language Myth, something took the name and date from the top post in a comment section and made it the author name for a citation [6].

I'm so tired. XOR'easter (talk) 01:23, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Making URL-based script-assisted referencing an approval-based permission is something I would support as an intermediate step. I'm not sure how that could be implemented technically, and there's a reasonable plurality of people who will argue that increasing any barriers to referencing will result in fewer references, but I believe the current state of the field is that a fair amount of the time a bare URL is better than whatever the tools turn it into, because at least it's not wrong. Folly Mox (talk) 05:29, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Another option could be to whitelist domains where the URL parser understands how to retrieve most of the information correctly, and have the tools throw an error like Sorry, we don't understand links from that domain yet for websites not on the list. Folly Mox (talk) 03:56, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

It seems to do a more-or-less okay job with large academic publisher websites where there's some kind of machine-readable structured metadata available. –jacobolus (t) 04:18, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Funnily, I have a pending task to fix mangled cites from Singapore-based sources. – robertsky (talk) 20:28, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

They're everywhere. I was as Help talk:Citation Style 1 yesterday asking about whether they would be able to make the citation templates throw errors for things like numeric strings or full sentences in last1= fields, and even the most obvious clear error category still listed as maintenance rather than error, Category:CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list‎, has a population, at time of this edit, like this:
Category:CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list‎ (58,527)

There has been some commentary at the MfD that the reference filling scripts used to be even more inaccurate, so it's probably safe to assume that for every ReferenceExpander– / Philoserf-related citation mangle, there are a half dozen more lying around undiscovered.

String parsing for citation parameters across the set of all web pages with arbitrary formatting is never going to yield perfect results, so the culture of trusting the code output without double-checking really has to go away. Folly Mox (talk) 14:53, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Huh I guess the function that displays category populations doesn't respond intuitively to subst. When I made the above post the category I mentioned contained 1688 pages. Now it's increased to 1691. The points remain valid, I think. Folly Mox (talk) 23:10, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Next steps

I've opened a discussion at mw:Talk:Citoid#Improving citation quality, hoping to get some clarity on how up to date the Zotero translators Citoid uses are, and Citoid's behaviour when a translator for a particular domain is unavailable.

For those unfamiliar with how automated referencing is handled by all tools reliant upon Citoid, including ReferenceExpander, ReFill, and the visual editor, what I've been able to determine is that Citoid relies upon code snippets from the Zotero community called "translators", that scrape metadata from individual domains, which it then converts into cite templates. When the Zotero translators work accurately – like for large academic publishers or the New York Times – we get great citations. When an appropriate translator cannot be found (whether it doesn't exist or isn't in the suite of translators Citoid uses), Citoid has its own default fallback functionality, which seldom produces accurate references, according to everyone's experience in this cleanup project. The tools relying on Citoid then insert the reference somewhere in the article being edited, without examining Citoid's output. Certain values in certain parameters will cause an article to be placed in one or more applicable maintenance categories, which I think is done at the time of edit by the modules that handle the citation templates.

I want to apologise personally to User:BrandonXLF for the assumption I and others made that the errors in ReferenceExpander's output were of his own design. Overwriting existing references was a major design flaw, but apart from that serious issue, the script honestly isn't that bad, and I shouldn't have blamed its silly output on him.

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:BrandonXLF/ReferenceExpander is nearing completion, with a closure having been requested. As I type this, we've repaired, reverted, or checked (in order of frequency) about 1340 of the c. 2400 diffs that comprise this phase of the cleanup. Labour hours are in the hundreds. Next steps include finding ReferenceExpander diffs outside the window of the original database query. There are about a thousand from the second half of 2022, before Philoserf started to go hard, and I don't think these have been included in the cleanup hub. There are probably more from even earlier, and possibly some since April. I proposed at Citoid's talkpage having it generate a warning if it has to resort to its own fallback scraper, and having it add a hidden comment to the references so generated, but those are both dev issues. We might ask script maintainers to have their scripts generate hidden comments in their citations if the Citoid devs are not receptive, or have their scripts add articles they touch to a hidden maintenance category like Category:Articles with unchecked automated references or something, to facilitate further cleanup.

For the next phases of cleanup, it's clear AN is not the correct venue for the discussion, but I wanted to leave these thoughts here before this thread is archived.

Folly Mox (talk) 09:50, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

I'd just like to note for the record, particularly for those here who have taken issue with the Foundation's responsiveness in the past, that I have already received two replies from a WMF contractor, on a Sunday, at mw:Talk:Citoid. Folly Mox (talk) 20:23, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Something in the citation infrastructure chokes on The Hollywood Reporter, generating corrupted bylines. For example, a story by Kimberly Nordyke and Mike Barnes got credited to last=Barnes|first=Kimberly Nordyke,Mike|last2=Nordyke|first2=Kimberly|last3=Barnes|first3=Mike. And a story by Gregg Kilday and Duane Byrge is credited to last=Byrge|first=Gregg Kilday,Duane|last2=Kilday|first2=Gregg|last3=Byrge|first3=Duane. This has probably affected articles about showbiz that are not on the current cleanup list. XOR'easter (talk) 22:10, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

While well-meaning, I think it is time to stop using the Administrator's Noticeboard to discuss issues with Citoid such as how it handles citations from a particular website. There's no administrator action required here. Time to close this thread and move conversation elsewhere. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 06:30, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

If there's a better place for all this, I'm fine with the discussion moving there; the thread only started here because of the earlier two and the lack of an obvious better option. (It's about sourcing but not the reliability of any individual source, so it doesn't seem to belong at RSN. It's a slog like a CCI, but it isn't a CCI. And of course, we were less in the technical weeds at the time.) If anyone opens a new thread, please include it with the others in the handy list at the cleanup worksheet. XOR'easter (talk) 18:00, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Unblock request for Djm-leighpark

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Djm-leighpark (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has requested a standard offer. They were blocked in April 2022 for this reason: Disruptive editing: perennial disruption, WP:BATTLEGROUND and WP:CIR (both language and policy). The following is their unblock request:

My editing merited a block because I was incorrect to challenge an administrator as I did following block following the 16 April 2022 ANI; even if I felt convinced I had due cause. The fact this arose out of harassment by a block-evading sock is in many ways irrelevant - I accept I needed to maintain better control even in this and other difficult situations and I had overly-harassed the sock myself in that case before the sockpuppetry was known. I acknowledge with shame some of my earlier interactions with administrators (and others) in some pressure situations: most especially in some cases where I was totally wrong. I also need to avoid the use of slang, as identified in of one (or more) of my blocks. I will focus in the future to ensure problems are raised calmly through the proper channels and processes and avoid BATTLEGROUND and CIR.

For constructive edits on the English Wikipedia I would expect to be improving a range of articles though I regard my particular areas of interest are Irish Railway History, some biographies (mostly non-blp e.g. engineers and whatever the BBC news website throws up), local/Irish settlement articles, and local/Irish river systems. In particular I am keen to improve article sourcing and have been accumulating books and and identifying books online for this purpose. I would resume doing anti-vandal work etc. Regardless of the outcome of this appeal I (as DeirgeDel) expect to continue activity on Wikidata, Commons, enWQ and gaWP but would likely avoid :simpleWP as too difficult!

If possible I would like to request a Standard Offer please.

Thankyou in anticipation and feel free to ask any specific questions. -- Djm-leighpark(DeirgeDel) ^t_a^c 00:24, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

My alternate accounts :DeirgeDel, Bigdelboy, Djm-mobile, DeirgeBot

— Ingenuity (talk • contribs) 16:53, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

For more context, this thread is the background behind the block. — Ingenuity (talk • contribs) 16:55, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

• DeirgeDel (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Bigdelboy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Djm-mobile (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• DeirgeBot (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Socks/alts. Secretlondon (talk) 14:24, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

• Comment. The problem wasn't "challenging an administrator"; people do that all the time. The problem was a long history of bizarre behavior that invoked CIR concerns. If Djm did return, if anything, I'd suggest avoiding anti-vandal work or collaboration involving other people at all given past problems with over-the-top and hard to understand communication... although I'm honestly not sold their content contributions are always a net positive, either. I'd suggest that if allowed back, at a minimum, Djm restrict himself to no new articles and to uncontroversial type things like finding references for trains & railways. SnowFire (talk) 00:13, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
  • Djm-leighpark replied here. Djm, I'm not angry at you or anything. I'm quite sure you operate in good faith. I'm not still salty over Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Overwriting (computer science) or something (while creating that article was bad judgment on your part IMO, everyone is at variance with the community sometime on article standards, so individually, it's not a big deal... although there are other, similar borderline articles that probably should be examined). The problem is - to repeat myself - "a long history of bizarre behavior that invoked CIR concerns." Which you should know already, because El_C's original block wrote "perennial disruption, WP:BATTLEGROUND and WP:CIR (both language and policy)," so trust an admin, not me. It's not any one single "bad" thing you did that annoyed people. It's a long, long pattern of strange behavior - the equivalent of 100 individual 1-point demerits, rather than a single 100 point demerit. The essential analogy of CIR is the volunteer at the local garden who sows too many weeds and pulls up too many good plants. Even if this person genuinely loves the garden, at some point they need to be ushered out as doing more harm than good. The fact that some of the work they do is fine is not necessarily enough to keep them around; like I said, I don't think you're a vandalism-only account or anything. For the "collaboration" note, maybe that was too strong a word, but your !votes on Wikipedia-namespace issues were very often nonsensical or weak IMO and I'm sure at least some closers discarded them on that reason. It's harsh to say at loud, but true. It's hard to stress just how nonsensical your statements talking with Polycarp were in the Monisha Shah incident that led to the ban, which is what I was thinking of when saying "collaboration" to try to lead you away from interactions like that. Anyway, I don't doubt that restrictions would stop you from doing some useful work, but understand that we don't need some useful work, we need mostly useful work. Restrictions would be guardrails preventing you from going down the same path as caused problems before. (But that might be getting ahead of ourselves - there's certainly a strong case just to say it's not even worth trying loosening restrictions.) SnowFire (talk) 15:07, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
  • I'll keep this short since I don't want to be grave-dancing, but Djm-leighpark: You're basically wrong about everything that I wrote, and ensured I don't have much confidence in you working on any project, so yeah, support conversion to full siteban and possible heads-up to other projects to check his work. I specifically said the problem was not any one old dispute over the Overwriting article, and yet you want to relitigate old disputes. I didn't say anything about the substance of the Shah article, just that your words on your own talk page made zero sense REGARDLESS of what came before, and yet you dive into the irrelevant background of that incident. You're offended that I brought up the fact that you were blocked on reasons of CIR, but you actually were blocked on grounds of CIR, so take it up with the blocking admin not me. And you spend great length going on about irrelevant issues, like how you'll plan on editing under a new account name. Nobody cares about that. The problem is with you, not the name of the account, so constantly saying you'll edit under a different name is irrelevant to an appeal. Mention it once as an FYI if you must. I'm afraid CIR is still a problem: if you are this bad at understanding what others write, then you're going to continue to be a net negative with others. You'll just have to trust us that those beautiful flowers you think you're planting in the garden are actually weeds (or to make the analogy very explicit: you think your contributions are good, but they're not). SnowFire (talk) 22:26, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't think I ever disagreed with DJM's aims over anything, but I found discussions involving them to be like wading through treacle. Even when they were posting to my talk page agreeing with me, it was very hard to parse what they were saying. This problem, which might be second-language based or might be neurodivergence making for disorganised language (also guilty as charged, m'lud), was just very hard work. That's not to say that I shouldn't've put the work in, or that the issue wasn't at my end for not being able or willing to do so, but it got tiring and I was not unhappy when they went away.

