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Close review of Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Capitalization of NFL draft article titles

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Among uninvolved editors, there is a substantial consensus to endorse the closure. Among involved ones, there is no consensus. Between the two, the closure is endorsed. Many who argued to overturn the result seemed more to wish to relitigate the RfC, which is not what this process is for, rather than assert that it was closed improperly or against consensus, which would further go against any alteration of the close. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 05:48, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

---

To start, this has been one of many attempts by a set of users to get the title "Draft" lowercase, going back to at least 2013. The most recent RM on the subject "National Football League Draft" occurred a few months ago and closed against lowercase being the title. A month ago, User:Dicklyon decided that "the large number of football-fan editors compared to the editors who want to respect our style guidelines" at RM was too great – something demonstrably false as a number of football editors supported lowercase – and so he decided to open up this village pump RFC in violation of WP:RFCNOT and prior consensus (not that he can't try again after a time, but it feels like its been happening over and over again – feels like a WP:STICK). The discussion was plainly a disaster; one of the worst and most disorderly proposals I've ever seen. First, not nearly enough notifications were sent out – e.g. NO relevant pages had a notice at the top as required by RM; the NFL project page received a notice but not the also-very active college football project; after the close, one of the most prominent football editors asked "When and where did that consensus happen?" and later noted that it seems "pretty sneaky."
At the discussion, a number of users pointed out that it was an inappropriate RFC and WP:FORUMSHOPPING, which was split out into its own section; by my count 11/15 out of the users commenting there said it was an inappropriate discussion. As demonstrated by the later WT:NFL discussion, a number of interested editors were discouraged from commenting due to the belief that it was going to be rejected as inappropriate. Furthermore, others were discouraged by the EXTREME AMOUNT of WP:BLUDGEONING from several lowercase supporters; User:Hey man im josh noted that three users combined had 192 comments. There is simply no way to come about a consensus when such extreme bludgeoning occurs. The amount of the discussion which was actually editors !voting was about 1/6, a number of which of those were "procedural close" comments. Hey man im josh gave an accurate description of the chaos in this comment; among other points, he noted that:

The validity of the discussion wasn’t established early on. There were a number of users who thought it was an inappropriate forum ... I think as a result some people didn’t participate or comment as much ...
Wikilawyering and bludgeoning the conversation to death was a significant reason why the discussion ended the way it did and I wish MOS discussions were better moderated to avoid these types of outcomes. “These type” being ones that are won by sheer number of comments and wearing people down ...
NFL Draft is absolutely (and clearly) a proper name of an event (in relevant sports sources, aside from ESPN, who is looking into their style guide based on an email I sent) but bludgeoning and wikilawyering has prevailed ...
There are inconsistencies in sources because most sources don't have a style guide they must adhere to, but that doesn't mean that downcasing is actually the proper result ...
It’s sometimes downcased in sources because sources themselves, which often consist of dozens of different writers, are not necessarily aware that it’s a proper name. This is a common problem for events, drafts particularly, that have self descriptive names which are also nouns ...
Inconsistency in sources doesn't mean that something’s not actually a proper name, despite what some are screaming from the rooftops ...
Some people refused to even consider the possibility of a proper name once the ngrams, which are notorious for lacking meaningful context, came out and showed an inconsistency (again, context is key) ...
Several people reached out to me privately to say that the discussion was such a trainwreck and drama filled that they weren’t participating ...

TL;DR: This discussion was an absolute disaster of a discussion – one of the worst I've ever seen. A large number of the participants didn't understand the terms of the proposal, many didn't comment because they thought it was inappropriate and going to be declined, not even close to enough notifications, zero notices on affected pages as required, SO MUCH BLUDGEONING, etc. etc. I could go on and on. But this really was a disastrous discussion to the point that no consensus could possibly be found in my opinion – even one of the supporters (User:Amakuru) later commented that they realized "This was a rare case ... where the raw numbers from ngrams didn't tell the whole story, there was decent evidence that capping could have been appropriate which was amply presented in last year's discussion, and without casting any bad faith ... this decision to go behind the back of the RM participants is a poor one." Whichever way this goes, we are willing to abide by the result (Hey man im josh has actually implemented some of the changes), but in my opinion, this really should be Overturned to no consensus. BeanieFan11 (talk) 00:55, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

BTW - Am I seeing double? Why are some individuals commenting in both the uninvolved & involved subsections? Ya can't be both uninvolved & involved. GoodDay (talk) 20:00, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

GoodDay, if one is "involved", is one only allowed to respond to comments by others who are involved? And the same for "uninvolved"? I get that endorsements and overturns are to be segregated, but all responding comments too? It should also be noted that when this discussion was first created on Feb 16, and when I first commented the same day, the sections had more generic titles: "involved" and "involved". These have been refactored into "RFC non-participant" and "RFC participant", which has had the effect of placing my initial comments in the "RFC participant" section even though I was quite clear about the nature of my participation on this issue: I'm not quite sure if I'm considered "involved" or not since I did not participate in this RFC, but I did participate in the 2023 RM and I am quoted above! I'll go with involved. Given that, AirshipJungleman29's admonishment toward me and several other editors (I think the WP:BATTLEGROUND behaviour should be taken seriously as a separate issue; it's no wonder this topic is so heated if five vastly experienced editors (Hey man im josh, BeanieFan11, Jweiss11, Bagumba, and SMcCandlish), with almost 1.2 million edits between them, can't even respect a basic involved/uninvolved division.) comes off as rather Kafkaesque. Jweiss11 (talk) 05:44, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

When I made the sectioning I was more thinking to divide the overturn/endorse votes by those who were participants and those who were not; I didn't really see an issue in responding to comments in the other section. BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:43, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

RFC Non-participant comments

• Endorse close the various bad-faith and/or factually-inaccurate complaints about the forum should be discounted completely. An RFC can change policy, and the sheer volume of complaints about the forum prove that there was sufficient notification. Once the "how dare you propose this" complaints are discounted, there is consensus for the move. 217.180.228.138 (talk) 01:59, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
• Endorse close. This has been a contentious point for years. The RfC sought to resolve the debate and was well attended with spirited discussion on both sides. Having read through the debate, I conclude (a) a community-wide RfC (with input from both American football and MoS editors) was a good way to resolve the issue one way or the other, and (b) the closure by User:The Wordsmith was reasonable.
  As for the concern with "bludgeoning", both sides were quite active in their comments. Compare User:Randy Kryn from the "upper case" camp (31 edits) with User:SMcCandlish from the "lower case" camp (42 edits). I don't see that as a basis for overturning the close. Cbl62 (talk) 02:25, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Bunch of extremely involved editors who should know better than to ignore sectioning ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 01:09, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

@Cbl62: I wasn't planning to join the discussion, but I think it's more useful to search for signatures as opposed to edits. The page was created part of the way through the discussion and some users replied to multiple comments in the same edit. I think that's a better reflection of someone's participation in the conversation as opposed to the edit count at that page. Hey man im josh (talk) 02:43, 16 February 2024 (UTC) Fair point, but a signature count ends up with roughly the same proportion: 41 for Kryn, 51 for McCandlish. And I didn't see anything that was particularly intimidating or "over the top" in the comments made. Cbl62 (talk) 02:56, 16 February 2024 (UTC) Though then there's also Dicklyon (72) and Bagumba (57); I for one was discouraged from commenting as much as I wanted due to seemingly every single supporter of uppercase receiving a barrage of opposition from one of those three (plus others), something that has continued at the related Talk:USFL Draft discussion. BeanieFan11 (talk) 03:23, 16 February 2024 (UTC) Are we really going to count number of edits/comments by editor here? I think the relevant questions on this matter are simply 1) was this RFC an appropriate substitute for an RM and 2) was there proper notice? Jweiss11 (talk) 04:15, 16 February 2024 (UTC) You labelled "capitalized" examples at Talk:USFL Draft § 2022, 2023 drafts that were almost half incorrect—either shown to be actually lowercase or without mention of the specific term "USFL Draft". The fact that it received responses is a reflection of the factual errors and failure to acknowledge the discrepancy in a timely fashion. Per WP:BATTLEGROUND: Editors in large disputes should work in good faith to find broad principles of agreement between different viewpoints. Discussions are not merely to tally votes without a policy and guideline-based discussion to understand opposing viewpoints. I'd welcome an uninvolved editor to assess the actual non sequiturs. MOS is under Wikipedia:Contentious topics, and the disruptive behaviour needs to be reeled in. —Bagumba (talk) 04:30, 16 February 2024 (UTC) Indeed. The last couple of months have actually shown repeated cases of what amounts to outright sourcing falsification in attempts to WP:WIN in tedious and trivial over-stylization disputes (especially in American in sports topics, e.g. here and here). This is turning into a WP:TE problem, a "let me capitalize stuff just to imply how important it is to fans, or else!" sort of thing. (That said, one assumes it is a product of presumption, selection bias, and inexperience at doing statistically meaningful usage examination, rather than being intentional sourcing distortion for PoV reasons. But the result is disruptive nonetheless.) To claim that editors who provide detailed refutation of such pseudo-sourcing are "bludgeoning" is just a hand-waving attempt to avoid scrutiny and to silence principled objections. In particular, Brandolini's law is highly applicable here: it almost always takes more effort and verbiage to refute provably false claims than to make them. The issue is exacerbated by the habit of many of those in favor of over-capitalizing things to simply repeat their "it's a proper name and must be capitalized!" claims in WP:IDHT fashion after it has already been proven that indy RS generally do not capitalize it as a proper name. Such proof by assertion attempts generate another round of refutation. The problem is further magnified when later arrivals do a "per X" !vote that cites the rationale of the provider of the bogus statements and so-called evidence. Most commenters do not read RfC, RM, and other discussions in any depth, and simply pop off with whatever best suits their predilections.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:58, 16 February 2024 (UTC) On Jweiss11's two questions: Yes, since consensus can form by any means the community chooses, WP not being a bureaucracy. And yes, at first, though the latter rapidly turned into repetitive and activistic canvassing (see extensive diffs in the RfC itself) by a particular pro-capitals party – basically, bludgeoning at a site-wide level. The idea that this discussion somehow had insufficient pro-capitalization input is a fantasy. And the input level really wouldn't make much difference, anyway, since the question was simple: is there sufficient capitalization in the independent RS to meet the MOS:CAPS (and WP:NCCAPS) standard? This was in a no way a question of what people might personally just like the look of better. Though several of them tried to turn it into effectively a referendum on whether editors focused on a particular topic can override WP:CONLEVEL policy to get a result they want, and the answer was of course "no", since the entire point of the policy is preventing editors involved in a particular topic from making up their own "counter-rules" and forcing other editors obey them in that category instead of following the actual WP:P&G and the sourcing.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:58, 16 February 2024 (UTC) Despite what WP:BUREAU says, Wikipedia is indeed a bureaucracy. Only a bureaucracy would claim it wasn't one. :) Jweiss11 (talk) 22:13, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

• Endorse close. It is reasonable to bring discussions that have not reached consensus on the pages involved to a wider audience, especially when they concern application of a global guideline. The evidence and policy-backing was overwhelmingly for lowercase, so even if every gridiron editor was properly notified it shouldn't have made a difference (unless they all invoked IAR, with impeccable reasoning). And as Bagumba noted, it doesn't seem like football editors were all that concerned about "proper procedure" back when the RM for the 2016 NFL draft page resulted in all the draft pages being moved to uppercase without notification or RM notices being placed. JoelleJay (talk) 04:55, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

  To be clear, JoelleJay is referring to my comments at the RfC, not here. For convenience, here are links to said 2016 RM and its move review.—Bagumba (talk) 05:31, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

• Overturn close A bizarre end run around the RM process, that used a separate, poorly advertised RFC instead of a move review, or a new RM. The stated idea for why we needed this novel approach was because this was meant to set some sort of precedent, and yet the ending we get only applies to the NFL. RFCNOT is clear, and this was not the way to go about it. The amount of bludgeoning in that discussion, and every single discussion related to it cannot be overstated: the statistic page for the RfC is unlike anything I've ever seen before. Already, one user (who posted ten times more text than anyone else at the RFC) has posted more text in the "Uninvolved users" section than any one uninvolved user. This is absurd, and something needs to be addressed if this is how MOS regulars are treating pages. Parabolist (talk) 01:13, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
• Endorse per JoelleJay. Mach61 (talk) 00:41, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
• Endorse close I don't see any convincing argument for why application of policy couldn't be discussed at an RfC, and the policy-based reasoning in the close was pretty impeccable. As an aside, I think the WP:BATTLEGROUND behaviour should be taken seriously as a separate issue; it's no wonder this topic is so heated if five vastly experienced editors (Hey man im josh, BeanieFan11, Jweiss11, Bagumba, and SMcCandlish), with almost 1.2 million edits between them, can't even respect a basic involved/uninvolved division. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 01:27, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
  • Hey man im josh, you could have commented in the involved section with a ping to Cbl62. I have no doubt that you have behaved with decorum in general in the aftermath of this RfC, but in this case I do not feel that you did. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:41, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
    • Hey man im josh, dividing a close review into involved and uninvolved sections is intended to prevent threaded replies rehashing the previous discussion from taking over the close review. I simply ask that you keep this in mind in the future. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:52, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
• Vacate RFC discussion, list at RM per WP:RFCNOT, which specifically includes Renaming pages. Carson Wentz (talk) 18:51, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
• Endorse close. According to a excellent essay I recently had the pleasure of reading, its hard to argue with the fact that lots of people knew about the discussion, lots of people contributed and the right people knew it was going on. The venue / namespace itself may have been contrary to community norms, but WP:CONLEVEL is also policy and I can't see a reason to delegitimise the discussion purely for being in an atypical location. Scribolt (talk) 17:24, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
• Endorse close—per SMcCandlish. Tony (talk) 03:27, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
• Endorse The idea that a discussion of this size can be void due to insufficient participation is ridiculous. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 03:39, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

  If the majority of comments were from unique commenters, the majority of commenters opined regarding the content question, and the majority of the commenters expressed valid opinions then you would be correct. The first two unarguably did not happen, the last one arguably did not. Thryduulf (talk) 04:19, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

• Endorse, more or less. I'm not a fan of RfCs circumventing existing processes, and an RfC isn't the right procedure to come to a conclusion about a page move. However, it is a suitable procedure to determine how to apply the MOS, even if there are implied page moves as a result. I read the close as finding consensus for lowercase "draft" and clarifying that yes, that means pages should move, rather than finding consensus that pages should move. The closing statement recognizes various concerns and I tend to agree with e.g. that it was advertised widely enough. Tangentially, however, I'll also express support for more liberally handing out restrictions to people who routinely turn MOS disputes into battlegrounds (maybe even experimenting with a comments-per-discussion restriction if not a tban). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:48, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

  The close was, explicitly per the closer, NOT about applying the MoS broadly. It was ONLY about that specific instance of "Draft". Parabolist (talk) 22:17, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

RFC participant comments

• Overturn page moves per WP:RFCNOT. My view hasn't changed, concerning the matter. An RM should've been opened at the page-in-question, including related pages. IMHO, an RFC shouldn't be used as a substitute for an RM. GoodDay (talk) 01:14, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
• I'm not quite sure if I'm considered "involved" or not since I did not participate in this RFC, but I did participate in the 2023 RM and I am quoted above! I'll go with involved. I concur with GoodDay that this change should be conducted via an RM. I'll also note that the "notice" of this RFC to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Football League was underwhelming: [1]. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:24, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

  What exactly are you're expecting for an RfC notification...? That's neutral and includes a link with a self-descriptive title, with further context provided earlier; nothing more should be said in such a notice. JoelleJay (talk) 05:00, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

  There was a repeat notification later at 18:31, 6 January, seen now at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Football League/Archive 23 § NFL Draft RFC at Village Pump.—Bagumba (talk) 05:27, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

• Endorse close. I don't understand why GoodDay and Jweiss11 and Randy Kryn and BeanieFan11 and a few others want to see this discussed again at an RM. The same evidence and same guideline-based arguments would prevail. You can see an example of a "related" RM (that is, similar issue, different football league) at Talk:USFL Draft. BeanieFan11 is again there posting ridiculously wrong info and then complaining when editors point out the mistakes. His "evidence" make the opposite case of what he's arguing for. Ultimately, probably much more quickly in that case, we'll follow the guideline, as we've done with the NFL Draft RFC. Lawyering about the process slows it down, and wastes a lot of editor argument time, as here; I'd call it disruptive, but we have a long tradition of letting everyone have their "day in court", so that's where we are. I commend the closer of this long mess of an RFC for all did he, other than making us wait a full 30 days when the result was clear weeks earlier. Dicklyon (talk) 05:38, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
• Endorse close. The purpose of a close review is to examine whether the closer erred, not to relitigate why people would have preferred one outcome or another. The closer did not err here, and despite the length of the discussion, the only actual questions to resolve were quite simple: does the sourcing show enough capitalization in indy RS to meet the MOS:CAPS standard? Clearly no. Is there some means by which the community can be prevented from addressing the question in an RfC (at VPPOL and later stand-alone)? Clearly no. Randy Kryn has been beating a drum that WP:RFCNOT somehow invalidates the RfC or makes it inoperable and just "an opinion poll", but this is a bad misunderstanding of policy. WP:Consensus can form anywhere by any means. RFCNOT (an "information page" essay) suggests, of course, that RfCs are not the usual process for effectuating page moves, which is true. However, this was not an RfC standing in for an RM, it was an RfC to resolve the problem that that a previous RM and a WP:MR after it failed to come to a consensus. That's a perfectly valid reason for an RfC, though it could also have been done via a followup RM. The RfC route netted broader input, so was the better choice, despite all the patently disruptive "shut it down!" handwaving by people unhappy with the predictable outcome (predictable because the WP:P&G on the original question are clear, as is the sourcing). In short, the closer did not err, the process was not broken (despite various parties trying hard to break it, and extensive pro-capitalization canvassing). The closer has stated in user talk that their intent was that the RfC result could just be used as a rationale to move the page in question, consensus already having been established. This is correct per WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY and WP:CONSENSUS. However, it's ultimately immaterial. It's clear that the pro-capitalization camp are going to insist on opening yet another RM about this anyway, so the pointless discussion is guaranteed to continue and waste more editorial community time. But that has no implication of any kind for whether the reasoning in the close is faulty, which it is not.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:09, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
• Endorse close yeah I thought it was the wrong avenue, but I trust the judgment done on the forum. Plus it evolved into its own page, so I accept the outcome. Plus, I'm not overly bitter about it and I guess I know when the bludgeoning gets really toxic, I just ignore it. Conyo14 (talk) 07:56, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
• Overturn page moves per WP:RFCNOT, the RfC itself was a good opinion poll but then the next step would not be moving pages but opening a Requested Move. Anything else is WP:IAR without the necessary reasoning of why unilaterally moving pages improves Wikipedia. Reversing the page moves is another topic and not related to this review, and should be addressed separately. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:51, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
• Weak endorse. I voted to keep "draft" capitalized and I stand by my opinion, but there did appear to be weak policy-based consensus to change it to a small "d." Sound, policy-based arguments were made on both sides but the closing admin got it right in the small "d" side having better support. While RM would have been the preferred way to handle this move, this RFC received significant participation from a wide range of users including consistent contributors to NFL-related articles and those who do not typically edit in this area; this RFC can be considered valid grounds for a page move. Frank Anchor 14:12, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

  Changed to overturn after a more thorough reading of RFCNOT. It specifically mentions RM, and not RFC, as the correct venue for a page move. I maintain that the RFC received a large base of opinions from both NFL-regular contributors and people who rarely or never contribute in the area, but when the RFC process page says RFC can not be used for a page move, then RFC can not be used for a page move. Frank Anchor 14:21, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

• Overturn the discussion on both sides devolved into an absolute mess. As I previously noted, I generally avoided the discussion after a few comments due to the tone. I will also note that the whole "wrong venue" discussion was a distraction for both sides. The original intent of going to RFC was to gather a larger audience. That was achieved but at the expense of a huge distracting discussion. I feel like both sides would be better served by having a cleaner discussion in the right venue (notifications can occur left and right to everyone) to mitigate any ancillary concerns. Seems bureaucratic, but it would seem that both sides would probably prefer to have a cleaner consensus to point to moving forward. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 15:29, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
• Overturn. I'm not thrilled with the closer hand waving away the RFCNOT concerns raised in the RFC. I would also like to dispute the idea that the "Pro Caps Crowd" was somehow canvassing when the "lowercase crew" has an entire section of WT:MOS dedicated to canvassing. And of course the bludgeoning issue needs to be addressed. There is no need for any editor to make dozens of comments at an RFC, regardless of which side they are on. Jessintime (talk) 18:05, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

  That section at the top of WT:MOS, of current and past style-related discussions, is kept neutral, central, and open to anyone interested, much like automatic and other notifications to Wikiprojects. Canvasing is something else entirely. Dicklyon (talk) 10:55, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

• Endorse close The review rationale does not identify anything in the close that was unreasonable or against policies or guidelines. The close is detailed and accounted for the major counterarguments, even if it differs from those cherry-picked quotes or what some !voters like. The claim of a "disaster" or bludgeoning mandating a do-over are unconvincing, if not also insulting. Veteran admins are capable of separating the wheat from the chaff, perhaps moreso than some non-admin closers, who might "safely" close with an otherwise unexplained “obvious no consensus”, instead of investing time to filter and assess the valid points. The OP argues WP:RFCNOT, which is from an information page, while WP:NOTBURO and WP:CONSENSUS#Consensus-building are policies. The close gave more weight to policies:

  Analyzing the relative strength of the arguments, those who sided with RfC being a valid venue for this issue have significantly stronger policy-based arguments. ..there is no consensus that the RfC is invalid or inappropriate.

  Circling back to the the review rationale, it has factual errors. The most recent RM was closed as "no consensus" not "closed against lowercase being the title" (see WP:THREEOUTCOMES). The RfC was closed in line with P&Gs. The info page WP:CLOSECHALLENGE states:

  Closures will rarely be changed by either the closing editor or a closure review…if the poll was close or even favored an outcome opposite the closure, if the closure was made on the basis of policy. Policies and guidelines are usually followed in the absence of a compelling reason otherwise, or an overwhelming consensus otherwise, and can only be changed by amending the policy itself.

  WP:POINTY also has some applicable guidance:

  Practically speaking, it is impossible for Wikipedia to be 100 percent consistent, and its rules will therefore never be perfect. If consensus strongly disagrees with you even after you have made proper efforts, then respect the consensus…

  For all the fuss about appropriate venue, nobody has explained how the MOS was applied incorrectly (MOS:CAPS: Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia.), or explained how a new RM would present any new arguments. NOTBURO indeed.—Bagumba (talk) 19:23, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
• Time to move on The RFC was a disaster from start to finish and I suspect there's zero chance that it is actually overturned because who has time to read through all of that debate about proper nouns? The lesson here is bludgeoning and badgering can work in certain situations. The endless wall of text comments certainly obfuscated the issue enough that a consensus was somehow pulled out of the wreckage. Congrats, I guess. It seems like there's more important matters to the project that interpretations of proper nouns. The English language isn't a math equation and treating it like one seems like a waste of time, but YMMV. Thanks! Nemov (talk) 19:50, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
• Overturn while I generally agree with everything Nemov said, I'm loathe to reward the badgering and bludgeoning by tacitly agree with the close. I've no interest in wasting further energy on a mostly-pointless debate, but for the record I dislike the pompous and contemptuous tone that the MOS crowd takes toward content area specialists. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 19:36, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
• Overturn per RFCNOT. As others have stated, a clever end-around when RMs weren't going their way, wrought with bludgeoning and simply overwhelming their opponents. The Kip 05:08, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
• Comment: @AirshipJungleman29, I've stayed out of the conversation except to clarify something and now to reply to a comment directed at me, not to make an argument for either outcome. The page was split off at one point and the "top editors" of the split version does not include pre-split comments and some users replied to multiple comments in the same edit. Not sure it's fair to call that "disrespecting" an involved / uninvolved section or implying that contributes to a battleground mentality. I've spent a lot of time since this close trying to calm tensions and I don't appreciate the implication that I'm fanning the flames and making things worse. Hey man im josh (talk) 14:28, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

  @AirshipJungleman29: I had zero expectation of it being an issue for me replying to Cbl62 the way that I did and, frankly, I still don't believe my reply was an issue. I also had no expectation that people would want to communicate as if this were a discussion at arb, where threaded discussions are discouraged between parties. There was no arguing on my behalf or any efforts to influence anybody, I didn't reply again after Cbl62 replied to me. Hey man im josh (talk) 14:46, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

  @AirshipJungleman29: My intention was not to rehash the old argument, but I get your point. I also do not believe this is a productive way to communicate between sections and that a person closing a close review should be able to separate the chaff from the wheat if discussions got off topic in spots. Hey man im josh (talk) 14:57, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

  @Scribolt: No comment on your endorsement of the close, but uh... According to a excellent essay I recently had the pleasure of reading... – That's a link to an essay you yourself wrote in your own user space that you edited just before replying to this discussion. Kind of strange to imply and link it as though it's another person's essay. Hey man im josh (talk) 18:16, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

  I find this revelation quite humorous. Maybe there's a good explanation? Nemov (talk) 18:41, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

  It sounds like someone loves to toot their own horn. Conyo14 (talk) 19:51, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

  So... you thought my masterplan was to try and mislead people into thinking that was someone else's essay, when it quite obviously wasn't, for the reasons you noted, and my edit summary included the phrase "shameless plug"? I can see I'm going to have to work harder at this subterfuge thing. I wrote it a while back and it expresses my thoughts on consensus, which is relevant to this situation and it expands on my vote here (which is why people link to essays). Scribolt (talk) 20:53, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

  @Scribolt: Well you did reply with "I read" instead of "I wrote". Read has a clear implication of not being something you wrote, which is why I found it comical. I didn't think of some master plan, I just thought it was odd. Keep in mind most people reading through a threaded discussion are not doing so while also looking at the edit history. It's fine to share your essay, but the phrasing really makes it sound like you're linking someone else's essay. Hey man im josh (talk) 23:18, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

• Closing Admin Comment Obviously I endorse my own closure, so I'm not going to make a bolded !vote here. I also hesitated to weigh in, since there isn't much to say that wasn't already explained in the close itself or at User talk:The Wordsmith#NFL Draft. I did expect it to end up here no matter which way I closed it, so I made sure to explain how I arrived at my assessment so that people at AN could understand clearly without my needing to re-summarize the same 4 deciEEng-long discussion here. Firstly, the Xtools page statistics are misleading especially for the amount of text contributed by each editor. The RfC began at the Village Pump and was copied into the separate page by SMcCandlish, skewing the ratios to the point they aren't very useful. Number of edits is a better proxy, but isn't perfectly accurate because some editors have a habit of copyediting their posts which results in multiple edits showing for one actual post. What I did see as clear WP:BLUDGEONING was where the same editor repeats their argument multiple times, with no indication that they took any of the counter-arguments into consideration. For example, the phrases "opinion poll" and "opinion survey" were used a combined 16 times in the RfC page, 14 of them by Randy Kryn to frame the RfC as illegitimate (the remaining two were SMcCandlish quoting Randy to rebut that idea). Randy has continued this framing[2], as well as making other false claims like the close "ignored" WP:RFCNOT when it was specifically mentioned in the close and explained further on my talkpage. I do think Hey man im josh's conduct has been exemplary; it isn't easy to enact a consensus that you disagree with, but he's taken steps to do that as well as tried to de-escalate the issue. Also noting that the practice of dividing comments in a close review into Involved and Uninvolved (I thought we recently settled on "RFC Participants" and "Non-Participants?) is a fairly new one, so it seems reasonable that there would be some confusion on that point.
  I welcome the review from uninvolved editors. Honestly, when I started the closure I expected to to be a complete lack of consensus. As I began filtering out the bludgeoning, writing down the editors and the arguments they made, I was surprised to see a clear consensus emerge based on the strength of the arguments. It took 4+ hours to sort through everything on the RfC and write up a close; I don't think any policy-based criticism reasoning have been raised. The idea that the information page WP:RFCNOT can be "violated" or "ignored" when it is weighted against the policies WP:CONSENSUS and WP:NOT is wildly incorrect and continuing to push it is rapidly veering into WP:IDHT. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 17:40, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

  re-summarize the same 4 deciEEng-long discussion here. I approve of EEng's talk page becoming the unit for page length, though maybe a link to the pre-archiving version would be better. JoelleJay (talk) 18:18, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

  I actually just put together a draft of User:The Wordsmith/EEngs. It takes a raw page size and compares it against the current length of EEng's talk, so the RfC length can be cited with the template as 0.39 EEngs. I'll update it to be called with a page name directly in the future. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 18:26, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

  "a link to the pre-archiving version would be better" – Sure, if you want to crash people's browsers. LOL.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:24, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

  It's laughable to single out RK for bludgeoning while ignoring users on the other side who commented much more in the discussion RK did. Their whole MO is to bludgeon every discussion to the point where people who disagree with them no longer feel like contributing to the discussions. Jessintime (talk) 19:41, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

  That was just one clear example of repeating an identical argument over and over, which is why I wrote For example. Other users have already been mentioned here by other comments, including Dicklyon and SMcCandlish and I agree with that. Bagumba also made a lot of comments/replies, but they were fairly short and addressed several different points/asked different questions so I wouldn't characterize their contributions that way. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 20:02, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

  Singling me out is fine, and I wish more editors here would read WP:RFCNOT and its use by the Dispute Resolution page as a defining description of what an RfC can and cannot do. It cannot, per RFCNOT, change the title of any page. That duty is assigned to WP:RM. I was convinced from the start that editors would use this RfC to change the casing of titles if a close went in their favor, so pointed out repeatedly, and do so again here, that the RfC was an opinion poll. According to RFCNOT it could not have been anything else. The results, of course, could be reported in a new RM, and the editors who commented at the RfC could be pinged to participate in the RM. But that route seems to have been closed off by editors using WP:IAR to move page titles to lowercase. My question is "How does moving the NFL Draft pages to lowercase improve or maintain the encyclopedia", the criteria for an IAR. Randy Kryn (talk) 23:59, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

  As has already been pointed out, WP:RFCNOT is an information page and does not overrule policy. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 01:12, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

  The policy Wikipedia:Dispute resolution#Requested move defines the parameters and process of how a page title is changed. The policy Wikipedia:Dispute resolution#Requests for comment refers to article content, and links to WP:RFC for definition and direction. That page contains WP:RFCNOT, which instructs that RfCs cannot change page titles, and refers editors to Requested moves for that task. Randy Kryn (talk) 04:32, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

  This cherry-picking of line-items from policy that seem like they support RK's extremist bureaucratic viewpoint (that consensus formation is invalid if it doesn't follow an exact procedural course that he prefers) really needs to come to an end. As was already pointed out multiple times in the RfC itself (and I won't re-quote it all here), other elements of the exact same policy, and WP:CONSENSUS, and various others, specifically recommend VPPOL and RfC for resolving failures to reach consensus. The undeniable facts of the situation are that RM (and MR after it) were tried already, and just produced a "no consensus", so the obvious and policy-recommended solution is RfCing the matter, including at VPPOL in particular. There is no form of WP:IDHT and WP:WIKILAWYER (verging on WP:GAMING) handwaving in furtherance of his extremist pro-bureaucracy position that RK can engage in that is ever going to change this fact.

