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Other areas tracking old discussions

Administrative discussions

Place new administrative discussions above this line using a level 3 heading

Requests for comment

Talk:Awdal#RFC - Habr Awal/Isaaq clan

(Initiated 143 days ago on 24 December 2023) ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 21:17, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

RfC: Tasnim News Agency

(Initiated 93 days ago on 12 February 2024)

Closure request for this WP:RSN RfC initiated on February 12, with the last !vote occurring on March 18. It was bot-archived without closure on March 26 due to lack of recent activity. - Amigao (talk) 02:33, 1 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

RfC: Change INFOBOXUSE to recommend the use of infoboxes?

(Initiated 61 days ago on 15 March 2024) Ready to be closed. Charcoal feather (talk) 17:02, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Before I try to close this I wanted to see if any editors believed I am WP:INVOLVED. I have no opinions on the broader topic, but I have previously participated in a single RfC on whether a specific article should include an infobox. I don't believe this makes me involved, as my participation was limited and on a very specific question, which is usually insufficient to establish an editor as involved on the broader topic, but given the strength of opinion on various sides I expect that any result will be controversial, so I wanted to raise the question here first.

If editors present reasonable objections within the next few days I won't close; otherwise, unless another editor gets to it first, I will do so. BilledMammal (talk) 04:43, 13 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Russo-Ukrainian War#RFC on Listing of Belarus

(Initiated 60 days ago on 16 March 2024) Hello, this RFC was started on 16 March 2024 and as of now was active for more than a month (nearly 1,5 month to be exact). I think a month is enough for every interested user to express their opinion and to vote at RFC and the last vote at this RFC was made by user Mellk on 15 April 2024 (nearly two weeks ago and within a month since the start of this RFC). The question because of which this RFC was started previously resulted in quite strong disagreements between multiple users, but I think there already is a WP:CONS of 12 users who already voted at this RFC. Since the contentious topics procedure applies to page Russo-Ukrainian War, I think this RFC must be closed by uninvolved user/administrator to ensure a valid WP:CONS and to prevent further disputes/edit warring about this question in the future. -- Pofka (talk) 09:50, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Will an experienced uninvolved editor please close this RFC. If there is a consensus that Belarus should be listed, but not as to how it should be listed, please close with the least strong choice, Robert McClenon (talk) 17:08, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think it should not be closed with the "least strong choice", but instead with a choice which received the most votes (the strongest choice). The most users chose C variant (in total 6 users: My very best wishes, Pofka, Gödel2200, ManyAreasExpert, Licks-rocks, CVDX), while the second strongest choice was A variant (in total 5 users). So I think the WP:CONS of this RFC question is C variant. -- Pofka (talk) 18:33, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Doing... —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 01:22, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Libertarian Party (Australia)#Conservatism

(Initiated 47 days ago on 29 March 2024) RfC template expired. TarnishedPath^talk 01:22, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk: Elissa Slotkin#Labor Positions and the 2023 UAW Strike

(Initiated 46 days ago on 30 March 2024) RfC expired, no clear consensus. andrew.robbins (talk) 04:05, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WP:RSN#RFC:_The_Anti-Defamation_League

(Initiated 39 days ago on 7 April 2024) Three related RFCs in a trench coat. I personally think the consensus is fairly clear here, but it should definitely be an admin close. Loki (talk) 14:07, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Enforcing ECR for article creators

(Initiated 37 days ago on 8 April 2024) Discussion appears to have died down almost a month after this RfC opened. Would like to see a formal close of Q1 and Q2. Awesome Aasim 00:11, 8 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Brothers of Italy#RfC on neo-fascism in info box 3 (Effectively option 4 from RfC2)

(Initiated 37 days ago on 8 April 2024) Clear consensus for change but not what to change to. I've handled this RfC very badly imo. User:Alexanderkowal — Preceding undated comment added 11:50, 1 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:International Churches of Christ#Request for Comment on About Self sourcing on beliefs section of a religious organization’s article

(Initiated 30 days ago on 15 April 2024) No new comments in eight days. TarnishedPath^talk 01:33, 11 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Havana syndrome#RfC on the presentation of the Havana Syndrome investigative report content

(Initiated 20 days ago on 25 April 2024) No new comments in 12 days. {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 08:52, 13 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:2024 United States presidential election#RfC: Define the threshold in national polls to include candidates in the infobox - new proposal