On that basis... yeah, I'd welcome them back – as I say, I don't think I ever disagreed with their aims even when their methods didn't suit me personally – but I'd like them to... I don't know... slow down a bit? Think on before posting on talk pages? Spend some time working on what they want to say vs. what they end up typing? Something like that. My thoughts here, ironically, are unclear. — Trey Maturin™ 16:12, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't think the basis for allowing an appeal is whether we disagree with an editor's aims. It's more appropriate to look at the reasons for the block and whether they have been addressed. In this case it seems to be about handling conflict and incomprehensible responses. I guess what I would like to see is evidence that DJM can now handle conflict calmly and cogently. Absent that I don't see that we have a basis to consider an unblock. Spartaz ^Humbug! 17:16, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Barely coherent walls of text such as this do not convince me that the issues that led to the block will not recur. Spicy (talk) 04:38, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree. Sandstein 12:44, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree with every word Spicy said here. — Trey Maturin™ 16:23, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

• I see zero reason to lift the block at this time. The 5 accounts just adds to the issues --Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 12:20, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
• Argumentative unblock responses do not convince me that we won't immediately be back here. Decline request. Star Mississippi 13:30, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

  followed by The Blocking admins and cabal disruption to an ANI I seriously took to ANI, easily remembered by their warrior at the top of the talk page, was an incitement to BATTLEGROUND. Zero acceptance of blame, zero indication this is going to have a productive outcome. Star Mississippi 14:16, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

  and suggest re-revocation of TPA to prevent the immolation that appears to be forthcoming. Star Mississippi 15:59, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose - There's no benefit to the project here by unblocking and seemingly great benefit by leaving them blocked. Maybe worth converting this to a full siteban. - Who is John Galt? ✉ 15:31, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. Having looked at Djm-leighpark's latest output - borderline incoherent, and clearly making things worse - I simply cannot see how anyone in that state of mind could usefully contribute to the project. And given past history, it seems highly unlikely that the situation will change for the better. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:05, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose my only interaction with Djm-leighpark was at WP:Requests for adminship/Hog Farm#Oppose, where the oppose in question was completely incomprehensible gibberish. The writing above is marginally better, but not enough that I can see any return to editing being a net positive. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 02:08, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose for now. DJM is still too emotionally invested in Wikipedia and, as evidenced from their Talk page, keeps attacking fellow editors, often for imaginary "offences". While I don't think they deserve a lifelong ban, I'd recommend them to wait another six months before re-applying. I still hope they will understand one day that Wikipedia is not a battleground but a collaborative effort where bold edits are done with respect and in good faith and don't usually require 10,000 bytes of passive aggression in response. — kashmīrī ^TALK 10:59, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
• Comment I've been asked by El C to reremove TPA. I hate to cut short appellant's ability to respond, but it looks like they've seized this opportunity to deepen the whole. Well, that was the whole point of carrying the request here-- test drive their constructiveness and ability to focus. It also looks like this request is going badly, so maybe once I wake up (it's 3am) if no one opposes TPA removal I will remove TPA. Thnks. (now I'm ramb;ling)-- Deepfriedokra (talk) 07:11, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

  If I hadn't suggested it up thread, I'd have done it myself. There's no path to this ending productively. Are you OK with the inevitable UTRS flood since you're the one who watches that the most? Star Mississippi 12:35, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

  In all likelihood, UTRS access might get pulled too if their behavior continues. I sincerely hope they don't appeal to UTRS until 2024 to be honest to give them time to adjust and focus on why they are blocked. RickinBaltimore (talk) 12:39, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Potentially involved block by AlisonW

Note: This matter is now being discussed at ARBCOM. -Ad Orientem (talk) 01:22, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

I have just accepted an unblock request by Veverve, after AlisonW (not to be confused with Alison) blocked him for Disruptive editing: Regular massive deletions of content the editor feels are irrelevant over many articles. See my comments at User talk:Veverve § Unblock request - June 2023 for my reasoning in accepting the request. An unjustified block in itself would not merit an AN post—most admins make bad blocks from time to time—but there is a particular aspect that I think needs community review, specifically the question of WP:INVOLVED. (To be clear, I saw grounds to reverse the block, in line with the norms established at WP:RAAA, regardless of whether it qualified as involved.) The sequence of events here is:

1. 00:56, 19 January 2023: Veverve removes the "In popular culture" section from Metatron per WP:TRIVIA
2. 16:40, 8 June 2023: AlisonW reverts with summary whole section removed without explanation. Content is relevant and encyclopaedic so reinstated. Discuss on talk page if you consider it necessary.
3. 05:44, 9 June 2023: Veverve reverts with summary I have explained each and every removal. Read my edit summaries and do not act as if I did not explain myself
4. 05:46, 9 June 2023: Veverve comments on AlisonW's talk that what is WP:TRIVIA is not encyclopedic.
5. 14:31, 9 June 2023: AlisonW reverts with default rollback summary (misusing rollback)
6. 14:33–41, 9 June 2023: AlisonW comments on Veverve's talk that I can see that you have strong views about religion, however removing an entire section, "in popular culture" is unacceptable and is far from the 'trivia' you suggested on my talk page. This is not a religious text, it is a place to discover information, as such the section is entirely appropriate (emphasis original). She also requests he take down his {{retired}} banner.
7. 14:47–52, 9 June 2023: AlisonW reverts 3 more Veverve edits on other pages.
8. 14:55, 9 June 2023: AlisonW blocks Veverve (without block notice)
9. 14:57–59, 9 June 2023: 2 more reverts, one by rollback

The INVOLVED line can be a bit blurry sometimes when dealing with content-based disruption (for instance, admins are allowed to revert users they've blocked for NPOV violations), but to me this seems to cross that line, and looks more like a case of an admin blocking someone for reverting them. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 01:19, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

This is an utterly appalling block. Indefensible. AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:34, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Not too surprising when considering the fact that, apart from Veverve's block, AlisonW has blocked only two users since 2012, both in 2021. The majority of their blocks have taken place between 2006–2009. —Nythar (💬-🍀) 01:49, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Ouch. As a result of my questionable life choices, I like to try to examine others' actions in the most favorable possible light. Even doing so here, every interpretation boils down to "this was wildly wrong." Dumuzid (talk) 02:00, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Compare and contrast Veverve's and AlisonW's contribution history. [7][8] It is simply absurd that an out-of-touch legacy admin should have the power to behave in such a peremptory manner. As for the disputed 'in popular culture' section in Metatron, the removal was entirely in accord with current practice, and I'd have done the same if I'd seen it. Much of it is trivial fancruft, with nothing remotely approaching the sort of independently sourced commentary necessary to justify inclusion. This might have ben acceptable in 2005, but Wikipedia has moved on since then, and an admin unwilling to accept that things have changed should not be permitted to continue in that position. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:21, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

A legacy admin doesn't understand widely accepted standards for admin actions? Must be a day that ends in y. Given how much scrutiny new RfA candidates can go through, it's surprising there's never been a real effort to apply the same scrutiny to admins that were chosen when it was given out like candy before ~2005. Unless someone want to try and convince me that someone with less than 2,000 edits in the last 10 years (and only a few thousand at the height of their activity) would pass an RfA reconfirmation today. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:35, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

• Endorse Unblock I'm having a hard time seeing anything that could be described as reasonable justification for that block. This was a poor judgement call. An apology is in order along with a nice big seafood dinner served with the community's compliments. -Ad Orientem (talk) 02:42, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

  This is more than a 'poor judgement call', it is an unequivocal abuse of admin tools. We can and do desysop for that. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:04, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

  I disagree. This doesn't look malicious to me. It looks like an exceptionally poor judgement call. A formal caution and a trouting are probably called for. I'm not seeing a need for more unless a pattern of similar bad judgement calls can be found. All of which said, I'm not a fan of people hanging onto the tools who aren't planning to use them. But that's a topic for another discussion. -Ad Orientem (talk) 03:31, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

• Non-admin but peripherally involved comment Endorse unblock with prejudice: I've known Veverve for around two years on-project and I'm familiar with the justified blocks and sanctions against them. However, V has been a broadly good-faith contributor during this time with occasional bouts of excessive deletionism. A block executed with the purpose of defeating an arguably justified series of deletions is wholly unacceptable in of itself. This is accentuated by the legacy admin's irregular use of their tools over the course of the last decade. I think that a reconsideration of whether AlisonW can be trusted with the mop might be suitable. ~ Pbritti (talk) 03:02, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
• Thinking further on this in light of what others have said, my current feeling is that this was probably not intentionally abusive, but shows a troubling disconnect with current norms. If AlisonW were under the (very mistaken) impression that removing "in popular culture" sections is widely considered disruptive, then she would have seen her actions as resolving a conduct issue, not a content dispute, same as the hypothetical admin who removes blatantly POV-pushing content and then blocks the account responsible. So to me the real issue is that her understanding of what constitutes disruptive editing is so far-flung from current norms, and what I would like to see is some acknowledgment that she needs to better familiarize herself with those norms before making future blocks. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 03:12, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
  • I'm sympathetic to this best-light reading of AlisonW's actions but V linked WP:TRIVIA in an edit. A block subsequent to that premised solely on V being disruptive would require either a.) AW missing the content of that edit (which is hard to imagine) or b.) willful ignorance. ~ Pbritti (talk) 03:17, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
• I knew something tickled at my mind when I saw this. I was able to find what I recalled, an instance when AlisonW threatened to block another editor for removing a template she was adding to a bunch of articles regarding Wikia. That template ({{Wikia is not Wikipedia}}) was later deleted at TfD, but the discussion and block threat, originally from the template talk thread, were archived at Wikipedia talk:Templates for deletion/Log/2008 February 5#Removal. It looks like I warned AlisonW not to make the block, so that's probably why I recalled the incident.[9] Now, to be sure, that was in 2008, and that may as well be antiquity in Wikipedia time, but just to clarify that this is not AlisonW's first time around with questionable admin decisions while involved. (For the sake of clarity, the block was completely inappropriate and AlisonW was clearly much too involved to make it, and I support Tamzin's reversal of it.) Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 04:18, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