  An important side point is that RK's non-stop habit of re-re-re-repeating the same arguments endlessly no matter how many times they have been demonstrated to be wrong is why the RfC got mired in circular, repetitive argument (and why this AN thread is heading the same direction, as have so many RMs in which RK has been involved to tirelessly promote capitalization that doesn't fit the sourcing or the guidelines). Every time RK repeats the same nonsense, it needs to be dispelled again, which necessitates another post from me or Dicklyon or whoever. RK would not be the first to use this "drown it in noise" tactic to try to trainwreck MoS/AT-related discussions that aren't likely to go their way because of the sourcing and the P&G at issue. The other habitual abuser of this strategy was topic-banned from capitalization and eventually from all of MoS a long time ago.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:46, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

  An important side point is that RK's non-stop habit of re-re-re-repeating the same arguments endlessly no matter how many times they have been demonstrated to be wrong pot, please meet kettle. Thryduulf (talk) 12:57, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

  Another kettle, and another name calling rant against me by Mr. McCandlish, but where in it does he dispel with examples that titles per WP:RFCNOT means something other than titles are decided by an WP:RM process and not by an RFC? If consensus is not reached with an RM then another RM is called for, not an RfC. And I "drown it in noise?". After so many insults let me at least point out once, please, that walls-of-text are okay to write and preserve for a good record of topic analysis, but consider learning how to say things in just a few less words. Thanks. As for wanting to ban me from discussions to, I guess, make it easier to get your way, that should not be how Wikipedia works, and if someone tried to ban SMcCandlish for repetitive wall-of-texts I'd be the first to oppose it. Better to have a discussion about WP:RFCNOT though, which is the sticking point to where this RfC likely bit off too much and went in a direction of allowing massive title changes without going through the RM process. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:09, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

  A bunch of argument to emotion hand-waving about "insults" is never, ever going to dispel the proven fact that you canvassed like mad in furtherance of both capitalization against the source evidence and guidelines and against the ability of the community to RfC the matter (I've diffed it from start to finish, as best I could track it, over the course of weeks). You should have been blocked shortly after that started, and topic-banned. But as usual, as long as style or titles are involved, the admin corps for whatever reason will tolerate unbelievable amounts of disruptive, battlegrounding, advocacy-pushing behavior that would result in action if any other topic of any kind were involved. I have no idea why there's this blind spot, but it's there, and so I'm sure you'll skate without even a administrative warning to never do that again. [sigh]  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:29, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

  Another pot-kettle post. When you and others attempt to replace WP:RM with WP:RfC then I'd think that you'd expect some pushback and wouldn't mind it. As for "capitalization against the source evidence", that's for an RM to decide, not an RfC. Yes, it'd be much easier for you to push through things like this if you could choose which editors could comment and which are banned/silenced/sighworthy. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:52, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

• Overturn based on the considerations discussed in my comments here. The search for perfect capitalization consistency is simply not worth the amount of dispute and demoralization that it has been creating for more than a decade. No criticism of the closer is intended. (I'm not sure whether I'm considered "involved" where I don't edit the underlying articles but I did participate in the discussion, but I've posted in the "involved" section to avoid any dispute.) Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:48, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

  I've updated the section headers per recent practice, "Involved" is intended to mean RFC participants rather than WP:INVOLVED The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 20:06, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

• Comments
  1. The OP, referring to Talk:2024 NFL draft#Requested move 27 April 2023 states: ...closed against lowercase being the title. The RfC closed with "no consensus". The statement in the OP is inaccurate. BeanieFan11, please amend this to accurately the close of the RM.
  2. My observation of how messy a discussion (eg RfC or RM) becomes is directly proportional to the degree of participation. If the subject is contentious, this it is exponential. However, more participation, despite this down side, must be a good thing. The 2016 RM compared with the 2016 MR shows the pitfalls of poor participation.
  3. Kudos to The Wordsmith for wading through this and making sense of it.
  4. Appropriate notifications gather participation. Notification at each year article is unlikely to garner appreciably greater participation than a notification at the parent article, National Football League draft. My mother would say that one has no right to complain unless one is prepared to do something about it and come to the table with a solution. To those making such a complaint, the solution should have been self-evident - fix it. If complainants in the RfC chose to do nothing to remedy their cause for complaint, IMO they have no cause for complaint now.
  5. If editors are going to complain about notifications, was this discussion notified at the RfC page? No. Yet there was a notification at Talk:National Football League draft by BeanieFan11 with pings to selected editors. Perhaps an oversight by still evidence of WP:POTish behaviour.
  6. The 2016 RM resulted in the move of multiple pages without notification to those pages. One editor that specifically advocated this is perhaps the most vocal of those asserting the RfC is flawed for lack of notification. This strikes me as particularly WP:POTish.
  7. In the course of the RfC, WP:RFCNOT was cited once by a participant. WP:NOTBURO was cited among other reasons for conducting the discussion as an RfC. WP:NOTBURO is expressly linked to WP:IAR. The closer has assessed the arguments for RM v RFC including WP:RFCNOT. It has not been ignored. Citing WP:RFCNOT herein is not of itself a substantive reason for overturning the close. The prevailing P&G tells us it is not a trump card that beats all others.
  8. The purpose of a discussion is to elicit different views on a question and to debate those views. Both WP:RMCI and WP:CLOSE explicitly refer to discussions as a debate. A robust debate of an issue tests the validity of evidence and conclusions and, exposes the strengths or weaknesses in arguments. A metric such as number of edits or number of signatures to assert bludgeoning does not consider context: whether the edits reasonably contributed to the debate, whether they were replies to questions or other reasonable contributions. On the otherhand, The Wordsmith observes What I did see as clear WP:BLUDGEONING was where the same editor repeats their argument multiple times, with no indication that they took any of the counter-arguments into consideration, Given Randt Kryn's edits as a specific example (38 signatures in the RfC not including collapsed text). The responses to this edit by UCO2009bluejay really do prove their point.
  9. At their TP The Wordsmith would also refer to: aspersions and assumptions of bad faith,[3] which evidence WP:BATTLEGROUNDy behaviour, which is totally unproductive and should be of greater concern.
  10. Notwithstanding my observation immediately two above, if we are going to consider bludgeoning, then, apart from those already mentioned, we also need to consider GoodDay and (50 sigatures), Thryduulf (43 signatures) [in uncollapsed text].
  11. We have heard enough claims of "opinion poll" and "opinion survey" at the RfC. Repeating it again and again here doesn't make it so.

  Cinderella157 (talk) 02:50, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

  No time to read all this, but in response to the ping, I was going by admin @Amakuru: stating that "the difference between 'no consensus' and 'consensus not to move' is largely cosmetic". BeanieFan11 (talk) 02:53, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

  BeanieFan11, the distinction may be cosmetic in respect to the effect it has on an article but in a discussion such as this, there is a very distict difference between asserting "no consensus" (there is no clear result to favour either) and "consensus against" (there is consensus not to). Amakuru continues to say: ... our guidelines say that such cases default to the status quo, which is functionally the same as if there's a consensus not to move. The OP could be seen as a misrepresentation of fact, which, if intentional is unethical and inappropriate conduct. Having been made aware of this, the appropriate course is to amend an unintended misrepresentation else it would reasonably be seen as deliberate. Cinderella157 (talk) 03:34, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

  Commenting only on the point where I was pinged, bludgeoning cannot be determined by signature count alone. One editor making 20 identical comments is more likely to be bludgeoning than another editor making 40 different comments. In this RFC I was not advocating for or against lowercasing, but arguing the RFC was an improper attempt to overturn the RM consensus, pointing out flaws in some commenters' arguments and/or methodology. Thryduulf (talk) 03:13, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

  Thryduulf, where I pinged you, the sentence commences: Notwithstanding my observation immediately above ... [I will amend this] I am referring to point 8. Therein I make a point very similar to what you are saying. While number of comments is indicative of bludgeoning, context does matter. Concerns are being raised in this discussion regarding bludgeoning by certain editors based on their number of comments. I have observed that you should not be excluded from that group based on that metric and consequently, your edits should be subject to the same scrutiny to determine if bludeoning has occurred. Cinderella157 (talk) 03:58, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

• Overturn. The disregard for all the valid concerns about venue, notices, canvassing, RFCNOT¸ etc. mean this was not an accurate summary of the discussion. Thryduulf (talk) 03:18, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

  As I already demonstrated with a large diff pile, the only canvassing (and a whole hell of a lot of it, by Randy Kryn) was was on the pro-capitalization and concern-about-the-venue side (which are the same side, i.e. trying to use bogus venue/process bureaucracy to evade the fact that the sourcing and P&G on the matter were entirely clear and could only have one outcome).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:49, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

  I asked you, multiple times, in the discussion to provide evidence for your aspersions against content editors. You did not do so then and you have not done so now. Thryduulf (talk) 12:56, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

• Overturn. Fundamentally, RFC is not the venue for deciding move discussions, and that's particularly the case when a fairly recent RM discussion which attracted lots of participation was closed without a consensus for making the moves that have now been made. Whether RFCNOT is an essay / information page / whatever else isn't the point here. The point is that we have years and years of precedence for using RM as the venue for making these sorts of decision, and that's the way it's done on Wikipedia. For the closer to assert otherwise and decide they have the right to make the close anyway, and then even accuse experienced editors of WP:IDHT when they point this out, is baffling. The reasons for using RM rather than RFC for moves are several - firstly, it ensures a central listing at WP:RM for all discussions, meaning that they're almost always frequented by those with genuine expertise in article titling policy. Secondly, the bots that run the RM process make sure that the talk page of every article that might be affected is notified, something that didn't happen here. The process can also be used for more broad decisions affecting numerous articles, as we saw at Talk:1872 FA Cup final#Requested move 5 January 2023. So that's the procedural reason for overturning this. Now looking at the RFC more specifically, the discussion was hugely dominated by the procedural aspect of it. More than half the discussion was about whether it was legitimate rather than the question itself and many, including myself, did not really take the RFC to seriously or even cast a !vote because we didn't expect it to ever be binding. Hey man im josh, another RM-experienced admin who also questioned the venue of this discussion, actually introduced some of the most relevant information into the discussion, in the form of evidence that a very wide body of sources capitalise NFL Draft consistently. This evidence may or may not have been compelling, but it was lost amid the confusion around the decision to host the discussion in the wrong venue. Certainly I was forced to shift my view somewhat in response to that and it would have been very interesting to pursue it. In short, the RFC should be voided, and if people want to genuinely discuss this issue, a fresh RM discussion at NFL Draft or similar should be crafted, where we can focus solely on the evidence at hand and come to a hopefully final and correct decision.  — Amakuru (talk) 13:38, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

  the bots that run the RM process make sure that the talk page of every article that might be affected is notified: That did not happen at the 2016 RM, when the system was gamed, only one notification was placed for 2016 NFL draft (not even the main draft page), no P&G arguments were made, but a non-admin closer anyways moved all "XXXX NFL draft" pages to capitalization. The last RM was non-admin closed, vote counting non-P&G votes to reach a "no consensus". This RfC was well-attended, and VPPOL arguably has more eyes—and neutral as well. Nobody has identified what new policy or guideline argument will result from yet another RM. —Bagumba (talk) 05:22, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

• Endorse: Closer used accurate policy and accurately took into account the sides of the debate which was well publicized in the appropriate channels. We don't need forum shopping here when time is better spent improving the project elsewhere. Let'srun (talk) 20:34, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
  • How is this forum shopping? BeanieFan11 (talk) 20:45, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

  How was this "well publicized in the appropriate channels" when it wasn't notified to all the articles affected (as is required for move discussions)? Thryduulf (talk) 21:06, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

  @Let'srun: I won't argue against your endorsement of the close, but c'mon, forum shopping? Close reviews, and especially not this one, are not forum shopping. You need to do some reading on the definition before accusing others of such. Hey man im josh (talk) 00:08, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

  Excuse Let'srun if they are confused, when no uppercase proponents patrolled the misuse of "forum shopping" previously at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Capitalization of NFL draft article titles § Forum question. On their talk page, the closer, Wordsmith, diplomatically called it an interesting statistical anomaly that no uppercase supporters called the RfC a good forum.[4] —Bagumba (talk) 01:53, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

  Oops, it should have been The Wordsmith.—Bagumba (talk) 01:56, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

• Endorse per my comments about how it was a good forum in the RfC itself (Ctrl+F). Apart from the forum question, there was a rough consensus to move.—Alalch E. 01:54, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

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

User keeps on making cosmetic, meatbot-style edits after having been asked to stop many, many times

Joe Vitale 5 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) has been discussed before at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive358#User_insists_on_making_hundreds_(thousands?)_of_cosmetic_edits,_refuses_to_stop_or_discuss and that conversation was cut short because he was engaging on his talk page. The behavior there that was disruptive or otherwise inappropriate per WP:MEATBOT has continued and his response to the most recent complaint was mainly about tone and he just kept on doing it, including on pages experiencing increased traffic, which would be particularly disruptive (e.g. Carl Weathers at his recent death). In spite of writing "I will from this point on only do those sort of edits if I’m focused on actually improving an article instead of purely cosmetic edits as you say" a month ago, here are some illustrative example edits out off dozens since then:

• capitalizing the first letter of a template
• capitalizing the first letter of a template
• shuffling around whitespace
• shuffling around whitespace
• adding line breaks that make no difference
• adding a DEFAULTSORT that is identical to the page title
• shuffling around whitespace
• shuffling around whitespace
• capitalizing the first letter of a template
• adding line breaks that make no difference

And lest you think that some of these spates of edits are just part of some larger meaningful changes to an article, this is the outcome of 11 edits and this is the outcome of 19 edits. Etc., etc. He has been asked by many users to stop on many occasions, said he would, and hasn't. As far as disruption goes, it's hardly the worst, but it is annoying to look at your watchlist (or, as I do, my email inbox and RSS feeds) and see what I think are actual edits and then have someone doing three dozen cosmetic edits to move around whitespace. If I'm wrong here, I'll just drop it, but I think this is actively unhelpful and disruptive editing, so I would like an admin to intervene, as nothing so far has been effective. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 15:58, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately, rather a large proportion of editors these days seem to do nothing much but this sort of stuff. They are manageable on mobile, where bigger edits perhaps are not. Johnbod (talk) 16:05, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Have they explained at all the why behind their edits? Is it an expression of obsessive-compulsive disorder, for instance? It does look like that this is the primary (maybe only) edit type that the editor is engaged in. -- User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 16:07, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

This is the rationale and this was some elaboration (note that I don't want to explicitly state anything and encouraged the user to ask for revdel in case he decided that he didn't want this publicly disclosed). ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:10, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

There is a known overlap between autism, and OCD. They can even be misdiagnosed for one another due to their similarities. It hurts me when things don’t look perfect to me (I especially love even numbers). Which makes my hairline deeply depressing, but perhaps the former is something I should look into.

Incidentally, I did improve the Poppy article which makes this scrutiny feel harsh, but don’t trust myself to make big edits as I often make mistakes. I even misspelt critical on it which is ironic, given things. But that would happen a heck of a lot more if I did large or even moderate edits. I fork up too much.

Thanks, Joe Vitale 5 (talk) 17:42, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

@Joe Vitale 5: My suggestion to you would be to add a spoonful of sugar to your editing. Something similarly menial, like filling out and fixing broken citations (there are a lot of 'em!), might be a better outlet for your energies than edits that other people might find irritating. (The more otherwise productive your editing is, the more people will let you get away with invisible standardization edits.) theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 18:30, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Well, I am an autist myself, and there is no shortage of useful things to sperg about on here. Give Wikipedia:Typo Team/moss or WP:LINT a spin if you want. I'm also trying to fix a bunch of really old Signpost crap -- Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Technical/Index validation#2015 shows 85 articles that need to be tagged (using User:JPxG/SignpostTagger.js) which would be a huge help if somebody did. jp×g🗯️ 22:30, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

And 143 in 2016! jp×g🗯️ 22:30, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Spelling is not a strongpoint for me — hence why I try to update redirects, and stuff like that. There are a lot of old links to things that need changing. Like Edinburgh Fringe Festival to Edinburgh Festival Fringe. I do little stuff like this which I think helps as it is the real name of it. Also changing associated acts to either current/former member of or spinoff from etc. I did that today with the Libertines article then removed the whole associated acts thing as it doesn’t show. If there was a way for me to turn off people getting notifications for my extremely small edits then I wish there was an option for that as I’m not trying to ping everyone every time that I edit, and think that’s more disruptive than the edits themselves. Thanks, Joe Vitale 5 (talk) 13:36, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

putting this out there: Hundreds of articles have sources in another language. If you were to run the titles through Google Translate or Deep-L and add the results to the references (as a trans-title parameter in cite reference templates or in a parenthesis in references that don't use it) that would be very helpful for source verification, even if the results come out a bit stilted. Just a though. There are a lot of these kinds of changes that you could make even if you don't want to do content work. Just a suggestion. Elinruby (talk) 22:45, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Off-topic

Jól vagyok és nagyon éhes vagyok. Joe Vitale 5 (talk) 09:26, 26 February 2024 (UTC) akkor egyél ;) Elinruby (talk) 13:18, 26 February 2024 (UTC) See, no one hates me here but Justin lol. Joe Vitale 5 (talk) 00:13, 27 February 2024 (UTC) Why do you write things like this? I don't hate you. You also explicitly ask others to assume good faith and then you write this. Why? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:31, 27 February 2024 (UTC) I don’t hate you either. I think that you’re a marvellous fellow. Joe Vitale 5 (talk) 00:37, 27 February 2024 (UTC) That doesn't answer my question. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:58, 27 February 2024 (UTC) Honestly, there’s no reason to feed this, Joe Vitale 5 (talk) 01:12, 27 February 2024 (UTC) That still doesn't answer my question. I would like it if you would retract your claim that I "hate" you. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:28, 27 February 2024 (UTC) We can’t retract anything on the internet. Best, Joe Vitale 5 (talk) 01:37, 27 February 2024 (UTC) You can, but you choose to not. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:38, 27 February 2024 (UTC) Joe Vitale 5, if your intention is to strike the "hate" comment, but a lack of technical know-how is stopping you, I'd be happy to assist. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 02:24, 27 February 2024 (UTC) It’s alright, I was being facetious . Not the best place for humour here really but I was again being facetious. Justin is obviously well-established on here, and I hope means well but I do wish I was what other people wanted me to be. Because I am a dunce. Joe Vitale 5 (talk) 05:58, 27 February 2024 (UTC) That wasn't funny. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:28, 27 February 2024 (UTC) Then may I please ask your forgiveness? Joe Vitale 5 (talk) 06:44, 27 February 2024 (UTC) Please stop. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:44, 27 February 2024 (UTC) I shall. Say, do you happen to like Marmite at all? Joe Vitale 5 (talk) 08:14, 27 February 2024 (UTC) Please stop. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:35, 27 February 2024 (UTC) We found the fellow that doesn’t like Marmite, Joe Vitale 5 (talk) 08:56, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

• I'm seeing enough evidence here for a final warning about cosmetic, or slightly harmful, edits. I plan to warn also about engaging with criticism without being facetious. Unless there are objections, I plan to close as such within the next 48 hours. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 17:38, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  Why are they harmful? Joe Vitale 5 (talk) 19:42, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  Joe, I'm trying to determine whether a warning is sufficient or if a block is needed. To ask a question like that, after all the explanations of other editors, is to suggest that a warning may not be enough. I am hopeful that you can re-read this discussion and the ones one your user talk page and come away with a plan for how to avoid disruptive edits in the future. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 00:04, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks Firefangledfeathers. I noticed the comments here some hours ago and thought they needed a response but was too lazy. Sealioning or good faith: it doesn't make any difference what the intention is, it has to stop. Johnuniq (talk) 00:39, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

  I tried to talk to him and he apologized to me which of course was not the point at all. I told him this was the place for that and he logged off. I get the impression of someone quite young, except he has been around for a while, which is confusing. I would suggest maybe waiting to see what he does when he comes back on. Or not. You've got experience with this stuff. But that's my thought, and Firefangledfeathers has beenso patient that I am still hoping it worked (?) But I agree, I totally see the problem and apologize for apparently triggering it. Elinruby (talk) 09:08, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

  I'm not in a rush. I don't think you have anything to apologize for. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 13:56, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

  Sorry lads, I had drank too much, and was sending you all up. It was intended as my own idiosyncratic humour but obviously descended into chaos instead. I again wish to reiterate that how I edit is via ticking things off in a small way so that I can personally understand what I’m doing. Unfortunately, that seems to tick certain people off instead. I’m sorry that my editing style doesn’t fit in with what people would like but I am genuinely struggling to see how I can change this. Please don’t block me for this admittance, I just genuinely ruefully am struggling. Best wishes to you all, Joe Vitale 5 (talk) 13:47, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

  I can appreciate how my “OCD behaviour” is irritating however, and no I don’t think that Justin hates me. It just feels like, at least to me that he has been on my back far too much but if I have been personally irritating to him then I have to accept that viewpoint, and I’m sorry, Joe Vitale 5 (talk) 13:50, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

  Thank you for the apologies and explanations, Joe. I'm not available to really process and respond, but I will be in about half a day. Interested in seeing how others respond. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 16:49, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

  Hi Joe, thanks for speaking up here. I was worried about you. Hopefully the editing while drinking will stop? As you can see it is a bad idea. Meanwhile, a series of small construvtive edits can be irritating to other people {as I know) but if the edits are constructive then the issue is theirs. The constructive part might also be an issue according to Justin. I certainly would not have chided you on your talk page about 15 notifications for on-topic remarks. My offer to help you find things other than whitespace to edit does stand btw. Elinruby (talk) 18:13, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

  May I thank you for being so magnanimous? I never edit whilst drunk but felt personally attacked which made me play up on here when I shouldn’t have, and obviously that was extremely poor behaviour. Hope that you’re well, Joe Vitale 5 (talk) 18:37, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

  I mean obviously, the problem lies within myself, and that’s why I did indeed play up. I think that I’m an awful perfectionist, and saw how certain things were done on here, and tried to copy them. Hence the reason for so many I guess pointless edits. I just genuinely want every article that I edit to look the same way via those means, and again, I still appreciate how that pisses people off. Best, Joe Vitale 5 (talk) 18:56, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

  That's an admirable goal, and I think (like others have suggested) there are ways that you can scratch that itch and improve the project without pissing anyone off. If I might throw my own suggestion in, converting bare links into proper citations, repairing dead links, and fixing citation template errors are small, routine changes that tickle the right parts of my brain. They're easy, don't require too much interpretation, and have a visible improvement on articles so editors are very supportive of them. I'd be happy to point you in the right direction if you're interested. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 19:14, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

  Honestly mate, I don’t have the technical know how but may I also thank you for being magnanimous yourself? Best, Joe Vitale 5 (talk) 19:18, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

  No technical know-how is required. We can give you a very short set of instructions for the particular task. But I will be quiet now and let other talk. So should you btw as somebody out there is probably wondering about impulse control. Elinruby (talk) 19:25, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks, Joe Vitale 5 (talk) 19:27, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

  The great thing about it is you don't need much technical information. Most of it is finding articles in the maintenance category, opening the bare URL, and turning the bare link into a citation template (usually {{cite web}} or {{cite news}}) by filling in the title, author, date etc. There's plenty of information at Wikipedia:Bare URLs and I honestly think you might enjoy it. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 19:28, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks for writing that. I definitely don't hate you. If you like making successive small edits, maybe you can copy and paste entire articles into User:Joe Vitale 5/sandbox and make as many itty-bitty edits there that you want and only if/until you make some non-cosmetic change, you can paste it into the original article (assuming that you aren't overwriting real edits made by others in the interim)? And maybe if you see that you have not made any actual substantive edit, you just don't paste it back in? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:27, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

  Either that or use the preview button. --JBL (talk) 21:45, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Joe, I'm warning you that you need to stop making the following types of edits, all of which are solely cosmetic and do not affect the article as displayed to readers:

• Adding or removing whitespace or line breaks
• Changing the case of templates
• Adding DEFAULTSORT that matches the article name

I've pasted this list at your user talk page, with more specifics on what the warning does and does not cover. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 02:37, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Sporting CP versus Sporting Lisbon

This [5] short explanation was reverted without a valid reason by a SL Benfica advocate. I would ask the administrators to pay attention to the multiple abuses by this user, who has absurd prejudices towards Portuguese football and is against anything that is not in the interests of his SL Benfica. A. Landmesser (talk) 08:18, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

So you made a bold edit, that was already contentious years ago (Talk:Sporting CP#Sporting Lisbon), they reverted it and instead of discussing it, or any other form of Dispute resolution. You take them to the Administrators' noticeboard without notifying them? Nobody (talk) 12:59, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

No, we are not talking about the same thing. The issue with Sporting Lisbon they were taking about is in the top of the article at the very beginning of the text not in the section Crests and motto. My recent contribution was placed in the proper section and has a bunch of references about the topic. A. Landmesser (talk) 23:51, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Your accusations are absurd. On the subject: The section title is "Crest and motto", it has nothing to do with "Sporting Lisbon", that's why I removed that part. It's important to note that (if I'm not mistaken) edits to that article are subject to review because of the "Sporting Lisbon" dispute in the lead. SLBedit (talk) 19:36, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

The crest was changed in 2001 to raise awareness about the Sporting Lisbon error. Since then the crest has the words Sporting and Portugal to refrain people from calling the club Sporting Lisbon. A. Landmesser (talk) 21:57, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

It's not an error. Adding "Portugal" to the crest didn't change anything, as "Sporting Lisbon" is still used. SLBedit (talk) 22:02, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

That's what is said in the subsection Names. It is used colloquially in foreign countries but was banned from official, institutional contexts around the world because in those contexts it was a recklessly inaccurate designation for the sports club. A. Landmesser (talk) 11:11, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

User added the same advocacy to José Alvalade, and I've removed it per off-topic. SLBedit (talk) 20:02, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

The founders didn’t found Sporting Lisbon but Sporting Portugal. A. Landmesser (talk) 22:00, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

That's irrelevant. SLBedit (talk) 22:02, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Nihonjoe and COI

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

---

It was recently brought to the community's attention – through an external online publication which I won't link to here but which can be easily Googled up – that Nihonjoe has been editing articles in which he has a significant conflict of interest. These are articles about his employer, which Nihonjoe has significantly expanded mostly with promotional material, and three articles about his employer's products.

• Auqaveo – Nihonjoe's employer. Nihonjoe adds promotional stuff, mostly a high-profile customer listing[9]
• GMS (software) – product by Aquveo; Nihonjoe adds version history and a Reception section with customer testimonials[10]
• WMS (hydrology software) – product by Aquveo; Nihonjoe adds customer use cases[11]
• SMS (hydrology software) – product by Aquveo; Nihonjoe makes minor amendments[12]

It may be worth noting that Aquaveo is a small privately-held company that occupies just one office suite on a multi-office floor of 14,000 sq feet.

Nihonjoe has been anything but forthcoming about his COI:

1. First, Sagflaps politely asked Nihonjoe about his COI[13]. Nihonjoe replied evasively, stating that he was never "paid to edit the article" [14], repeating it twice. An admin of 18+ years will surely know the difference between COI and PAID.
2. Nihonjoe did not acknowledge his links with Aquaveo until later, initially claiming that the company is just found within one of many topics I find interesting because he's edited a fair number of river and lake articles over the years, and Aquaveo's software is used by a lot of people writing academic papers analyzing rivers and lakes[15][16] It needed a direct question from Sojourner in the earth for Nihonjoe to confirm that he had indeed been employed by Aquaveo.
3. At first, Nihonjoe claimed that he had edited these articles before he started working for Aquaveo.[17] Then he refused to say whether he had a COI when editing them,[18] and only after a further challenge by Sojourner later conceded that he had edited them while being employed.[19]
4. Nihonjoe claimed that all his edits had been to improve the article by adding references, removing marketing speak, and expanding it based on references.[20] It is unclear whether "removing marketing" also included pushing the article about Aquaveo to the front page of Wikipedia.[21]
5. Other than Nihonjoe, the four articles were created and edited mostly by two other accounts: Edit42 and 42of8. While Nihonjoe asserted that he doesn't know these accounts, a long-time Wikipedia editor and admin unaware who else in a small team could have worked on the company's Wikipedia presence, additionally with a shared interest in Brandon Sanderson as the case is, feels highly unusual.
6. I have not scrutinised Nihonjoe's alleged edits to competitors' products as mentioned by Levivich.[22]. Also, I did not go into other allegations mentioned in the external analysis (e.g., allegations of posting promo reviews for a book allegedly edited by his wife, etc.), as they are unrelated to Wikipedia.

It was a week ago that Sagflaps asked Nihonjoe about COI. Yesterday I politely suggested to Nihonjoe to come clean on it before the community starts its own investigation. He responded that he doesn't have time and anyway wasn't inclined to share "personal information".[23]

The Aquaveo article is now on its way to deletion due a forming consensus that his employer lacks notability.

I wouldn't like for this COI problem to overshadow Nihonjoe's 120,000+ positive contributions to Wikipedia over 18+ years, and countless hours of unpaid (?) work he has put into this project. However, if the editor community is to trust him – an admin and bureaucrat – to enforce Wikipedia policies fairly and transparently, it becomes necessary to address the evidence of the alleged policy violations.