(Initiated 0 days' time on 16 May 2024) An RfC on exactly the same matter was literally closed a few days ago. Prcc27 (talk) 15:44, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Place new discussions concerning RfCs above this line using a level 3 heading

Deletion discussions

XFD backlog
V	Apr	May	Total
CfD	19	23	42
TfD	0	1	1
MfD	1	3	4
FfD	2	5	7
RfD	22	50	72
AfD	0	12	12

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 8#Medical schools in the Caribbean

(Initiated 55 days ago on 21 March 2024) House Blaster (talk · he/him) 20:38, 4 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 8#Category:French forts in the United States

(Initiated 54 days ago on 22 March 2024) House Blaster (talk · he/him) 20:38, 4 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 10#Category:19th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in Réunion

(Initiated 53 days ago on 23 March 2024) House Blaster (talk · he/him) 13:39, 13 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 24#Category:Asian American billionaires

(Initiated 21 days ago on 24 April 2024) House Blaster (talk · he/him) 20:38, 4 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Place new discussions concerning XfDs above this line using a level 3 heading

Other types of closing requests

Talk:Maersk Hangzhou#Second merge proposal

(Initiated 112 days ago on 24 January 2024) Merge discussion involving CTOPS that has been open for 2 weeks now. Needs closure. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 04:46, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@WeatherWriter: I would give it a few days as the discussion is now active with new comments. GoldenBootWizard276 (talk) 00:00, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As nominator, I support a non consensus closure of this discussion so we can create an RFC to discuss how WP:ONEEVENT applies in this situation. GoldenBootWizard276 (talk) 21:56, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:1985_Pacific_hurricane_season#Proposed_merge_of_Hurricane_Ignacio_(1985)_into_1985_Pacific_hurricane_season

(Initiated 106 days ago on 30 January 2024) Listing multiple non-unanimous merge discussions from January that have run their course. Noah, AA^Talk 13:50, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Pharnavaz_I_of_Iberia#Requested_move_6_February_2024

(Initiated 99 days ago on 6 February 2024) Requested move open for nearly 2 months. Natg 19 (talk) 17:46, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Has now been open for three months. 66.99.15.163 (talk) 19:23, 10 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:12 February 2024 Rafah strikes#Merge proposal to Rafah offensive

(Initiated 92 days ago on 13 February 2024) The discussion has been inactive for over a month, with a clear preference against the merge proposal. CarmenEsparzaAmoux (talk) 19:35, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Rupert_Sheldrake#Talkpage_"This_article_has_been_mentioned_by_a_media_organization:"_BRD

(Initiated 29 days ago on 16 April 2024) - Discussion on a talkpage template, Last comment 6 days ago, 10 comments, 4 people in discussion. Not unanimous, but perhaps there is consensus-ish or strength of argument-ish closure possible. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:24, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't seem to me that there is a consensus here to do anything, with most editors couching their statements as why it might (or might not) be done rather than why it should (or should not). I will opine that I'm not aware there's any precedent to exclude {{Press}} for any reason and that it would be very unusual, but I don't think that's good enough reason to just overrule Hipal. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 01:01, 13 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Forest_management#Merge_proposal

(Initiated 17 days ago on 28 April 2024) As the proposer I presume I cannot close this. It was started more than a week ago and opinions differed somewhat. Chidgk1 (talk) 13:46, 10 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Press_Your_Luck_scandal#Separate_articles

(Initiated 13 days ago on 2 May 2024) Please review this discussion. --Jax 0677 (talk) 01:42, 11 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Agroforestry#Merge_proposal

(Initiated 12 days ago on 3 May 2024) As the proposer I presume I cannot close this. It was started more than a week ago and opinions differed somewhat. Chidgk1 (talk) 13:46, 10 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Place new discussions concerning other types of closing requests above this line using a level 3 heading

Poem of woe

Here sit I, a much merry sort
On my way to a flight from Heathrow Airport
Declaring my intention unto thee
To engage in a wiki vandalism spree
This IP expendable, one should confess
For it belongs to the National Express
There's no point blocking, as you'll feel my wrath
When soon free airport wifi shall I hath
My advice, sit back enjoy the show
Cos you ain't not seen da last of me bro!