• AlisonW reverted/rollbacked me on 7 pages, not 4. Here are all of the reverts/rollbacks:

• Document on Human Fraternity
• Seven deadly sins
• Metatron
• Do-it-yourself biology
• Vocationist Fathers
• Contemporary Catholic liturgical music
• General Congregation of the Anatolian Turkish Orthodox

I consider all but one (the TRIVIA one) of those reverts/rollbacks to have been motivated not by editorial concerns, but as an automatism (4 out of 7 have a summary along the lines of "reverting removal" without any clear justification of why the revert/rollback was ever needed, and one has no edit summary at all). I also would like to point out that that AlisonW clearly violated WP:BURDEN on many cases. Veverve (talk) 06:14, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

I have a suspicion that the Vocationist Fathers article is a copyright violation: compare early versions with this: [10] And while it isn't reasonable to expect admins (or any other contributor) to check ever revert for such violations, I'd have hoped that anyone with an ounce of sense would look askance at phraseology like this:

By the reality of their vocation-oriented charism, a “Vocationist”, a name given to them by their founder, Fr. Giustino Russolillo, and coined from the word “Vocation”, is one who has an exceptional love for vocation, one who is a specialist in caring for vocations, one who dedicates his life to vocations, and one who is committed to working and praying for vocations. According to Fr. Giustino, other religious institutes wait for vocations and welcome them, while the Vocationists, personally and purposely, go out searching for them, especially through their catechetical schools and other apostolates. In other words, their activities are highly riveted on matters of vocation and in all, their immediate objective, though not their goal, is to see people being guided to properly discern their vocations and being helped to realize them by responding appropriately to God's call in their lives. Their ultimate goal is to help all attain Divine Union with the Blessed Trinity by means of universal sanctification of all souls.

That doesn't need a citation. It needs a complete rewrite for neutral encyclopaedic phrasing. No admin should be restoring that, with nothing beyond a 'citation needed' tag. AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:56, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

• Regardless of that section at Metatron being an "In Popular Culture" one, it was a pile of crap anyway [11], as you can see most of the sections were either unsourced or sources to non-RS such as IMDB or forums. I note this quote from User:AlisonW; ...editing the content in order to increase that record of knowledge is and will always be far more important than getting hung up on 'process' and 'policy'. The only policy that matters is to *add useful stuff*.... Given that and the terrible INVOLVED block which Alison used to enforce her ideas of what Wikipedia should be like, I suggest that she seriously considers handing in her bit to save everyone the timesink that is an ArbCom case. Black Kite (talk) 13:09, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

  Black Kite Do you have a diff for that quote? -- RoySmith (talk) 14:23, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

  Oh, never mind. It's on their user page. Dooh! -- RoySmith (talk) 14:30, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

• Getting past the easy stuff first, there's no problem with Tamzin's unblock. As for AlisonW, I don't think we're in desysop territory yet, but it's clear that if they're going to continue to use the tools, they need to make a serious effort to get up to speed on how things have changed on enwiki since they were last active. I don't mind that they're an inclusionist, but they need to understand that policies (and culture) have evolved. It's not enough to "add useful stuff" anymore (and hasn't been for many years). We've gotten tougher on WP:N and WP:V, insisting on more and better citations, and moving away from the whole "In popular culture" concept. But deeper than that, the concept of WP:INVOLVED goes back to at least 2008, but I suspect it's much older than that. So it's not like that's something that grew up after they had put their mop in hibernation.
  AlisonW, you need to take a step back, acknowledge your error, and make a commitment to review recent (by which I mean the past decade or so) policy changes. If you're not sure about a admin action you're planning to perform and you'd prefer to ask off-wiki, I'm sure any of the admins who have responded to this thread (including myself) would be happy to offer advice by email. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:52, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

  Don't we have a page for returning admins that updates them on changes? Could swear it exists but can't remember the name. I halfway wonder if there should be a big box at the top of that page saying "Notability and inclusion standards have become significantly more strict since the project's early years", since that seems to be the top recurring issue. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 15:11, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

  Maybe Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention/administrators? DanCherek (talk) 15:14, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

  Reading through the Guideline and policy news sections of Wikipedia:Administrators' newsletter/Archive would also be useful. It only goes back to 2017, but it's a start. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:35, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

• I agree with RoySmith that trouting is most appropriate, in the hope that it doesn't happen again. Regarding WP:INVOLVED, it's been an understood thing as long as I can remember. It was stated as a principle in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Stevertigo in 2005. Mackensen (talk) 15:03, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

  I also agree, but I would like to see at least an acknowledgement that they have seen this thread, taken the message onboard, and will make an effort to avoid issues in the future. Ymblanter (talk) 15:28, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, you're right, and I should have mentioned that. Mackensen (talk) 15:36, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

  Per WP:ADMINACCT, admins are required to communicate, and may face sanctions or desysopping for failure to "address concerns of the community". AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:43, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, they are. AlisonW hasn't edited since the block. She appears to edit rather infrequently, which means both that this isn't necessarily deliberate and that they shouldn't be blocking. I don't think a desysopping is warranted absent a pattern of tool misuse. Mackensen (talk) 15:52, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

  So how do you suggest the community prevents an admin who clearly doesn't understand current practice and/or doesn't care about it from returning from a long (and possibly convenient) absence from misusing their tools again? Not sanctioning someone because they don't comply with accountability requirements is simply untenable. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:59, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

  What I've suggested above is the functional equivalent of a yellow card. Call it a warning, call it a reprimand, the point is that you communicate that someone's behavior was below expectations and that if it happens again there are likely to be far more serious consequences (desysopping in the case of an admin). A feedback loop that goes from zero to desysopped, or zero to banned, isn't helpful when working with a good-faith editor who made a mistake. Absent a demonstrable pattern (pace the IP below, that pattern was adduced with Scottywong), I think that's a viable approach. I made a similar suggestion a few weeks ago regarding ErnestKrause and the GAN process: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1128#ErnestKrause disruption at GAN. This does depend on AlisonW engaging with this discussion. Mackensen (talk) 21:35, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

It’s wild how so many people were out for ScottyWong’s scalp over the “Mr Squiggles” remark but here we have people willing to give a slap on the wrist to admin who violated the brightline INOLVED policy. 2601:196:4600:5BF0:A44C:D931:2B68:E6CE (talk) 18:24, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Who cares what IPs with one edit think. Ymblanter (talk) 18:36, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Actually, it's not only one edit: see Special:contributions/2601:196:4600:5BF0:0:0:0:0/64.--Bbb23 (talk) 13:12, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

I see, thanks. Impressive. Ymblanter (talk) 16:28, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

They're not wrong though, are they? Black Kite (talk) 08:25, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Meh--there's a big difference between an admin making a bad block and an admin using (what was generally perceived to be) racist language, and in the other case there was, or was alleged to be, a pattern. Drmies (talk) 03:07, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

I think someone would need to put the work in to explain how they're right. An INVOLVED block is an error in judgment, and no one's suggested that this is part of a pattern. Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Scottywong/Evidence suggests that the situations aren't really comparable. Mackensen (talk) 11:20, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

We could discuss whether the cases are similar and whether people are the same (I can not recollect myself saying anything about the Scottywong case for example) but I guess it is best left to users in good standing to open such discussions, and it should be probably separate from the current case. Ymblanter (talk) 16:30, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

I thought WP:NPA applied to IPs too. -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 05:05, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Note AlisonW has now started editing again. She must be aware of this discussion. [12] AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:26, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

WP:THEYCANTHEARYOU. That edit was with the Android app. In theory, yes, she should have. But in practice, I wouldn't be so sure. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 01:18, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

She appears to have email enabled. Has anyone tried that? AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:26, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

I just did that. -- RoySmith (talk) 01:30, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Someone with the tools really needs to have notifications enabled. No one is expected to live on here. But admins must be able to respond in a timely manner to concerns that are raised by editors or the broader community. AlisonW's failure to respond to or address this little dumpster fire is not a good look. If they had stepped up right away and acknowledged their mistake, apologized, and promised to be more careful going forward, I think it likely this conversation would have wrapped up by now. Yet, here we are. Still... -Ad Orientem (talk) 02:28, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi Roy, you say you tried email but I've not received anything via WP mail. How did you send it? --AlisonW (talk) 12:42, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

@AlisonW I clicked the "Email this user" link on your user page, which takes you to Special:EmailUser/AlisonW. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:30, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

[/me goes to check ... ah ... correction made to tld concerned. Many thanks. --AlisonW (talk) 14:51, 12 June 2023 (UTC)]

@Suffusion of Yellow: For what it's worth, I've been using the app regularly for over a year and I always receive notifications (whether I'm pinged or when someone messages me on my talk page) I'm aware that there are some pre-existing mobile communication bugs and differences between whether you use iOS/android (I can see my watchlist because I have the latter)... but my point is that AlisonW could have been made aware of this discussion through the app given my own experiences. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 21:47, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

• If AlisonW does not respond to this post, it could presumably mean that she does not consider this to be a tool misuse issue -- opening the chance for this happening in the future. In the face of non-acknowledgement and possibility of disruption continuing in the future, I would suggest we take the stronger path and allow the community to decide on whether this becomes a blockable offence (to prevent further disruption). Of course, if she responds and apologises, that's about it. Lourdes 09:53, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

  Outside of emergency blocks for ongoing abuse (not applicable here), I don't think it makes sense to block admins as a way of restricting admin tool use. If AlisonW continues to edit without responding, I think the appropriate next step would be ArbCom. But I'm still hoping we can avoid it coming to that. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 10:03, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