With this, I'd like to open the floor for discussion. — kashmīrī ^TALK 12:03, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Excellent summary, Kashmiri, thanks. Yes, it would seem, to an uninvolved eye, that Nihonjoe has, through evasive and occasionally outright misleading statements, been gaslighting the community since the issue came to light elsewhere. This is a clear breach of both his conditions of conduct (undeclared COI, for example) and accountability (failure to adequately communicate). ——Serial 12:59, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

My first immediate thought was: "This all could easily have been avoided if he simply followed the disclosure policy." Then I next began to wonder as to whether an employee of a company could escape needing to disclose COI if the company were particularly large and there was no immediate bright-line connection between them and the business ownership, i.e. they were too far down the totem pole to have a legitimate interest in making the company articles look "nice". As WP:EXTERNALREL says, how close the relationship needs to be before it becomes a concern on Wikipedia is governed by common sense. However, in this case as Kashmiri has said, Aquaveo is a very small company that develops specialized scientific software, so this seems far more concerning. In particular, the response regarding the other two accounts editing the article also sets off alarm bells in my mind immediately.

I am taken aback that we are having this discussion about a bureaucrat. In the interests of WP:AGF, I cannot immediately assume paid editing; I hope maybe this could be a case of misinterpreting or misunderstanding the policy. But the only way to be sure of that is through Nihonjoe holding himself accountable, and I feel only the Arbitration Committee has the capacity to deal with private evidence in this manner, particularly if it is potentially revealing of personal information as Nihonjoe says. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 13:28, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Diff #1 is eight years old. The rest (which are mostly formatting) are five years old. The community's attitude to COI/paid editing has changed significantly in that time (largely as a result of professional marketing firms using significant resources to covertly influence our content). Is there anything more recent or that was explicitly against the rules as they stood at the time the edits were made? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 13:38, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Not quite that though. They have known for many years that they have had an undisclosed conflict of interest with each of these companies/products, and have edited their articles up until relatively recently (for Aquaveo, Nohinjoe's most recent edit, while a couple of years ago, was only seven edits ago). In some cases, as recently as last year. Community attitudes towards PAID and COI have indeed changed (they've got tighter). But admins are expected to keep themselves fully informed of changes to, and stay up to date with, policy. So either they did that and ignored them or did not and did not realise.

None of this addresses possibly the greater issue, of course, which is vague communication and repeated attempts at swerving questions. ——Serial 13:57, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

@HJ Mitchell I recall COI policy was fairly strict in 2015 when Nihonjoe first edited about his employer: [24]. It has remained that strict until today, and Nihonjoe's last COI edits were as recently as last summer.[25]

Already at their 2007 RfB, Nihonjoe proclaimed: I think it's very important to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest. [26]

In view of this, I find it challenging to try to justify his editing by a "changing community attitude" as you seem to suggest. — kashmīrī ^TALK 14:56, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

I have sent the private evidence to the arbcom email, so they should be aware of it. Sagflaps (talk) 15:36, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Who is BurroWrangler? They appear to be a very old account, which has only edited things related to WMS. Now, they have made an edit out of nowhere. See Special:Diff/1209231706 Sagflaps (talk) 14:13, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

They were likely notified by email after their article was nominated for deletion. Their commented in the wrong place, too (shouldn't be Talk). — kashmīrī ^TALK 14:38, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Ok, I've reviewed some information, and it generally seems like the editor BurroWrangler is not a sockpuppet. For privacy, I won't discuss here. Sagflaps (talk) 16:17, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

• It's no surprise that the environmental modeling software company with four Wikipedia articles is the one that has a Wikipedia admin on its payroll. Levivich (talk) 15:41, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
• This is all deeply unfortunate. It brings to mind the oft-repeated truism that the cover-up can be as bad as the crime. With the way this has played out so far, the community's level of trust in Nihonjoe at the moment does not seem to be at the level needed for him to effectively serve as a bureaucrat. Given the off-wiki evidence, this seems like a matter where there is a role for ArbCom, who I trust to take appropriate action. Sdkb ^talk 16:24, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
  • The thought that I've been mulling over is that there's no indication of administrator tools or bureaucrat tools being abused here, or that they would be. The lack of trust is squarely the lack of trust to write article content properly, with a tool that even people without accounts have. Although Nihonjoe removing praise published in a predatory journal in Special:Diff/829120321 and in Special:Diff/828998968 in 2017 removing much of the content that had earlier been added in 2015 by Edit42 and a Utah IP address in Special:Diff/608274825/650181752 does indicate that the diff above that covers 21 edits and several users is perhaps blurring some details here. Uncle G (talk) 17:29, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

    Trust unfortunately isn't something that can be segmented out that narrowly. The lost trust here applies not just to whether or not he will COI edit in the future, but more broadly to whether he will abide by the rules, show accountability, and overall behave responsibly. And even if we're looking more narrowly at only COI, that's still something that could intersect with 'crat work (e.g. judging consensus on whether to promote/demote an editor with COI issues).

    I'm not yet at the point where I see no path for him to retain his 'crat bit, but to do so he will need to show accountability rather than defensiveness to begin to restore the lost trust. Sdkb ^talk 17:57, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

    Generally, sysops in the past have lost their permissions for things that are not related to their actions as administrators. As you said, it's more about community trust. Sagflaps (talk) 18:00, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

    Yep. Blatant COI is often blockable at sight. Not using admin tools when COI editing makes no difference. — kashmīrī ^TALK 18:10, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

    Bureaucrat in particular is fundamentally a position of community trust more than it is a technical position. The technical right to add administrators and bureaucrats isn't really necessary, because a steward could do it. Bureaucrats are trusted for their good decision making. Sagflaps (talk) 18:34, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

    Well, that wasn't the entirety of your edits on that day, right? Actually, in that edit series you replaced some of the content (including a single predatory reference) with much longer content of similarly promotional character.[27] Anyway, I'm not sure what benefit you see in going edit by edit and trying to defend them when the problem is not really in the quality of your editing. — kashmīrī ^TALK 18:02, 22 February 2024 (UTC) Striking the entire comment – I regret I was quicker to respond than to read. Thanks, Primefac! — kashmīrī ^TALK 18:07, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

    Kashmiri, you are replying to Uncle G, who did not add the text to which you refer. Primefac (talk) 18:03, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

To address various things brought up here:

• It's already obvious I didn't create any of the articles in question. Just making sure that's stated.
• Yes, I should have declared a COI when I first edited Aquaveo. That was a mistake on my part. As for why, that was going on a decade ago (around 9 years, I think), so I don't know exactly what might have been going through my mind at that time. I suspect I did not because I wasn't editing while on the clock, I was not ever directed by anyone there to make edits or told how to edit, and all of my edits were attempting to improve the articles to better meet the neutrality and sourcing requirements because they were not very good before I worked to improve them. So, my brain likely interpreted it as not being a COI because Aquaveo wasn't involved in any way in the decisions I was making, and I wasn't trying to promote them. And, as I mentioned, I have edited many river and lake articles over the years, and often run across Aquaveo-related references and such when doing so, even before I worked for them. Within that small niche of river, lake, and related water science, they are well known. I nominated the article for DYK because I do that for many of the articles I improve significantly or create. Even with the work I did, however, I don't think the Aquaveo article currently meets the requirements to be kept (and I've said as much in that discussion). I haven't participated in the WMS discussion, but I suspect it's also not quite meeting the requirements to be kept after a quick glance at its current refs.
• I don't have any way to prove the other accounts mentioned here (Edit42, 42of8, and BurroWrangler) are not mine (it's really impossible to prove a negative like that). I can only say that I didn't create those accounts, I don't know who did, I've never used any of them, and I don't know who did/does use them. Given the somewhat geeky/nerdy nature of Aquaveo's products and how many geeky/nerdy people use them, and given how popular Brandon Sanderson is around the world, it's not a stretch to imagine that others who use or work on Aquaveo products might also be fans of Sanderson.
• Kashmiri's representation of my comment as He responded that he doesn't have time and anyway wasn't inclined to share "personal information". is rather disingenuous. I said that I have a life outside of Wikipedia, and I can't spend every waking moment here. in response to him posting a section on my talk page claiming that I was being silent and not responding to things. He posted this around 24 hours after I had last responded to something from him. He may have had a point if it had been a week or even a few days, but he needs to be a little more patient in waiting for someone to reply or make a comment.

I should have indicated my COI. That was a mistake on my part. I take following the policies and guidelines here very seriously, and I didn't do that here when I should have. It was never my intention to be evasive, but rather to protect my privacy. I apologize for any appearance of evasiveness and for not indicating my COI as I should have done. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 18:37, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Personally, I'm willing to accept this. My intent when I posted the original message on your talk page was that you would realize it's not worth fighting over and declare the COI to avoid further scrutiny into your personal life, and to placate the issues mentioned in the external site where this was originally brought up. Are there any other COI concerns that might come up? If so, I think it's better to just declare them now, since people on the internet can be ruthless. Sagflaps (talk) 18:52, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Not disclosing a COI is a big mistake, but the impact has been pretty trivial and they've owned up to it now. To me, a bigger concern is that participants here don't seem to care about the effort to dig into Nihonjoe's personal details off-wiki, outing and doxing him on a site known for harassment of Wikipedians, and publishing all of those allegations (even the thin speculation about sockpuppetry) here on-wiki. Is outing and doxing really tolerated by this community as long as you actually find a speck of dirt in their past? Could this really not have been settled in a completely private manner? I suppose it does send a clear message: watch those COIs or you lose all rights to privacy and discretion. The cat's out of the bag at this point, so fair to have a conversation about what to do, but it's not Joe who's primarily lost my trust here. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 19:43, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

What can be done, though, about a place "known for harassment of Wikipedians"? A description, incidentally, that could perhaps as easily describe One Montgomery Tower, San Francisco  :) ——Serial 19:57, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Doxxing that occurs on another site - even if it's triggered by WP editing - is something that's essentially impossible to deal with. People suck. I imagine most of us think COI editing is bad, and doxxing is bad, and different people assign different levels of outrage to each. The change I feel I've seen in recent years is that people seem almost unconcerned about doxxing if it's in the service of sniffing out a COI. I know others disagree, but this feels like if I got 5 years in jail for shoplifting a Snickers, and when I complained, I'm told "well you shouldn't have broken the law". I suspect there are those here who don't understand the point I'm trying to make because they would agree with the 5-year sentence. I can simultaneously be disappointed in NihonJoe, but even more disappointed in "Eddie Lands-something", who I'm sure has no WP account and no history of disagreement with NihonJoe on-wiki. The moral of the story is threefold, kids: (1) Don't edit with a COI, (2) Don't link your WP username with a username anywhere else in the world, and (3) Always remember that there are a lot of smart and mean-spirited people out there, who think they're on the side of angels. --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:14, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

We don't have to prevent bad behavior off-wiki in order to decide it should stay off-wiki. To deal with it, all it takes is an admin to decide WP:OUTING, WP:PROBLEMLINKS, the rest of WP:HA, etc. still exist and that it doesn't matter if a few influential editors try to add an "unless I think they deserve it" clause to the policy. It's disappointing, along the lines of your Snickers example, that even in such a frankly pretty trivial case of wrongdoing that nobody has any reservations about outing a fellow editor. I might expect to see the erosion of our harassment enforcement in the case of, say, the uncovering of a large UPE sockfarm, or an admin showing a pattern of blocking users to win disputes or something more egregious, but this is just some mild COI editing-while-crat. We can have all the proposals we want at WP:RFA2024, but if our admins are specifically targeted for harassment because they're an admin and nobody will go to bat for their basic humanity and dignity, it's pointless. Speaking of unfair things asked of admins: you're drawing a moral here, but you're an admin; by choosing what rules to enforce or ignore, you are creating the conditions from which we can extract a moral. Adding for the record, in case I need to be clearer: My point is not that there's "no there there". COI editing bad. Yes. But if outing is required to prove it, though, keep it private. Go to the editor, go to arbcom, and let them do what needs to be done. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 20:43, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm not aware - beyond obvious hints about what external site this doxxing is on - of any personal info disclosed on-wiki that NJ hasn't admitted to. If it exists, please tell Oversight. If there is more adminning (rather than OSing) to be done (policy-based, which an admin can act on, not morals-based, which we can complain about) then point it out here. Do you mean redacting references to that external site? Do you mean any mention of the COI editing, based on a "fruit of the poisonous tree" philosophy? I think at this point that would be pointless. If you have concrete suggestions of what admin action could be taken, I'm open to hearing them. Floquenbeam (talk) 20:58, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

regarding the part you added after I started typing: I agree, private arbcom or private discussion would have been more appropriate. Floquenbeam (talk) 21:00, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

(Putting this here as a response to Rhododendrites, never sure where to go in these long threaded discussions.) Yes, this is unpleasant. But COI editing is a breach of trust and the community has a very high expectation of bureaucrats, higher than for admins and I believe higher than for arbitrators. People differ. But for me personally, the argument in the off-wiki article was a bit mountain out of a molehill-ish, but Nihonjoe's responses to the issue being raised on his talk page fell short of WP:ADMINACCT. I expect any admin, when someone queried whether they had edited articles about their employer, to check the timeline to see whether they had indeed fallen afoul of the (current) standard. I expect that all the more of a bureaucrat. Yngvadottir (talk) 23:40, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't disagree about COI and initial responses. I'm not trying to absolve Joe. My question is, why are you ok with people talking about, linking to, and repeating the outing/doxing publicly on-wiki? If it were handled privately, Joe would get his trouting (or worse), own up to COIs, etc. As soon as it's on-wiki, however, it's a violation of our behavioral policies on harassment. Both can be true: Joe should've addressed this/fixed this after contacted about it, and Kashmiri, et al. have violated our harassment policy. It's extremely disappointing that the former is treated as a cardinal sin and the latter as, basically, worth it. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:50, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

The community as a whole has become very concerned about COI, particularly when it's about one's employer. It's important to avoid the appearance of a double standard for admins, since we are coming down like a ton of bricks on ordinary editors. On private handling, I don't know that it wasn't raised privately (via e-mail or at ArbCom). So far as I can see (I obviously can't see the suppressed IP edit in the same location that preceded it), the first on-wiki mention was Sagflaps' hypothetical at Nihonjoe's talk page. That looks to me like an attempt to have a quiet word. The response was less than forthcoming. So while as I say I think the exposé was overblown, my disappointment in Nihonjoe remains greater. (This later misstatement, which I assume was based on faulty memory, doesn't help my impression of Nihonjoe's responsiveness to concerns; as I said, as part of accountability I expect an admin, when the serious issue of COI is raised, to immediately check the timeline to see whether they had in fact contravened current standards.) Yngvadottir (talk) 02:03, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

• A major red flag for me was when Nihonjoe told the OP at the AfD to Please stop harassing me (diff), seemingly for no apparent reason... El_C 22:10, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
  • OP effectively outs him, opens an ANI thread, nominates an article at AfD based on that outing, publicizes a link to external harassment (all of which is a flagrant disregard of WP:HA and WP:PROBLEMLINKS), and in your judgment not only is none of that actually harassment ("no apparent reason"), but it's a red flag that Nihonjoe called it harassment? This place sometimes... — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:44, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

That is an incredibly distorted view, but I see that you've decided to defend Nihonjoe at all cost, which is a position I suppose. El_C 23:49, 22 February 2024 (UTC) — My edit summary was meant to read no to entrenched defense of wrongdoing — that at was a typo. El_C 23:55, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Flummoxing response. Haven't defended Nihonjoe at all. Just wishing someone would defend our harassment policy. With that, I think I'll part ways with this thread. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 00:05, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

From my perspective, you've done little but that. You taking a break from this thread is a good idea, though, I'd grant you that. El_C 00:10, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

I read through the discussion and it definitely comes across as strange to ask them to "stop harassing" them. I thought that was a perfectly acceptable conversation that was moving forward productively. Hey man im josh (talk) 00:14, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

• As I've mentioned off-wiki, this is a misdemeanor rather than a felony. I liked the earlier TROUT close and think that's still an appropriate way to end the dramahz. Carrite (talk) 00:40, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

  Agreed. This conversation, which was disproportionate from the outset, has outlived its usefulness. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 00:49, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

  When an advanced permission holder is credibly accused of violating core policies and admits it (after first being evasive and then giving an untrue answer), shutting down the discussion within hours just seems like an effort to sweep it under the rug. This is especially true when the discussion is still very active, and when "loss of trust" has been raised. Personally I don't think this will go very far unless there are more violations, but trying to stifle discussion of a serious issue before it has run its course just doesn't look good. "I don't think this is serious enough for sanctions" would be a legitimate opinion, but "Stop discussing this confirmed violation" isn't. I'm sure there are functionaries keeping an eye on this thread for actual outing that we really can't discuss on-wiki. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 02:28, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

  Then maybe someone should move the discussion forward in a constructive direction. Because the biggest thing that's happened since the thread was reopened is that the admin who reopened it belittled Rhododendrites into leaving the discussion and then took a parting shot for good measure. Did that look good? LEPRICAVARK (talk) 03:49, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

So says the person who chronically diminishes civility. Looks like they moved on to diminishing COI now. Not an improvement. El_C 04:40, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

As for the the biggest [biggest?] thing that's happened since the thread was reopened -diminishing: Yngvadottir made an insightful comment since (diff), as did Hey man im josh (diff), as did Usedtobecool (diff). The diminishing runs deep. El_C 04:51, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

I'll admit I communicated rather clumsily in that thread from a month-and-a-half ago, but I don't think that gives you the right to cast aspersions against me. Your treatment of Rhododendrites and myself is verging on conduct unbecoming of an admin. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 05:38, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Not that you seem concerned with fairness towards me, but the Usedtobecool comment came 40 minutes after my comment. Evidently you were too focused on discrediting me to pay careful attention. The other comments are certainly insightful, but I believe the negative impact of your behavior outweighs them (a belief that is not consistent with your claim that I chronically diminish civility; perhaps you should set aside your disdain for me and revisit that assertion). Frankly, I don't believe I've done anything to deserve this level of contempt from you. I don't expect you to like me, but I do expect an admin to refrain from grandstanding against a fellow editor. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 05:54, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

I am unmoved by your accusing me of "grandstanding." I speak plainly and directly, also about you diminishing others, which I maintain the facts bear. You attempting to turn what you called a parting shot, or my criticism of you ("contempt"), into some kind of egregious conduct — well, I obviously disagree. But the timeline, okay sure. El_C 06:11, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

If you want plain and direct speech, that suits me just fine. Broadly speaking, I support our civility policy; at times I have criticized the manner in which others sought to enforce it. If you intend to persist in publicly labeling me as someone who diminishes incivility despite my protestations to the contrary, it would appear that I will just have to put up with having my name dragged through the mud by an admin.

At any rate, your decision to personalize our interaction has clearly added more heat than light. Likewise, your snippy replies to Rhododendrites added more heat than light, even after Rhododendrites announced he was withdrawing from the discussion. In short, regardless of how much insight one derives from the comments that were made by other editors since you re-opened this thread, you have been raising the temperature and pushing the discussion in directions that are not constructive. I don't appreciate being mocked by an admin for my suggestion that this thread should be either pushed forward constructively or closed. You aren't above criticism, and you certainly shouldn't respond to criticism with aspersions. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 06:37, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

I didn't mock you, I criticized you. If you're unable to distinguish the two, then I'm sorry to say, but that's on you. Everyone is subject to criticism, which I'm obviously not exempt of, but neither are you. I've nothing further to add at this time. El_C 06:44, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Now it's my turn to be unmoved. So says the person who chronically diminishes civility has an unmistakable mocking, dismissive tone. It's certainly not constructive criticism; it's nothing more than a bald-faced aspersion. It's too bad you have nothing further to add beyond doubling-down. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 12:59, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

• Basic facts do not seem to be in dispute. And there is no consensus so far on how bad it was. The community has been moving heavily in the direction of giving crats more responsibility. The level of trust required for that position has increased if it's moved.
  If this were the case of a regular non-admin, with a comparable amount of contributions, I do not think we would immediately move to ban. But a topic ban seems like an obvious outcome. Said non-admin would not pass RFA for the next 5-6 years, maybe ever. Now, do we want admins who clearly wouldn't pass RFA, not because they've made enemies doing their job but the opposite? The answer has not always been a no, in the past. The bigger question yet is, do we want someone who would not pass an RFA, clerking RFAs, closing RFAs, partaking in cratchats and closing cratchats?
  To concerns of outing, they are not without merit. OP could/should have said, offwiki evidence exists and functionaries/arbs have been made aware of it. It was a ways too far to say the evidence was easily googled. OP has previously been oversighted recently, and presumably made adequately aware of OS policy, so it is truly unfortunate that more than was necessary was revealed yet again. It is also worth pointing out that ARBCOM as a institution is partly responsible for these kinds of incidents. They take a millennium to do anything, and routinely fail to assure the community that they are even doing something, making people impatient. When matters become public that should really be handled by arbcom, and it is obvious that arbs know of it, it should not require three days of ten people calling on them to say something for them to give a "yeah, we know."
  tldr; Nihonjoe should not be editing those topics anymore however that is achieved, and we need to find out Nihonjoe still retains the trust of the community to act as a crat in RFAs, however that is achieved. Usedtobecool ☎️ 04:39, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

• Given the edits and the timeframe, this does seem to be a mountain out of a molehill. Nihonjoe did screw up by not owning up more aggressively, but I disagree that the policies on COI was that strong in 2015. They were still be developed and there was a very strong anti-paid attitude at the time, much stronger than now (many, including Jimbo, said paid shouldn't edit AT ALL), so anyone with a mild COI was incentivized to not mention it if they really were not paid and not spamming their COI articles. I think Nihonjoe now need to either choose to avoid all COI editing completely, or declare their COI on the talk page. I did the same before I semi-retired. I think a lot of people are rightfully pissed at Nihonjoe, but mainly for wasting their time by not being more forthcoming from the start. Most of us have some kind of COI, most of us have some kind of job, after all. It's how you manage the COI, and disclose it that matters. I don't see any reason for a larger case, or continuing this. Dennis Brown 2¢ 06:26, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

So when they write in their RfB that: I think it's very important to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest (diff) — that is immaterial to you? El_C 06:39, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

The question was about how they would use the Crat bit. Not the admin bit, not the editor buttons. ":4. Do you pledge never to promote a person you are affiliated with or to discuss their RfA with them in a bureaucratic sense?", so it doesn't apply here, as there isn't any claim he misused any Crat tools or supposed authority as a Crat. Dennis Brown 2¢ 06:43, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

I'd say that conflict of interest (even the appearance of) is still the thing that it is (i.e. WP:COI), but I concede your point. El_C 06:47, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Had he simply put a statement saying he had a COI on his user page back in '15, there wouldn't have been a problem with the actual editing (even if others reverted him), so the real problem is disclosure, not editing. Was not disclosing the COI stupid? Probably. Was it so egregious that I have lost faith in his ability to properly use the admin and crat tools? No. My guess is the majority of people have some COI and edit without disclosing, but try to be reasonable and fair, including a lot of admin. I would bet money on it. For me, it's about having a response that is proportional to the actual "crime". Arb can look closer if they feel they need, but dragging him in the mud, publicly, seems overkill. We have our pound of flesh, I think we can quit whipping this horse. Dennis Brown 2¢ 07:10, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

RE: My guess is the majority of people have some COI and edit without disclosing — I wouldn't have thought that to be so. I certainly do not have one, nor have I ever (though you'd have to take my word for it). RE: Was it so egregious that I have lost faith in his ability to properly use the admin and crat tools? — I don't know. Like Usedtobecool above, I have reservations. Finally, I personally will not undo another closure of this thread (once is enough for me). El_C 07:25, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't thinks thats true... But if you do what COI topics have you edited without disclosing? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:55, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

"My guess is the majority of people have some COI and edit without disclosing" - definitely not. That really is telling, Dennis :-) "Don't edit about yourself/your employer/your family/friends/etc" is like Wikipedia COI 101. Levivich (talk) 17:58, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

I would say it is true that a significant chunk of Wikipedia pages have undisclosed COI text. Most companies after all have PR teams, and don't really care about Wikipedia policy. But, I wouldn't say that most Wikipedia editors have made undetected/undisclosed COI edits. Sagflaps (talk) 18:17, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree. Pareto principle. Levivich (talk) 18:19, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Dennis, I can entirely understand his failure to disclose back then (I see you've adopted the same mountain out of a molehill phrase as me). But now in 2024, we're bound by current rules. What concerns me, a lot, is that when Sagflaps asked, he didn't say "You know, now that I think about it, you have a point" and fix the omission at that point. Issue defused—consensus and procedures change—and we might even have been able to keep the article. But it's more than wasting the community's time (hell, all noticeboard discussions waste some time). I'm weighing in here because of the accountability issue (under 2024 rules). He's fallen well below my expectations on that. Yngvadottir (talk) 09:16, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

• Yngvadottir mentioned double standards. Well let us not apply them as a couple of people are doing, then.

  How would we treat use of the ordinary editing tool in this manner if it were a person that did not have any extra tools? I know what I would do, because it is what I have done for years, which is point to User:Uncle G/On notability#Writing about subjects close to you and observe that Special:Diff/828998968 is completely contrary to that, citing the company's own wiki as a source. (Even if one grants that in practical terms only company employees can edit the wiki, citing a wiki that is "user-supported" and apparently open to all is by itself a well-settled poor choice for sourcing, let alone combining that with what I talk about which is citing a company's own WWW site, which of course that wiki is. And whatever the back-and-forth over conflict of interest standards as of 2017 may be, citing wikis and autobiographical sources where companies write about themselves has been regarded as poor practice since years before I wrote Special:Diff/66348491 in 2006.)

  I would definitely ask Nihonjoe what on Earth xe thought that xe was doing removing the Journal of Hydrology (peer-reviewed, Elsevier), the Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics (peer-reviewed, CUP/SAEA), and Sedimentary Geology (peer-reviewed, Elsevier) and replacing them with the company's wiki. But I certainly have never called for the Arbitration Committee to remedy such a situation, in the many times that I have encountered people writing articles using the subject's own WWW sites. I'm not in favour of applying a double standard in that respect here.

  As I said above, there is no evidence here of mis-use of any tool other than the tool that everyone has, or any indication of, or even logical scenario for, there being so. About the only scenario that I could dream up is the utterly outlandish one of a bureaucrat getting all of those company employees administrator accounts on this wiki, which has many practical difficulties on the English Wikiepdia (in contrast to the recent very different situation on the Croatian Wikipedia with a bureaucrat). The trust issue is about the edit tool.

  And when it comes to trust, certainly my trust has diminished slightly in editors who just parroted off-wiki accusations of sock-puppetry without looking into them, and who even went as far as to rail against going through things edit by edit. Someone who is unwilling to look conscientiously and diligently at an edit history in detail to work out the facts of a matter is someone who I think is the person whom we should be wary of entrusting advanced tools to. Let's avoid that double standard, too. How many times does the world have to be burned by bad World Wide Web Detectives before the caution to be wary sinks in?

  I know that I for one (and I suspect many other administrators) have seen enough sock-puppeteers to know that a claim that account B waits 3 years and entirely undoes the edits of account A is a foundation for a claim of sock-puppetry that wouldn't pass muster at SPI. The person who adds content and cites peer-reviewed journals I for one would not conclude to be the same person as the person who removes that content and cites the company's wiki. (The only conclusions I might draw is that Edit42 was editing logged out at one point, and from deleted edits 42of8 definitely has some conflict of interest concerns and from talk page contributions such as Special:Diff/572217141 has a far stronger behavioural connection to Edit42.) I'll let Beeblebrox and JzG (who even edited the same article to remove predatory journals just like Nihonjoe) speak to the asinine idea that putting HHGTTG references in a username is grounds for drawing any conclusion at all.

  Uncle G (talk) 09:21, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

  Uncle G, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that in the 2018 edit you linked, Nihonjoe removed only 2 of the journal articles you mention: the Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics citation was retained, and in fact became the focus of the paragraph. Nihonjoe replaced a section headed "Examples of GMS implementation" with bullet points with a briefer summary in which this one implementation was highlighted and a table of versions of the software, which so far as I can see is the only place where he cited "xmswiki.com": a named reference to the version history there. He changed the balance of the article towards the technical; I don't see why he shortened the material on implementations, removing those 2 journal citations and giving added prominence to the one he left, but the wiki use was understandable given that he wanted to add the table and reference every line in it. Yngvadottir (talk) 23:24, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

• Nihonjoe did a stupid thing. (Personal attack removed), but a slap with the Wikitrout seems more appropriate. And Kashmiri does not come off well here, for obviously frivolous and vindictive AfD nominations. Guy (help! - typo?) 10:38, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

  @JzG: Please desist from attacking fellow editors. Please assume they are here to help rather than hinder. ——Serial 13:09, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

• Just a note that there may also be COI issues with Nihonjoe's Latter Day Saints related edits. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:53, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

The heat/light boundary

• "More heat than light" is such an overused cliche for closing threads. Dear colleagues, if there is more heat than light, remove the heat not the light! Not both. It's not a good idea to tell everyone they can't have a discussion because some people are acting like jerks. Let's stop doing this. The next time you see more heat than light, remove the heat so the light can continue. Don't just shut it all down with a cliche. This public service announcement brought to you by Levivich (talk) 16:52, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

  And if I hadn't used those words you'd find something else to complain about. I've re-opened the above section. Primefac (talk) 07:12, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

  To save everybody time I've started WP:WIKICLICHE. Levivich (talk) 23:09, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Requested specific subsection

I propose that ArbCom formally remind Nihonjoe that communication is required, and that under WP:ADMINACCT, the expectations for administrators to respond to concerns are higher than for regular editors. I am sure that regardless of what discussions they may have conducted or still be conducting on the matter, they will be able to post such a statement on their noticeboard or at his user talk without much extra effort.