Yours, A traveller of sorts who enjoys good things — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.12.107.132 (talk) 15:17, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Can impotent wrath be felt, by definition? If a tree is wrathful in the forest and no one is around to feel it, does it make a sound? Dumuzid (talk) 15:20, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think you'd better ask User:TheGracefulSlick about that tbh. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.12.107.132 (talk) 15:56, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

RFC review request: Request for Comment: Country of Origin

Location:Wikipedia talk:Identifying reliable_sources (medicine)/Archive 19#Request for Comment: Country of Origin

Specific question asked:

"Should we change MEDRS, which currently reads:
Do not reject a high-quality type of study due to personal objections to the study's inclusion criteria, references, funding sources, or conclusions.
to
Do not reject a high-quality type of study due to personal objections to the study's inclusion criteria, references, funding sources, country of origin, or conclusions.
This proposal is to address only the addition of high-quality sources into the guideline

Concerns over the closing of this RFC have halted its implementation. The question is specific to only High-quality sources.

Discussion

Endorse The RFC was specifically about High quality sources and this was spelled out in the RFC question. The question had a very narrow focus. The closer rightfully discounted comments that were about low quality sources as off topic. AlbinoFerret 19:50, 20 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
This is nonsense; who defines what a high or low-quality source is? There is no clear-cut process that is accepted by all, and actually the entire reason for the guideline. What if you define it depending on "personal" reasons — then you nullify the entire clause? The RfC concerns sources on Wikipedia. CFCF 💌 📧 07:52, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The guideline already gives reasons not to reject "high quality" sources for reasons like funding so that argument fails. But this is not a place to reargue the merits of the RFC. 13:48, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
No, but it is important to note the actual coverage of the RfC, which is all sources that would go on Wikipedia. CFCF 💌 📧 15:40, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Not all sources, only high quality ones. Your statement is one of the reasons I endorse this close. The RFC was a very narrow focused one and the off topic responses were obviously discounted, and your repeating them here doesnt invalidate the close. AlbinoFerret 15:53, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'm kind of inclined to go with "this is nonsense", but because Albino has misquoted the guideline again, and therefore his objection is irrelevant (NB not wrong, just irrelevant). A high-quality type of study is not the same thing as a high-quality source. A systematic review is a very high-quality type of study, but it can be a remarkably low-quality source for any given statement. For example, a systematic analysis of whichever studies I have photocopies of in my filing cabinet would be a high-quality type of study and a low-quality source.
The fact that the closer made the same mistake, not to mention also introducing ideas never mentioned in the discussion at all, are both reasons to overturn it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:05, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Regardless if it is "type" or "source", I used source because thats what they are, sources. We are still talking about high quality, and simply because a high quality type or source is from a specific country is no reason to disqualify it. That premise, that just because something is from a specific country it fails, is troubling regardless of what criteria you are looking at. In any event this is off topic for a review as it is just re-arguing the RFC. AlbinoFerret 17:33, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"Type of study" and "source" really are very importantly different concepts!

A meta-analysis is a type of study. They are often done well, but they can be done very, very poorly. All meta-analyses are high-quality "types of studies"; some meta-analyses are impossibly bad "sources".
A good textbook is a source. It is not any kind of scientific study at all. That doesn't mean that the textbook is a low-quality source. It just means that this particular type of source doesn't fall on the levels of evidence scales. A good textbook can be the best source for many medicine-related statements.