OK, having responded originally at [diff] I'm happy to restate that opinion here. I noted on recent edits the massive deletion of content (one person's irrelevancy is another person's desired search result) on the 'Metatron' page (sidebar: The first I'd ever heard of this belief subject was in the movie 'Dogma', which reference was part of that deletion). I didn't *edit*, per se, the page at all, just rv the deletion, primarily because of the volume of information and links deleted. Veverve responded "I have explained each and every removal" which I disagree with (despite stating "This user is no longer active on Wikipedia" on User:Veverve they have made over 100 edits in the last two days; it is impossible to find such details without spending hours.) Because of that I took a look at their recent edit history and noted other examples of mass content deletion (some of which just needed references, writing "not notable people" for a redlink is a reason to _create_ an article, not delete content imho) and, taking on board the frequent comments on their talk page regarding substantial other content deletions it was clear that there are problems with that user imposing their personal beliefs on WP content. As an example I quote "you are currently edit-warring across a wide swath of liturgical calendar-related articles. You are fighting multiple editors who disagree with your unilateral decision to gut all of these articles of their usefulness. Could you please cease and desist the edit-wars, firstly, and secondly, consider that your decision goes against consensus and that you should permit others to hold contrary opinions about this? Elizium23 (talk) 13:07, 9 September 2022 (UTC)". That they have had repeated blocks I concluded another was necessary, and did so. Sadly, yes, I failed to make the proper notification on their page, for which I apologise. I stand by my decision though, formed of many years involvement at all levels with Wikipedia in all its forms. I wasn't 'involved' in the content of the articles at any point - this was purely acting in the best interests of retaining encyclopaedic information. If I may also make a couple of asides, (a) I don't live here, anything substantial needs me to be on a 'proper' machine so that I can properly see diffs and references, hence replying now not at the weekend. I have never _stopped_ editing. (b) raw edit counts are meaningless - anyone can game the system by doing each small change separately. I choose to edit in the browser with extensive use of preview. ymmv. (c) Yes, I saw this discussion start but didn't jump straight in because the comments and views of others are more important initially. How people choose to view that is up to them. I would additionally comment that "out-of-touch legacy admin" is an interesting attack. Those of us who have been around a long time are, very definitely, 'not' out of touch, indeed I'd argue that we have shown by our longevity that we have the best interests of this project at heart. Obviously, ymmv applies but 'new' isn't automatically 'better'. --AlisonW (talk) 12:38, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

"acting in the best interests of retaining encyclopaedic information" **is** being involved in content. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:06, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Then guilty as charged as that is the purpose of Wikipedia! Check Wikipedia:Prime objective --AlisonW (talk) 13:08, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

With this [13] edit summary, you were clearly and unambiguously involved. Inviting someone to engage in talk-page discussions over disputed content is involvement, by any sensible definition whatsoever. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:12, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Andy, when I wrote "Discuss on talk page if you consider it necessary" I was referring to the action I was taking at that moment and adding a comment to the rollback; my concern was not with the 'content of the content' but with the deletion of the content and, accordingly, I asked them to talk to me before taking they took any further action. They chose not to. --AlisonW (talk) 13:26, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, but that simply makes no sense. Talk pages are there to discuss content. You invited discussion on the talk page, after editing the article (and yes, restoring deleted content is editing, as Wikipedia policy defines it, despite your earlier suggestion to the contrary). By any sensible reading, the purpose of the discussion was to determine whether the content should appear in the article. If that wasn't the purpose of inviting discussion there, what exactly were you expecting to discuss? AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:38, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

@AlisonW This was a classic content dispute and you used the tools to enforce your side of it. That you don't seem to understand how wrong that was, is frankly very disturbing. This despite a wall of comments above from a wide range of experienced editors, including other admins, panning your block. -Ad Orientem (talk) 13:53, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

I asked them to talk to me before taking any further action. They chose not to. Ergo they got blocked? I'd see that as a pretty egregious misuse of power, but perhaps that's just me... (Non-admin comment) Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 14:01, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

I saw what I believed to be a pattern of vandalism - large deletions of content with little evidence of consideration - and took appropriate action. It wasn't about the 'content' and I take no view on whether the content of that range of articles is good or bad. I'd refer you to Wikipedia:Edit_warring#What_edit_warring_is on that point. --AlisonW (talk) 19:28, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Nothing in WP:PRIME (notwithstanding that it is at any rate an essay, and cannot possibly overrule WP:INVOLVED which is part of the WP:ADMIN policy) says that retaining information is inherently desirable. It explicitly says that Wikipedia should be a summary of and gateway to all of the world's knowledge, which by definition requires that there must be some selection and exclusion. It's all very well trying to smuggle in the assumption that the content in question was "encyclopaedic", but that's begging the question: Veverve had clearly articulated that they did not believe that it was encyclopedic, and the way to resolve a content dispute on Wikipedia is to discuss on the talkpage, not to abuse the block button. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 13:48, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

(ec) I found the "not involved" rationale to be astounding. In essence that if they were actively editing/reverting in the contested area but in their opinion it was "acting in the best interests of retaining encyclopaedic information." that that makes it not count as involvement. That's exactly what involvement is. North8000 (talk) 13:56, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Re: "Then guilty as charged as that is the purpose of Wikipedia!"... You're missing the point, which is that admins who involve themselves in content should not take admin action over that content. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:01, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

I've been in the situation of being the old-timer who curses the Eternal September of the community and sees the new ways as morally degenerate. I don't think that position is the correct one here. Wikipedia has changed in many ways over the years, and the changes to policy and culture relevant here have been changes for the better. (non-admin commment) XOR'easter (talk) 16:27, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Beyond the INVOLVED issue, I will note the admin seems to be aware of violating WP:BURDEN by restoring unsourced content without providing a source to support it (noted other examples of mass content deletion (some of which just needed references [...])), and does not seem to care.

Quoting Elizium23 who is now permanently blocked, and thus cannot provide further information and details, is quite unfair to Elizium23. Veverve (talk) 14:31, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

• It is fantastically ironic that AlisonW says they blocked the user because it was clear that there are problems with that user imposing their personal beliefs on WP content but are completely unable to see that they blocked them because their actions conflicted with their personal beliefs on WP content. Seriously, you couldn't make it up. Since AlisonW still does not seem to understand why their block was completely wrong (indeed, she does not appear to understand WP:INVOLVED, so that's hardly surprising), I really don't think a slap on the wrist is going to be the answer here. Black Kite (talk) 14:54, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

  Yeah, the comment was bad. After this comment from AlisonW, I don’t see anything less than a referral to Arbcom as suitable. Courcelles (talk) 14:59, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

• @AlisonW I have stated that I don't think your actions were malicious, and that remains my view. But your recent comments have raised serious questions in my mind regarding your general understanding of very fundamental policy and guidelines, in particular INVOLVED. So much so that I think it touches on WP:CIR. At this point, I think you should review the comments in this discussion from numerous experienced editors and consider voluntarily surrendering the tools. Absent which I have to ask if you are open to WP:ADMINRECALL, and if so, under what conditions? -Ad Orientem (talk) 15:41, 12 June 2023 (UTC)AlisonW

AlisonW It's an area where you are not active anyway and which requires an extremely strong current knowledge of policy including admin policy and related mechanisms. In this case having / not having the role/tools is simply based on whether or not that is the case and not a reflection on you as an editor or thankfulness for your work. North8000 (talk) 16:19, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

• Given that AlisonW has made just three blocks in the past decade I view any referral to the Arbitration Committee as a grossly premature response to one-off behavior. Nobody's ever referred to the Committee after their first incident of incivility. – wbm1058 (talk) 16:56, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

This isn't an 'incident of incivility'. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:17, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Where did you get incident of incivility from, wbm? This is, at best, a misuse of tools, and, at worst, a gross misuse of tools followed by a complete failure to understand why this was a gross misuse of tools. I can't see where incivility comes into it. I'm clearly missing something very major: can you supply diffs for this, please? — Trey Maturin™ 17:23, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Arguably this misuse of tools is a form of incivility, albeit low-level incivility. She blocked in lieu of engaging in a civil bold–revert–discuss process. My point is that if more blatant incivility doesn't merit an Arbcom case, then this certainly doesn't. – wbm1058 (talk) 17:57, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

The blocked editor was blocked for a full month as recently as three months ago (contribution history) so this block shouldn't be viewed as grossly out-of-bounds.

I don't see that this admin is particularly "INVOLVED" in religion topics, per her most-edited pages. Whereas religion topics are the blocked editor's main focus. So this is not an "INVOLVED" content dispute, just more concern for inclusion vs. exclusion of marginal content added by other editors. – wbm1058 (talk) 17:57, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

That seems the exact opposite of how the community and ArbCom have interpreted involvement. We generally don't say that admins are involved with respect to an entire topic area, even topic areas they spend most of their time in; but we do say admins are involved if they get into an edit war and then escalate by blocking, regardless of broader circumstance. I think Alison's comments have born out my appraisal that she didn't think she was doing the latter, but it's still what she did. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 18:23, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Nonsense. She didn't block "in lieu of engaging in" BRD, she reverted (and invited discussion in her edit summary) and reverted again before blocking. She was clearly involved in a content dispute, whether or not she had any former engagement with the topic. And there's nothing in WP:INVOLVED which says "it doesn't count if you are violating WP:INVOLVED to win an edit war against someone if they have recently been blocked", so Veverve's history has no bearing at all on whether this was an involved action. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 18:27, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm a little concerned that an admin who has been here for 12 years has as little understanding of WP:INVOLVED as AlisonW clearly does. Black Kite (talk) 18:49, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

(outsiders perspective) Is it possible that only in the past few years that it's become a policy that is adhered to? While the policy may have existed for a decade+ it's also reasonable to say that not everyone may have closely adhered to it (and only particularly egregious violations of it were prosecuted). Kcmastrpc (talk) 18:56, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

For the record, I've been editing WP for almost nineteen and a half years, including for the WMF office and OTRS. --AlisonW (talk) 19:21, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

• AlisonW, I am just a non-admin nobody, but I'd like to ask a clarifying question if you feel like answering. Given the benefit of hindsight, is there anything you would do differently with this situation? Relatedly, is there anything you might handle differently in the future? You are of course under no obligation to answer. I hope everyone has a good week. Dumuzid (talk) 17:02, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi. Um, simply put 'not kicked the hornet's nest'! I've never seen a plain revert or rollback as being 'involved' with an article as, for me, that means you are editing the _content_ not the existence, however it has become exceedingly clear that more recently (years=??) others consider that so. Ditto 'edit war' imho requires editing the content. Given the user's past blocking I felt I took an appropriate action but, as always, others are able to agree or disagree as they will (eg why this page and individual talk pages for users and articles exist and are in regular use.). --AlisonW (talk) 18:56, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, I appreciate the answer. Have a nice day. Dumuzid (talk) 19:00, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm sorry but I don't consider that response to be adequate. Your views on being involved are not in line with current practice, and I would like you to confirm that you would not block again in similar circumstances.-- Pawnkingthree (talk) 19:02, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