The closure of this discussion when the last substantive posts to it were (a) a long post by Uncle G a primary focus of which was raising a new point about Nihonjoe's editing and (b) a gross personal attack by JzG is not merely bad optics; it risks establishing a precedent in favor of Nihonjoe's inadequate responses prior to his statement here. The closure has made a statement from the Arbs necessary, in my view. Yngvadottir (talk) 02:03, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Speaking with my Arb hat on, and asking a genuine question - Nihonjoe has declared their COI; what more do we need to tell him? (please do not ping on reply) Primefac (talk) 07:14, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

I would like for arbcom to find facts; they are the ones with access to all the evidence and the authority to investigate. Nihonjoe is still editing the AFDs. We need them to declare all their COIs and promise that there aren't any more of them. We need arbcom to determine that their story checks out with the timeline of verifiable events. After all that, we need arbcom to tell us that they are satisfied we can all move on. If all arbcom gives out is a reminder, it is completely fine, but we need to resolve these questions properly. Because it concerns a crat, a position considered so above reproach that our page on crats doesn't even say what to do about a bad one. If we need a case for that, we should have a case. But it is untenable for Nihonjoe to go back to cratting RFAs while there isn't an established version of events about what they are supposed to have done and how bad it was really. — Usedtobecool ☎️ 10:41, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

I was not kidding about a need to determine whether Nihonjoe still retains the trust of the community to continue to act as a bureaucrat. I thought we were going to have an on-wiki discussion because the cat was out of the bag. But if we feel that it could be worse, it is very good that arbcom looks into it instead. But we need an arb to come here and say arbcom is looking into it. What we don't need is an arbcrat being the one to close the discussion referring to completely irrelevant matters, giving last say to people who added nothing but abuse people raising concerns. I don't usually get deep into conflicts between regulars because Wikipedia works just fine with or without the input of a single editor such as me. But we've lost perspective indeed if we fail to consider the optics of extremely long-time admins shutting down discussion when concerns are raised about a top-ranking member of the community, and not even pretending to be nice about it. I did not say Nihonjoe should not be an admin or a crat. I said we need to determine where the community is. What's Nihonjoe going to say in the cratchat if an RFA is started tomorrow and it comes out during the RFA that the candidate had once created a undisclosed COI article and that takes it to the discretionary zone? Smaller issues have been known to become central in RFAs. Everything does not become fine just by pretending it never happened. Usedtobecool ☎️ 02:49, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Not an arb, but I sent the private evidence in question to them, and they replied that they are looking into it. Sagflaps (talk) 02:53, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

I was acting in my individual capacity as an admin, with neither 'crat nor Arb affecting my decision. Since yall want to keep going at it, I have re-opened the above discussion. (please do not ping on reply) Primefac (talk) 07:12, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Primefac, I apologise unreservedly. I did disagree with the timing and rationale of the close, and with the closer being an arb and a crat at that particular juncture. My concern with the latter was wholly about appearances; I do not and have never doubted your integrity. I regret everything else that I said, and for things I did need to say, I regret the manner in which I said it. — Usedtobecool ☎️ 11:11, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

As the first person who tried to close this, it's unclear to me what the folks who want to keep this going would like to see happen. If you want Nihonjoe to be desysopped, file a case request with arbcom. If you want to get them decratized, I'm not sure what the process is for that, but filing an arbcom case is probably the place to start. If you want them investigated as a sock, file an SPI. If you think some type of community sanction should be enacted, propose it here. Short of one of those things, continued angst over past actions doesn't seem useful. RoySmith (talk) 14:16, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

I concur. Even though I have my opinions on this matter, there is absolutely nothing of positive value that can be accomplished with continuing to have this thread open. Anytime we start talking about issues of trust when it comes to administrator or bureaucrat roles, then by explicit process, that is something which needs to be handled through WP:RFARB. It becomes even more so when you add to that the discussion of conflict of interest, where there is an attendant and increasing risk of outing personal information. As I said previously: I feel only the Arbitration Committee has the capacity to deal with private evidence in this manner, particularly if it is potentially revealing of personal information as Nihonjoe says. By continuing to keep this thread open, we are indeed creating a venue through which actual harassment can occur, which grows the size and scope of the case and makes everybody's Wiki-lives that much more difficult. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 15:06, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

How about a closing statement? Like a real one, not one that says everybody shut up. One that focuses on the behavior of the reported editor, not on the behavior of the editors discussing it. One that summarizes what happened, what the consensus is, and hey how about a warning not to do it again?

Not for nothing guys but why is it there is no problem processing COIs for non-legend-status players but when it's a functionary it's like "he finally admitted it, what more do you people want?!"

Neither of the closes were like normal closes with normal closing statements. Is that too much to ask?

And is it too much to ask for one of the dozen arbs to speak on behalf of arbcom and let us know if they're going to do anything or not? Am I the only person who wants to know if arbcom received private evidence of this before or after the off wiki blog post made it public?

And maybe one of the advanced perm holders can do something about the ridiculous personal attack I removed?

thanks. Levivich (talk) 15:44, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

My personal opinion: WP:COI doesn't strictly forbid a lot of behavior that people sometimes seem to expect being forbidden. WP:PAID does, but it's very narrow in scope. There is no "COI policy" and Nihonjoe is not a "functionary". WP:ADMINCOND exists but there is no formal higher standard for bureaucrats beyond this. And as currently the amount of actual private evidence involved and necessary to determine if there have been policy violations appears to be close to zero, or zero, I personally see no need for ArbCom to do anything at the moment – not even to provide a definitive official statement about whether the committee is going to do anything or not. This is a community discussion to me unless WP:COI becomes policy and gains strict prohibitions that it currently lacks. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 16:47, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

• Close The primary section has been re-opened for the 3rd time. If you want ArbCom to do something, there is a forum to request that. While this thread has arguably outlived its usefulness, we definitely do not need a third section for an outcome that AN cannot provide. Star Mississippi 17:48, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

  I move that ArbCom formally sentence Nihonjoe to 25 wacks with a wet trout. Or, if ArbCom is feeling bold, five squishes with a whale. Sagflaps (talk) 18:03, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

  Agreed. This has gone one well past its usefulness and just turned into a platform for users to snipe at each other. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 18:11, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Proposal: Nihonjoe admonished and reminded

Administrator and bureaucrat Nihonjoe (talk · contribs) is admonished for failing to abide by community guidelines on conflict-of-interest editing over an extended period. They are reminded of the high level of trust placed on bureaucrats and an expectation to lead by example.

• Support as proposer, in light of the fact that admins and arbitrators have shown no interest to take any further action, and community-at-large has similarly been apathetic, which leads me to believe that not enough people care; even if they do, we get what we deserve. Further, we do not have anything that codifies a higher level of expectation from bureaucrats, nor do we have established procedures for evaluation of bureaucrat conduct, separate from adminship. And this case does not rise to the level of desysopping, even though there were WP:ADMINCOND shortcomings. I continue to believe that we need something official to bring the matter to a close, this can be it, even if it fails. Usedtobecool ☎️ 18:08, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
• Support. I should point out that my attempted close (i.e. "TROUT") was essentially this. RoySmith (talk) 18:12, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose & Close - This has gone on well past its useful point. Nihonjoe has already apologized, formal admonishment at this point is just trying to get a pound of flesh. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 18:13, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose, that's not a community sanction. He has apologized. Take it to ArbComm if you feel you have a case. Otherwise this is just a ridiculous waste of community time and energy. Star Mississippi 18:18, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose this thread has not become more useful since I first observed that it had outlived its usefulness. It was time to move on then, and that hasn't changed. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 18:38, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
• Support Since at the end of the day, this is just a formal reminder to not do it again, and has no real consequences unless he were to COI edit in the future without disclosure. Sagflaps (talk) 18:52, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
• Close and maybe trout the people who keep demanding this be reopened. Grandpallama (talk) 20:46, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
• Reluctant support. In my view, it's at least as important, if not more so, for him to be officially reminded of the need to engage with ordinary editors in response to concerns (and for both Sagflaps and Kashmiri to be endorsed in their attempts to raise the issue collegially). It seems evident that no one has raised the issue of desysopping because no one—including me—believes his conduct has been so egregious as to merit desysopping. But that's a red herring, as is hypothetical de-cratting. A range of sub-par conduct exists for which admins are censured in lesser ways (above trouting), and these include non-responsiveness to concerns. For which we don't need ArbCom, but we do need to know that ArbCom takes issues seriously even when the editor in question is also a bureaucrat. Minimizing concerns about conflict of interest and ADMINCOND and countenancing personal attacks are highly concerning. Even Uncle G's carefully considered and laid out opinion has not received any response. But the posts here by arbitrators and other senior members of the admin corps make it clear that this is the only resolution I can hope for that places on the official record that Nihonjoe's behavior has been below the expected standard. Yngvadottir (talk) 23:24, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
• Support - basically, this proposal could have been the closing statement for the above discussion. Levivich (talk) 23:41, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
• Support. I appreciate that Nihonjoe has apologized. What I don't appreciate is that it took an obnoxious WP:AN thread for them to acknowledge error, and I'm concerned by the continuing phenomenon of defending a user by engaging in personal attacks against other users. Just in this thread we have HandThatFeeds saying users are out for a "pound of flesh." That's a personal attack, and over a proposal to admonish. Admonishments mean nothing! It's the community putting on record that Nihonjoe's behavior fell below what was expected of them, and that community expects them to do better! They agree! It's the most anodyne possible outcome short of doing nothing, and it's still too much somehow. Mackensen (talk) 02:29, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

  Admonishments mean nothing!

  Exactly my point. It's performative and just to make the proposers feel good about smacking someone on the nose with a rolled up newspaper, hence my "pound of flesh" comment. This accomplishes nothing except assuaging some egos. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 20:49, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

  @HandThatFeeds I admit I haven't read Merchant of Venice in a while, but I recall Antonio was in literal danger of his life. The degree to which you're worked up about a possible admonishment seems all out of proportion to what's being discussed. The best thing for Nihonjoe would be rhetorical de-escalation. This could have been closed a day ago if people didn't keep side-tracking the discussion, making personal attacks, or suggesting that this should go to Arbcom instead. Mackensen (talk) 19:31, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

  Again with the comment about personal attacks. Criticizing people for dragging this out for no gain is not a personal attack. If you believe that I've committed such a violation, file it. Otherwise I'd ask you not to make such an accusation again.

  The thing I'm "worked up" about is precisely people side-tracking this discussion by dragging it out, including this admonishment request. It should've been closed with Nihonjoe's apology & promise not to violate COI earlier, but people just want to formalize it for formality's sake.

  Unless you plan on filing a complaint against me, I'm done with this discussion. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 19:56, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

  For the record, I asked The Hand That Feeds You to strike what I felt were personal attacks and they declined. Mackensen (talk) 22:50, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

• Support as a proportionate response to the issue given the (late) apology (and one that will lay the groundwork for future actions, in the hopefully unlikely event that there are further or ongoing issues). Sdkb ^talk 05:12, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
• This has gone on long enough that it is no longer useful, and is almost bordering on running an editor off. This proposal doesn't accomplish anything that hasn't already been done and said. Not only are we beating a dead horse, but the horse is nothing more than a puddle of goo, and we are still beating it. Dennis Brown 2¢ 09:19, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
• Support I'm sure it won't reoccur, but recidivism should bring with it consequences which will be harder to establish without a preexisting record. Likewise its been pointed out that an admonishment is really nothing on its own, and it's hard to see how an ordinary, particularly a new, editor would have gotten away with much less. ——Serial 12:05, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
• Support (Non-admin) accountability is important and this behaviour falls far below community expectations of admins and bureaucrats. An admonishment and formal reminder of these expectations is proportionate and prudent. Polyamorph (talk) 12:31, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose A years old incident involving a lapse of judgement for which Nihonjoe has apologized is being blown way out of proportion. It is inconceivable that they would engage in similar behavior going forward, especially given the response here. This is starting to take on the appearance of the proverbial mob with pitchforks and torches. Enough. It's time to close this, definitively. If anyone wants to pursue this further, WP:ARBCOM is that way. -Ad Orientem (talk) 22:49, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Struck a line that another editor found objectionable. I stand by the oppose. -Ad Orientem (talk) 19:45, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

• Storm in a Teacup kinda rhymes with Shave and a Haircut ... Two Bits. ---Sluzzelin talk 23:01, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
• Support per Yngvadottir et al. As a bare minimum. The COI editing may or may not be historical; but the prevarication & dissembling when called on it, is not; and falls far short of the standards to which we should hold bureaucrats. Rotary Engine ^talk 16:17, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

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

So, who were the harassers?

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

---

Just wondering, do we know specifically which people were involved in the WP:OUTING and WP:HARASSMENT of Nihonjoe off-wiki? And do any of them have accounts on-wiki that should absolutely have some sort of consequences for their actions? I don't really care about the ones that only exist over there, because we already know they're sad people who seem to spend all of their time obsessing over Wikipedia (also, many of whom are already global-banned here anyways).

But I have questions in addition, such as, why did Sagflaps suddenly ask about COI for an article Nihonjoe hadn't meaningfully edited outside of a tag removal in 6 years? What prompted that? Something to do with said off-wiki outing and digging to try and find something, anything, to accuse Nihonjoe of?

Just wondering if we're, yet again, going to bury under the rug the frequent and constant harassment of editors' personal lives. Probably because many of those involved in the harassment over there are admins here and actively work to prevent any sort of consequences. Silverseren^C 00:22, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

The answer, as usual, is "it depends". If someone is not blocked on-wiki and starts outing and/or harassing other editor(s), we should (and often do) block them for it. Whether this block takes place as a normal admin action or as an ArbCom action (or something in between) largely depends on if the connection between on- and off-wiki accounts is public or private. On the other hand, if User A is already indeffed here (or has no account), there really isn't anything we can do if User B sees the off-wiki comment and then asks about it on-wiki (assuming they don't break the outing rules themselves in doing so). Primefac (talk) 09:03, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

we don't know. anyone can submit blog posts. ltbdl (talk) 09:30, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm not involved with the blog in question. I did read it however, and figured I might as well suggest that he declare the COI to quash any future concerns over it. Sagflaps (talk) 16:00, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

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

How should we address OUTING, going forward?

• WP:AVOIDOUTING

So WP:AVOIDOUTING is a section of WP:COI. And in reading everything above, unless I missed it, I'm not seeing that this was followed at all in the recent situation.

Per WP:COI - "When investigating COI editing, the policy against harassment takes precedence. It requires that Wikipedians not reveal the identity of editors against their wishes. Instead, examine editors' behavior and refer if necessary to CheckUser. Do not ask a user if they are somebody; instead one can ask if they have an undisclosed connection to that person."

So, someone saying that someone is being non-responsive to a public question - and thus of being outed? Wow. That's a really bad idea to be placing people in that position.

What's to stop someone from randomly asking anyone whether they have a COI about some article they've edited? Doesn't the act of asking create a question of outing?

That some external website did the initial outing is no excuse. We at Wikipedia do not follow the lead of some external website for our best practices.

Reading over the policy pages, it seems to me that none of this should be being discussed here on WP:AN. And instead should have happened in private communication with checkusers (which could include arbcom).

So my question is this:

Where do we go from here?

What can we do to stop this type of situation happening in the future?

I am dead serious - should blocks have been handed out once the outing started? If it turned out that Nihonjoe had a COI, that can be handled. I mean seriously, on Wikipedia, things like copyright infringement edits get handled, so cleaning up COI in an article is presumably pretty easy by comparison.

But outing people?

So, everyone here is part of the Wikipedia community. What do you think should happen in the future? - jc37 06:27, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Speaking as someone who's been following this thread but who hadn't (previously) participated in it, I have to say that it made me uncomfortable that this was being discussed on-wiki at all - especially the connection to an external site which can be easily Googled up. I was thinking of emailing Oversight due to the (in my opinion) veiled link to offwiki outing, but I decided against it - for one reason, as I thought there would be Oversighters already aware of this thread, who would have suppressed anything if they thought it was needed. In my opinion, this should have been dealt with privately (by email to ArbCom) from the beginning. All the best, ‍—‍a smart kitten_[meow] 07:02, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

That line made me uncomfortable as well. It exists on a spectrum between naming the website (which would have been clear outing) and providing no information about how the info was recently brought to the community's attention (which would have been more alright). Part of what this incident has revealed is that different editors have different views about where to draw the line along that spectrum, with the practical effect that we end up at the intersection point between the editor with the narrowest view of outing and the oversighter with the broadest view of what's oversightable. Given that oversighters are (understandably) cautious about using their tools in borderline cases, it seems that that intersection point is perhaps less protective against outing than community consensus might wish. Sdkb ^talk 08:24, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

The reality is there's symbiosis between Wikipedia and certain WP:BADSITES, to the point where many long-time editors, admins and arbitrators are active at those sites, and what is discussed can be quite influential on what happens on Wikipedia (or, to Wikipedians). That may even be a good thing. However, linking or invoking that stuff on-wiki just creates drama and is unlikely to get traction, especially if it's "just" from editors. The shadow governing needs to stay in the shadows. Perhaps the community could revisit WP:BADSITES and see if it has the stomach to prohibit linking-to (or invoking) outing material? Bon courage (talk) 09:28, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

I think that line was an obvious attempt to comply with WP:HARASSMENT by not actually posting the information or linking to it on-wiki, I just think it fell short by giving hints on where to find it. I don't think that was maliciously done. Many of our policies have shades of grey, and discussing undisclosed COI without directly posting/linking the private information is one of them. It might be prudent to add a statement to WP:OUTING saying that giving hints on where to find doxxed information isn't allowed. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 17:25, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

• The outing question is central to my concerns, and comments to just move on (and one failed attempt to close the discussion that got edit conflicted, so I didn't close and commented instead) even if I haven't said as much. People here have to understand this risk, but they just don't seem to give a damn if an editor keeps getting outed. It isn't our best moment, and the several failed closes are proof of that. Dennis Brown 2¢ 09:22, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

  Dennis Brown, ditto. My vote to close and trout those reopening was not because I don't consider this a serious breach of the community's trust, but because the thread itself seems to be creating damage in ways that are not desirable for an issue that should have been handled privately from the outset. Grandpallama (talk) 15:24, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

  Just so we understand the risk... We're all going to be outed within the coming years, our semi-anonymity is rather easily outed by machine learning systems (Google for example already knows who you are both on and off wiki unless you're from an obscure market). Outing is inevitable, in the long run none of us will avoid it. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:34, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

  I was outed less than a year after I started editing in 2005. Someone posted my home address along with something about visiting hours on my talk page. I admittedly did not try particularly hard to hide my identity. I am not as high-profile as a number of editors, but I think we need to do something to protect editors who take on the hard jobs from harassment and worse. Donald Albury 17:59, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

  We do a ton to protect all editors... But at the end of the day if we have to be honest: we can not reasonably expect to protect our users from doxing in the long term. At the end of the day the way we write is as unique as a fingerprint and we will all be outed, end of story. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:10, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

The balance between outing and investigating COI issues is always problematic. I haven't looked at the "other" website nor at the name mentioned there, but on the other hand it isn't hard to find (Redacted) (and one wonders how nihonjoe found the draft 3 minutes after creation in the first place[28]). (Redacted)

Note how Nihonjoe also used their admin tools here and here, which may or may not be a COI use of the tools (directly with the person, the Mormon/BYU angle of COI may perhaps be too tenuous to be objectionable here and with other articles). Fram (talk) 10:40, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

What the hell Fram. Primefac (talk) 13:31, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

He uses his real first name, he uses his wikipedia handle elsewhere to connect his full name to it, he edits multiple pages he is very closely connected with (more than was initially raised), and he uses admin tools on another page which seems likely to be a COI page as well. Why are you still protecting them? They should be stripped of their rights instead. Fram (talk) 14:01, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Are you trying to get yourself blocked again? — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 19:00, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

One practice I find somewhat inexplicable is the one where nobody is allowed to say the name of the BADSITE. People are allowed to read the BADSITE, they are allowed to bring stuff up here that was mentioned on the BADSITE, and they're even allowed to go to the BADSITE themselves and post there about stuff here -- and information from the BADSITE is allowed to be used in our decisionmaking processes -- but we draw the line at forbidding people to mention its name (despite it being notable enough for us to have an article about it, in fact, the only currently-active web forum in Category:Critics of Wikipedia)? Incidentally, this Voldemort procedure is the only thing that doesn't actually affect the situation, and simply makes it imposible for non-power-users to participate in the discussion. jp×g🗯️ 13:39, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

But, do we? Is an arb going to block someone for mentioning Wikipediocracy, knowing that it's been mentioned multiple times on WT:ARBN, for example? Or will an admin block on this page for mentioning Wikipediocracy, even though it's been mentioned loads of times on the usual notice boards? I mean, if people want Wikipediocracy to be unmentionable, actions speak louder than words. But it would presumably have to codify all the other aspects of Wikipediocracy you touch on—intersite participation, for example. Wasn't that recently tried, whereof the committee emerged covered in less than their usual glory? Man, it's a tricky one. ——Serial 13:58, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

The very good reason not to mention it was the same as why OP should have shared less. It's the same reason why arbcom should have so been on top of this that as soon as a concern was raised onwiki, they were able to shut it down with "we're looking, we'll post our findings; meantime, no one mention this on wiki again", or maybe I'm just too stupid, but how about do that preemptively when half of you would have found the offwiki evidence all your own faster than most everyone else and knew full well it was only a matter of time? Instead, you go, after days of being asked, "there's actually nothing new to investigate, so we aren't doing anything; btw COI isn't even a policy, so who cares?" Well, it looks like there was a need to investigate. And if only arbcom had handled this sensibly, we would not have more things coming out publicly that should have all been discovered and discussed privately. In one of the most valuable human undertakings ever, with more than 20 years of experience, we can't find a balance between protecting the encyclopedia and protecting an individual's privacy? It has to be a choice between sweeping everything under the rug and doxxing someone who's contributed more than most? Because, why? Because arbcom has to appear on high and aloof and say as little as possible for whatever reason that's more important than maintaining trust and protecting privacy, I guess. What a let down! — Usedtobecool ☎️ 14:54, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Absolutely. What the hell Primefac. El_C 16:14, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

This is also my primary concern. As I understand it -- and I don't know if this is true -- but the COI editing was reported privately to arbcom before the off-wiki blog post that exposed it, and the blog post was written in part because arbcom didn't do anything. If this is true, this is a problem.

As to JPxG's point above, I don't think the issue is so much that we aren't allowed to say the name of the site, but that people choose not to name it, in order to not bring attention to it.

I don't think the COI/outing concern Jc brings up is that major of a concern. For me, it's pretty basic that you do not edit the article about your employer, just like you do not edit the article about yourself, just like you do not edit the article about your friends, etc. If you choose to edit COI subjects like that anyway, then you must disclose it. (And it doesn't matter if the edits are good edits or vandalism. Improving an article you have a COI with is still very bad, and that's the reason there are COI rules.) People violate this rule all the time. Outing is essentially required to police COI editing.

Personally, I'd much rather any such outing be done in private, by email arbcom@ or paid@. However, if those reports are being made and sat on, then that's a problem, and a problem that begets off-wiki outing.

I'm still waiting to hear some official word from Arbcom about this. (And I'm hoping the rest of the committee doesn't share the views expressed by PF and TBF in this thread.) Levivich (talk) 16:56, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

"Outing is essentially required to police COI editing." - No.

Most ways that an editor can edit Wikipedia are reversible. And what we do to sanction an editor who edits inappropriately is to remove their editing access. Outing is not what we do here. - jc37 20:34, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

@Levivich We learned about this the same way the community did, we weren’t contacted in advance. No comment on anything else here (for now). Moneytrees🏝️(Talk) 17:24, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for answering this.

I'm much more sympathetic to Rhodo's point above that off-wiki blog posts is no way to police COI on Wikipedia. The first port of call for any Wikipedia editor who wanted to raise this should have been to email Arbcom (which I thought was done, based on comments at said off-wiki site).

I'm going to ask an unpopular question: why is the editor who runs that site not blocked on Wikipedia? If I know their username so does everyone else. That person should be emailing their concerns to Arbcom rather than making blog posts about it.

It's tough to resolve a situation where people on both sides are in the wrong. (Though sweeping it under the rug is no solution.) Levivich (talk) 17:53, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

So many reasons, but I'll start with 1) we don't sanction users for off-wiki activities and 2) silencing one's critics by force is antithetical to everything we do here. RoySmith-Mobile (talk) 19:22, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

1) EEML, gamergate would probably like a word. 2) FRAMGATE. ——Serial 20:37, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Note that clear (and as far as I can tell so far unacknowledged) COI editing was going on at least until August 2023[29]. Fram (talk) 10:16, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Editing with a COI is not the same as COI editing. Adding someone's book isn't exactly violating WP:COIU, in that it is an unambiguously uncontroversial edit. Primefac (talk) 13:01, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

It is if you were to be e.g. (Redacted). It's not just "adding someone's book", it's (Redacted). Oh, haven't they disclosed that yet, despite their "apology" and the forced COI declarations they already made? And oh, isn't ArbCom already aware of this after all of this? Oopsies... Fram (talk) 13:54, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

You really do not know when to stop. Primefac (talk) 13:58, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

To clarify my above comment, editors with a COI are allowed to make uncontroversial edits to pages with which they have a COI. Discouraged, yes, but not prohibited. In the example above, a book is being added to an author's list of publications, and nothing more, which is why I said that it appeared to be an unambiguously uncontroversial edit per the guideline. Primefac (talk) 14:13, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Very few things on Wikipedia are 'prohibited'. But doing things you're not meant to do, repeatedly, tends to draw the disapproval of the community leading in the end to sanctions. Adding a book which is (say), your own, your friend's, or which stands to earn you money from sales, is a straight-up COI problem edit. Bon courage (talk) 14:18, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Not discouraged... "strongly discouraged." Also not seeing how a promotional edit could be uncontroversial, unambiguously or otherwise. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:03, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

"Editing with a COI is not the same as COI editing"? Earlier in this conversation you said I'd just find something else to complain about. Well, I found it. Levivich (talk) 15:27, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

I've said it before but I think conflict of interest is often poorly understood on Wikipedia. Everybody has latent COIs (most obviously, in relation to descriptions of themselves). The more you do in life, especially if you do notable things, the more COIs you accumulate. It's not a bad thing. There is only an issue on Wikipedia where articles exist on topics for which one has a.COI, and one starts editing those topics. Edits made with a COI to the topic and tainted by that COI and Wikipedia frowns on that, most especially for financial COIs (and note being an employee of a company and editing about that company on work time is WP:PAID editing). Bon courage (talk) 15:37, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Yeah I understand that just because you (1) have a COI and (2) edit at the same time ("editing with a COI"), isn't the same thing as (3) violating the COI guideline ("COI editing"). But this instance -- what Joe did -- is violating the COI guideline. Specifically, failing to disclose the COI whiling editing about the thing he had a COI with, and repeatedly denying it before finally admitting and apologizing to it. So this isn't a question of "editing with a COI" v. "COI editing". Nobody should at this point be confused about whether guidelines were followed or not. The answer is not. Now you could argue that it's just a guideline as an arb argues above. But shit, adding a source to a Wikipedia article is a violation of a guideline if you have an undisclosed COI with the source or the Wikipedia article. Levivich (talk) 15:43, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

....except if you are a bureacrat, except under watch of this particular iteration of the committee, whose members have no stands other than whatever they happen to find when they hurriedly type WP:[best guess]. — Usedtobecool ☎️ 15:49, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

And, in many instances "it's just a guideline" is the mating call of the problem editor (who hasn't heard that about WP:RS, WP:MEDRS, WP:FRINGE etc?). Editors that keep on refusing to do what the community guides them to do are a problem the community eventually has to deal with. Bon courage (talk) 15:52, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

And I'd say the COI guideline isn't "poorly understood" on Wikipedia, it's poorly followed. It's amazing to me how many editors, particularly veteran admins, are shrugging at long term undisclosed COI editing here (not directed at you BC, that's a general comment). It's opening my eyes to just how many veterans apparently think editing about your employers/family/friends/whoever is no big deal. Especially, apparently, if you're making good edits. Although since so many thought that "paid advising" shouldn't be prohibited, I shouldn't be surprised, but I'm still surprised.