The disputed sentence is part of an entire section ("Assess evidence quality") on how to tell which type of study is better evidence than another. A type of study is all about scientific levels of evidence. It's not "simply high quality" or the entirety of whether a particular source can support a particular statement; it's very specifically about "high-quality types of studies" (emphasis in the original). A specific source (=a specific publication) can be a very high-quality source despite containing no scientific evidence at all. Similarly, a source could use a very good type of study – something that rates high in levels of evidence – while still being a very bad source indeed. To determine whether a source is a good one, you need to look at more factors than merely the levels of evidence (="type of study"). "Assess evidence quality" is only one of six major factors that MEDRS encourages editors to consider, (mostly) in addition to the five major factors that RS recommends for all subjects (see WP:NOTGOODSOURCE for a brief list). WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:57, 23 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Interestingly enough, that argument failed in the RfC because editors were objecting to certain Cochrane Reviews simply because they had Chinese authors, and since Cochrane Reviews are prestigious reviews of reviews and meta-analyses, that means they are both the "highest quality source" as well as "highest quality study type". For the purposes of the RfC, there wasn't a difference, and editors who objected because of problems with lower quality references (type or source) missed the point and their votes were tossed aside. Objections were raised on the basis of potentially biased low quality Chinese published primary research (RCT's), which wasn't ever the point. Those are low quality sources and study-type . Naturally, the editors raising these objections weren't happy when their off-topic arguments were counted as such. LesVegas (talk) 14:16, 23 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing You missed my point in again trying to explain type and source again. The point being that regardless if you are looking at type or source, country of origin as a basis for exclusion is troubling. AlbinoFerret 14:45, 23 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I think that if you're bringing this here at this point, you should present the entire context, such as the two subsequent RfCs about the same question. Sunrise (talk) 01:21, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I would rather start at the beginning and discuss one RFC at a time as it may not be necessary to review them all. The next RFC was closed no consensus and as a NAC I agree with that closing, but if someone disagrees with that close they are welcome to start a review for it. Though I dont know why a review for a no consensus close is necessary. There appears to be a current RFC that has recently started that I just became aware of today, but we are far from the close (about 3 weeks) of that RFC for a review, if it is necessary. AlbinoFerret 02:06, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think it should be clear that whether the other RfCs should be reviewed is not the point. The point is that you selectively omitted context in a way that favors your preferred outcome. With regard to the current RfC, if you're implying that you didn't perform due diligence by reading the talk page before coming here, then I don't think that helps you. And perhaps you forgot, but you did not "just become aware of" the current RfC, because you commented in it. Sunrise (talk) 22:57, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Link to related discussions:

Cunard (talk) 07:07, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

{{Do not archive until}} added. Please remove the {{Do not archive until}} tag after the review is closed. (I am adding this because RfC closure reviews frequently have been archived prematurely without being resolved.) Cunard (talk) 07:07, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Just a note, Wikipedia talk:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)#What does MEDRS cover? was on a different topic and section of MEDRS. AlbinoFerret 14:32, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia_talk:Identifying_reliable_sources_(medicine)#Questions_about_RFC_closure_-_Country_of_origin. The closer wrote "Opinion in discussion appears evenly divided between Support for either 1, or 3, or 5 with No Consensus. In addition it is #3 which is the most contested. A new RfC which would rephrase the material as something like a choice between some version of #1 and some version of #5 would likely lead to an outcome." Fountains-of-Paris" The more recent RfC overrides the previous RfC. QuackGuru (talk) 16:24, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

QG your comment is about the second RFC, and a no consensus closing does not override a previous RFC. AlbinoFerret 16:35, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes it does. You did not mention the other RfCs when you began this discussion. Do you stand by that decision. QuackGuru (talk) 16:49, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sure I do as posted above this is a discussion on one RFC, all the rest is off topic. AlbinoFerret 17:29, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There is a third RfC that rejects the use of country of origin. See Wikipedia_talk:Identifying_reliable_sources_(medicine)#RfC:_How_to_Implement_the_Country_of_Origin_Closing. QuackGuru (talk) 16:49, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Overturn close. The closer neglected to take into consideration comments made by others.

Revert 5. The closer was trying to force changes in.

It is suspicious the close was on 18 October 2015 and months later it is brought up here. The other RfCs show a clear consensus to not include the language that is against MEDRS to use low quality bias sources. QuackGuru (talk) 16:49, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the second editor to perfectly explain why the close should be endorsed. The RFC question was not about Low quality sources but high quality ones. Anyone replying with a low quality source comment was off topic. Also thank you for pointing out that the RFC was ignored and the only reason it was not implemented was edit warring, hence the need for this review. AlbinoFerret 17:29, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Using low quality bias sources is against MEDRS. Confirmed bias sources are not high quality sources. QuackGuru (talk) 17:33, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The RFC question specifically was talking about a section in MEDRS dealing with High quality sources and never mentioned low quality sources. Regardless of low quality sources, can you address why the close was wrong when closing on High quality sources without going off topic into low quality ones and rearguing the RFC? AlbinoFerret 17:41, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