It's not in the slightest adequate. Unless you are rolling back obvious vandalism (which you weren't, regardless of your Wikipedia worldview), any change to an article makes you INVOLVED. This has been the case for at least 14 years. Also, blocking someone on the basis of their previous block record makes it even worse because it suggests you are judging their edits on the basis of their block log rather than their edits. I think it's time for ArbCom. Black Kite (talk) 19:06, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

On the particular point of "blocking someone on the basis of their previous block record" no I did not. That record did suggest to me that if one week and two week blocks in the past had not worked then maybe a month would. YMMV obviously (which it apparently does) and if I'd not read their current talk page it would have only been a single week. --AlisonW (talk) 19:17, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Except that the editor hadn't done anything wrong, so they didn't need to be blocked at all. It appears that you're still saying that you still don't understand that your block was utterly incorrect. And yet you still claim that you're not a legacy admin that's out of touch with community norms. That's clearly not the case. Black Kite (talk) 19:26, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict) That doesn't address the fundamental issue here. Even if it were true that Veverve should have been blocked (I don't think they should have been in any case, mind, but hypothetically speaking), the inappropriate thing is specifically that you, in the midst of a content dispute with them, were the one to do it. If you felt administrative intervention was necessary, you should have brought the matter to a venue like ANI and allowed uninvolved admins to decide what, if any, action needed to be taken. That's the expectation for any involved admin. Even if this were a good block, it would have still been wrong for you to be the one to make it. Does that help to make things clearer? The exact reason for the "INVOLVED" rule is that being in the midst of a situation can cloud our judgment, so we should let someone who isn't make the call. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 19:30, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

I note Wikipedia:Administrators#Involved_admins: "One important caveat is that an administrator who has interacted with an editor or topic area purely in an administrative role, or whose prior involvements are minor or obvious edits that do not show bias, is not involved and is not prevented from acting in an administrative capacity in relation to that editor or topic area.". This is absolutely the case with my actions, which I believed to be vandalism by their nature. --AlisonW (talk) 19:43, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Alison, what do you believe constitutes vandalism? Because I cannot see how any of the edits in question possibly fit the definition in WP:VANDALISM.

Policy says (emphasis original): Even if misguided, willfully against consensus, or disruptive, any good faith effort to improve the encyclopedia is not vandalism. The edits in question were made by an editor of 5 years and 50,000 edits experience, and though they have some blocks for editwarring, they were in good standing at the time of your block. They explained the reasons for their edits in their edit summaries. Do you genuinely believe that this was a bad-faith attempt to harm Wikipedia? Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 21:29, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @AlisonW: I do hope you take what Seraphimblade says above to heart — as someone who got this wrong themselves, it's painfully easy to double-down and argue the toss, but if this many people are telling you it looks involved, then its "apparent involvement" and the rest is mostly moot.. — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 19:47, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

I very much take your point, but if others want to keep on about 'involved' and policy then actually reading what it said on the subject is important. Also it should be noted that I did not engage in wheelwarring, any further action was something for others to review, not me. --AlisonW (talk) 19:54, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Then, I have to add to those who have urged you to resign the tools voluntarily. That certainly doesn't mean you'd have to leave entirely; no one's asking for a site ban, and plenty of excellent editors are non-admins or former admins. I very much hope you would stay around in that capacity. But given that you have essentially doubled down on saying you did nothing wrong, I think you have substantially lost the community's trust as an administrator, and even were you to reverse course now, I think many would see that as "too little, too late". At this point, the only ends I see to this are the easy way, and the hard way. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 20:14, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Alison: the way out of this mess is to plainly and sincerely apologise to the editor you wrongly blocked, then to promise here to never do anything similar again.

Your attempts to make this go away by citing technicalities, especially when everybody here is trying to tell you that you have made a mistake, is wikilawyering.

You probably have a few hours where you can walk this back and thus maintain your admin bit. By tomorrow morning, your only way out will be to resign. By this time tomorrow, you will be in front of ArbCom.

Please listen to what people are saying here. — Trey Maturin™ 20:24, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

I would add to Seraphimblade that you can always give up your tools and then go through the nomination process again when you're ready. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:25, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

As Tamzin noted at the top of this page, the involved block is not the only issue here. Alongside blocking Veverve, AlisonW also went on to make a series of reverts, apparently in retribution. In my opinion several of these were not only unjustified, but actively harmful. As I noted above, ignoring a possible copyright issue (which I wouldn't consider it fair to expect investigation of) the material Veverve had removed from the Vocationist Fathers article was entirely inappropriate, promotional and unencyclopedic. [14] The material AlisonW restored to Do-it-yourself biology includes at least one unsourced assertion regarding a living person, uncited since 2015, and thus arguably a WP:BLP violation, alongside a long poorly-sourced list of 'Groups and organizations' not otherwise discussed in the article. Given legitimate questions as to whether WP:MEDRS should apply to the article, and as to whether Wikipedia should be linking to apparently non-notable websites encouraging 'DIY biology' and other questionable practices with serious medical implications, a wholesale revert here seems entirely unjustified. One might perhaps argue that Veverve went too far, but that is a question best answered through policy-based discussion and if necessary dispute resolution, not wholesale reverting by an admin apparently engaging in knee-jerk mass rollback. And look at AlisonW 's revert to Contemporary Catholic liturgical music, with an edit summary stating that "Redlinks are NOT a reason for deletion, they are reason to create an article". I have no idea whether this was ever actually Wikipedia policy, but it isn't now. Not for redlinks to putative biographical articles, which per WP:REDLINKBIO should only be created for people who would likely meet Wikipedia's guidelines for notability. Did AlisonW investigate these names before restoring them to a list of 'Popular composers'? I very much doubt it, but in any case, such wholesale restoration of content in this context is unjustifiable. I haven't looked into all the other reverts, and there may be further matters of concern, but meanwhile I'd like to ask AlisonW whether she thinks it is appropriate to engage in wholesale restoration of content without apparently confirming whether it is compliant with Wikipedia policy? AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:06, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

• I cannot find any record of AlisonW ever going through the RfA process. There is a note on her user page that says Until 2006 I used a different account which also had 'admin powers', but I also can't find a record of that account. I'm not sure any of this really matters, but if AlisonW has never gone through a consensus-based RfA process (e.g. adminship was granted ex officio and never removed) that seems like it would be relevant. – bradv 00:18, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

  Well this seems a little weird. Per Wikipedia:Courtesy vanishing § What vanishing is not, Vanishing is not a way to start over with a fresh account. When you request a courtesy vanishing, it is understood that you will not be returning. If you want to start over, please follow the directions at Clean start instead of (not in addition to) this page. If you make a request to vanish, and then start over with a new account, and are then discovered, the vanishing procedure may be reversed, and your old and new accounts may be linked. – wbm1058 (talk) 00:47, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

  Her old account is documented at Wikipedia:Former administrators/reason/renamed Courcelles (talk) 00:55, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

  Based upon the info on that page, then, there's this. - jc37 01:21, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

  Wow, it's wild seeing a successful RfA with just 25 participants for an account that was around 3-4 months old with 1600 edits.

  Nearly 20 years later, a successful RfA has ten times that number of participants, and an account being around for at least a year or two with tens of thousands of edits is basically a minimum. How far this project has come! 2600:1700:87D3:3460:8836:50DB:CF58:3BA9 (talk) 01:51, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

  along with similar behavioral concerns. Unsurprisingly. Star Mississippi 01:44, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

  Seems to be a recurring theme: [15] AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:13, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

  Ok, just please stop. It's one thing to talk about current edits, it's another to go back years and try to dig up past things long resolved. If you can draw an ongoing line throughout an editor's editing history to show ongoing issues, that's one thing, but cherry picking from the past is just inappropriate. Let's please stick to the topic at hand. - jc37 02:20, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

  No digging involved. It's in the immediate history of their alt account. Star Mississippi 02:46, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

  (ec) If there was much in the way of 'current edits' - or more to the point, current admin actions - to discuss, you might have a point. Since there isn't, and since AlisonW suggests that her long-standing presence on Wikipedia justifies her remaining an admin, we are fully entitled to look at that presence. Which seems to indicate ongoing issues, going back a long way. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:47, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

• There's enough here, IMO, for the arbs to handle this via motion. Drmies (talk) 03:14, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

  Agreed. Originally I was inclined to view this as just a really bad lapse in judgement and would have been satisfied with an acknowledgment of the mistake, an apology, and a promise to be more careful going fwd. Unfortunately, I think that ship has now sailed. Based on their comments above, I no longer have confidence that they possess the requisite judgement and command of policy and guidelines for someone to be trusted with the tools. As far as I can tell they are not open to recall and have not responded to the various calls to stand down voluntarily. Regrettably, this needs to be referred to ARBCOM. I will close with a caveat. This is solely about their abillity to be trusted with the tools. It is not a reflection on their character or long history of contributions as an editor. -Ad Orientem (talk) 14:04, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

  Disagree. When asked "Given the benefit of hindsight, is there anything you would do differently with this situation? Relatedly, is there anything you might handle differently in the future?", she responded "simply put 'not kicked the hornet's nest'!" I trust her not to use the block button in this manner for, at least the next ten years. This seems like another "storm in a teacup" to me. Does AlisonW have a history of behavior unbecoming of an administrator? Some old behavior could be investigated, but it's mostly a decade or more old. wbm1058 (talk) 15:54, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

  Preferably AlisonW comes to the realization that they don't meet the current admin standards and voluntarily puts their tools and badge on the desk so to speak. @AlisonW: are you open to that or do you feel that there are compelling reasons that you remain an admin? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:11, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Arbcom

• I have opened a request for arbitration. Interested editors are invited to comment at the linked discussion. -Ad Orientem (talk) 17:38, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks. How many more such cases does it take for people to realise that we need to have a better way of removing the admin tools than referring every case to Arbcom? Phil Bridger (talk) 20:35, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

  I don't see a major problem with the current system. The need to remove the bit from admins is not altogether common. We have a situation here where a longstanding sysop has acted in a manner that is clearly inconsistent with community expectations and the broadly accepted interpretation of some fairly important policy/guidelines. The matter was discussed here with a broad consensus to that effect, and they chose not to stand down. So the matter has now been handed off to ARBCOM. I'm not seeing a big deal. AlisonW does not appear to be actively using the tools for good or ill. What's the rush? Desysopping should not be something done casually or quickly absent something very urgent like a compromised account or ongoing blatant abuse. -Ad Orientem (talk) 00:37, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Handling the content side