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person who is not using Wikipedia to try to make money or improve their career, reputation, etc. Of course that's not true, 99% of editors are probably complying with the guideline just fine, but I naively expect advanced rights holders to be adhere to policies and guidelines more strictly than average, rather than less. I've been here long enough now that I really should have disabused myself of that notion long ago. Alas. Levivich (talk) 15:50, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't understand how it's not clear that "paid editing" includes any COI editing involving a financial relationship with the subject. It literally says at WP:PAY An editor has a financial conflict of interest when they write about a topic with which they have a close financial relationship. This includes being an owner, employee, contractor, investor or other stakeholder.... JoelleJay (talk) 11:38, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

The first sentence defines a broad category ("having a financial COI") of which "being paid to edit" is a proper subset; this is made clear by the sentence immediately following the two that you quoted: Being paid to contribute to Wikipedia is one form of financial COI. If I edit the article about my employer tomorrow, I will have a COI, but I will not be a paid editor, unless my employer instructs me to make such an edit in the interim. --JBL (talk) 21:42, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Sure, I understand the distinction, but the section is titled "paid editing" which suggests "editing pages about your employer" and "being paid to edit by your employer" fall under "financial COI" and that this broader category is synonymous with "paid editing". JoelleJay (talk) 03:07, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree with you (maybe?) that the section WP:PAY is poorly written in that its title is X but its first paragraph is about a larger category, and it doesn't address X specifically until the second paragraph. I have attempted a simple rearrangement of text to remedy this situation. --JBL (talk) 18:37, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

• I think that it's clear that we need a better way to report and investigate COIs whose investigation necessarily involves discussing potentially personal information. Sending them to ArbCom is a problem for a variety of reasons - ArbCom is already overworked; it is also intended as a court of last resort, which means that sending something there limits appeal options. Restricting too many things to ArbCom from the moment they arise also risks giving the opinions and interpretations of arbitrators too much weight. I think that all our arbs are good, but the fact that most things go through multiple layers of process before ending up there is an important balance that retains community governance; if too many categories of things are sent straight to arbs then there is a risk that they could become unduly affected by just a few views, even if it's not intentional. And while privacy is important enough to restrict this from being discussed publicly, I don't think that most COI discussions are so private that they need to be restricted straight to ArbCom; for some things, there is a middle ground between "discuss things publicly, outing the person in question to everyone" and "immediately redact them to the absolute highest level." Of course I'm aware that some things would need to be sent straight to ArbCom for legal / OFFICE reasons, but that doesn't cover everything. That said I'm not perfectly happy with any of the other obvious alternatives that come to mind (private courts of admins or CUs or the like aren't something we want to expand either, for a variety of reasons.) Maybe we need a jury system with volunteer jurors who are sworn to secrecy; all you have to do is be a reasonably experienced editor in good standing, agree to that secrecy, never violate it, and put your name forward as available in order to participate. This would probably require some technical support, but it would give us a pool of people who can investigate, discuss, and build consensus on semi-sensitive things without the detrimental effects of sending them straight to the same closed court every time, and would allow for an initial round of investigations before ArbCom. Obvious admins would close discussions, and since the whole point of this is to offer a stop before going to ArbCom, a route of appeal to there would be preserved. --Aquillion (talk) 15:55, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
  • In my understanding there is a legal angle here, in that people handling personal information need to have signed an agreement with the WMF. Bon courage (talk) 16:13, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
    • I would hope that many discussions fall below the level that require that (as I said, there are clearly some things that require going straight to ArbCom.) But if it really covers all possible personal information, then we could have anyone who wants to be a juror sign that. I feel that cramming basically all serious investigations with the potential for WP:OUTING (and anything else that requires secrecy) through the same court with, functionally, nobody to appeal to is not scalable in the long term and is a recipe for disaster. It isn't what ArbCom was originally created for; and when we can avoid it, we should try to avoid situations where the same small group of people is the sole judge, jury, and executioner for entire categories of disputes, with no way for anyone else to even review their decision-making. Having a dedicated class of jurors who can review at least some types of private cases would allow ArbCom to preserve its role as the final court of appeals while ensuring that most cases still have enough eyes on them. --Aquillion (talk) 16:24, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
      • This issue about COI v OUTing has never been a problem, before. It's a problem that's been conjured up now to excuse not having done the usual reasonable things that are done, no problem, in literally every other case, ever. It's so simple, it boggles the mind. Someone finds out someone's been doing COI editing but involves private evidence, they just say "I found this editor is breaking COI guidelines (private evidence sent to arbcom or this functionary)". The one who received the evidence handles it privately, which is again, so simple. If you determine it's minor, you tell them not to do it again without disclosing COI, if it's major, you seek sanctions. You make public which articles are affected. Everyone who's interested checks the articles for NPOV issues. Done. Of course, that would have required in this case for the party with the evidence and the authority, to actually want to do what's required, rather than seek excuses to protect a bureaucrat. — Usedtobecool ☎️ 16:39, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
        • That last part seems very confused, given that the people with the off-wiki stuff in hand who brought this up at AFD and on this noticeboard are Sagflaps and Kashmiri, who most definitely did not seek excuses to protect a bureaucrat. Nor did they privately take their evidence to the Arbitration Committee as you would have had them do. Uncle G (talk) 15:02, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
          • Uncle G, yes they did. Sagflaps said the very day this thread was opened that private evidence had been sent to arbcom, no one has challenged that. Regardless, Moneytrees has now said that they took the offwiki evidence to arbcom soon after it was published, which was days before editors started posting to Nihon's talk. — Usedtobecool ☎️ 15:31, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
            • That doesn't help to make what you said any less confused. How is Sagflaps/Kashmiri posting the evidence publicly here and at AFD in line with what you said about sending evidence privately? It seems to be quite counter to it. How is Sagflaps/Kashmiri posting the evidence publicly here and at AFD "the party with the evidence" "seek[ing] excuses to protect a bureaucrat"? I'm fairly sure that that's the direct opposite of what they are seeking. Uncle G (talk) 17:29, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
              • Uncle G, the party with evidence and authority is arbcom. Since the very beginning, I have only asked one thing, that arbcom take over the case and close public discussion, so COI issues can be dealt with privately and there is no chance of outing happening in public. — Usedtobecool ☎️ 17:38, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
• I've always been of the opinion that the best preventative medicine for outing relating to WP is to conceal nothing about one's own identity. Unfortunately, the Cult of Anonymity here is so pervasive that it seems universal and with the enhanced powers given to San Francisco to smoke any WP volunteer they want to smoke under the ill-considered Universal Code of Conduct, so-called Outing has become the third rail here. There are two problems in this specific instance: one is that the entire volition for the COI accusation came from off-wiki with a blog post like a bolt from a sky — it wasn't, in this case, a matter of a Wikipedian seeing a problem from within and trying to address the issue internally through prescribed channels, it was a case made by an individual seeking to cast WP in a negative public light. And secondly, it was an accusation of borderline or inappropriate COI editing made against a bureaucrat, not an ordinary administrator. Teh Drahmaz erupt!

Of course, the most Wikipedia thing ever happened: instead of addressing the blog and its accusations head on — oh, dear, that would be outing! — or instead of Arbcom acting proactively and immediately about the matter — why, there's no precedent for that! — a perfectly good article was hauled to the abattoir and people started to either stuff fingers in their ears and hum or start the sanctimonious derby about how nasty, nasty, nasty BADSITE is and how internet anonymity is a fundamental human right. Neither of which are true, but believe what you want to believe.

The fix would have been for the Bureaucrat in question to mea culpa quickly, resign the most advanced hat, and move along with life. But that's not what happened and so we are all wasting our time chattering. Including me. Now, time to write some content. —Tim Davenport, Corvallis, OR //// Carrite (talk) 18:05, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Anonymity can be important for certain topics – if you're editing about organized crime or dodgy nation states, for example, because it's possible exception might be taken to individuals thought to be bringing the wrong things to light. But often privacy is not necessary and is simply fetishised on Wikipedia (and this has roots in digital communities of all types). This enables a lot of crap/COI content. I don't know how to address this tension between content quality and privacy. Bon courage (talk) 18:21, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

I've always been of the opinion that the best preventative medicine for outing relating to WP is to conceal nothing about one's own identity. That's really easy to say for a white man living in the US, which is part of the privilege that you and I both enjoy. It's not as easy for others. Levivich (talk) 18:29, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

It's not even necessarily completely safe for people in first-world nations. --Aquillion (talk) 18:35, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Indeed, part of the privilege of being an American is having the protection of very strong freedom of speech laws. Even Europeans don't have these protections. It's part of what makes my country exceptional. ;-) Levivich (talk) 18:50, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Even editors in the US are not necessarily completely safe. It's possible that things like the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions could be brought to bear against an editor who adds something sufficiently detailed. And exposure can risk life-changing consequences even if they're not legal in nature - I recall that during Gamergate (harassment campaign) there were some efforts to direct the campaign against certain editors here, say. They didn't really go anywhere for the most part, but it's a risk. Banned editors have sometimes gone to partisan press outlets and named specific other editors there, too; if those reached the point of discussing real names it could get nasty. --Aquillion (talk) 01:30, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

True. The other issue is that Wikipedia is incredibly poorly designed from the perspective of anonymity/privacy. Every single action is permanently recorded, and there are no built-in controls to limit or even caution people regarding disclosures. Some information does end up hidden from casual-editors, but it is still stored permanently in a database that nation-state actors could gain access to if they so chose. Furthermore even without that level of concern, such information is often available from mirrors and archive services. It's not limited to just on-wiki stuff either, material from the arbcom mailing list has leaked before. 184.152.68.190 (talk) 18:52, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

ArbCom time?

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

---

Since the opening of this noticeboard section on 22 February by Kashmiri, the main section has been closed four times: by admin and arb Primefac ([30]), by admin Ganesha811 ([31]), by admin RoySmith ([32]), and by non-admin JayBeeEll (26 February). Despite the evaluation in the most recent close that the earlier closers were correct in reading the discussion as having reached no consensus ... for any sanctions more serious than an expression of concern about their editing, and the evaluation of subsequent proposals as a weak consensus that Nihonjoe's behavior should be officially admonished, that closure states that: Since Nihonjoe has already apologized, it is impossible to see any further point in continuing this discussion. Whether that was a supervote (and whether all closes including that one wrongly ignored the distinct issue of criticism of Nihonjoe's responsiveness, by me and others) has been overtaken by subsequent events. Active discussion has continued below the close. Other instances of editing by Nihonjoe that some editors regard as conflict of interest editing have been adduced, some relatively recent. There is disagreement—and a suggestion that a new reporting procedure should be instituted—about best practices in reporting suspected COI. There have been uncivil and ABF posts. There has been extensive participation by at least one arb, Primefac, but Moneytrees has stated that the Arbitration Committee was not informed of the off-wiki allegations of COI, so this is, so far as we know, where the issues are being discussed. Now (February 28) Fram, a former admin, has been blocked, also by Primefac (oversight block, following a series of allegations in this thread), had their talk page access revoked and reinstated. It is clear that substantial community disagreement exists; the repeated closure attempts have not worked; OUTING concerns make it desirable for the matter to move to a venue where evidence can be submitted privately; Primefac's conduct in the discussion and in blocking Fram arising from a discussion where they have been an active participant is not above suspicion; some have already stated that private submission of the concerns to ArbCom should have been the route taken in the beginning. I have stated above that this could and should all have been avoided, but my view of how demonstrably differs from that of many other editors; there's an intractable disagreement here. I believe a request for arbitration is in order. Someone who knows how, please make one. Yngvadottir (talk) 01:47, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

• Support not because I necessarily think there's a case, but because it is the only path to resolution and eventual closure of this thread before the last remaining editor gets in the last word. Star Mississippi 02:03, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

"Someone who knows how, please make one." Okay, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Conflict of interest management. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 09:54, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

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

1RR appeal by Marcelus

I would like to ask the community to remove or reduce the 1RR restriction imposed on me. I received 0RR on March 7, 2023 ([33]), this restriction was reduced to 1RR on July 3, 2023 ([34]), for appreciating my trouble-free editing history. On September 27, however, after my 2nd revert on the Povilas Plechavičius article, I received 0RR again ([35]). It was once again reduced to 1RR on November 29, 2023 ([36]).

After another three months of trouble-free editing, I would ask that the sanction be removed or reduced. Marcelus (talk) 11:57, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

@Sagflaps: I received 0RR for waging the editing wars. Since then, I have changed my style of working and communicating with other editors. I avoid making reverts, in complicated situations I initiate discussion. Except for this one case on Povilas Plechavičius, I have not had any problems related to reverts. My revert to Povilas Plechavičius was due to my misinterpretation of the revert (I restored the deleted content with the addition of sources, responding to the objections of the user who removed the content under the pretext of a lack of sources), and not out of bad faith. Marcelus (talk) 09:12, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

You haven't given much information on why the 1RR/0RR was given in the first place, and why those concerns are no longer applicable. Sagflaps (talk) 16:10, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

this comment should follow the one that it answers. Maybe someone will move the question above it. @Marcelus: Do you feel that the way you initiate discussion is collegial and in compliance with Wikipedia policy? Elinruby (talk) 12:30, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes Marcelus (talk) 20:20, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

You should withdraw this appeal. Or take it to whoever gave you the sanction.

I actually think this is the wrong sanction, and semi-supported your appeal, but now I have grave concerns about your grasp of policy. I am being vague for your benefit but I know you understand at least in part what I am referring to. I am giving you the opportunity to walk back what you just said. Elinruby (talk) 20:32, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

@Elinruby if you think that I did something wrong or that I should be sanctioned somehow for something, please speak up or report this to adequate noticeboard. I don't really know what you mean, and those sort of innuendoes do not serve anyone Marcelus (talk) 20:36, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

It wasn't innuendo, it was one last attempt to avoid dramah on a board that is getting more traffic than usual.

So be it.

I have an appointment and also need to consult someone about whether some of what I have to say would be outing. But. There is quite a bit to choose from in the past three months, however pending a fuller answer perhaps you would like to use [37] as an example of collegial discussion of a work in progress? Elinruby (talk) 21:11, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

It seems to me that the description of the revision is quite comprehensive: I removed unnecessary positions from the bibliography and your meta comments. I would ask you to formulate your objections towards me more comprehensively, i.e. write directly what I am doing wrong according to you. Marcelus (talk)

And you discussed your interference and removal of sources from a work in progress where exactly? We call what you are pointing at an "edit summary". You claim above that you initiate discussions in a collegial manner in accordance with Wikipedia policy. The above is just one example, given when I wasn't really available, but it's a manual revert and will do for a start.

Your past three months may not have included in a 3RR complaint but they by no means constitute "trouble-free editing". If you would like to amend that statement and strike the one about initiating discussion, which is the one that made me guffaw, I am willing to drop this for now.

I do have some time today to write up the longer answer I promised, and without getting into the third-party privacy stuff, I can discuss why I have felt a need to move work on Lithuania offline until it is done. There is however a significant issue from the past three months that involves a third party and about which I have offered pertinent private evidence. Why is this not at AE, by the way? Elinruby (talk) 17:13, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

It's rather clear that I don't start a discussion about every change I make. In this case, a comprehensive edit summary seemed to me to be sufficient. I will not continue this discussion because it looks like WP:BLUDGEON. Nor will I respond to innuendos or attempts to intimidate. I encourage you to provide actual evidence, instead of telling about them, it can be on AE.Marcelus (talk) 17:58, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

I am either bludgeoning or I am not being forthcoming. Pick one. Btw, you are interrupting the work you asked for.

As for AE, I am actually rather busy and don't plan at this moment to initiate a complaint. I am objecting to this appeal simply because of the jaw-dropping discrepancy between in complicated situations I initiate discussion and your actual editing pattern, as reflected in It's rather clear that I don't start a discussion about every change I make. I agree, btw, you do not by any means start a discussion about every change you make. At all.

My question to you was why this appeal is not at AE. Elinruby (talk) 18:19, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

All my appeals were here, it's a good place to discuss it. Marcelus (talk) 18:22, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

I have sent an email about the privacy question and offwiki evidence. Elinruby (talk) 00:01, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

FYI: I didn't receive any mail. Marcelus (talk) 16:03, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Why would I email you about the privacy of a third party? Elinruby (talk)

You didn't specify to whom you send an email, so I just informed everyone that it wasn't e-mail to me Marcelus (talk) 17:52, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

huh. I am not sure why anyone would think that but ok? Elinruby (talk) 18:21, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

• Support. As someone who offered previously to mentor Mercelus, I am not aware of any problems with his editing (as in, nobody complained to me or tried to draw my attention to anything, nor did I see any issues with my occasional intraction with him). The only issue I see is a slight need for an interaction ban betweeen Marcelus and Elinruby, although so far it does not appear serious, nor do I want to imply that either party is at fault here more than the other (on that note, I'd strongly advice both of them to try to avoid one another and to not comment on, or talk to, the other party).

_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:34, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

• Support. The user has 1RR, so at this point granting a WP:ROPE 3RR is reasonable. I don't think there's many negative consequences here, since if the user edit wars they will be right back at AN. Sagflaps (talk) 02:55, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Piotrus I have considered you a friend, but come on. You have asked *me* for help with Marcelus' behavior and while I am digging for diffs I'll see if I can find one for than too.

Sagflaps they are always right back at AN, and that is the problem. I was just trying to count the number of times since Ivanvector gave them a final warning on (checks notes) 29 November, which I note he has failed to do mention. On December 3 he accused another editor of "further attempts to obscure the history of Lithuanian collaboration during WWII" over (checks notes) removing vandalism from the lede that was unsupported by the text. This was one of his accusations against Cukrakalnis btw, that the vandalism was unsupported in the text, which Cukrakalnis had not otherwise edited. Currently article has no mention of Ambrazevičius pro-Nazi activities made it seem as though he were responsible for this. This ANI thread never did get closed but went instead to Arbcom and triggered a motion to tighten sourcing requirements. In that ANI he also misleadingly cited the user's final warning at a previous AE for losing his temper as evidence of "improper editing". Yes, he said that there. But there was no finding to this effect and The discussion ended with a "final warning" for Cukrakalnis. It seems that after a short break, C has returned to his practices. certainly makes it seem as though there was. There is a storm and intermittent power and telecommunication outages in my area so I may disappear again, but the privacy concern is resolved and there is more to come, including hounding me on Christmas Day Eve for a source for what I had described as "OR" as in "your OR does not trump their OR". Talk:Juozas Ambrazevičius#Agency in dissolution He has also created an article on the capital of Lithuania entirely devoted to Polish grievances about the treaty that placed it in Lithuania. It has only one Lithuanian source. Briefly, he has no business editing in Lithuania at all and should have been topic banned long ago. His entire editing style is problematic and I will also be linking to demands that I make changes for which he refused to provide a source. Talk:Juozas Ambrazevičius#Recent changes made by Elinruby This is not "trouble-free editing" Elinruby (talk) 03:42, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

ELinruby, as a friend, I really think you should try to disengage here and for everyone's benefit, avoid interacting with Marcelus. And as for the diffless comments above, nothing you even mention pertains to edit warring, which is what is being discussed here. I strongly suggest following the motto: "Live and let live". _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:52, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

I strongly suggest you look at this dispassionately rather than through the lens of...whatever is clouding your thinking here. As it happens I just addressed that. Cukrakalnis has been driven from the topic area and has felt the need to change his username. (email evidence available) *I* have had to work on revisions offline. You really want to defend deleting a bibliography, Piotrus? He is trying to own the topic which might even be ok if he was doing it justice, but he is not. But sure. Next you'll call me a Lithuanian nationalist. Elinruby (talk) 04:01, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

@Piotrus: if I get another email like the one just now from you I will post it here. Lose the threats bud. Elinruby (talk) 04:08, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

I did warn him. I am going back to diffs now. Have a good night. Elinruby (talk) 04:09, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

You can post that email here. It was not intended as a threat, just a friendly advice, although written quickly as I am dealing with a crying baby (even now); if anything in it was offensive, let me apologize in advance. Since things seem to be escalating in a way that is not likely to benefit anyone, nor Wikipedia, I will not say anything more about this issue (appeal), or you, except note that WP:BOOMERANG is a thing. Consider me "chased away" from the discussion here, I said what I wanted already (about Marcelus), and I do not want to say anything else about you (I still consider you a wiki friend). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:19, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

PS. Just to avoid any miscommunication, crying baby refers to a real baby crying in real life next to me, not to anyone on Wikipedia. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:20, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

I will consider this permission to share it if asked. Elinruby (talk) 04:57, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Oh and the lack of edit warring? I seem to be the only editor left standing in the topic area and I simply don't, so I am not even sure he should get credit for that. Elinruby (talk) 03:53, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Oppose -- with the following I think I will have sufficiently backed up what I said above to demonstrate good cause at a minimum not to grant the appeal. If not, or if there are questions, please do ping me.

===Evidence for statements above===

• Final warning Nov 29: By successful appeal, Marcelus' indefinite 0RR restriction in the WP:ARBEE contentious topic area is reduced to 1RR. However:The editors who participated here and declared themselves involved were quite unanimously opposed to reducing this sanction. Although there is consensus among the uninvolved commenters to accept this appeal, the opposing sentiment was echoed by several uninvolved editors. The previous sanction and appeal were discussed just two months ago, and there was also a rather weak consensus to convert the AE block to 0RR at that time, with a minority preference to impose a six-month moratorium on appeals. Had this appeal been considered a continuation of that very recent one, I believe it would have failed. Nonetheless, our mandate here is to consider the consensus of uninvolved editors who participated in this appeal discussion, and as such the appeal succeeds. However, I advise Marcelus that, per the points above and per WP:RECIDIVISM, further violations are likely to result in more severe sanctions; likely a ban from the topic at minimum. It is your responsibility, and only your responsibility, to abide by the restriction.

-- Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 20:39, 29 November 2023 (UTC)Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive356#Marcelus 0RR appeal (now restored more times than the House of Bourbon)

• AE We could give Cukrakalnis a logged warning that any further inappropriate remarks will lead to sanctions courtesy ping: @Extraordinary Writ and HJ Mitchell:
  • Note that Piotrus pings me into the discussion and mentions a previous occasion where he asked me to help mediate as I mentioned above. And before someone points it out, yes I was on both occasions exasperated and rude to both parties. I now believe that I was wrong to both-sides this. I would not have resolved this case in this way, but the close is not wrong either. Cukrakalnis did fail to many maintain a Spock-like equanimity in the face of personal attacks. I have not gone through the case line by line; it is cited here to show the reason for the warning; it was not editing.
• Arbcom request
• ANI
• Juozas Ambrazevičius edits by Cukrakalnis

===Additionally===

• M insists on using obscure Polish source as reference over more easily verifiable sources in English: Talk:Juozas Ambrazevičius#Removing text that doesn't verify
• Attempts to discuss
  • Talk:Juozas Ambrazevičius#personal attack removed
  • Talk:Juozas Ambrazevičius#Please explain this edit
• M insists there are no differences in the historiography between countries or timeframe, yet there are in fact at least Soviet, Lithuanian nationalist, Israeli, Belarussian, and World War II German narratives. I think there may be a separate Polish narrative as well but I have had trouble sourcing it or verifying Marcelus' source. But for example:
  • short historiography primer
  • See Occupation of the Baltic states#Soviet and Russian historiography for the Soviet version
  • Sorbonne explainer
  • Stanislovas Stasiulis pictured the history of the Holocaust in Lithuania as "three layers and periods." The first, he wrote, involves the relationship between Lithuanians and Jews during the Nazi occupation, and the second followed the Soviet re-occupation. The third period of interest covers the historiography since 1990, he wrote, which has attempted new and open discussions of the defensive (emigré) and ideological (Soviet) reactions to the Holocaust. The Soviet refusal to acknowledge the racialism of the Holocaust helped trigger a defensive cultural response known as double genocide theory, which equated the Holocaust and the Stalinist brutality meted out to Lithuanian by the Soviets. Considered a form of Holocaust trivialization, this paradigm has sometimes been taken as far as portraying Nazi pogroms as retaliation. from Provisional Government of Lithuania (text and reference added there by me)

References

Elinruby (talk) 07:51, 28 February 2024 (UTC)}}

Oppose, because Marcelus' edits on the main and talk pages do not lend credibility to his appeal. For example, the first version of his recently (Jan 28) created article Vilnius Region under Lithuanian administration (1939-1940), he mentioned a Lithuanian "occupation" of the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. Everyone would correctly recognize that something is definitely wrong if someone writes about the "English occupation of London", "French occupation of Paris" or "Ukrainian occupation of Kyiv" because these things don't make sense, so neither does the "Lithuanian occupation of Vilnius", but Marcelus still wrote those words. This sort of writing is suspicious and problematic. In addition, in a recent discussion Talk:Żeligowski's Mutiny#Żeligowski launched an offensive to occupy all of Lithuania, Marcelus is doing apologetics and denying that the Polish army units that launched an offensive that occupied the Lithuanian capital Vilnius and then aimed to take over the temporary capital Kaunas had any plans to conquer or occupy all of Lithuania. Overall, Marcelus' editing is definitely not as trouble-free as he would like to claim and so I oppose granting him the appeal.--+JMJ+ (talk) 19:38, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Elinruby and +JMJ+, my suggestion: let's focus here on the problem of edit waring, any other objection I suggest you present on AE, I will be happy to answer them there. I see that you together have a big problem with me, so I think it's time to resolve it. And I propose to keep the discussion on the content on the article talk pages.Marcelus (talk) 20:58, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

The way you immediately dismissed the legitimate concerns of other users only shows that your style of communication (which you claim has changed) with other editors leaves a lot to be desired and demonstrates why your 1RR exists. +JMJ+ (talk) 21:13, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

my Internet is going in and out again and I have to go but I think that the fact that this appeal seriously misrepresents your editing style is relevant to this appeal. You should withdraw it. I tried to talk to Piotrus about this last night. Bottom line he's genuinely too busy to read this entire thread let alone monitor your behaviour. I still think you should be topic banned and will applaud if that ever happens, but all I am asking right here is that your bullying behavior not be further empowered. It is revealing that the discussion immediately went to boomerangs and interaction bans. The problem here is that you feel entitled to hostilely police other editors' work based on beliefs you refuse to substantiate. Or cannot, as above. Elinruby (talk) 21:35, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Elinruby and +JMJ+: Ok, I listened to you. I don't agree with your assessment of me, of course, but it saddens me that you see me this way. However, I don't want to bludgeon this discussion into things unrelated to 1RR, that were also largely discussed elsewhere (here for example). I encourage you to create a submission in AE. And now I'm waiting for feedback from other editors and eventual request for comment from them.Marcelus (talk) 22:08, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

blink. I could swear you just answered my point that you misrepresented your editing style here in this appeal by pointing to an ANI thread where you misrepresented the findings of an AE. And which I quoted extensively above. In which you steadfastly refuse to provide a source. Have you read the other posts in this thread? Please Marcelus, nobody has time for this right now. Are you really trying to be your own Arbcom case? Elinruby (talk) 23:50, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Elinruby, as I said, I'm waiting for the contributions of other editors. I am not comfortable talking to someone as hostile as you are towards me. Marcelus (talk) 00:24, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm not even slightly hostile. I keep offering you a way out of this hole you've dug. But there is no question that you have made misleading statements. I had the receipts and since you demanded I show evidence I did so. I even warned you first.

You initiated this and can possibly still withdraw, due to all the other drama going on. I am actually rather sad about the fact that you won't. Elinruby (talk) 03:49, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Elinruby if you do all this only out of concern for me, then you can stop. I really don't need it. Let's wait for the opinions of others. Marcelus (talk) 10:10, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm not enjoying this conversation either, Marcelus, but that's not what I said.

I said that you have made misleading statements here and at ANI, and you should withdraw this appeal if you are not going to address that.

Other features of your editing have also been mentioned, such as unsubstantiated personal attacks, but you should address the above examples of misleading statements because they put in question what you say about facts and sources and why you would revert something in the first place Elinruby (talk) 11:43, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Edit warring by User:AlNahyan

This user consistently imposes unconstructive edits with vague/pretentious edit summaries ("Fixing grammar and format"/"Format fix"/etc.) [38] [39] [40] [41] And this user's track record involves edit warring behaviors at pop-music articles [42] [43] [44]. This user's main issue is WP:FALSETITLE, which I know is not an official MOS/guide whatsoever, but per WP:STATUSQUO articles that have implemented them before are being consistently messed up by this user without adequate explanations. Ippantekina (talk) 03:05, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

I find this entire situation quite funny as you seem to always be "reverting false titles" non-stop but when told its not an official policy, you ignore the fact and continue doing so.

In addition, "Fixing grammar" and "fixing format" is literally the correct edit summary and not vague because most (not all) of my edits with that summary also include general grammar fixes of the article in addition to removing your reverting of the "false title". Do you want me to write a whole essay on which edits I've done to an article or what?

Also I'm on my phone and having issues logging in, which is why I'm commenting via an IP address. Also editing warring hasn't occured as of yet, just so you know. x 2404:4401:9404:EB00:6829:2AB5:7D28:BD5B (talk) 03:49, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

@AlNahyan: The issue is WP:STATUSQUO. False title is not an official policy, but users who find them useful are free to implement it. The problem is that you disregard this and continue imposing your "MOS" to articles that are fine before. For example, at the article OMG (NewJeans song), which I'm nominating for GA, you jumped in and reverted my edits that disrupted the status quo prior (it has since been reverted by the GA Reviewer). Had you understood the issue I wouldn't have gone this far. Ippantekina (talk) 04:25, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

"your MOS" the MOS in question is Wikipedia's Manual of Style, not something which I just made up on the spot and shoved down your throat.

My issue with people like you who seem to be obsessed with "removing false titles" on every article is the fact that false titles and their existence in general are a subjective thing - many people (me included) believe that removing "false titles" simply don't improve the article in any major way and it makes the first sentence just look odd and incorrect even though it may not me.

Moreover, because false titles aren't actually an official policy, there's not a whole lot which you or anyone can do towards those (me included) who have an issue with removing "false titles".

But I'd like to apologise nonetheless for disregarding WP:STATUSQUO because that was definitely not the right thing to do in this situatio following reflection. @Ippantekina 2404:4401:9404:EB00:6829:2AB5:7D28:BD5B (talk) 07:16, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

(Again) WP:FALSETITLE is not an official policy but STATUSQUO should be respected. Furthermore, I also follow other essas (such as WP:ELEVAR, WP:RECEPTION, WP:PLAINENGLISH to name a few). These essays, alongside FALSETITLE, are not MOS but they are insightful w.r.t more encyclopedic writing. Thank you for your understanding. Ippantekina (talk) 08:04, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

What I see is a lot of groundless reversions on your part, and constructive editing on the part of AlNahyan. In fact, in almost all of those diffs you provided, his so-called "pretentious" edit summary is an accurate description of his edit, which fixed grammar and formatting issues that you and other users subsequently inexplicably undid. What I'm seeing is edit warring and serious ownership issues on your part, to the degree that a boomerang might be warranted. All of this is even before we address the fact that you're using an essay that has not been accepted by the community--in any way--as a justification for your behavior. Grandpallama (talk) 15:35, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Thank you so much for your opinions. I really appreciate them :) 2404:4401:9404:EB00:99DC:9214:3496:E663 (talk) 05:28, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

• Sidenote: As User:Popcornfud/The problem with false titles is not a page in the Wikipedia: namespace, I've removed the WP:FALSETITLE shortcut from it. NebY (talk) 13:27, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

  Thank you for doing so. Grandpallama (talk) 15:35, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Edit warring on D'Arcy Wentworth

The article on D'Arcy Wentworth is the subject of an ongoing edit war regarding unverified claims (from a self-published, unreliable source) that he had a long term affair with Jane Austen that ended when her family blocked it and the characters of Mr. Darcy and Col. Wentworth were named after him. Please could an uninvolved admin step in to adjudicate? 81.174.149.183 (talk) 19:10, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

The person who keeps introducing these unverified claims seems very keen on calling everyone else vandals. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:46, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

The author of the self-published book in question lives in the same area that the IPs geolocate to (and which use the same language in their edit summaries as the SPA that has now shown up to also revert). There's good reason to believe this is a COI situation. Grandpallama (talk) 18:54, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Seeing Special:Diff/1093334907 reveals that this back and forth has been going on since 2022. The disputed content was added to the article in 2020.

On the other side we have "Removed vandalism.", "Remove vandalism", "rm fiction". "The relationship between Austen and Wentworth is a hoax.", "Removed a section about Jane Austen that cited a fake book (false ISBN)", "removed libelous conspiracy theorist falsehoods from the article. Stop restoring this ridiculous crap. It is a terrible blight on wikipedia.", "Reverting con artist lie - and that search brings up a blank page. Jane Austen was thirteen at the time, by the way, and living in rural Hampshire. How exactly did they meet at a party?", and "Huge 100% hoax. The book doesn't exist - the ISBN isn’t real - and the website is highly unreliable.".

It is apparent from Special:Diff/950880377 that 1 person with a conflict of interest wrote not just the Austen stuff but the other problematic prose in the article also called out on its talk page. 1.144.105.121 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), 1.129.108.254 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), 1.145.112.185 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), 1.145.62.39 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), 1.144.105.166 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), 1.145.52.39 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), and 1.144.105.166 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) all seem to be making this same edit in this slow-motion edit war.

The address range is 1.128.0.0/11, which is too large a range for a block it seems. And unfortunately it is several editors without accounts that are helping to combat the conflict-of-interest edits, and DetachedPeices (talk · contribs) appears to be the same person, and so semi-protection would probably harm more than it would help. This person is prepared to edit war about this for, so far, one and a third years (Special:Diff/1102820283), which potentially means the patience to wait out any full protection.

I'm not really sure what can usefully be done with administrator tools, here.