MEDRS should not be used as a platform to include bias sources in articles. A high-quality is not from a country of origin that is known to be bias. QuackGuru (talk) 17:51, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, that reasoning seems to exclude an entire nation's population for extraneous considerations relating to QuackGuru's subjective notions about nationality that should have no quarter here. (But the grammar problems make it less than perfectly clear.) @Kingpin13:: Do you think it's OK to advocate we reject all studies from a country even though surely some studies from all countries exhibit some bias, and no country is a source for nothing but biased studies? You've blocked users for overt bigotry before, Kingpin13. Where's the line? --Elvey^(t•c) 00:49, 27 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Overturn. I have never edited anywhere near this issue. A well intentioned but inexperienced closer got in the middle of an attempt to rewrite policy to win a content dispute, they gave a consensus contrary to a roughly two-thirds majority (which included some of our most respected editors[1]), and the close explanation effectively affirmed the majority concerns. The close had the good intention of saying people shouldn't baselessly reject reliable sources, but the proposed policy change is pointless once it's re-written to explain that closing intent. The community is now engaged in a clusterfuck of additional RFC's trying to respect that awkward close - by rewriting it in a way that almost no one is going to consider a meaningful improvement. This should not have gotten a consensus against the majority, not unless it's an experienced closer who knows how to send an against-majority close on a constructive course. Alsee (talk) 01:18, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If this appeal is going ahead, I'll copy my comment from the long discussion at WT:MEDRS about the original close: "I don't think there's a rule about NACs while under sanctions, but I'd consider it a bad idea myself due to the necessary level of community trust. In this case there are actually connections with the RfC - Elvey's topic ban followed some highly acrimonious interactions with User:Jytdog (one of the editors !voting Oppose), and the t-ban was supported by several other editors who also !voted Oppose here. I read the close as likely being an attempted supervote, especially after their subsequent actions - joining the edit warring over the RfC result, telling editors questioning the close to "drop the stick" and other less complimentary things, and ultimately trying to archive this discussion. But either way, the close unfortunately perpetuated the dispute rather than resolving it." To clarify the first part, Elvey is under a topic ban from COI broadly construed and the closure could easily be interpreted as a violation of that as well, because conflicted sources were one of the points under discussion. Sunrise (talk) 22:57, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment What I find interesting is that Albino Ferret, who agreed with the close, is actually the editor endorsing its review. That shows character. Every editor opposing it, including those here, were well aware they could have Elvey's close reviewed at this administrator's noticeboard. I, other editors and even an administrator reminded everyone opposed to the close about this review process several times. But the editors who disagreed with the close resorted to edit warring to keep the change off instead of having it formally reviewed. LesVegas (talk) 00:01, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- This isn't actually surprising at all. The closing statement was so far from the actual consensus that editors have refused to allow its few supporters – namely, you and AlbinoFerret – to implement the alleged consensus. Getting Elvey's closing statement affirmed here is the only possible way to get MEDRS amended to permit you to cite studies Chinese journals that have been identified, in academic studies, as being biased due to government pressure to only publish results that support the political party line. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:40, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There are a couple of facts I need to correct. First, there have been many supporters beyond Albino Ferret and myself. In the original RfC there were 7 for the change and several more editors have come along since and voiced their support. Even DocJames said the sources in question (Cochrane Reviews with Chinese authors) were undoubtedly of the highest quality. And this isn't about the Chinese published journals you speak about and never has been, although even in the worst case scenario evidence shows that they are still more reliable than much research with industry funding, and we already prohibit rejection of these sources based on funding. That was a point that nobody refuted in the RfC and one that the closer commented on. The final tally was 9 opposed to 7 support (if you read Herbxue's in the misplaced section below), but all but 1 of those 9 votes opposed were votes that failed to stay on topic and didn't stay relevant to the actual question asked in the RfC. As Albino Ferret (who has closed many RfC's) said, an experienced closer would throw these out. The 1 vote opposed that did have a partially relevant point was Richard Keatinge's, and this point was rightfully mentioned in and became part of the close. LesVegas (talk) 05:31, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Once again, MEDRS does not insist that editors use research paid through industry funding. What it does say is that you can't toss out sources with a higher levels of evidence because of your personal objections (i.e., something not widely supported in academic literature) to the funding source in favor of lower levels of evidence. You may not substitute a cherry-picked primary source for a widely respected meta-analysis merely because you believe that the author is a surgeon and is therefore gets paid to prove that surgery works (=real example, and the one that prompted the addition of that line to the guideline). That canard has indeed been refuted, by me at least twice.

If you're interested in financial conflicts, then you'll want to read the section of MEDRS at WP:MEDINDY.