Veverve asked me when this started what would happen with the reverts, and I replied that he should wait for this thread to resolve. Since things are moving in the direction of ArbCom now, and ArbCom can't decide content, seems we should resolve that. To me, the most equitable solution would be to revert AlisonW's 7 reverts (i.e. re-remove the content), without prejudice against the content in question being restored as part of the normal editorial process if appropriate. Same as we would do if an editor e.g. incorrectly massrollbacked something as vandalism. CC AndyTheGrump. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 18:53, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

(NAC) This seems fair and pretty drama-free. — Trey Maturin™ 18:56, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

I already performed some of these re-reverts on the grounds that the discussion was heading that way, anyhow. I'm willing to standby the content of those changes (back to V's version) independent of the discussion, too. ~ Pbritti (talk) 19:05, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Yup. If the disputed content is policy-compliant and appropriate (some at least isn't, in my opinion) it can be restored by consensus, after discussion. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:11, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Request to review a close

This is a request to review the close at Talk:Czech Republic men's national ice hockey team to determine whether the closer interpreted the consensus incorrectly. I tried to discuss it but the closer has not responded. I think that the closure has been wrong since the moratorium does not affect this site. (It is also the opinion of Mike Cline that has set the moratorium.) I also do not find it as an attempt to bypass the moratorium since one country can use multiple names in titles. Martin Tauchman (talk) 16:56, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

May be we need a restriction similar to Russia-Ukraine prohibited non-extended-confirmed users to decide on such matters. The RM was opened by an IP, with a good chance to be a sock, and perfectly repeats disruption in Ukrainian topics when a few socks were able to drive everyone crazy. Ymblanter (talk) 17:06, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

But a serious discussion was led by other users. I do not see it as a problem there. Martin Tauchman (talk) 17:23, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

• Good close IMO. As was pointed out by one of the contributors, it was clearly an attempt to get around the failed move of the country article. It's illogical to have the country at one article title and sub-articles using the country's name at others, so I agree that it makes sense for the moratorium to apply more widely than the main article. Number 57 17:36, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

  But it is not stated in the moratorium's text that it would apply on more articles. We also do have such cases when the name differs across articles (United Kingdom vs. Great Britain in the article about men's national team). Therefore I find it wrong. Martin Tauchman (talk) 17:10, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

• Belongs at WP:MR, but I'd endorse it. Good close.—S Marshall T/C 09:34, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Admin needed to add template

Hi! Apparently an admin is needed to add the cban template to User:Roxy the dog, two non-admins have tried but have been reverted on the grounds that its either WP:GRAVEDANCING or that it can only be done by an admin. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:45, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Note that a third non-admin editor has intervened and the template is currently on the page. Some clarification about whether this is kosher or not still appears to be needed though. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:57, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

The tag shouldn't have been placed. It shouldn't have been removed. It shouldn't have been restored. It shouldn't have been re-removed... etc. Who cares? Roxy is banned either way. There are more useful ways to spend our time. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 17:14, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Banning policy § Avoiding pointless ban-tag wars -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 17:38, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

This matter is also being discussed at AN/I. — Trey Maturin™ 17:13, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

...I don't think there was consensus to make this change to the banning policy. --Rockstone^{Send me a message!} 05:06, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

WP:Banning policy has been amended accordingly: [16]. (And the tag on the user page has been self-reverted by the last editor to add it, so I hope we can just leave it at that.) --Tryptofish (talk) 19:17, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Tag now placed by an uninvolved admin. So I hope we can leave it at that. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:44, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Ban notice on User:Roxy the dog

An edit war has erupted on User:Roxy the dog over whether there should be a ban notice on their userpage. I procedurally added the ban notice since I had noticed that they were banned by ANI (I did not participate in the revert war afterwards, or express any opinions regarding Roxy). So that spurs me to ask, is there a threshold where a (non-invisible) ban notice should not be placed on a userpage? — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 19:33, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

This is also discussed at #Admin needed to add template, just above. And following a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Banning policy#Avoiding pointless ban-tag wars, a consensus quickly emerged that editors should not simply go around adding such tags, but instead, leave it to admins or other persons who are familiar with the reasons for the ban. In this case, an uninvolved admin has decided to use the tag. There is new policy language at Wikipedia:Banning policy#User page notification. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:50, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Give me a break. I'll fully protect the page for a couple days so people find some other flashpoint for their drama. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 19:52, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Note from blocking admin

As the blocking admin who closed the discussion and imposed the CBAN, I purposefully did not add the tag, because I didn't feel it was needed. Though, when I do tag, it's usually to the user talk rather than the user page (unless an LTA/Sock). I was away during this incident, or I'd have attended to it myself, with it likely not being added. Ultimately, I don't think it's really that important, but if Roxy the dog (←ping) feels strongly about it, I'd be inclined to do remove it. Generally, I usually had been using my own discretion for CBAN tags, but I ordinarily default to not adding them. El_C 12:50, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

1Lib1RefNG campaign 2023

Aderogbabo (talk · contribs), a participant in 1Lib1RefNG campaign 2023, has added user-generated, circular, copyvio, verification-failing, and flat-out bogus sources. It's not clear from the Meta page who to report this to or what measures (e.g. disqualification after a certain number of reverts/warnings) are in place to prevent mass addition of inappropriate citations like this, which seems only inevitable if the participants are incentivized. Pinging participants in the AN thread re 1Lib1RefNG last year: @DMacks, Fram, Primefac, Atibrarian, Phil Bridger, and Kusma:. Nardog (talk) 09:59, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

I was going to block them outright (they received plenty of warnings) but I noticed that they have not edited in the last hour. As a courtesy I will wait until they start editing again to see if they have anything to add to this conversation. I won't be upset if someone decides that enough is enough, though. Primefac (talk) 10:10, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

It's not about just this user though. It's about prevention. Or are we to clean up loads of low-quality (or worse) refs year after year? The way the contest is designed, with reference to the Citation Hunt tool, seems to be incentivizing mass addition of low-quality sources. Nardog (talk) 10:13, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Can we just make an edit filter to block their hashtags? If a contest doesn't do quality control, we should not allow it to run here. —Kusma (talk) 10:21, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

A filter tracks them currently. Here is the "contest or editathon" RecentChanges filter and here is the relevant filter log. (Within the timeframe being discussed, these are identical, just two different ways to look at the same data.) -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 10:24, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

And one user is already blocked for Advertising sexual services presented as a citation... Nardog (talk) 10:34, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

I know that we can track them; the question is whether we should block #1Lib1RefNG for being a net negative in terms of reference quality. —Kusma (talk) 10:35, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Even setting aside the quality of the contributions, it seems particularly misguided to run a contest that's focused on finding sources for statements that are already slapped with . What that tag is typically saying isn't just that the statement doesn't have a citation but that it might not be true verifiable. So the premise of the contest is like the scientific method in reverse. Yeah we might as well block them altogether. Nardog (talk) 10:44, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

My only issue with the "ban hashtags" thought is that if we filter out and prevent folks from using the hashtags in summaries, we will not be able to track them as easily. I have zero issues on dropping blocks on competition-players who cannot manage to do it right, as only by blocking those individuals can we get it through the coordinator's heads that we're serious. Primefac (talk) 10:50, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

My impression is that they use the hashtag counts to see who "wins" the contest, and we could stop that by blocking the hashtag, so that should also send a message to the coordinators. —Kusma (talk) 10:52, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

As Kusma says, the Meta page says they're using the hashtags to track the contributions. Another way is to allow admins to block participants with lower tolerance (e.g. after 1 warning), though I'm not sure if that's currently possible without changes to PAG through community consensus. Nardog (talk) 11:09, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

The problem I have with blocking after one warning is more that we might lose a misguided but good-faith potential contributor who isn't only there for the prizes. No issue with blocking those who are in it only for the prizes quickly (from mainspace, and for the length of the contest); disruptive editing needs to be stopped, and such blocks would clearly be preventative. —Kusma (talk) 11:15, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Huh? If people involved in this competition manage to find reliable sources supporting the claims tagged as {{cn}}, then clearly they are verifiable, as evidenced by the fact that they have been verified. The whole point of the {{cn}} tag is to mark a statement which an editor thinks might be true, verifiable, and worthy of inclusion in an article but is nonetheless in need of support; if whoever tagged it didn't think it were true, verifiable, or worthy of inclusion then they should have removed it rather than just tagging it. Maybe 1Lib1Ref are doing it badly, but a contest focusing on adding references (though fixing statements tagged as {{cn}} is one suggestion, that's not the only possible way of participating listed by 1Lib1Ref) seems like a sensible idea. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 11:01, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

As we often have it that a huge proportion of the sources added this way are unreliable, the idea is only sensible in theory, and disruptive in practice. —Kusma (talk) 11:11, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Sure, but is that a particular problem with contests focused on cleaning up {{cn}} tags? All sorts of contests get reported to this noticeboard for having too high a proportion of problematic edits. There are all sorts of causes for this, but probably the biggest are that they bring in lots of editors with little experience, they don't give them enough guidance or supervision, and they incentivise them to make many edits rather than focusing on edit quality. I'm not convinced that the idea of fixing {{cn}} tags is a particularly misguided focus for a contest. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 11:52, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Another WP:CIRCULAR [17]. —Kusma (talk) 10:50, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

@Kusma in previous years Special:AbuseFilter/1158 has been used to limit the rate of contest edits to try to encourage people to make fewer, higher quality additions, it might be worth doing something similar here if the issues resume after the training course? 192.76.8.70 (talk) 20:32, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Finally found users listed as "facilitators" on the Dashboard (link was broken): @Kaizenify, Ayokanmi (WUGN), and Olaniyan Olushola: Can you tell us what measures, if any, are in place to prevent contest participants from making disruption to wikis like mass addition of non-reliable or bogus sources? Nardog (talk) 11:43, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Hello @Nardog: and other users on this thread. Thank you for calling our attention to this and we apologize for the mass disturbance this has caused.

As an emergency response to this disruption, we have temporarily discontinued this campaign and have directed our members to stop participating until these issues are resolved. Although a series of trainings were organized to train participants prior to launching this campaign, it seems that this is not sufficient and additional measures are required. We are reviewing the level of disruption the campaign has produced to identify the knowledge gap and how it could be bridged going forward.

We see the potential of 1Lib1Ref as a strategic campaign to recruit new volunteers for the Wikimedia community, and we want to provide the necessary support for the newly recruited volunteers for this campaign, which includes but is not limited to building capacity and providing guidance for them. To this end, another training has been scheduled for June 17, 2023, by 4 p.m. GMT+1. This campaign would not resume until after training. In addition, a number of experienced volunteers in our community would be patrolling the 1Lib1Ref hashtag to fix any errors on sight while fixing the current disruptive editing.