Uncle G (talk) 15:44, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

• It looks like Ponsonby100 reverted the material a few times, and may have the article watchlisted. An experienced user keeping an eye on the page plus long-term extended confirmed protection would prevent further Austen disruption. Grandpallama (talk) 16:11, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
  • Yes, I have reverted it a number of times. I first became aware of it after reading the book 'Jane and D'Arcy'. To be frank, I don't really mind what the Wentworth page says as I have no interest in him, but it seems wrong to allow the persistent inclusion of material which has no scholarly basis. The editor who keeps inserting it has been unwilling to answer the very simple question - if all this material is properly sourced why isn't it on the Jane Austen page too? I have no doubt that if it was added there, it would be reverted by many more editors. Ponsonby100 (talk) 18:43, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
  • No, it would not. Semi-protection would subtract the contributions of 81.174.149.183 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), 96.238.30.75 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), 2406:3003:206B:2E4E:0:0:0:0/64 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), and 24.76.103.169 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) who have been doing the "R" part of "BRD" for one and a third years whilst leaving DetachedPeices (talk · contribs) free to get extended confirmed and keep reinstating the "B" part over and over. Ironically, it would do the exact opposite of getting more people to be able to keep an eye on the problem. More eyes in itself wouldn't stop the slow-motion edit war, anyway, just add more participants to it. The idea is to stop it.

    The problem here is that MediaWiki doesn't let us see nor pageblock Special:Contributions/1.128.0.0/11 (the Telstra Australia range being employed here) but requires administrators to play whack-a-mole with pageblocking 32 sub-ranges just to get the "B" part to stop. The clearly one person doing the "B" part has already used 3 of the sub-ranges. A non-page block would catch too many other customers of the ISP, as one can see from just Special:Contributions/1.129.0.0/16 for starters.

    Uncle G (talk) 02:17, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

    • I suppose the reason it seems to me that my proposal would work is that the SPA is over 480 edits away from being extended confirmed, and since they do nothing but occasionally reinsert the same material, effectively ECP would bar them from the article. Right now, the article is free of the Austen material, so extending ECP would de facto end the slow edit warring. Is there something about that idea I'm not realizing? Grandpallama (talk) 02:46, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
      • Yes. Wikipedia:Protection policy#As escalation from semi-protection and the fact that this addresses the wrong people as I just explained. As Wikipedia:Rough guide to extended confirmed protection#General considerations explains, the right approach is appropriate blocks, and the appropriate block, at least as far as I can see, is a pageblock of the one person doing the "B" edits over and over since 2020, which MediaWiki doesn't let me (or any other administrator) do without starting a tedious whack-a-mole game involving Telstra's /11 range which we can only address as a load of /16s. Uncle G (talk) 03:03, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
        • I suppose this seems like an IAR situation to me, in which the rough guide can't be followed precisely, because it's incapable (as you point out with the difficulty of any potential blocking) of achieving the needed outcome, and a workaround would help; the general considerations even state If semi-protection proves too weak even in combination with blocks that are appropriate, extended confirmed protection can be deployed, which is not too far from the case here. In its current state, you don't need the various IPs who have been part of the R in the BRD cycle, because the article is currently "clean" of the problematic behavior. But I do understand that you feel like your hands are a bit tied as an admin, based upon the links you've pointed out. Grandpallama (talk) 04:01, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
          • When the next "Bold" inevitably comes around we will. Better to include those people without accounts who already have eyes on the article, because it distributes the editing effort to all of those non-administrators. The amount of cleanup needed of this one person's other writing in the article that has been mentioned on the article's talk page would mean that, in the case of extended-confirmed or full protection, that all of that cleanup would funnel through a very few people and tonnes of specific talk page edit requests. The ideal situation, in contrast, is the one "B" person — with the single purpose, conflict of interest, and self-published book — blocked from further edit warring and everyone else free to challenge, cleanup, and improve content. It's both policy constraints and the desire not to tie the hands of the people without accounts, and people with accounts who are not administrators, who clearly want to help. (There are also some people with accounts in that edit history who need to be reminded that just because an edit is made by someone without an account, blanking repeatedly challenged content, it isn't a bad-faith edit to be rolled back or undone as vandalism.) Uncle G (talk) 10:26, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
            • Well put. Grandpallama (talk) 18:08, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
• Sometimes whack-a-mole is the only game in town. I would encourage any good-faith editors reading this to add relevant articles to their watchlists. Phil Bridger (talk) 10:22, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
  • I already put a pointer on Talk:Jane Austen. Uncle G (talk) 10:26, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Unblock request for Eni.Sukthi.Durres

• Eni.Sukthi.Durres (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
• Link to ANI thread

Appellant was blocked by @Kinu: for WP:CIR and WP:NPA related to their English language skills. Both their language skills and comportment have improved, but is it enough? I share Kinu's hesitance, so I bring it to you. I will copy the latest unblock request and ensuing discussion in separate blocks.

;carried over latest unblock request--

Hello dear Wikiedians. During these times I've had some serious problems that I had to solve so I couldn't speak more about this issue of unblocking, sorry. Ok then, for the question that 331dot (talk · contribs) did to me, I want to tell you that I didn't had anything serious there but however I must admit that it wasn't anything good, but I was misunderstood for what they said to me. For short, I want to say once again that the reason I love Wikipedia is the passion for information, biographical content, their correction, so I promise once again that I will do useful work whenever I can, even in cooperation with fellow editors here.

;carried over unblock discussion

Please describe concisely and clearly how your edits merited a block, what you would do differently, and what constructive edits you would make. Please read Wikipedia's Guide to appealing blocks for more information. For instance, you made a threat of violence. Please, in the context of this threat, please tell us why we should unblock you. Do you think that your English is good enough to understand a conversation? -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 01:27, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Why when anyone answered one of your questions did you come back with a challenge? Is that the sort of behavior we can expect from you if you are unblocked? -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 01:31, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Do you understand that we don't know from text on a screen whether you are serious or kidding? Any person receiving such a comment would likely be fearful. Is English your main language? [[User:331dot|331dot]] ([[User talk:331dot|talk]]) 08:25, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

{{ping|Deepfriedokra}} {{ping|331dot}}

-Style of editing

I have changed my style of editing compared to the one I had before being blocked. My edits will start from simple stats update to helping improve the quality content of the articles I plan on working with.

-Reaction to the threat!

As for the threat. It came at the heat of the moment and it wasn't meant as a threat. I didn't mean it and I have apologized for my mistake. It wasn't polite and it wasn't surely professional.

If I'm granted unbloking, I'll do my very best to help improve this project while cooperating with the fellow editors.

My English has been improving alot since the last time I contributed in the English Wikipedia. I've taken classes outside and my level of knowledge and understanding has gone up. Thank you and greetings. Eni.Sukthi.Durres (talk) 15:46, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

@Deepfriedokra: @331dot:

Hello. SOrry mates, have you received MY message. I can understand you are busy with other requests but however I mentioned again to be sure you received it, thank you. Eni.Sukthi.Durres (talk) 17:55, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

In addition I will wait patiently for an answer. Eni.Sukthi.Durres (talk) 17:57, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

@Kinu: OK to unblock? Does it need to go to WP:AN as a WP:CBAN?

Link to ANI thread -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 19:45, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

I am admittedly somewhat hesitant. The text of the unblock request above and other comments herein do not convince me of the editor's ability to write in English at a level that would be required for an encyclopedia. However, that is not as problematic as the persistent behavioral issues. The extensive block log, which includes sanctions not only for the aforementioned threat but also for this horrendously inappropriate edit summary (RevDeled but still visible to administrators) and for prior harassment (per the logged reason), is problematic. It came at the heat of the moment (as mentioned in the reply above) could be a justification had this happened once, but it does not excuse overall pattern of WP:NPA-violating behavior. With as much objectivity as possible (given that I am both the blocking administrator and the recipient of the aforementioned threat), I personally feel that an unblock is not justified. However, if any other administrator who has commented here and/or at the relevant discussions feels otherwise, I would not consider it wheel-warring. --Kinu ^t/_c 19:40, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

@Kinu: I appreciate your consideration in replying to me regardless of the many conflicts that have occurred here which are the reason of my blocking.

I must say that since I'm insisting all this time to get unlocked, it's because I like working here on the wiki and that I've also understood my mistakes which I've said even before that I didn't had any serious intention but simply I felt offended, you don't know me I don't know you personally. I also readed WP:NPA and I really found myself at section First offenses and isolated incidents where says that sometimes they aren't meant as attacks at all...

Dear admin, I humbly ask you to look positively at me to appreciate my true passion for Wikipedia and once again I tell you that I have changed my behavior even though I didn't gain anything from all that. I'm open for discussions, only tell me what else needs to do to justify the negative things I've done in the past, thanks. Eni.Sukthi.Durres (talk) 08:31, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

I might well take the request and this discussion to WP:AN as I am also hesitant. If no one unblocks first. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 06:59, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

@Deepfriedokra: I appreciate that. Greetings. Eni.Sukthi.Durres (talk) 07:10, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

@Kinu: Ima formatting for WP:AN. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 12:19, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Carried over by -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 12:38, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

• No to unblocking Based on what I have just read (as I am new to the issue), and seeing the horrendous (revdel) edit summary, I say no to unblock. That behavior is unacceptable. -- Alexf^(talk) 12:53, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

  (Non-administrator comment) I can't view the edit summary, but can you explain what it was about? The 🏎 Corvette 🏍 ZR1^{(The Garage)} 16:46, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

The Corvette ZR1 I would characterize it as a vulgar personal attack containing what I think is a racial slur. 331dot (talk) 19:25, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Decline badgering while awaiting response to unblock doesn't bode well for a change in conduct/temperament, which to me is the bigger issue than the language ability. Also, that e/s while eight years ago is horrendous. We don't need that kind of editor here. Star Mississippi 17:36, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Replly carried over.

Mate thanks for sending the case to WP:AN. I even saw the first opinions there and sorry for bothering you but I was impressed by someone who called my question to you (about receiving the message or not) a bandering. I'm very sorry, but I thought it was very necessary to ask that question, because in the first instance I was very kind and courteous with its drafting, but also that we know that the previous request was declined for not responding within 1 week, only for this is what I was worried about.. I waited patiently for 4 days but I couldn't stayed without asking 1 simple question so that they don't think I don't give any importance to this, sorry however. I also think that maybe not all admins. are with that same opinion, however I'm here to collaborate. As for that e/s of 2015 who they speak, I think that it belongs to the past now, it even hadn't any serious meaning at the time, it came only at the heat of the moment in an useless debate there. Eni.Sukthi.Durres (talk) 19:53, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

-- Deepfriedokra (talk) 22:26, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Hello? Is anyone there? -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 18:40, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

I am. Now I'll go ping some involved editors. @331dot and Kinu: can you give your opinion on this matter? The 🏎 Corvette 🏍 ZR1^{(The Garage)} 19:06, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

I feel like my opinion is pretty clear from the carried-over comments, but for the record I will state oppose unblock. --Kinu ^t/_c 19:26, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

• Since my opinion has been solicited I oppose unblocking this user. Their attitude has no place here. 331dot (talk) 19:25, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

• reply carried over below

@Deepfriedokra: Thank you for everything you are doing. I admit I'm really surprised that everyone is against my unblock. I would tell them once again to try to be positive to understand my great desire to work on the wiki, a desire which has even made me forget the bad behavior. If you don't unblock me, I don't know how else to prove it, I can't think of it at the moment. Thank you everyone.Eni.Sukthi.Durres (talk) 23:16, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

-- Deepfriedokra (talk) 12:32, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

I would tell them once again to try to be positive to understand my great desire to work on the wiki, a desire which has even made me forget the bad behavior. sounds like they'll lose track of their behavior out of a love for the project again which isn't a good sign. Is it viable for them to work on another project for six months to show ability to edit productively? Star Mississippi 14:46, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

• reply carried over

@Deepfriedokra: Please carry over this also. In reply to the latest comment added recently in WP:AN, I would say that "My great desire is to work here to show my abilities of expanding information and making useful contributs in several articles, but however if I don't have another choice you can test me in another project to convince you all that I have left behind my bad conduct and I intend to work passionately here in english wiki where I like it most. Thank you one more time for your consideration, greetings everybody. Eni.Sukthi.Durres (talk) 10:51 am, Today (UTC−5)

carried over by me -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 15:58, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

User talk:𝓓𝓮𝓮𝓳𝓪𝔂 𝓚𝓮𝓵𝓵𝔂 𝓷 𝓵 𝓮

User is vandalizing, but can't be issued warning because creation of her talk page is not allowed and restricted to administrators, page movers, and template editors because the page title matches an entry .*[^\0-\x{FFFF}].* <casesensitive> # Very few characters outside the [[Basic Multilingual Plane]] are useful in titles. Also the user is not notified of this issue here on ANI, because of the same. Regards, ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 18:04, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Blocked for self promotion, with a side of NOTHERE. They're welcome to make a compelling case for an unblock Star Mississippi 18:46, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

I created the page and issued a warning, I see the user has also been blocked. I'm pretty sure the username violates policy, but I'm not up-to-date on username policy so I'll leave that to others. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 18:48, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Absolutely breaks policy. Primefac (talk) 19:08, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

There were about five reasons the account could have been blocked, I went the route of less wikilawyering because they can file for a name change, but the conduct is still problematic. If someone feels a different reason is better, feel free to adjust it. Star Mississippi 19:14, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

The reason is perfectly valid. If they do make a good unblock request to deal with the disruptive edit, it would probably need to also be conditional on a name change. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 19:17, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Why was someone even able to create this username in the first place? Those characters should really be blacklisted, even if it was someone trying to be constructive the user would still have to undergo a username change. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:12, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Someone has to add it to meta:Title blacklist. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:45, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Anyone with access want to do the honors? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 19:04, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

IPBE request

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

---

I am here to request an IPBE. I have been affected by an IP block that prevents me from editing, and the IP address apparently comes from a proxy. I use public WiFi connections a lot, so that might be a reason. I promise to not misuse this privilege and be responsible with it. — Davest3r08 >:) ^(talk) 18:04, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Please see WP:IPBE for instructions on requesting the flag, it generally involves sending an email to the right team depending on circumstances. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 18:55, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

The Wordsmith, thank you! — Davest3r08 >:) ^(talk) 18:57, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

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

Talk:Israel–Hamas war#Requested move 23 January 2024

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

---

This RM has now been open for more than a month. More than 100 !votes have been cast, and more than 30,000 words have been offered. The discussion has been relisted twice and listed at WP:CR, but given its length and contentious nature I am making a post here as well. It would be best if an experienced user, preferably an administrator or perhaps a panel of administrators, closed this discussion. Thanks. InfiniteNexus (talk) 20:15, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

I've had this one on my radar for some time – planning on making a close tonight (or maybe tomorrow), should no one else want to take it. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 23:43, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

 Done :) theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 20:59, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

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

Dicklyon temporarily blocked for incivility

Yesterday, I blocked Dicklyon for 72 hours for a second-offense personal attack at RMTR. This has sparked quite a bit of discussion at my talk page as well as his. A couple of admins I trust have asked me to bring this here, and if editors feel that it is best for Dicklyon and the project to shorten his block to time served, I'd have no issue with that :) Courtesy pings to @Chris troutman, Tony1, SMcCandlish, Cinderella157, Amakuru, SportingFlyer, GoodDay, BeanieFan11, Primergrey, The Wordsmith, Serial Number 54129, Vanamonde93, Lepricavark, Bishonen, and The Kip. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 01:06, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

• Endorse block I’m on my phone so I can’t quite type up as long a response as I’d like, but to put it semi-succinctly - Dicklyon has been blocked four times already in 2024 (and we’re not even two months in) relating to PAs, edit warring, and similar in the MOS:CAPS area that merited this block; even if the PA itself was comparatively minor, it’s become a constant issue with him, and this PA was as some would say, the straw that broke the camel’s back. These are the only way of clearly telling him to cool his behavior in the area, and honestly the fact this is a recurring problem could be extended to argue the block should, if anything, be lengthened, not shortened. That’s not what’s being debated here, however, so to conclude I don’t see any reason why a mere three-day block is unjustified or unfair, especially when the PA that originally earned it was in response to civil opposition to an edit he, with his prior editing history, was almost certainly aware would be controversial. None of this even considers his specifically adversarial treatment of GoodDay before this PA, and in addition, the block will probably be over before this discussion has any kind of a consensus anyways. The Kip 01:13, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  As noted in user talk already, trying to use the happening of the questionable block as a justification for why the block was not questionable is circular reasoning.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:48, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  The problem is that A. The block wasn’t questionable, and B. Without it, there’s still three blocks in two months. That’s not circular reasoning. The Kip 04:11, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  That's more circularity. Many here are in fact questioning the block, so by definition it is questionable. The premise that you are advancing is that it shouldn't be questioned, yet you are attempting to use the idea that it shouldn't be questioned as proof of the proposition that it shouldn't be questioned. That's the very definition of circular reasoning; see the article for details. Yes, there are other blocks; that has nothing at all to do with whether this one was justified. If I had a criminal record, that doesn't mean that if I get hauled into court tomorrow and charged with murder (with flimsy evidence at that) that I should be considered guilty by default. It's a form of faulty generalization (a.k.a. inductive fallacy).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:52, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  I personally don't believe it's questionable, but for everyone here's sake I won't expand on why exactly I believe that.

  Anyhow, it's a good thing Wikipedia doesn't abide by criminal law, then. Simply put, when you have a history of block-worthy behavior your leash gets shorter every time, and with his recent block log Dicklyon's leash is dangerously close to up, hence why a comparatively minor comment merited this. The bar doesn't reset every time a block expires; otherwise we'd have plenty of far worse editors running around here getting temp-blocked for toeing the lines of behavior, but never quite going far enough to merit an indef (which Dicklyon did once receive, by the way). The Kip 06:22, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  Terrible analogy; a 72-hour block on editing Wikipedia is not a murder sentence. And, at least in the nations in which I have lived, recidivism is taken into account, not in charging, nor in establishing guilt, but certainly at sentencing. Rotary Engine ^talk 07:01, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  Wow, way to utterly miss the point. Let's invert the analogy and see if you get it this time: If I have multiple convictions for manslaughter and get out on parole, if I end up in court again, this time accused of littering, my former transgressions don't make me automatically guilty of that one or even more likely to be guilty of it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:46, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

• Endorse block Last month, Dicklyon referred to GoodDay as a 'thorn in my side'. That wasn't even the worst thing he said about GoodDay in that discussion, but it does show that he needs to rethink his attitude toward that particular editor. I don't believe that an early unblock would encourage that outcome. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 01:16, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  That edit, and the one preceding it, were egregious personal attacks. But Dicklyon has already served a block for them. This new block needs to be justified on the basis of subsequent conduct. Vanamonde93 (talk) 04:36, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  This block is justified on the basis of subsequent conduct. My point is that lifting this block would not help to address the underlying problem of Dicklyon's repeated hostility toward a specific editor. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 04:55, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

• Don't overturn, per The Kip, who mostly sums up my thoughts. BeanieFan11 (talk) 01:17, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• Endorse block per the rationale provided by Amakuru at the editor's Talk page. - Rotary Engine ^talk 01:26, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• Overturn I was one of those on the user talk page. What Dicklyon said did not, to my mind, rise to the level of a block. I understand there was a larger context of past blocks and other editing, but that should have resulted in a thread here, not a unilateral block for claiming someone was "being obstructionist." Chris Troutman (talk) 02:06, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• Endorse block I am unimpressed by multiple editors on both talk pages and their arguments. WP:NPA and WP:CIVIL are bright line rules to follow, not an exhaustive set of "If you don't explicitly say Y, you'll avoid sanctions" style training. Frequently incivil users should be held to the same or higher standards, not be excused from our usual policies based on which content dispute they're working at. Soni (talk) 02:07, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• No comment on the block. GoodDay, if you're going to object to a page move, can you please give a reason for the objection? Not just that you see it as controversial, but some substantive reason you oppose it? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 02:21, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  GoodDay's response to this (from my talk page) is telling:

  Hello. As you've requested. In 2023 an RM was held (which I think I took part in) concerning whether or not to move NHL Conference Finals to lower-case. The result was -no consensus- to move. It would be advisable to hold another RM there, if one believes a consensus to move, is now attainable.

  This is precisely what I did not ask for. I am frustrated. I think I'm many levels short of accusing GD of being obstructionist in the wrong venue, but it's not so odd to me that someone did reach that level of frustration. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 02:32, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  I’m not GoodDay, but the issue/substantive reason for opposing has been that the moves were done without any formation of consensus, or any attempt to do so. These moves are known to be controversial (see WP:ARBATC and prior contentious RMs/RfCs in the area, many of which Dicklyon had either started or participated in), and as a result RMs or RfCs should’ve been opened regarding the hockey pages if he felt so strongly about downcasing the titles; however, he instead did so unilaterally, citing an entirely unrelated RM/RfC on NBA pages as justification to do so. The Kip 03:06, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  If you think someone's move rationale is wrong, that would be a good reason to undo the move, and it would be helpful to say so. If you anticipate controversy, you can bring the move up for discussion at many available venues. If you don't personally object to a move, you shoudn't revert it. It would be a detriment to the project if people did otherwise. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 03:20, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  If you don't personally object to a move, you shoudn't revert it.

  The problem is that we have procedures in place; this to a degree advocates for WP:IAR in a space where IAR is a dangerous precedent to set. Whether or not I or others agree or disagree with Dicklyon’s edits, there should at least be agreement that the proper channels should be gone through rather than unilaterally imposing one’s own view of the topic. The Kip 03:33, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  I wouldn't frame the problem that way, and even if I did, I wouldn't suggest reversion without substantive objection as a remedy to that problem. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 03:43, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  I frame the problem as Dicklyon unilaterally moving a page for which there was a recent 'no consensus' RM. That is a substantive reason to undo the move. I see no reason for GoodDay to face criticism for taking this to RMTR. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 04:58, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  I'm using "substantive" to mean "dealing with the substance, rather than the procedure, of the matter", but whatever. Assume you're right about that one. How about this one? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 05:08, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  YMMV, but I'm not concerned about the distinction between dealing with the substance vs. dealing with the procedure. It has been well established that these page moves are controversial, so I believe they need to go through RM. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 05:18, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

• Endorse block. If further issues with Dicklyon arise, the next step should be arbitration, IMHO, since the community failed to resolve any of Dicklyon's BATTLEGROUND editing in the MOS:CAPS area in the last ANI thread (Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive1139#Dicklyon_and_semi-automated_edits), which was closed five months ago. Some1 (talk) 02:36, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• Endorse regardless of whether Dicklyon is on the right side in the current kerfuffle, it doesn't excuse the conduct. I have not participated therein or in the close review, so fully neutral. Should be blocked longer next time because it's clear from his history that if he believes he's correct he will do whatever he wants to get the outcome he prefers. Star Mississippi 02:44, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• Endorse block. I'm more than a little concerned that this is Dicklyon's second personal attack on GoodDay, the first happening on 22 January, and his forth block since the start of the year. With all due respect to Chris troutman, if Dickylon's comment had happened in isolation, I'd agree that it maybe wouldn't rise to the level of a block and instead it would have been warning worthy. But Dickylon was blocked a month ago for a personal attack against the same editor. Making a second personal attack in such a short timeframe is not a good look behaviourally. Sideswipe9th (talk) 02:48, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• Overturn per Chris Troutman. That's a very mild description of behavior that does not rise to a blockable offense. If the block is for a pattern of incivility, then that should be made clear, but in terms of an inciting incident, this is pretty mild. This is an over-sensitive response. Grandpallama (talk) 02:56, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• Endorse block The insinuations about the motives of other editors is just one sign of a real problem. The comment was made as part of an RMTR after Dicklyon unilaterally moved the page to lowercase. His move occurred one year (to the exact day) after he had previously unilaterally moved it, was reverted at RMTR, and opened an RM on the same page, which was closed as no consensus with the majority being against the move. Last year's RM was still the most recent thread on the article talkpage. I fundamentally do not believe Dicklyon's excuse that he had "forgotten"[45] the previous discussion, exactly one year ago. If true, it would mean that he didn't even glance at the talkpage before moving. I also don't buy that he assumed a discussion about a different page for a completely different sport meant this this move would be uncontroversial (especially when I blocked him for that exact same thing 3 weeks ago). The persistent incivility is just icing on the cake. What's worst is that he's probably right about the actual capitalization, but his conduct shows that he can't work productively with others in this area. If this continues, it may be time to consider a topic ban from page moves and/or article title/capitalization discussions. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 02:58, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• Endorse block, with respect to good User:Chris troutman, given the context of User:Dicklyon's frequent and sustained misbehaviors during historic anti-capital-ism crusades (and blocks therefrom), the second-offense personal attack at RMTR counts IMHO as an egregious taunting attack. Kudos to theleek to seeing something burning and stomping it out. I believe leek has demonstrated appropriate respect to Dicklyon throughout. As an aside, I have found over time that Dicklyon is a quite obstinate fellow and often careless of what others think. Most of the time, IMHO, Dicklyon has found himself on the right side of wiki-history. I have grown to respect him enormously and be thankful for his many micro-focussed contributions. I believe his agency (and stridency) represent an extreme example of WP:BOLD. That's why his frustrating and frequent violations of our social norms are so troubling. I have seen great editors walk off the pedia because of Dicklyon's relentless misbehavior (before their previous indefinite community ban). This is inexcusable behavior and it has been stopped. We'll soon be at longer term sanctions again, sadly. BusterD (talk) 03:11, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• Endorse Block If this were a first offense, I'd be inclined to cut them some slack and let it go with a warning. But they have a rather long history of problematic editing, mostly involving edit warring but personal attacks as well. Their block log is frankly disheartening for an experienced editor. -Ad Orientem (talk) 03:21, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• Endorse block, but only in the context of working to progress on an overall issue. IMO the individual issue alone was not enough for a block. Dicklyon is an immensely valuable contributor. Folks with that many edits can fall into a pattern getting high-handed, overly blunt/nasty, too impatient and other things. This can be a part of an effort of fixing any such issues and to keep this valuable editor on a nice course. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 03:26, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• No comment on the 72 hour block. But for me the phrase "beyond the pale" means something like "worst possible thing they could have said/done". I can think of worse things to call someone than an "obstructionist". So I was a bit surprised about that. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:30, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  I agree. I have seen "beyond the pale" comments many times on Wikipedia, and this certainly isn't one of them. Galobtter (talk) 03:34, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  +1, as that stood out to me also. Grandpallama (talk) 03:50, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  Plus people really, really need to stop using that phrase. See Pale of Settlement and the Pale for the origin of the term, which is bound up in centuries of ethno-national trauma for at least two large groups of people.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:53, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  Pales are fences or boundaries. The OED defines the term as:

  beyond the pale (of): outside or beyond the bounds (of). beyond the pale: outside the limits of acceptable behaviour; unacceptable or improper.

  Which is exactly what the discussion here is setting out to establish. On the origin of the term it says:

  The theory that the origin of the phrase relates to any of several specific regions, such as the area of Ireland formerly called the Pale (see sense I.4b) or the Pale of Settlement in Russia (see sense I.4c), is not supported by the early historical evidence and is likely to be a later rationalization. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 09:09, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  Interesting; will look into it. Even if the geographical matters end up being a folk etymology, the perception is common, so the offense potential remains real.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:49, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

• Overturn; while Dicklyon has indeed ruffled a lot of feathers, and could probably use some cooling off, describing another editor's behavior as "obstructionist" is not a personal attack. It's a critique of one's editing and can often be apt. Seems like this block was more of a lifetime achievement award. Sigh. If Dicklyon cracks ten blocks in 2024, I say we all chip in and buy him tickets to the NFL Draft[sic] in 2025! As the zoomers would say, "no cap"! Jweiss11 (talk) 03:34, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• Overturn. DL's comment in question was clearly not actually a personal attack, but a comment on behavior/action. It did not need diffs because the action was opening an unconstructive RMTR request to obstruct moves the basis for which was already discussed and sourced in detail, and DL's comment was directly in response to that request; i.e. there is no point diffing the post you are replying to, and obstruction of a move is self-evidently obstruction, so there is no "accusation" to "prove". What DL could have done better is maybe not use an "-ist" word which can often sound more combative than intended (unless a uniformly positive or neutral term like "encyclopedist" :-); but this is not TonePolicePedia. Could have also linked to the previous discussions of sourcing showing that this sort of phrase is not "capitalized in a substantial majority of independent reliable sources". That said, DL now provides diffs of related behavior at his talk page, and they are even more indicative that GoodDay was being obstructive, having earlier engaged in related move reverts without any substantive rationale, only the bureaucratic basis they they weren't run through the full RM process. RM is not required except when a move is likely to be controversial, but there is no controversy if the matter has already been aired out. The discussion at the related wikiproject page shows various participants there in support of the moves, and no substantive objection, just repetition of a desire to invoke RM process for its own sake. We have WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY policy for a reason. Neverthless, I'm pretty sure that DL gets, now, that any moves pertaining to sports leagues and events will be better done via full RM process, due to tempers running hot lately in this subject.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:48, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• Overturn, the comment, while inappropriate, was not so uncivil it deserved a block, and I think any compounding factors from previous blocks should be weighed against the high levels of tension in the topic area. Mach61 (talk) 04:03, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• Overturn. Lest anyone think I'm coming here from a generic sympathy with Dicklyon, I was the last-but-one admin to block him, for what I thought was an egregious personal attack. This does not rise to the level of a block for me. There is a real danger in blocking an editor with an already lengthy block log over a minor offence that would have been allowed to slide coming from someone else, in that we can create a self-fulfilling prophecy about said editor's bad behavior. Vanamonde93 (talk) 04:32, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• Endorse block Dicklyon's WP:FANATIC-like behaviour isn't helping in capitalization-related issues. And he seems to have learned nothing about civilly interacting with others from his ANI thread from last year - Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive1139#Dicklyon_and_semi-automated_edits. Also, his reading of MOS:AT appears to be that no capitals are needed in article titles at all, which is just grossly untrue. Perhaps it is time to discuss an editing restriction for Dicklyon in the area of capitalization issues, so he can contribute to Wikipedia without getting caught up in capitalization issues that end just end up in heated discussions and uncivil attacks of other Wikipedians.Canuck^{89 (Converse with me) or visit my user page} 04:41, February 27, 2024 (UTC)
  • "no capitals are needed in article titles at all": we could do without the strawman. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 05:02, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
  • MOS and articles titles are both listed under Wikipedia:Contentious topics. AFAICS, the "heated discussions and uncivil attacks" have not been limited to one person or "side" w.r.t. capitalization around sports topics.—Bagumba (talk) 05:15, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• Overturn per Vanamonde93. A few posts above seem to want a bet each way (i.e. the "obstructionist" comment wasn't worth a block, but oh, wait, in the overall context). Really? Sounds like progressive punishment, in which the bar is raised at each stage. No, keep the bar at the same height over time for all editors. I have advised Dicklyon to depersonalise and soften any comments he makes—without wishing to endorse this hasty, unproductive block. Tony (talk) 04:50, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• Overturn. I'm sorry, but we can't be the civility police. There are too many cultures with different ideas of civility here, and no universal standard for what is ok and not ok, it is entirely too subjective so it ALWAYS leads to uneven enforcement. Personal attacks are different and obvious, but blocking for a mildly uncivil comment is going to be controversial and should be avoided. The comment was a bit rude, and worth a warning, but not blockworthy by itself. If it was an ongoing issue with many instances, these are better handled at ANI with the community deciding, not a single admin. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 05:26, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• Overturn, but... That comment on its own wasn't worth a block, and I am uneasy about using an editor's block log to justify it, but I do think that Dicklyon needs a rest from this particular arena. Black Kite (talk) 08:21, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• Overturn, per Dennis. I'll repeat what I said on Theleekycauldron's page: this was an unreasonable block for a fairly mild comment. Like Vanamonde, I'm not here out of general sympathy with Dicklyon. I agree that Dicklyon's attack on GoodDay a month ago was nasty, and I was the first to reproach Dicklyon for it. Perhaps I should have blocked. Anyway, after my comment, Vanamonde did block him for it. A previous unacceptable comment, for which Dicklyon has already been sanctioned (and, note, has already apologized), is not a good reason to block him for saying GoodDay is being obstructionist. Would you still have blocked if you had known he had apologized for the earlier comment, Theleekycauldron? I know you thought he had not, and used that as one argument for your block. (Here, you become aware of it.) Bishonen | tålk 10:10, 27 February 2024 (UTC).