I agree that you and AlbinoFerret are not the only editors to have supported this change. AFAICT, you two are the only ones who continue to push for its inclusion against the actual consensus there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:07, 23 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

WhatamIdoing, I'm afraid this really isn't the forum to discuss this. We've already gone round and round about industry funded primary research making its way into higher levels of evidence many times, which was always the point. So I'll have to politely decline discussing this further here so as to not overburden potential reviewers with in-depth side arguments we have already gone back and forth on many times. LesVegas (talk) 14:16, 23 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Overturn I am glad to see this here. The closer, Elvey, has a block log as long as my arm. The latest restriction (not in the log) was a community imposed TBAN from COI matters, imposed here on August 7 2015, due to disruptive behaviors, mostly directed at me, over COI matters. I am strongly identified with WP:MED around here, and I was dismayed to see Elvey close the subject RfC just a couple months after that TBAN was imposed. He doesn't ususally close RfCs, and in my opinion this was yet more disruptive behavior, clearly going against the established WP:MED editors who were uniformly opposed to the motion, and supporting the alt-med editors who were arguing on its behalf. (The origin of the RfC was the desire of advocates of acupuncture to use sources from China that present acupuncture in a favorable light, when there is a boatload of evidence that these studies are poorly done and controlled; these editors have continued even here to make the inflammatory argument that the exclusion is due to racism or bias, when the problems are well established in the literature as I pointed out in my !vote here) Elvey himself made ~~that~~the "bigotry" argument just now in this dif with edit note: "Nationalist bigotry?"

I'll add here that Elvey ignored the COI TBAN and is on the verge of getting a 3-month block for doing so per This ANI thread, with an additional TBAN for SPI matters added (per Vanjagenije's comment to him here.)

And I'll close by saying that in my view the close did not reflect the policy-based arguments that were given, and again in my view it was just disruptive. Jytdog (talk) 01:34, 27 January 2016 (UTC) (redacted for clarity per markup Jytdog (talk) 17:16, 27 January 2016 (UTC))[reply]

Comment. The problem lies in part with the way the sentence is written (my bold):

"Do not reject a high-quality type of study due to personal objections to the study's inclusion criteria, references, funding sources, country of origin, or conclusions."

If it said "do not reject a high-quality study" because of country of origin, that would make sense – if it's a high-quality secondary source we should use it no matter what country it stems from. But what is a "high-quality type of study"? A secondary source (e.g. a meta-analysis) is not ipso facto high quality. So that implies that, when choosing a low-quality study (but a supposedly high-quality type), we can't factor in where it comes from, and that makes no sense.

It would be better to say something like: "Do not reject a high-quality source simply because you do not like its inclusion criteria, references, funding, country of origin or conclusions." Discussion can then focus on quality, rather than origin. SarahSV ^(talk) 02:08, 27 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Editors are trying to use MEDRS to include low-quality sources in articles from a country of origin that is known to be bias and of low quality and pass it off as a high-quality source. QuackGuru (talk) 13:21, 27 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Diffs please, showing where my close is being used logically by at least 2 editors to support that. I ~~bet~~ guarantee you can't find any because it doesn't justify that. I don't believe I wrote it in a way that would allow it to be used to do so. --Elvey^(t•c) 02:54, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

QuackGuru, yes, but I think the change of wording will help. It now says: "Do not reject a source that is compliant with this guideline because of personal objections to inclusion criteria, references, funding sources or conclusions." If you add "country of origin," it won't cause so much harm now, because it is only talking about high-quality sources, rather than implying that any secondary source (e.g. meta analysis) is high quality, and that therefore any meta analysis is fine by definition. SarahSV ^(talk) 04:17, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