While we may not second-guess the motivations of the participants to conclude that they are participating because of the incentives, we have reviewed the prizes to only include souvenirs such as T-shirts, water bottles, and banstars.

We believe that these measures should suffice. If these measures aren't working, we will impose stricter rules of participation, including throttling contributions from new editors. We respectfully ask the community to give us the opportunity to try these new measures. We continue to appreciate the support of the English Wikipedia, and we are open to any feedback from community members.

Once again, we are sorry for the inconvenience and harm this might have caused and promise to mitigate this as possible. Kaizenify (talk) 13:52, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, it seems an emergency stop was necessary. Two more totally irrelevant non-references. More than 95% of edits for this contest should be improvements; currently it seems under 50% are of any use. —Kusma (talk) 17:06, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

@Kaizenify: I want to thank you for these measures and your efforts to recruit new volunteers in Nigeria! Best of the luck with the second training! –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 19:00, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your swift response and explanation. I look forward to constructive contributions and hope your effort leads to recruitment/retention of good-faith editors. Nardog (talk) 16:38, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

It doesn't really help of course when our own admins use the tag to add dreadfully formatted refs[18]... Fram (talk) 15:22, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

That doesn't seem related to 1Lib1RefNG. And dreadful formatting is far less serious than any of the problems we identified above. Nardog (talk) 16:41, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Deleted image assistance

I'm a Commons admin trying to investigate some copyright violations on the Commons. Could someone tell me whether w:File:Mercy Chinwo.jpg is the same image as this? If not, would it be possible to provide a link to the image (assuming it was merely taken from the Internet) so I can see it? (This seems easier than temporary restoration or emailing it to me, but those would be options too.) Эlcobbola _talk 15:50, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

@Elcobbola: yes, it's the same image. — Ingenuity (talk • contribs) 15:54, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Excellent, very much appreciated. Эlcobbola _talk 15:56, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Unblock request of Riceissa

The following is the unblock request of Riceissa, who was blocked per a discussion in 2017. I bring this as a courtesy and make no endorsement in doing so. 331dot (talk) 06:39, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

My understanding is that I was blocked for some combination of paid editing, SEO spamming, and use of index tags on userspace pages (see the ANI thread). My responses are:

• Paid editing: I understand that this is very controversial on Wikipedia, which is something I did not appreciate/anticipate back in 2017. (My understanding is that it doesn't go against any hard rules but a lot of editors on the site really dislike it.) I will not edit for payment if I am unblocked. Additionally the person who was paying for my work, User:Vipul, no longer pays people to make edits.
• SEO spamming: I never engaged in "SEO spamming". I created informational articles about a variety of topics, and none of my material was promotional (a lot of my work was about global health and government forms). I believe the editors who wanted to block me have a deletionist bent and did not want to see articles written about topics they considered not notable enough. Even some of the articles mentioned as promotional in the ANI thread, such as Slate Star Codex, have since been re-created by others because the topics did end up being considered notable enough.
• Index tags on userspace pages: I understand that this looks suspicious, even though as far as I know there was no rule at the time against their usage. If I am unblocked I will not use index tags on my userspace pages.

Riceissa (talk) 00:10, 13 June 2023 (UTC) 331dot (talk) 06:39, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

• Unless there's something I'm missing, there is only one reason for adding tags to userspace pages and that is SEO spamming. Why would you do it otherwise? Black Kite (talk) 09:06, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

  Somewhat concerned by the rules-lawyering aspect - I can't speak for whether there was a specific prohibition against index tags in 2017. I did, however, just go and check that WP:NOTPROMOTION was a policy. Since you've not stated you were acting promotionally, what non-promotional/advertorial reasoning was behind your index tag creation back then? Nosebagbear (talk) 09:24, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

  vanity. small jars tc 13:50, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

• Comment from Riceissa: There's some questions of why I decided to use index tags on my userspace pages back in 2017, so I'd like to respond to that. My thinking at the time, though it's been a long time and seems pretty naive now, was that I wanted to start writing a draft of an article and then have others help improve it, so that eventually the article would be ready to be published to mainspace. I know there's a special draftspace for this sort of thing, and I'm not quite sure why I didn't use it (User:Vipul liked using userspace for drafts back then and I learned how to edit Wikipedia from him, so perhaps I was just copying his behavior without fully understanding why). But anyway, in the context of all of this, the index tags were a way to make it easier for potential editors to find the page (I know experienced Wikipedians have no trouble finding article drafts like this, but I believed at that time that there was a long tail of knowledgeable people who could contribute but who wouldn't be searching on Wikipedia itself, who might find my drafts via internet search). Anyway, I believe that was my reasoning at the time. Since then I've become a lot more pessimistic about people helping me write articles like this so I wouldn't bother putting index tags to make it easier for people to find my drafts. Riceissa (talk) 20:39, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

WP:RM notice about WP:CIR

• Please see Wikipedia_talk:Competence_is_required#Requested_move_13_June_2023. - jc37 09:53, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Unilaterally making the change [19] before requesting the move is entirely improper. Move it back. AndyTheGrump (talk) 10:23, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

I see the essay has now been moved back, by another contributor. AndyTheGrump (talk) 10:28, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Try again. I boldly moved the page. And when I saw it was reverted, I started an RM. And noted it here. - jc37 10:35, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

That's... not true. I reverted you 10 minutes ago. You started the RM 40 minutes before that. — Czello ^(music) 10:38, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

So, you're saying that you didn't look at the edit history before reverting the move? User:DIYeditor reverted the talk page move about 5 minutes after I did the bold move. I saw that on my watchlist, and started the RM. Then you apparently stumbled through reverting the rest later. - jc37 10:41, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Ah, apparently DIYeditor moved the talk but not the main article. That's what I'm talking about. — Czello ^(music) 10:44, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

I thought it would be better to delete Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Competence is required (double "Wikipedia") as it was a mistake and very recently created, with nothing pointing to it. Then I looked at its talk Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia:Competence is required and realized I was out of my depth (check its history). Would someone please clean up. Johnuniq (talk) 10:43, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

The two talk page archives also need some surgery. Johnuniq (talk) 10:45, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Nice irony. I fixed that. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 11:27, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

That one's on me. You can direct me to an essay about how required competency is, if you like — Czello ^(music) 10:45, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

I was trying to avoid a comment about irony : ) - jc37 10:46, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm accepting WP:TROUTs — Czello ^(music) 10:58, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Sooo, I believe I followed typical process...

But, if someone was so inclined, I think it could be possible that the three of you in your attempts to revert, might very well qualify for Wikipedia:Village stocks. The page name being the qualifier, I think. I'll leave that up to someone else to decide though : ) - jc37 11:16, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Incidentally, since I didn't try to re-revert, I think I (hopefully) spared us all from Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars... - jc37 11:20, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Account reads as blocked on contributions but is still editing

See Special:Contributions/Jack4576 - really not sure what is going on here. Beyond my ken. Iskandar323 (talk) 11:12, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

As far as I can see, the account is only blocked from Wikipedia-namespace and Wikipedia-talk; so edits in article space are still possible; @Jayron32: for more info if needed. Lectonar (talk) 11:16, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Oh I see. That's why it pays to read the fine print. Hadn't realized such meta-blocks existed. Iskandar323 (talk) 11:20, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Partial blocks; it's a very convenient tool, much more precise than a site-wide block. Lectonar (talk) 11:30, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

To other admins who might be a bit tentative about using it, as I was, I can attest it is a very useful tool. I waited a while before using it, but I finally saw the perfect opportunity and found that, once I did, it was a much more helpful tool than I realized. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:33, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, it's a good way to stop edit wars between multiple parties without having to shut down the entire page or put the discussion on hold while those involved are fully-blocked. Primefac (talk) 10:22, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Except if you fully block someone for a shorter period of time then they partial block the partial block is cancelled and has to be manually restored after the sitewide block expires, Doug Weller talk 20:43, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

• For an easy way to tell the difference, I highly recommend checking "strike usernames when blocked" in the gadget section of your preferences. Users who are fully blocked are struck through and users who are partially blocked are underlined with dots instead. The nav popup gadget will also say a partially blocked user "has blocks" instead of just saying that they're blocked. Pinguinn 🐧 03:23, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

WP:RFPP

Three days ago, Fork99 added a slew of railway/transportation templates requesting indefinite semi-protection to be "consistent" with another template. No admin, including me, has been brave (knowledgeable?) enough to either grant or decline the requests. Meanwhile, that board remains backlogged/cluttered so that at least when I patrol it (not that often compared to some admins), I automatically scroll down to the first request past the template requests. I thought bringing it here might spur someone to dispose of the requests. To be clear, this is not a complaint about Fork99's conduct.--Bbb23 (talk) 15:05, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Declined, all but 1 archived. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 17:31, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Choo choo. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 17:49, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi, I’ve only done this because there is a sentence that does say templates that are high risk can be semi-protected (see the table at WP:PPLIST, it states “Some highly visible templates and modules.”) I do understand that it is up to the particular admin’s discretion, and that some of the templates have been protected. From my point of view, these templates are possibly subject to subtle vandalism (just the nature of the topic can bring people who like to complain about a particular transport system or whatever), without anyone able to revert them as the editors who created or have been substantially involved are all retired, and there’s not many people watching these templates. I am one of the people who do watch them, but I’m not always on Wikipedia, nor can I be 24/7. Thanks for your concern. @Daniel Case and @Courcelles did accept some of my requests. Fork99 (talk) 20:11, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

I also was looking at the requests, and decided in the end that i also don't know enough to be able to process the requests; especially the argument about consistency kind of caught me on the wrong foot. Lectonar (talk) 07:07, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

As a general comment on protecting things that are transcluded (templates and modules), unless there is fairly active disruption (or strong potential for such e.g. adding a new template to the main page), it is usually safe to decline. MusikBot has a task that protects transcluded things, escalating protection kind based on transclusion count.

There is no real valid argument for consistent treatment then as a motive to protect transcluded pages. IznoPublic (talk) 17:56, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Dispute on Khmer-related articles

Hello, I've been informed of some inappropriate edits by a new user I have been assigned to mentor, @Cerie1914:. @Turaids: informed of of this, the diffs in question were placed on Cerie's talk page by Turaids. I've come to the conclusion that my IRL duties have made it implausible to mentor for now, with this being an example, but I wanted to alert you to this. It does look like the two users are collaborating now (per Turaids talk page), but wanted to report this just in case. Royal Autumn Crest (talk) 18:12, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Sock puppet for a permanently banned user: militaryfactchecker equals CptJohnMiller

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Earlier this month @Militaryfactchecker, who frequently edited the British Army Training Unit Kenya wiki, received a permanent ban from wikipedia. He committed many sins, including edit warring, soapboxing, plagiarism, and harassment (posting the lyrics to violent racist ethno-nationalist songs on my talk page).