  Theleekycauldron has not replied to my question above, despite editing today — including editing AN itself — perhaps my ping didn't work. They sometimes don't. Trying again. Bishonen | tålk 21:55, 27 February 2024 (UTC).

  Ah, thanks for the reping, Bishonen! I genuinely assumed it was more of a rhetorical question, I've gotten a couple of those over the past few days as well. To answer: Dicklyon's apology for the previous doesn't change my view on whether the current block was appropriate, though I do give points for good faith. An apology is a poor bandaid if you hurt the person in the same spot again – if an apology is meaningful as a commitment to be better, that commitment is broken on the second offense. Would it be worse if he hadn't? Sure. But I still think a block was warranted (although I am cognizant of the reasonable minds who differ in this thread and will take them into account going forward), and I still think an escalation was appropriate under the circumstances, given the insufficiency of said apology to prevent repeat behavior. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 22:12, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  Thank you, Bishonen—the voice of reason. Tony (talk) 12:25, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

• Endorse per the comments I made at Leeky's talk page and also Dicklyon's talk page. This isn't about the incident itself, which of course wouldn't merit a block on its own, but about the ongoing pattern of WP:BATTLEGROUND conduct over these capitalisation questions and, of late, a seemingly endless stream of low-level needling of other editors and questioning their motives in the wrong venues. If Dicklyon genuinely believes that GoodDay is being "obstructionist", then they should discuss that directly with the user on their talk page, showing evidence and diffs of what they're talking about, or raise the issue at WP:AN/I with the same so the community can assess. In the case at hand, Dickylon moved the page NHL Conference Finals to lower case without discussion, and (in good faith) did not notice that said page had an RM for the same move last year that failed to find consensus. GoodDay objected and raised a RM/TR request, which by the way is actually the proper due process, per WP:RMUM, particularly for previously discussed moves, and Dicklyon then said the page should not be reverted because GoodDay is obstructionist. I have often disagreed with GoodDay myself on various issues, but like any other editor they have the right to edit here without constantly having to face aspersions and accusations of bad faith. I really don't want there to be any long-term sanctions issued against Dicklyon because they do great work in general, but something's gone a bit wrong so far in 2024 and this needs to improve starting now.  — Amakuru (talk) 10:36, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• Overturn I understand the history, but I do not think that particular interaction rises to anywhere close to a level of a block. SportingFlyer T·C 10:58, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• Overturn The comment from the 22nd was inexcusable and Dicklyon was rightly blocked for it, and has apologised. However the I agree with others that this last comment comes nowhere close to blockable territory. It's the kind of thing where it would have been helpful for a friendly editor to to trout him a reminder to keep to the content not other editors, but nothing more. Editors should be on their best behaviour, but equally we shouldn't have to walk on eggshells. That's a balancing act, and this block fails that balance. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:40, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• Endorse My last interaction with this editor was battleground in nature[46] and that's been the pattern every time I see this editor pop up. I would recommend that this editor be topic banned indefinitely from MOS issues regarding capitalization. This type of behavior has been a problem for a very long time and it needs to stop. Nemov (talk) 13:43, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• Endorse Not so much 'per block log length', which is—perhaps—unfair, but at least partly due to the number of blocks this year and we're only in sodding February. Recidivism is important context. If Dicklyon 'needs a rest' from this topic area, it is merely another in a long line of 'rests' he has been encouraged to take. Often enforced. Regarding this specific issue, while the offence itself may not seem particularly egregious, it illustrates a mindset in which this is perfectly acceptable language to use with other editors and the level of respect they can be approached with. ——Serial 14:06, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  Yes, four blocks in the first two months of the year is a lot, but in fairness, it's a leap year, so February is longer than usual. Levivich (talk) 16:00, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

• Comment. I see Primefac recently referred to a named user as "an idiot" here. Block time, surely, if "obstructionist" gets Dicklyon 72 hours. Would you like to self-block, Primefac? Bishonen | tålk 14:53, 27 February 2024 (UTC).

  Consider this an invitation on my part for them to strike it. Besides being a personal attack, it's unhelpful. Casual rudeness is corrosive. Mackensen (talk) 14:58, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  Incidentally, I just finished editing that comment to tone down the language; their subsequent reply made a not-unreasonable point making my initial comment a bit spicy. And yes, I should not have used that sort of language in the first place. Primefac (talk) 15:11, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  If we're playing incivility poker, I'll see your 'Idiot' comment and raise you to 'Piss off... you miserable little swine', by Tony1, which Bishonen subsequently defended on account of the, err, policy that Tony1 was a 'another of the FAC greats', whomsoever they are. ——Serial 16:08, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  Indeed. Nobody's nose is perfectly clean when it comes to incivility, and civility issues are never policed consistently. On a thread higher up the page, an admin rather rudely dismissed me as the person who chronically diminishes civility. This aspersion was not accompanied by evidence, although I suspect my prior opining on the topic of inconsistent civility enforcement is what prompted the remark. I'm sure one could easily compile a long list of recent instances in which admins made personal attacks or were otherwise rude/uncivil, but none of that would negate the problem with DL's editing. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 19:15, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

• Weak endorse. I can see both sides here. The block was in good faith and justifiable, certainly; whether it was necessary and preventative I'm less certain. Ultimately we should expect an editor who was recently for personally attacking and bickering with another editor to refrain from further bickering with that very same editor and a block was reasonable for that recidivism. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:35, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• Overturn per Dennis Brown and ActivelyDisinterested. The comment doesn't merit a block. Yes, I understand that previous incidents have, but not this one. It might be a good idea if he avoids the topic area, but that's his choice. Doug Weller talk 15:37, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• Block makes sense if Dicklyon was on Double Secret Probation. --Floquenbeam (talk) 16:26, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• Overturn to title/sentence-case page-move ban - I think everyone here knows I'm a flag-bearer of coming down hard on incivility, but the comment in question here was so innocuous (and reasonably fair comment) as to boggle the mind why anyone thought that a block was a reasonable response, even considering WP:RECIDIVISM. However, there is clearly feeling among the sort of editors who regularly participate in move discussions of this sort that Dicklyon's participation is unproductive and disruptive: besides frequent personal attacks they bludgeon discussions, won't let things go, often relitigate settled discussions and frequently do things based on tenuously-related discussions or directly in the face of consensus. We're just inviting more problems if we allow them to continue. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 16:32, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  completely uninvolved editor, speaking up on behalf of other uninvolved editors: litigation of capitalization has jumped the shark. Pick the two worst offenders and give them a short topic ban. If disruption continues do two more. Maybe create a separate noticeboard for those who care. Draw straws or something. The disproportionate amount of time that is sucked up by these disputes is mind-boggling, and I prefer the lower case myself. Elinruby (talk) 16:48, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  Personally I don't think we should adopt any enforcement model that resembles the Hunger Games. But the long-running capitalization dispute could be bound for Arbcom. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 18:26, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

  I have heard of Hunger Games but never watched it. I believe it was something like the Thunderdome? Anyway.

  I am against escalating this to Arbcom for the same reasons. Nobody cares but the people who are in these disputes. The content creators of Wikipedia just want to know what the standardized format is.

  Well, snicker, maybe I care a little about over-capitalization, but putting up with it would be a small price to pay for not seeing something about this every time I venture onto a noticeboard. It's behaviour at this point. Flip a coin, people. I will now go away and tend to my own tasks. Regular programming will now resume. Elinruby (talk) 18:45, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

• Overturn - where's the blockable personal attack here? GiantSnowman 22:20, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• Comment I would once again like to point out that, as I mentioned in my !vote, we're still debating a block that will now end within the next 24 hours. The Kip 09:19, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

  Yes, well, the blocking admin dragged her feet about bringing it here for review; it took her 22 hours. Opening a discussion right away, or instead of blocking, would have been preferable. Compare my comment here, when she proposed waiting still longer. But I still think it would be worth actually lifting the block if it's deemed to be inappropiate. It makes a difference to how the block log looks, and to how the blockee feels; blocks are scarlet letters, not just a matter of not being able to edit for such-and-such a number of hours. Bishonen | tålk 10:20, 28 February 2024 (UTC).

  @Bishonen: agreed, this deserves an assessment of consensus before the block expires. It'd be pretty silly if admins could evade review of their actions by time-limiting them towards mootness – I'm not intending to do that here. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 17:53, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

  That's frustrating, and the blocking admin behavior here is subpar. Even though the Endorse comments outnumber the Overturns, it's not by a high proportion; it's clear the community doesn't have consensus the block was appropriate. theleekycauldron claimed they were bringing this to AN for review, but their earlier comment shows their disregard for a differing opinion and that there was no actual good-faith intention to lift the block if it lacked consensus (I still think a block was warranted (although I am cognizant of the reasonable minds who differ in this thread and will take them into account going forward)). It was 17 Endorse, 15 Oppose (16, if you count Floq) at the time she made that statement, so abundantly clear her actions did not have consensus backing from the community. Grandpallama (talk) 16:21, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

  Noting that it is the status quo action that is to be overturned by consensus, normally of around two-thirds, not a consensus needed in favour of the action. Administrators are elected because the community places its trust in their judgment. It would be an untenable situation if any block could be overturned simply on the grounds that not enough people supported it. Hence there has to be a clear majority against it in order to counterweigh the trust originally placed. ——Serial 16:42, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

  Technically, yes. But since the question here is whether the block would have been supported in the first place, and whether theleekycauldron should have placed it on such a contentious claim of NPA without seeing if her thinking is in alignment with the community, and whether it should thus be maintained, I'd say that technicality ignores the reality of the situation. The discussion here shows there never would have been a clear majority to support this from the outset, and the notion that we elect admins because we place trust in their judgment is exactly how this discussion came to be--an admin making a call that caused members of the community (and of her fellow admin corps, specifically) to question her judgment. The foot-dragging that Bish has noted is a part of that problem: take an action that wouldn't have community support, then delay submitting for review, then count on the timer to run out so that your action stands. This is not what I expect from an admin. Grandpallama (talk) 16:56, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

• Overturn and GoodDay's conduct WP:NPA states: Accusations about personal behavior that lack evidence are considered personal attacks. WP:RM#CM states: A move is potentially controversial if either of the following applies: there has been any past debate about the best title for the page; [or,] someone could reasonably disagree with the move. GoodDay stating, No RM was held, does not satisfy either of the conditions for contesting the move. An RM is not mandatory. The statement by DL that GoodDay was ... being obstructionist about progress that involves page moves is a comment on GoodDay's behaviour. By way of evidence, DL also stated: The underlying issues on these were settled in the month-long RM discussion at Talk:NBA conference finals#Requested move 20 January 2024. To remove any doubt, DL has provided more specific evidence at his TP here (subsequent to the block). While raising this issue at WP:RMT may not be the most appropriate venue, it is not excluded. The rationale for the block is not supported by WP:NPA and should be overturned. Furthermore, if we are scrutinising DL's conduct and the rationale for the block, this cannot be done in isolation of GoodDay's conduct giving rise to DL's statement. Cinderella157 (talk) 10:00, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
• Endorse block. Outside of the context of Dicklyon's ongoing incivility this is very minor, but the comment was very much made within that context so considering it in isolation is wikilawyering. There are three possibilities here: (1) Dicklyon knows personal attacks and personalising disputes are inappropriate but chooses to continue making them anyway, in which case blocking them until such time as they are willing to contribute collegiately is appropriate; (2) Dicklyon knows personal attacks and personalising disputes are inappropriate but is unable to understand what is and isn't a personal attack/personalising a dispute, in which case we have CIR issues that have been going on so long that we should be seriously considering a ban on those grounds; (3) Dicklyon doesn't know (or understand) that personal attacks and personalising disputes are inappropriate, in which case we have very serious CIR issues and are probably a net negative to the project. For his sake, I hope it's 1.
  If GoodDay's behaviour is sufficiently bad that it rises to the levels of needing sanction then the answer is to sanction both of them, not to give them both a free pass. The latter is how we end up with toxic editing environments that drive editors away from the encyclopaedia. Thryduulf (talk) 10:46, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
• Endorse block: Their targeting of GoodDay needs to be addressed and this was an appropriate way to do so. Dicklyon also knows better than to try to act like one league downcasing "Finals" to "finals" is justification for downcasing every instance, he's been involved in numerous move discussions because of this exact premise. Hell he literally started the last move discussion for NHL Conference Finals that ended in no consensus. He's well aware that different leagues may result in different capitalizations but went ahead with it anyways, despite the obvious and expected pushback. I basically begged Dicklyon in a long threaded conversation last month to start holding RMs when downcasing "Draft" to "draft" instead of "being bold" (he eventually declined this request). On February 8th I reached out and said: "I think, at this point in time, it's safe to presume that renaming pages from "Draft" to "draft" would be moves that someone could reasonably disagree with. As such, moving forward and based on WP:PCM, would you please start RM discussions prior to moving pages from "Draft" to "draft"? – He then went forward with the move I was directly referring to, using a move summary of "Overwhelmingly lowercase in sources; no conceivable reason for anyone to object", despite me telling him directly that it was clearly not an uncontroversial one. He was blocked for this, so I'm not requesting any type of action on it, but it's relevant to the current situation. This is an extension and another clear example of Dicklyon's inability to work well with others and respect the process when it comes to their capitalization efforts. If I'm counting correctly, Dicklyon has been blocked 11 times for edit warring, twice for personal attacks, once for move warring, and once for socking. They've been blocked four times this year and it seems like every time they apologize. At what point do we say enough is enough? Time and again they continue to move pages, despite an obvious and expected pushback, in direct opposition to WP:PCM, and then they criticize anybody who reverts them. GoodDay had good reason to oppose the move given that there had been a previous discussion on the topic. In this case, it goes against both aspects of WP:PCM, in that there would be expected pushback and there had at one point been a debate about the best title for the page. I'd support a topic ban or restriction of some kind. This is a ridiculous amount of leash we've given to someone who should clearly know and understand the lines but continues to disrespect them. Hey man im josh (talk) 13:44, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
• I'm going to share an opinion without making a vote because I'm on the fence.

  On the one hand, saying someone is "just being obstructionist" is not what I would call an "attack" or "uncivil." It's negative, it's criticism, but it's not an attack, not a violation of WP:NPA or WP:CIVIL, neither of which prohibit criticism of others. In isolation, if someone were blocked for saying that, I'd vote to overturn that block.

  On the other hand, this isn't in isolation. More than a dozen editors have said, in so many words, "enough is enough," and I agree with them. IMO if the block cited WP:DISRUPT or WP:BATTLE instead of citing WP:NPA, it would have been roundly endorsed, maybe not even challenged.

  Then there is the question of whether a block, as opposed to a ban, was the best remedy. I'm not sure about that, either. It seems a sanction was warranted, but perhaps not this particular sanction, and perhaps something stronger than this sanction.

  I don't like the idea of endorsing a "right block for the wrong reason," nor voting to overturn a 72hr block when I think an indef TBAN may have been merited.

  It's a tough call, and I have the luxury of not having to make it. What I am sure about, though, is that I disagree that 22 hours is "foot dragging." It's hardly worth pointing out that a 72hr block review will take longer than the block; that's true of every short sanction. I don't think it's wise to rush, or to pressure others to rush, simply to try and come to an answer before a short sanction expires. I want admins to be able to sleep on it and take a day to decide whether their actions should be self-reversed or not. I want the community to have the time to be able to consider difficult or complex issues and come to well-thought-out consensus, not rushed consensus. It's not like Dicklyon was sentenced to 72 hours of torture; it's OK if he has to not edit for three days, even if the sanction ends up being overturned later.

  One thing that the split vote proves to all of us is that this was neither a clearly good, nor a clearly bad, block. The only thing that's clear is that opinion is divided, and that is clearly a reason not to rush to any conclusions. Levivich (talk) 18:15, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

  One thing that's come up periodically over the years is that the community has consistently struggled with how to deal with needling. Which is to say a series of remarks made by someone over time that disparage, slight, or irritate, each of which individually may not be an issue, but that when taken as a whole poison the collaborative environment. I don't think any consensus is likely to emerge from this discussion either, but it may be worth bringing up again some time in the future when passions from this have cooled and the issue can be discussed more abstractly. 184.152.68.190 (talk) 18:35, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

• Overturn I get that Dicklyon has had several previous blocks, but this just isn't a personal attack. Calling someone "obstructionist" is so mild it should never be blockworthy.-- Pawnkingthree (talk) 21:07, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
• Doesn't matter much, at this point, but a late Overturn. If it's a history-based problem, then I guess there are interaction bans (which I'm not fond of either), otherwise saying someone is "being obstructionist" simply is not a personal attack. Maybe it's an incorrect description of behavior, I don't care, we all occasionally fail in our judgment of other people's behavior, but it's not a personal attack. ---Sluzzelin talk 23:57, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
• Comment This should probably be closed as moot, as the block has expired and there is no obvious consensus that it was a bad block. Thryduulf (talk) 14:56, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

  Even the admin whose action is under review seems to disagree with that idea: It'd be pretty silly if admins could evade review of their actions by time-limiting them towards mootness – I'm not intending to do that here.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:44, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

• Endorse block per a lot of the above. And yes I'm aware the block has expired. JM (talk) 22:08, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
• Overturn - This conduct does not, in my opinion, rise to the level of a block. Moreover, as I am sure has been mentioned here already, Dick has already apologized for his conduct. Overturn the block and move on. Obstructionst comes off as more of a comment on editing, not a personal attack. Bad block. — That Coptic Guy^{ping me!} (talk) (contribs) 03:31, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

GoodDay's conduct at Wikipedia:Requested moves/Technical requests

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

---

As noted in my comment above, ... if we are scrutinising DL's conduct and the rationale for the block, this cannot be done in isolation of GoodDay's conduct giving rise to DL's statement. DL made this statement regarding GoodDay's conduct: GoodDay is just being obstructionist about progress that involves page moves; accompanied by the statement in evidence: The underlying issues on these were settled in the month-long RM discussion at Talk:NBA conference finals#Requested move 20 January 2024. DL has offered further evidence at their TP, which I am copying into this thread below. Cinderella157 (talk) 11:15, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

If you're asking for evidence of the obstruction I was referring to, it's these:

• [47] and [48] Reverting my changes, solely on the basis of no RM done, without opposing the substance of these case fixes.
• [49] Reverting change to disambig page, leaving it in an inconsistent state
• [50] Requests at WP:RMTR to revert my moves, without mentioning a reason to prefer the capitalized form (which is exactly where we were when I wrote the removed personal attack "GoodDay is just being obstructionist about progress that involves page moves", not as a personal attack, but as a characterization of these edits).

If he had said "I think these should be capped, because ..." or something like that, then we'd have something to discuss at an RM discussion. But neither he nor anyone at the discussion he started at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ice Hockey#NHL Conference Finals moved to NHL conference finals has given a reason to prefer caps. It's all just procedural obstruction: "Not without going the RM route." After a month of discussion at the RM at Talk:NBA conference finals, I thought we had hashed out all the relevant issues and arguments, though we would point out different data of course. That discussion seemed to me like it served to make these others clearly within the consensus to follow MOS:CAPS. So why does he want to discuss all that yet again? There's no remaining controversy. I don't get it. Also note that at that wikiproject discussion, several editors (Hockey project members, I presume) defended my moves as correct and appropriate. I'm wondering if that's why the RMTR revert requests have not been done yet. Dicklyon (talk) 08:04, 26 February 2024 (UTC) Copied here from User talk:Dicklyon#February 2024. Cinderella157 (talk) 11:15, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

• I don't see an issue with GoodDay requesting that these moves be reverted. Dicklyon should know these are not uncontroversial moves at this point after 10+ years of dealing with capitalization discussions. I could tell you without thinking about it that they would be and I've only been paying attention to these discussions for a year. Hey man im josh (talk) 12:54, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
• Again, this is just more WP:BATTLEGROUND activity on this topic. Frankly, the regulars in this CAPS war need to stand down. Calling GoodDay an obstructions is just another baseless accusation. Nemov (talk) 13:40, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
• The moves were obviously controversial, a previous discussion which Dicklyon started determined there was no consensus for the move (and in move discussions, "no consensus" means don't move the page), and then Dicklyon moved them anyway, cherrypicking a consensus from a similar discussion on a different topic. The moves should not have happened, and GoodDay asking for them to be reverted was the correct course of action. Dicklyon is relying on first mover advantage (pun not intended): they moved the pages to their preferred title without a valid rationale and are now demanding a rationale for moving them back, which is treating the debate as a battle to be won, and that's not how this works. Doubling down on that tendentious logic suggests they should not participate in this debate any more. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:03, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

  Having said that, maybe BilledMammal's NAC close of Talk:NHL Conference Finals#Requested move 25 February 2023 should be revisited. The closer acknowledged that those supporting the move (to sentence case) had the stronger overall argument, but then closed as no consensus anyway on the basis of numerical opposition. That is precisely the sort of bad close described by WP:YOGURT. Still, the approach to an improper close is to review or challenge it, not wait a while and then move the page anyway. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:15, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

  Their move reason was Change to sentence case (MOS:AT).[51] That seems like a plausible GF rationale, even if one finds it debatable. —Bagumba (talk) 14:23, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

  It's not a good rationale to move a page where you've already proposed the move for that specific reason and it was found to have no consensus. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:30, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

• I mentioned this above, but I don't think GoodDay should continue to make requests to revert moves if the only reason provided above is "No RM was held". I don't think the disambiguation page edit was good. None of this is major stuff, but if we can suggest an improvement to a prolific editor, we should. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 14:03, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

  Well, if undiscussed moves shouldn't be reverted, why does WP:RM#TR have a separate "requests to revert undiscussed moves" subsection? Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:27, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

  Surely we agree that not all undiscussed moves should be reverted. Some should. When pushing for such a reversion, one should provide a reason. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 15:15, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

• I wish the spirit of Wikipedia:Don't revert due solely to "no consensus" was in a guideline, but it's only an essay. —Bagumba (talk) 14:06, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
• Attempts to shift the scrutiny onto GoodDay are inappropriate. GoodDay has not done anything wrong. The problem is with Dicklyon's editing, specifically regarding both his battleground approach to article capitalization and his repeated personalized remarks about GoodDay. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 15:45, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Followup discussion

Regarding GoodDay's conduct

1. GoodDay posted a resquests at WP:RMTR to revert the undiscussed move for NHL conference finals with the rationale Recent unilateral page move, goes against 2023 RM result. This reason is consistent with the advice at WP:RM#CM.
2. GoodDay posted a resquests at WP:RMTR to revert the undiscussed move for KHL conference finals with the rationale No RM was held. This reason is not consistent with the advice at WP:RM#CM.
3. GoodDay posted a resquests at WP:RMTR to revert the undiscussed move for Conference finals with the rationale No RM was held. This reason is not consistent with the advice at WP:RM#CM.
4. The page Conference finals is a disambiguation to three pages: NHL conference finals, KHL conference finals and NBA conference finals. The last was down-cased as a result of Talk:NBA conference finals#Requested move 20 January 2024. Each league is divided into two conferences, eastern and western, and each conference conducts a final. Each page from the disamibuation page discusses the two conference finals for each respective league. the title Conference Finals is a general term that collectively describes the six conference finals in the three respective leagues. Conference finals is intrinsically a descriptive noun phase - a final played by a conference, of which six are being referred to by the title. Conference finals does not refer to a particular referrant. There is no reasonable argument to assert this is other than a common noun when used as a stand-alone noun phrase, especially when conference finals is explicitly down-cased for the NBA finals, one of the titles. This is especially clear from the close of Talk:NBA conference finals#Requested move 20 January 2024.
5. At Talk:NBA conference finals#Requested move 20 January 2024, the substantive argument was that: NBA Eastern Conference Final and NBA Western Conference Final "might" be capitalised as the formal name of these events, NBA Conference Finals was not a specific event, it was referred to in the plural and is a descriptive term for the two specific events; and, while it might be capitalised by the NBA, the NBA is not an independent source. There was overwhelming support for the move based on this argument and no substantive policy based argument to dispute this.
6. Having participated in the RfC, GoodDay was aware of the discussion and of the close.
7. While there are two different leagues being considered, the conditions giving rise to the substantive arguments at NBA clearly apply. If there is good reason to believe that the result of an RM for these two leagues would be different from NBA in the light of the NBA RM, then this should have been given. No RM was held is not a good reason of itself. It falls to I don't like it.
8. Without good reason to believe that an RM might reasonably result in retaining capitalisation, then the action of requiring an RM just for the sake of process is just wasting everybody's time. It can reasonably be seen as Wikilawyering, pettifogging, making a point or stonewalling (all with Wiki links), which are all examples of disruptive editing and/or editing in bad faith. This can also reasonably be described as obstructionist.

Consequently, it is reasonable to raise the issue of such behaviour, especially in the case of the disambigation page. Cinderella157 (talk) 07:25, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

• What is is about MOS CAPS issues that lends itself to editors discussing matters in wall of text? No wonder this disruptive behavior never goes to ArbCom. Who has the time to weed though paragraphs worth of text to address it? As I mentioned in the close review a few days ago, the community is encouraging this disruptive behaviour. Nemov (talk) 14:34, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

  I wonder if a word limit of say 100 words per person per comment in all discussions about MOS:CAPS would help? Any comments longer than that would simply be truncated with sanctions for gaming it. If we don't so something to rein in the length and incivility of these discussions it will end up at arbcom. Thryduulf (talk) 14:49, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

  It's not a bad idea. Anything we can do to reduce the number issue regarding this topic would be helpful. Nemov (talk) 15:23, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

  Given the contentious nature of those discussions, and the toxic atmosphere MOS discussions currently have, I'd absolutely support a limit to the number of replies and/or words. The sections for the 3 MOS related discussions at AN right now total over 177kb. Hey man im josh (talk) 16:00, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

  When there are a lot of facts at issue (who did exactly what for what reasons, in relation to what previous edits, and under what policy, guidelines, procedural rules, etc., etc.), then posts like Cinderella157's are necessarily going to be detailed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:57, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

• @Cinderella157: I'm quite concerned by the logic presented in this argument. The NBA discussion ABSOLUTELY does not apply to other leagues, especially those in different sports, and Dicklyon KNOWS this based on a litany of past discussions related to downcasing "Final" to "final". Otherwise every single page with "Final" in it would have been downcased by now and that's just not how it works. I find it quite peculiar that you, also being very experienced in MOS related discussions, are trying to make this argument. GoodDay is under no obligation to start an RM after protesting against an article being moved. Especially when Dicklyon started the last RM discussion a year ago to the day, which ended in no consensus. To be blunt, this is starting to come off as a group of MOS enthusiasts targeting GoodDay. Hey man im josh (talk) 15:56, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

  The thing is, GoodDay doesn't have a reasonable rationale for starting such an RM, and it's entirely predictable what the result would be. Thus, there was no sensible rationale for RMTR, either. That is, there is no real controversy to settle, only a "drawn out process or else" approach which is ultimately a waste of editors' time and their patience with each other. We apply the P&G by default; exception are something that require excellent evidence or solid P&G rationale, which are clearly, demonstrably lacking behind GoodDay's resistance.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:57, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

  The last RM, started a year prior to the day by Dicklyon himself, ended as no consensus. That's a really bad look, even if it truly was unintentional. WP:PCM, a link I mentioned to Dicklyon I believe 4 times earlier this month, states two different criteria for when a page is likely to be controversial and this fits both of them. It states that the RM process should be used if there's any reason to believe the move would be contested, which there definitely was. This very clearly fits that criteria and it makes sense to reverse the move and have a proper discussion. We can't just CRYSTALBALL it and make the decision ourselves based on what we think the outcome will/should be if there was a past discussion on it. Further, it's pretty silly for someone of his experience, and also of Cinderella's, to suggest that an RM for a different league of a different sport would apply, they both know better. I appreciate that you didn't focus on that aspect of their argument, but I really don't believe this is the situation to be calling GoodDay's behaviour into question given the actions and the arguments being made. Hey man im josh (talk) 00:55, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

• FWIW, I tend to agree that GoodDay's behavior was obstruction or process-mongering for its own sake, which is contrary to WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY, WP:WIKILAWYER, even perhaps WP:POINT. It's entirely correct that "no RM was held" is not a rationale for move-reverting. But it doesn't seem to be worth taking some kind of action about, and it's fine that the proposal to take some kind of action closed without any. On the other hand, Dicklyon should not have been blocked for objecting to this GoodDay behavior. Is everyone here observing it was a bit problematic going to be punitively blocked now? [sigh] Tempers have run hot in this general organized-sports subject area when it comes to capitalization, and everyone should just relax and take some time off from squabbling about it (and, administratively, from severe and one-sided overreaction to people squabbling about it).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:57, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

  But an RM was held, a year prior to the very day, by Dicklyon himself and it ended in no consensus. I also fail to see how this is a general issue with sports related editors, but I don't think that's a discussion for this venue. Hey man im josh (talk) 00:57, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

• This is going nowhere except creating more wall of text nonsense. Close it up or start handing out topic bans. Nemov (talk) 04:54, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

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

A number of small but frequent deletions take place.