SarahSV I think the wording of your actual edit is very well crafted. Thank you. Jytdog (talk) 04:53, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Overturn the close. The RFC was based on a false premise - that nationality was being capriciously used to reject sources (the main issue is pro-acupuncture editors who dislike the well-documented fact that Chinese studies on acupuncture effectiveness are unreliable due to systemic bias; the changed wording does not affect this due to the reference to quality). Practice will not change. Chinese-authored and published studies on acupuncture remain suspect, North Korean studies promting "brand new" ideas originating in North Korea remain suspect, and in both cases we have reliable independent sources to show that they are unlikely to meet quality thresholds due to systemic bias. Guy (Help!) 12:18, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please note. There is consensus to overturn the close but it is being forced in against consensus. An admin should consider a topic ban for User:LesVegas. On User:LesVegas' user page it says "I've been a resident for the past decade and have also lived in China for 2 years." User:LesVegas has lived in China and the user wants to include Chinese journals in articles.QuackGuru (talk) 22:27, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wait, so you disruptively revert the action of an administrator who reviewed the RfC and I am the one who needs to be topic banned simply because I've lived in China? Hahaha. LesVegas (talk) 23:16, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Boghog is not an admin and the edit was not the specific text from the close. See WP:CLOSE. Are you providing COI information on your user page regarding China? QuackGuru (talk) 23:21, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Give me a break QuackGuru, you know all too well Jamesday was the administrator I was talking about. You complained about his edit, the one you reverted, in the talk section on MEDRS. Your pretend ignorance is even worse than it was back when I had to deal with you regularly. LesVegas (talk) 23:59, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If you or anyone one else continues to push this nonsense then I think ArbCom is around the corner. QuackGuru (talk) 05:34, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi admins, just want to note that Jamesday's creative but out-of-process approach below, has not helped settle things but instead has become the subject of edit warring in the guideline and further dispute on the article Talk page. The need remains for an in-process decision whether to uphold or overturn the close that is the subject of this thread, so that we can take it from there. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 04:24, 1 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse The question posed in the RfC was regarding high quality sources. These included Cochrane Reviews given in the examples which were being objected to based on the authors being Chinese. Many arguments were given by those in opposition regarding possibly suspect Chinese primary studies (RCT's) that would have never made it onto the encyclopedia in the first place, both low quality and low-quality-type sources, and these objections were rightfully not given weight by the closer since they were not on topic with the question being asked. That question was very specific and had a narrow focus. Yet these objectors edit warred the implementation of the close, instead of coming here for review themselves, so it looks like that's why we're here. LesVegas (talk) 18:53, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A decision of sorts from a previously uninvolved administrator

As an editor and administrator who started here some twelve years ago and who has not previously been involved in these discussions I have reviewed this discussion and the past RfCs on the country subject and have come to the following conclusions:

there can be legitimate reasons to reject the use of sources from a country but it is unlikely that all sources on all subjects will be unreliable.
the underlying cause of dispute is trying to find an all or nothing wording when in fact in most cases there will be no concern but in some there will be grounds for legitimate concern.
the requirement to reject based on country of origin must be made for the narrowest reasonable range of fields and based on established consensus.
if required, consensus should be sought on what the narrowest reasonable range of fields is.

As a result I have partially overturned and partially accepted the various RfCs and added this text:

"Country of origin is sometimes given as a reason to reject a source. That is not generally appropriate but there are clear cases where it can be an issue. For example, studies of the effect of diet could well have been an issue during the Soviet-era famine in Ukraine and today it is legitimate to wonder whether studies relating to this issue from North Korea might not be entirely neutral or fully authoritative, both because the subjects are politically sensitive and might lead to political interference in scientific research. If you believe that a country is not a good source, before rejecting studies based on that origin you must:

seek consensus that for the area of knowledge involved, that country should not be regarded as a suitable source.
try to avoid an all studies from the country decision, even a country with poor standards and much political interference may have some good sources.
after consensus is obtained, place that list in a suitable meta page location so that all of the restrictions are known and can be subject to revisiting as required."

Naturally, I expect consensus-seeking on where such a list should be placed, if consensus is that an item needs to be placed on such a list.

As with many disputes here, this is not a black or white decision but rather one with many different shades and it is desirable to consider specific cases, not reject outright or accept outright black or white.

Please move on from the is it or isn't it a factor and on to trying to establish consensus on specific areas where specific countries as sources are concerns. If you think you can provide suitable references for rejecting everything from a country go for it and see whether you can establish that as consensus. I expect that you will have a far higher prospect of success if you seek a narrower consensus than that but if you want to try it you might be able to succeed.

In essence, this is a recognition that it may be necessary and beneficial for the community to recognise that certain sources - publications or individuals or institutions, perhaps, not just countries - might be unreliable in certain areas and to move towards a process whereby the community might formalise such a list after discussion of each case.