1. He would start edit wars with me to remove information he deemed was damaging to the reputation of the British military.
2. He would cite almost exclusively from Ministry of Defence blogs and social media accounts with little attempt to use secondary sources.
3. He was most active on List of equipment of the British Army.
4. He was banned on the 2nd June by admin @Arado Ar 196.

The day after militaryfactchecker was banned, a user called @CptJohnMiller makes his first edit.

1. He edits the same pages as militaryfactchecker. His first edit was militaryfactchecker's favourite page, List of equipment of the British Army.
2. He first began editing the very next day after militaryfactchecker was banned.
3. He is also fond of removing from the leads of articles information potentially embarrassing for the British military on the British Army Training Unit Kenya wiki, just like militaryfactchecker used to frequently do.
4. Just like militaryfactchecker, he cites almost exclusively from Ministry of Defence Blogs and social media accounts with little attempt to use secondary sources

I believe militaryfactchecker and @CptJohnMiller are the same person, and that this is an alternative account used to evade a permanent ban. The History Wizard of Cambridge (talk) 01:15, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Sorry everybody, another editor just notified me that about the existence of WP:SPI. I have instead made a report there. The History Wizard of Cambridge (talk) 02:01, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Militaryfactchecker. Beyond My Ken (talk) 08:39, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Where to report shared accounts?

I was looking over noticeboards, WP:SPI, usernames board, but none seem the right place to report shared accounts. The account which triggered this is User:Collectif9juillet, which explicitly describes itself as a shared account and has instructions for contributors using that account. They have already caused minor issues (one mainspace article deleted, one moved to userspace) as well. Fram (talk) 14:22, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

I've blocked the account as a "compromised" account (by definition it is since the password has been shared). I did explain on their talk page however that the individual users are more than welcome to create their own separate accounts and discuss together what drafts they want to create, etc. RickinBaltimore (talk) 14:34, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. Fram (talk) 14:45, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Related question: the User: page of the account displays a message about a permanent block with a link to WP:NOSHARED, however WP:NOSHARED doesn't seem to exist. Can anybody fix the link (change e.g. to WP:NOSHARE)? Or should I create another redirect on that name? --CiaPan (talk) 15:05, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Just add the redirect, it seems a common enough typo. —Kusma (talk) 15:15, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Resolved

@Kusma: Done. Thank you. --CiaPan (talk) 15:26, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

It never ceases to amaze me that we have shared logins across all Wikimedia projects, but do not have roughly compatible policies on account use. You can get your organisation's shared account officially verified at dewiki, and the moment you edit on enwiki, we will block you. —Kusma (talk) 15:18, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Maybe that's a discussion to have at the Village Pump perhaps? Honestly that would make sense to look it, as we have unified logins across the board, but here it's a block of that login is shared. RickinBaltimore (talk) 15:22, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

The last time I have seen it discussed, there was no appetite for changing our rules here. —Kusma (talk) 15:29, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Username Yae4 engaging in persistent disruptive editing of the Libreboot article

Dear WikiPedia admins,

I write to you to inform you of persistent, disruptive editing of the "Libreboot" article (English version) by username Yae4. I'm requesting that the admins of Wikipedia review the discussion, and ban this individual from editing said article.

My rationale is explained on the talk page of said article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Libreboot&oldid=1160297412#Persistent_vandalism,_or_otherwise_disruptive,_non-neutral_editing_with_clear_conflict_of_interest_for_those_involved

I link here to a specific revision because, as is common for the user in question, the user has attempted to hide such criticisms; in the actual latest version of the page, Yae4 collapsed the most critical element of my complaint there, in the following diff:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3ALibreboot&diff=1160298043&oldid=1160297412

Essentially, in a nutshell, the article is being edited in violation of Wikipedia's regulations regarding Conflict of Interest, Neutral Point of View and, though cleverly concealed, the edits by Yae4 are in fact disruptive, intended to pervert the text of the article to promote a particular point of view.

The article in question is here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libreboot

And assuming that Yae4 doesn't outright delete the complaint (in the article's talk page), here is the non-revisioned, most current version of the discussion:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Libreboot#Persistent_vandalism,_or_otherwise_disruptive,_non-neutral_editing_with_clear_conflict_of_interest_for_those_involved

(as I post this, the collapsed text is still there, but you have to click Show to show it, because it's collapsed - Yae4 asserts that the text is an "editor attack", but it consists of valid criticisms that I think are of interest to Wikipedia admins.

Thank you in advance for any and all consideration.

PS: I have a connection to the article in question, so I don't edit the article text itself, instead I submitted the above complaints on that talk page. Such a connection is also declared, by me, in said section of that talk page. Libreleah (talk) 15:46, 15 June 2023 (UTC) — Libreleah (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

I'll translate: There are two versions of the libreboot software project, and three editors are at each other's throats fighting over which one gets to be the legitimate one. I've told them to stop it and given some advice on the content dispute at Talk:Libreboot#Advice by Maddy from Celeste. -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 17:27, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Response by Yae4:

• Libreboot (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• User:Yae4 (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

My edits at Libreboot speak for themselves. I've added summaries of cited sources, as neutrally as I can, and followed where they go. I've removed cites of libreboot.org in other articles, because I concluded it is not a WP:RS. I now know there is a call for help at libreboot.AT:

Another way to help this project and take a stand for fully free software is to change URLs across the web from <libreboot.org> to <libreboot.at>, and to let people know that no other version of Libreboot is reliably free software.

Believe it or not, I did not know that when I took interest in editing Libreboot in late May 2023 (aside from a cite removal in 2019), or until a few days ago when I started considering using libreboot.AT as a source. I had seen Denis Carikli's LibrePlanet 2023 presentation online, as stated at Talk:Libreboot.

I have no conflict of interest or close connection with the subject or any entities involved.

This, from Talk:Libreboot summarizes where the article was when I started editing, and what PhotographyEdits, whose edits there puzzle me, had done to stubify Libreboot over a couple years: In September 2021[20] after PhotographyEdits edits, the article was left with sources from libreboot-ORG, notabug, coreboot, GNU, lists.gnu.org, Hackaday (2), and some better cites, but the article was a stub, billboard. In March 2023[21] about the same, but a linux-magazin.de cite (with passing mention) was removed. On 2 May 2023,[22] about the same, on 3 May 2023[23] Hackaday cites increased to 3, a TechCrunch (WP:TECHCRUNCH) was added, and a section with "Supported hardware". On 19 May 2023[24] about the same. The persistent appearance is a stub, billboard, and no progress towards WP:GA.

• User:Libreleah (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Based on editor behavior and statements at Talk:Libreboot‎‎, I observe the recent block of IPs at Libreboot was soon followed by re-activating the Libreleah account, which has similar, disruptive behavior, continuing at length at Talk:Libreboot. I don't know if that wiki-technically constitutes block evasion or puppetry, but I previously saw "revert sock" edit summary, and asked Bbb23 for advice. Whether to waste spend time at SPI is TBD for me. I'll note repeated removals of Collapse and SPA tags - until today, that account had nearly no edits at Wikipedia. Putting notification for this atop my User Talk is just one more minor example of disruption. -- Yae4 (talk) 19:04, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Putting the notification of your entry on this page, onto your talk page, is required as per Wikipedia policy.

You assert that I'm someone else that you or someone else recently blocked, but this is false. News of libreboot.org's erasure (or the attempt to erase it), on the article, was raised with me via IRC about a week ago when someone noticed what you were doing, so I've been keeping a close eye on it. I didn't think much of it until I saw the more aggressive edits, which are the subject of my complaint.

If you'll read more carefully, you'll note in my complaint on the talk page (and linked on this entry on the admin noticeboard), that I did think your initial changes to the article, adding more sources, was a genuine improvement. It's when you used the momentum later on to *remove* libreboot.org that I started taking issue. Indeed, the cited sources for the article are all talking about libreboot.org - not libreboot.at.

Even if you have no conflict of interest, which OK, let's take that at face value, your edits are still not neutral. As I've stated in my complaint, mentioning both libreboot.org and libreboot.at is OK. Removing libreboot.org from the article, or keeping it but placing libreboot.at at higher prominence, is what I take issue with, since the .org domain is still the most notable one for the purposes of the article.

So if you're going to continue editing the article, I ask that you do so with neutrality. As I've said, I won't edit it myself because I'm the founder of the project, so I'm not capable of acting with neutrality in that regard. Libreleah (talk) 19:40, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

User: Seventh Ward Dragon and their user pages

I'm probably Wikipedia:INVOLVED with Seventh Ward Dragon, so bringing this here for wider attention. They've done some CSS magic to their user page which makes the page title invisible. I posted a request to their talk page asking them to undo that, at which point I discovered they've also done some magic to their talk page which makes messages invisible. If it wasn't for their history, I'd AGF that this was just some nerdy exploration of odd corners of wiki-markup, but given their trollish history, AGF is in short supply. See also Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/WhichUserAmI, the SPI filed under their previous username. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:49, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

The user talk page looks like an honest mistake (HTML comment started but not closed, I have fixed this). The user name is very clearly shown on the user page, so I don't care too much that it is hidden. I have fixed the near-unreadable template they use on the talk page. —Kusma (talk) 16:05, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

I have removed the title-hiding CSS that was transcluded from their "/userpage" subpage, with WP:SMI in mind. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 16:08, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

I was unaware of the fact that messages were not appearing, and I'm unsure as to why that would be. I do know that I hid the title of the article on my userpage, but A: I was not aware of that being an issue, and B: I did not intend to have it affect the messages posted to my talk page. I had no idea that was happening, I apologize for any inconvenience. Seventh Ward Dragon 18:09, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

To comment out something in wikitext, enclose it like this: <!-- Hidden comment here -->. On your user talk page, you had <!--Please leave leave new messages below this line--!>. Because it wasn't closed correctly, everything beneath it was inadvertently hidden as well. DanCherek (talk) 18:13, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Well, I'm happy this got sorted out, but Seventh Ward Dragon if I may make a friendly suggestion, maybe spend more time writing articles and less time writing CSS? -- RoySmith (talk) 20:56, 15 June 2023 (UTC)