A number of small but frequent deletions take place. Many are useful and can be considered cleansing. But not all of them are necessary and, unfortunately, sometimes completely useless. The users' contribution history sometimes suggests reinforcement of the suspicion. I hope someone looks into the matter a little more closely.Arbabi second (talk) 07:59, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Arbabi second, you have given zero context or information. Without anything more, we cannot look at anything. Primefac (talk) 07:59, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

@Primefac

This is widespread. It is enough to follow the latest changes for a while. Arbabi second (talk) 08:04, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

No, it isn't. Primefac (talk) 08:14, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Arbabi second, you say, "The users' contribution history...", but you don't say which user. In order for anyone to understand you need to identify the editor, and follow the instructions in the yellow box above by informing them. If you don't have a behavioural issue to raise about a particular editor then you are in the wrong place. Phil Bridger (talk) 10:11, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Phil Bridger, do you really see the box yellow?— Usedtobecool ☎️ 11:53, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes. It follows the pink box. It displays for me (using Firefox on Linux Mint on a desktop with no customised gubbins) as a darkish mustard yellow, but definitely yellow). Phil Bridger (talk) 12:09, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

I see what's happening now. When I go into "edit section" I get the colour I describe above, but when I look at the whole page without editing I get a pink box. This looks like a bug to me. Phil Bridger (talk) 12:17, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Phil Bridger, ah, I get it now. It's the edit notice that has the same message in what I would call a dark yellow box.— Usedtobecool ☎️ 12:21, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

@Phil Bridger@Primefac

I have had a very sad experience in the Farsi Wiki. In a slightly more serious similar case, when they asked me for something more concrete and I in good faith gave a name that I pinged myself at the same time, it started a absurd process and led to me being blocked for a week. As I have written, it is enough to look at the latest changes. Where we have many (eg: - 14, -46, - 18 ...) . Some of these are very good contributions. In some cases I have thanked for it. But other times these little deletions are just personal taste and sometimes don't taste good to everyone. When you look at the contributor's last active period, you see that there are no edits with a plus sign, but row after row of only small edits with a negative sign. Arbabi second (talk) 11:01, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

But how the [expletive deleted] are we supposed to look at the contributer's record when you won't say who it is? I feel like I'm being trolled here. Phil Bridger (talk) 11:07, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

اربابی دوم, are you talking about Nikkimaria? You don't have to be afraid to name names. We have a much better protection for editors like and you and me compared to the smaller wikis. You won't get blocked just for raising your concerns as long as you listen if people don't agree with you. Regards! — Usedtobecool ☎️ 11:12, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

I was guessing that they were talking about Nikkimaria too. I've reverted their last edit they made prior to opening this AN thread: [52] 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 11:20, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

@Usedtobecool Thanks. Arbabi second (talk) 11:23, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

اربابی دوم, about the edit you reverted, Wikipedia works on WP:CONSENSUS. There is a long-standing, high-level consensus against including the cause of death to the infobox when it does not significantly add value. WP:INFONAT applies about adding nationalities to infoboxes. Nikkimaria removed those details per consensus, using a helpful summary. You can disagree with that consensus but unless you can convince more than half of Wikipedia, you'll have to learn to live with it. Nikki's other edits are almost certainly similarly based on consensus. We can't just go assuming those are bad just because the bytechange is in the red. Now if you have specific edits to list that you think were unhelpful, you can do that. But in general, it's best to just look at the edit summary and try to understand why they made the edits they made. If that does not help, you can go to their talk page and ask them. If you remain unconvinced, you can seek a third opinion (WP:3O). And if you really have to go to a public board, it's best you go to the TEAHOUSE first. Admins only deal with specific reports about serious issues; they can't go investigating any of the thousands of users just because someone has a bad feeling. Best, — Usedtobecool ☎️ 12:07, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

@Usedtobecool

The explanations I have received now are good enough. But such concerns or misunderstandings may occur from time to time. Thank you for the comprehensive explanation. Arbabi second (talk) 12:26, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

اربابی دوم, glad to be of help. Indeed, misunderstandings are inevitable. The answer is always to try and talk with the editor in concern. If that does not go well, we're always happy to help clear things up or offer advice over at the WP:TEAHOUSE where you may find me or far more experienced hosts. Regards! — Usedtobecool ☎️ 12:32, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

@Usedtobecool 😊 Arbabi second (talk) 12:34, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Invented dates of birth and death by Edgenut

Edgenut (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is doing mass edits to biographies of people from antiquity, inserting dates of death and birth and sometimes other information for which no sources appear to exist, and which seem to be Edgenut's own inventions or estimates presented as fact. Examples: Mucia Tertia, Hiempsal II, Cornelia Postuma (reverting dates back in).

They have been warned about that (User_talk:Edgenut#Bad edits, User_talk:Edgenut#Birth and death years generally), but have not stopped. This conduct is disruptive because it systematically degrades the quality of our articles.

I am asking for feedback whether a topic ban, a block and/or a mass rollback of their edits would be appropriate. In my view, a topic ban from biographies from antiquity is required.

I am pinging people who have interacted with Edgenut on their talk page about this and may have further input: Johnbod, StarTrekker, Ifly6, Merytat3n, P Aculeius. Sandstein 13:18, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Contributors who invent fictitious data should be blocked indefinitely, not just topic banned from specific subjects. Functionally, this is almost indistinguishable from vandalism. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:26, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Also see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Classical_Greece_and_Rome#Mass_changes_of_birth_and_death_dates for more detail. I see I was the first to complain to him, within 2 weeks of the account being registered. He doesn't seem to have got much better. Probably we need a topic ban on biographies from antiquity, and perhaps altering/adding dates completely. Johnbod (talk) 13:44, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

• Blocked. Going by the user's talkpage, their defense is "They [the dates] are not all made up" (in the sense that some of them are taken from wikis in other languages, which are of course not reliable sources). Not all made up? The warnings don't seem to be making any impression. I've indeffed. Bishonen | tålk 13:45, 27 February 2024 (UTC).

Thanks for this. It's been extremely time-consuming to revert, get un-reverted, explain, and keep track of all of these demonstrably erroneous changes over and over again, while also abiding by obligations under 3RR. Hopefully we can actually remove the damage to these articles now. Ifly6 (talk) 15:42, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

You have bigger problems with Cornelia Postuma and sources for dates. Volume 1 of Acta Classica is JSTOR i24589251; it is dated 1958 not 1960; there is only article by T. F. Carney in the entire issue, which has nothing to do with Cornelia; and page 74 is an article in Italian by Ettore Paratore about a different subject. Uncle G (talk) 17:16, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

• Comment I used to run into this kind of vandalism quite a lot years ago and at the time, I thought it was the worst sort of vandalism that could be done. A bad page move or dirty words can be easily reverted but who is going to notice that some Chinese philosopher was stated to have died in 670 CE and it now says they died in 746 CE? These kind of changes take either the article creator or a subject matter expert to even notice, much less correct. If it hasn't been done yet, I do recommend a mass revert of any involved edits. Otherwise, I doubt that all of the changes made will ever be corrected. These kind of articles just don't get the kind of traffic from knowledgeable readers that articles on more contemporary subjects receive. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 08:04, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
  • It is not strictly vandalism. See Special:Diff/1195007658 as one of the contested edits. Everything there in that edit is clearly already in the article. The problem is that Edgenut is an infobox-warrior. And on some, but not all, of the infoboxes Edgenut was interpolating or just outright inventing extra information. As you can see from Special:Diff/1210497354/1210518632 Edgenut was apparently willing to stop inventing information in some of the infoboxes, as of yesterday, but the insistence on having infoboxes, when pretty much none of the information for an infobox is known for these people, remained. Uncle G (talk) 09:47, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Unblock/unban request for Neel.arunabh

• Neel.arunabh (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
• Archived ANI discussion

Carried over from UTRS appeal #84399

Neel.arunabh 2024-02-03 00:34:39 I have done the following actions in January 2022, which have got me blocked: 1. Asking Wikipedia to fix facebook. 2. Using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested_moves/Technical_requests to revert year-old moves 3. Canvassing random users in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion This is what I will do differently: 1. If there are technical issues with a site, then I will contact that support team and not Wikipedia. 2. If a year-old move must be reverted, then I will use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested_moves only. 3. I will discuss my argument in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion without canvassing random users.

Deepfriedokra 2024-02-26 07:08:58 I see this is still unactioned. Please describe what constructive edits you would make. I cannot read Hindi, and I need to carry the request to WP:AN.

Neel.arunabh 2024-02-26 13:44:25 Improve the articles and update the content based on latest reliable sources.

Carried over -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 14:52, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Oppose I don't think this is a credible unblock request given the vast amount of disruption this editor caused. Their description of the disruption they caused seems to focus on three specific issues, rather than addressing the large overarching concerns with their editing. I find the description of the constructive edits they intend to make to be very lacking.

On their talk page they told the admins reviewing their unblock requests that they would be editing sandboxes on other projects while blocked, seemingly as evidence that they can be productive here? Looking at what they've been up to on other projects it seems that on the Italian and simple English wikipedias they have spent the last year making hundreds of edits producing pages of utter nonsense [53] [54]. I'm sorry, but if this is the stuff that they are drawing people's attention to while requesting unblocks it really does not inspire confidence that they now have the competence to be a productive editor here. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 15:44, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Oppose The original ban was for WP:CIR and disruptive editing, but from this appeal you would think they were banned for asking Wikipedia to fix Facebook, and some other technicalities. If the appeal doesn't address the reasons for the ban, then I can't support accepting it. Sagflaps (talk) 17:07, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Oppose - the sandboxes linked by the IP would be an excellent audition for the role of Jack Torrance. For being a productive editor, not so much. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:46, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

@Rosguill: But "all work and no play make Jack a dull boy." I'll see myself out. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 18:42, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. The issue here (which I remember quite well) was a lack of competence. That's a very difficult block reason to overcome, and the appeal doesn't give me any confidence that Neel.arunabh has done so (nor do the sandboxes...), basically per the 86 IP. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 20:46, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose The canned replies are unconvincing. I feel like they are saying what the manual says to say if you want to get unbanned, but that is it. I'm not at all convinced the CIR issues are resolved. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 04:49, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
• Reply carried over below

Deepfriedokra The current appeal at WP:AN does not convince anyone that I have resolved the CIR issues. So, I adding these comments to convince others now. Looking at the four bullet points at WP:CIR, I am listing every CIR issue that caused a block and what I will do instead. 1. English-language comprehension and copyright infringement: See Rosguill's comment in the ANI discussion: The issue here is copying other people's comments in English without understanding. Instead, I will understand every English-language statement without blindly copying them. 2. Reliable sources: The issue here is using unreliable sources the judge my claim. Instead, I will check the reliability of a website before submitting it to back my claim. 3. Consensus: The issue here is edit warring and bludgeoning the process when I do not agree with the community consensus and also using the sock puppet account OnlyThenDidI and logged out IP addresses to protest against the discussion. Instead, I will accept the community consensus and discuss the matter on the article's talk page and on the editor's talk page. 4. Other disruptive edits: A long list of disruptive edits including the three issues I have listed in the previous appeal. For another example, I first try to delete references to fix reference errors. After being blocked for edit warring, I next try to revert to old revisions to fix the errors. Instead, I will make only a relevant edit that fixes the error or leave it for other editors to fix. I hope this will resolve every CIR issue, and when I resume editing, I will make more productive edits. Neel.arunabh (talk) 07:19, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

-- Deepfriedokra (talk) 12:28, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, but I'm not convinced and I still oppose an unblock. As Extraordinary Writ said above, a CIR block is a very difficult thing to overcome, and this reads more like writing out a list of things you think will get you unblocked, rather than showing actual understanding and growth.

One of the best things you can have in order to demonstrate improved competence is a history of trouble free editing on other projects, and I simply don't see that here. I already mentioned the sandboxes above, but let's look at what else you've been up to since the block here. You basically stopped contributing to Wiktionary after being told off by that project's admins for producing rubbish pages, not following the rules and not understanding how a dictionary should be written [55]. On the Portuguese wikipedia you made about 15 edits incorrectly adding pages into non-existent categories, and about 15 edits reverting yourself to clean up the mess you made [56]. On the Hindi wikipedia the largest contribution you have made is this article [57] which appears to be a translation (possibly by machine, based on the broken wiki mark up) of mug, but with all the images and formatting broken. You then proceeded to delete most of the references, because you couldn't get them to work [58]? On the Spanish Wikipedia you have been going the same thing, creating articles which are unattributed translations of English wikipedia pages, (e.g. [59] is a translation of Airline seat) then deleting the references and bits of the article when you couldn't get them to work [60], resulting in a talk page full of warnings about writing improperly sourced content [61]. This does not, in my opinion, show that you now have the skills to edit articles here properly, if anything it looks like you have just started being disruptive in other places. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 13:11, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

• Neel.arunabh sent me two emails in March 2023 following his 2022 CBAN asking me to proxy edit on his behalf. Here's the text. (Timestamps are possibly of Europe/Berlin)
  Dated Sun, 13 Mar 2022, 18:31, Sub: "Move war in Queen", Text: This film has been moved back and forth by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bovineboy2008 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Akandkur. Se the move history at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Queen_%282013_film%29&type=revision&diff=952873778&oldid=952796158, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?, title=Queen_%282013_film%29&type=revision&diff=980455737&oldid=979792462, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Queen_%282013_film%29&type=revision&diff=1031298468&oldid=1031298454, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Queen_%282013_film%29&type=revision&diff=1049822470&oldid=1049496585, and https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Queen_%282013_film%29&type=revision&diff=1069835351&oldid=1065156097. And, I am getting unconvincing edit summaries from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bovineboy2008 saying "film premiered in 2013". This should be a "2014 film" since the film was released in 2014. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(films) says to disambiguate films by the year of release. I encourage you to start a discussion at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Queen_(2013_film).
  Following this email, I've reached out to ToBeFree for guidance (User talk:ToBeFree/A/4#Community banned users allowed to email?). The next day, Neel.arunabh sent me the second email.
  Dated Mon, 14 Mar 2022, 18:42, Sub: "Sources for Queen", Text: Courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:ToBeFree#Community_banned_users_allowed_to_email? Yesterday, you posted that the info in question was not sourced. So, today, I am mentioning the sources which say that the film was released in 2014. https://www.filmfare.com/interviews/i-have-faced-rejection-like-rani-in-queen-5549.html https://www.indiatoday.in/movies/reviews/story/queen-kangana-ranaut-vikas-bahl-rajkumar-rao-movie-review-183999-2014-03-07 https://www.rediff.com/movies/review/review-kangana-rules-in-queen/20140307.htm https://www.news18.com/news/india/masand-review-masands-verdict-135-672733.html https://www.filmibeat.com/bollywood/movies/queen/hashtag-tweets.html https://www.deccanchronicle.com/140307/entertainment-movie-review/article/movie-review-queen-film-%E2%80%98golgappa%E2%80%99-stuffed-culture https://www.indiatvnews.com/entertainment/bollywood/kangana-ranaut-queen-success-pics-12435.html I kindly request you to form a consensus at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Queen_(2013_film).
  I hope, this info would shed some light during this request. — DaxServer (t · m · e · c) 17:35, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

  Forgot to mention, he used WP:EMAIL to send me these mails. I hadn't responded and thus he's, I hope, unaware of my email. — DaxServer (t · m · e · c) 17:41, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

• reply carried over

@Deepfriedokra: The diffs in Spanish and Hindi mentioned by the IP 86.23.109.101 are actions that I have performed last year in 2022, and it has been more than six months since those edits, and I have not made those same edits this year. We are interested in my behavior on other projects for the last six months. So, the edits in the last six months were just the self-reverted edits in Portuguese and the sandbox edits. So, I guess I will have to wait for another six months now. Neel.arunabh (talk) 18:05, 29 February 2024

-- Deepfriedokra (talk) 18:08, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Israel-Palestine conflict topic area indefinite block appeal

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

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I appeal for lifting the indefinite topic ban from the Israel-Palestine conflict topic area. I promise not to engage in heated debates and I will by myself exit any discussion that gets heated in this topic area. ☆SuperNinja2☆ 18:34, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Per the conditional unblock described at User_talk:Super_ninja2/Archive_4#Blocked, you are not yet allowed to appeal this topic-ban, as it has not been six months since the ban was applied; it hasn't even been six months since the indef-block preceding the conditional unblock. The conditional unblock also included an informal commitment to avoid CTOPS in general for 6 months, which this appeal appears to ignore. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:41, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Oh I'm sorry, I thought that the appeal should be within the six months not after. Okay thank you! ☆SuperNinja2☆ 18:48, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

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

Anze kopitar article

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

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Hello administratiors how is it going? I am Ethan Parker. On the Anze kopitar article in one of the headers it says “Later Career” and I changed it multiple times to “Selke Trophies and Start of captaincy” because I thought it flowed better since he got 2 Selke trophies within that time and was named captain in 2016 and I also tried to mention in my reasoning that Kopitar is still active in the nhl so the word “Later” didn’t make much sense to me. The main accounts that I got harassed by were sbaio, starscream1007, Goodday, 1995ho and Bbb23 especially sbaio. These individuals are completely selfish, narcissistic and manipulative where they would revert perfectly good edits for absolutely no reason. I know I am not the only one that has been through this. I have talked to other accounts in the last couple months who have had similar treatment. Point is, I am a well meaning guy who means no harm and was gaslit and ignored by these users when I tried to explain myself. Starscream1007 actually sounded like a cool guy at first and he even told me to keep fighting my case only to turn his back on me when I asked him to be a character witness for me to prove I mean well. Anyway, thanks for the consideration please look back at some of these articles if you want to see how these individuals are abusing their power and why they should be blocked while I (my account that got falsely blocked a few months ago (gymrat16) should be unblocked. I don’t wish to get other people in trouble but if they are going to behave this badly towards fellow users without reason I believe the consequences should be held on them. Thanks and hopefully I get some help finally to prove my case. 67.254.133.36 (talk) 19:08, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

I (my account that got falsely blocked a few months ago (gymrat16) should be unblocked

…You’ve just admitted to being a sock of a blocked account. The Kip 19:10, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

I was FALSELY blocked because they thought I was some user names Moka Mo. I told up above I desperately tried to tell them that I am a completely different person who had no idea what Moka Mo was and the similarities between me and that user but they never listened. I have tried to explain that multiple times but I keep getting ignored. I was told the next time I could try to appeal this was on February 27th and today is February 27th. 2600:1017:B82F:F1C6:EC8F:6F5C:46CE:761D (talk) 19:16, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

I tried to appeal on the citing system but it wasn’t letting me submit on the UTRS saying the ip address was banned like what else am I supposed to do? I would appreciate it if you helped me out because these accounts I listed are unbearably toxic and narcissistic and cruel people 2600:1017:B82F:F1C6:EC8F:6F5C:46CE:761D (talk) 19:18, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Evading an illegitimate block is equivalent to escaping prison for a crime you didn't commit. It's still going to destroy any chance you have of not being blocked/imprisoned when caught. And I am not interested in reading the same crap you've copypasta'd to three different fora, especially if it's from a patently-obvious block-evading IP who leaves insults in edit summaries and seems allergic to any sort of serious discussion, especially when, from what I can tell, the material keeps getting reverted off as unnecessary cruft. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{Source assessment notes} 19:23, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

But I was falsely blocked for life so I wouldn’t be able to argue my case they know I’m right they just don’t want to admit so and want to abuse their power instead. I had perfectly good edits and when I tried to explain myself I kept getting shut down. What else am I supposed to do to defend myself?! 174.204.140.172 (talk) 19:26, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

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

Prince Edward, Duke of Kent

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

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In the ‘Military Service’ section of this page it states that in 1970, the Duke was a member of the NATO force on the divided island of Cyprus. But the Turks didn’t invade Cyprus until ?April, 1974! He may well have been posted there, but not in the guise quoted. 80.7.2.135 (talk) 07:31, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

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

Biased Neil Parrott page content added by a writer.

Moved to Talk:Neil Parrott § Biased Neil Parrott page content added by a writer.

Primefac (talk) 19:13, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

User Jalen Folf deleted a page that is clean with resources

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Hi there, User Jalen Folf deleted article that I wrote and that is related to the page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supermarket_chains_in_Serbia I noticed there that some of listed companies do not have corresponding pages and page that have linked company "Crafter" is linked to the page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keirsey_Temperament_Sorter#Artisan with no reason. So I investigated that company and wrote informative page that user @JalenFolf removed. Article was informative with resources as other companies normally have. I require your attention and review. Thank you. Uli085 (talk) 21:38, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

I would like to remind that an anonymous user has also opposed this user's edits as promotional material. (diff) This is very clearly a casting of WP:ASPERSIONS on the user's part, and administration should consider a possible WP:NOTHERE clause on the OP. Jalen Folf (talk) 21:42, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

But after you pointed out that the text resembles promotional material, I made the necessary changes to completely eliminate any suspicion that the article contains any interest. Additionally, my intention was to write articles for all the companies that are on that page. I'm sorry that this is a battle with someone who has been using Wikipedia for a longer time and does not allow the content of pages related to Serbia to be found in the public encyclopedia. Uli085 (talk) 21:48, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Good job Uli. You, as a very new editor who has no idea what they're doing, has driven a good editor to both madness and completely off this website. I hope you're happy! Jalen Folf (talk) 21:45, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't know what's going on right now, take as long of a break as you need and know that others are on the case; I hope your day improves. 184.152.68.190 (talk) 21:59, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

But after you pointed out that the text resembles promotional material, I made the necessary changes to completely eliminate any suspicion that the article contains any interest. Additionally, my intention was to write articles for all the companies that are on that page. I'm sorry that this is a battle with someone who has been using Wikipedia for a longer time and does not allow the content of pages related to Serbia to be found in the public encyclopedia. Uli085 (talk) 21:49, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

I was going to call this a basic content dispute...but there's not even much back and forth in the page history. I'm struggling to understand why this was reported here, or why Jalen seems so stressed about this report...? Sergecross73 msg me 21:52, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Dear Jalen, instead of showing understanding towards a beginner on Wikipedia, I immediately received a deleted article even though I made the corrections you asked for, which are in accordance with the rules for editing articles. This public encyclopedia is meant for the exchange of knowledge, and that was my intention, not to make you nervous. However, I think it's not right that you persistently delete an article that is in its place. The article for the term "Crafter" was wrong, so I decided to try to write it. I'm sorry this upset you, but let's be realistic, the changes were made, I prepared and researched the text, spent my time only for you to delete it. I live in Serbia, in Belgrade, and I know what I'm writing and what is correct. I believe that my post, and the first one at that, is worth something.

@Sergecross73Sergecross73, I don't know what upset him so much, I wrote the text, Jalen asked for changes which I made, and then he sent a request to delete it even though it's in accordance with the rules. I'm writing here because I can no longer see the article and I don't know who to complain to. Uli085 (talk) 21:56, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

What article are we even talking about here? Sergecross73 msg me 21:58, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

This relates to Crafter, which has been repurposed into an article which both myself and an anonymous user have opposed for notability reasons. Jalen Folf (talk) 22:00, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

I created article on page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crafter as I noticed that on page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supermarket_chains_in_Serbia "Crafter" is linked to the page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keirsey_Temperament_Sorter. Uli085 (talk) 22:00, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Crafter. It used to be an article (different topic), then was merged and became a redirect to Keirsey Temperament Sorter#Artisan. Then Uli085 blanked the redirect and wrote an article on a Serbian company of that name. Schazjmd (talk) 22:01, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks @Schazjmd for clarify, but now I have no idea where are we now? Would you or anybody else be kind to explain. Thanks! Uli085 (talk) 22:04, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Clear content dispute, Jalen Folf hasn't deleted anything, I know a new user might not understand what that means but reasonable people can disagree over when to add red links or spinout articles, and the first step should have been a talk page discussion, again an easy mistake for a new user to make, but that's been clarified now. 184.152.68.190 (talk) 21:59, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

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

Eyes on AIV please

Hello,
Wikipedia:AIV is getting a little stale, could someone go through it, especially the bots section?  Thanks Geardona (talk to me?) 01:50, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

User:20 upper rename request

20 upper, who has a history of blocks and was unblocked two months ago under strict conditions, now wants to change their username to Wolverine XI. I’m here to check if the rename request complies with the unblock conditions or if there are any objections from the AN folks regarding this rename. This is just a global renamer inquiry, and 20 upper is aware of this message, so I haven’t left any notice informing them about this thread. If needed, please let me know, and I will be happy to leave them a message. Thanks. – DreamRimmer (talk) 05:51, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Informed 20 upper about this discussion. – DreamRimmer (talk) 05:56, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

File:Sound.wav created despite salting

According to the protection policy, File:Sound.wav is supposed to be empty and salted, and the log for the file confirms that it's protected against creation, but somehow it was created by a user in Commons and now exists here. Or, I guess, auto-links to the Commons file. I'm posting this here even though I guess it's sort of a deletion request because it's in effect bypassing a creation protection here and maybe some action needs to be taken to prevent this in the future, here or in other Files --Gimmethegepgun (talk) 08:04, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

It's salted only here, not on Commons. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:55, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

It's really stupid that random stuff on Commons can override en.wp salting, although I guess that's a consequence of the system being extremely weird and bespoke to begin with. At any rate, I've uploaded a dummy file to File:Sound.wav (a 132-byte file consisting of 0.001 seconds of silence), and full-protected that. jp×g🗯️ 09:07, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

I think the Commons file should rather be renamed; the Commons policy allows renames of meaningless titles. I'll see how to find a new name. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:13, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

@JPxG: Renamed and requested salting, so the local copy can probably go again. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:52, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

It's really stupid that random stuff on Commons can override en.wp salting. Could create a Phabricator ticket for this. That'd be the first step to getting it fixed. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:20, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2024).

Administrator changes

• Sdkb
• The Night Watch

• East718
• Isabelle Belato
• Mzajac
• Staecker
• Stan Shebs
• Sugarfish
• Tamzin

Bureaucrat changes

SilkTork

Guideline and policy news

• Phase I of the 2024 RfA review is now open for participation. Editors are invited to review, comment on, and propose improvements to the requests for adminship process.
• Following an RfC, the inactivity requirement for the removal of the interface administrator right increased from 6 months to 12 months.

Technical news

• The mobile site history pages now use the same HTML as the desktop history pages. (T353388)

Miscellaneous

• The 2024 appointees for the Ombuds commission are だ＊ぜ, AGK, Ameisenigel, Bennylin, Daniuu, Doǵu, Emufarmers, Faendalimas, MdsShakil, Minorax, Nehaoua, Renvoy and RoySmith as members, with Vermont serving as steward-observer.
• Following the 2024 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Ajraddatz, Albertoleoncio, EPIC, JJMC89, Johannnes89, Melos and Yahya.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:22, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Edit warring on Commerce

User @MrOllie , constantly reverts completely scientific, correct, referenced and sourced image and content on commerce for personal reasons.Even though I talked to him several times and explained to him,In response, he says that the added image is not a commercial ship, but a boat! And it has nothing to do with that article. I would be grateful if you check.Thanks Kavehkdf1402 (talk) 17:00, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Kavehkdf1402, you boldly edited the article and MrOllie reverted you. The next step is to discuss the issue on the talk page, not to re-revert or start a discussion here. I see no mention of this issue on Talk:Commerce. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:00, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

I talked to him on my talk page, but unfortunately he insists on his position.The image is completely related to the subject of article (a commercial ship carrying commercial cargo) and its caption is also sourced and correct. First,he said that this is a boat! And now he says it is decorative.I will be very grateful if you take a look at the edit and tell me what is wrong with it.

According to Wikipedia policies, if an edit has a problem, it is better to fix it in the first place than to delete it immediately! But this user seems to be very interested in reverting.This will definitely discourage new users.

Additionally, most of my edits are reverted by this user only. If there is a problem with edits, why can only this user recognize it?! That's why I'm reporting his behavior here. Thanks Kavehkdf1402 (talk) 18:33, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Also, my edit wasn't 'boldly' at all ,l just added a perfectly relevant image to the article. Kavehkdf1402 (talk) 19:01, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Phil Bridger is correct. Just as MrOllie doesn't automatically decide on whether the image should be added, you don't automatically get to decide either. See WP:BRD (which is what he meant be "bold"). Go to the article talk page, stop the insults, and have a calm rational discussion. If that doesn't result in an agreement, then follow the steps outlined here: WP:Dispute Resolution. If you both are less brusque with each other, it will make it more likely that other people will want to join the discussion. It's time to stop reverting each other on the article, though. Floquenbeam (talk) 19:27, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

It is probably worth mentioning that the image caption is a copy and paste of the cited source. It seems that the main focus of Kavehkdf1402's edits so far are pasting dictionary definitions into various articles. MrOllie (talk) 19:37, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Unless someone has objections (or just closes it), I'm going to move this to Talk:Commerce as it appears to be a content dispute. Primefac (talk) 19:36, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

• MrOllie notified on his talk page. --Floquenbeam (talk) 19:21, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Requesting a second opinion

A few years back I semi-protected the article Milli Vanilli, given my logged rational it appears that I intended this to be only for a few weeks. The block originated as part of a hammer and anvil maneuver brought about User:Jroccolv breached the NLT policy in attempting to navigate our COI guidelines with regards to her information which as you can see on both the history of the article and the user talk page did not go the way I think she was expecting. The other day I got a talk page message from a User:DaiMadAboutIt requesting a drop in protection. I don't have a good reason to maintain the protection on the article, so I dropped it, however I am suspicious about the latter account as its been here for less than a year and has only made 10 edits. I'm AGFing here, but in light of all of this I'd like to request a second opinion from the admin corps on whether this seems odd, off, or otherwise suspicious. I'll note for the records that the former account has not in any capacity I'm aware of requested unblock since the original failed request, but did post up on twitter to complain about the block, calling me out by username, which means I'm technically an involved editor here, but I'm still a little unsettled by that low these years later which is a factor in this request for a second opinion. (Noting that since I'm requesting a review of my action, I've left no messages with the other accounts as of this posting, however if need be I can double back to do so if they are judged to be needed.) TomStar81 (Talk) 19:59, 1 March 2024 (UTC)