Do you disagree? If so, please explain here why you do not believe that it is possible or desirable for consensus to be sought that a particular source is in effect to be regarded as not of high quality in a particular area based on country of origin. Since consensus-seeking is how we decide most things, expect that to be a high bar to pass but if you think you can get others to accept it, no harm in trying. Jamesday (talk) 02:13, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Jamesday. First, thanks for trying to take action and I understand the sense of what you wrote and the effort to solve the problem. However, there are a few problems with this.

First, it is out of process. An RfC was held and closed, and the close is being challenged. The only real options here are to uphold it, or overturn it. I reckon you could do a new close, but that would have to comply with WP:CLOSE, which leads to...
Secondly, it seems to me that you don't have the right to craft a solution not discussed in the RfC itself or the discussion and impose it. In my view nobody does - not in a close (or re-close) and not as you have done here. Your proposal can be put in an RfC to see if it will fly, of course.

Therefore would you please withdraw your statement, or re-frame it? And I do thank you again for the BOLD effort. Jytdog (talk) 02:55, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm fine with this as NOTBURO and IAR. Strictly speaking, James can't do this, but if it sticks it will resolve a large part of the main problem. There are changes I'd like to see, but since the text (as I understand it) isn't being presented as a consensus result I think that can be done through the usual process, preferably after a short break to let tensions reduce. Sunrise (talk) 03:11, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that he actually implemented it in MEDRS, in this dif, as though it is authoritative. I appreciate the BOLDness but it is not a solution that can stick, and the manner in which it was done is going to cause more trouble. In contentious things like this, we need good process. Jytdog (talk) 04:53, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Don't get me wrong - I think the best decision would have been to simply close this as overturn. This action adds unnecessary complications to the issue, but I think that opposing it is likely to cause more confusion than not. I don't expect this to stick permanently, and I don't think it's authoritative or intended as such. The advantage I see is to finally end the discussion about the original close and the associated drama, including making the current RfC obsolete, so we can restart from the current (speculative) revision. Since this discussion isn't closed yet, hopefully it will just be recognized as a consensus to overturn. In the absence of that, I think the best outcome is to leave the text in for a few weeks, and then start editing to bring it in line with consensus - and I find that acceptable, if not optimal. Sunrise (talk) 11:03, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to all contributors. As the various processes are going nowhere at immense length, a little boldness may well be in order. I do suggest that Jamesday's specific examples are inappropriately speculative - I would hope for RS rather than supposition. As one example, you might like to consider Controlled Clinical Trials. 1998 Apr;19(2):159-66. Do certain countries produce only positive results? A systematic review of controlled trials. Vickers A, Goyal N, Harland R, Rees R. (China, Japan, Taiwan, Russia are mentioned.) I also suggest that all of the new texts proposed are at best examples of bloat, and that a better way of dealing with the problem is to take what RS say, and write the article properly. For example, a section on trials might appropriately start with the point that RS find them to be based on invalid work, and then outline what they say. Richard Keatinge (talk) 10:02, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Richard Keatinge's objection seems to be based on an 18 year old publication involving primary studies, not systematic reviews or meta-analyses, likely not published in reputable journals, likely not high-quality, and none of those sources would ever see the light of day onto Wikipedia for about 10-15 other reasons in MEDRS . Country of origin need not even be one of those reasons. China is a completely different country than it was 18 years ago, by the way. Following Jamesday's reasoning that "country of origin" is a valid reason to reject a source only in the narrowest of instances, objectors have shown evidence that we should reject primary studies on acupuncture published in China 18 years ago. And I agree that we should. But frankly, we don't even need to reject sources like that on where they originate; they fail the MEDRS barometer in many other ways. I know there may be other studies out there looking at the possibility of publication bias that are newer, but these also involve primary studies with no evidence any attention was paid to quality. Hence, the RfC was always about "high quality" research. It goes beyong Chinese studies on acupuncture, by the way. Jamesday noted country of origin to have been an issue in his 12 yr editing career; I have also dealt with (the very same) editors rejecting Russian research on GMO's because of its country of origin. Fortunately, some of these editors are now topic banned from the GMO subject, but they are not banned from rejecting sources elsewhere based on country of origin. This needs to change. Rejecting a source should be limited to source quality, journal integrity, if it's primary research, etc, ie if it's low quality based on its merits outlined in MEDRS. Industry funded studies have also shown the same (or worse) issues objectors note with Chinese sources on acupuncture, and we don't reject sources based on "funding source" (noted by Elvey in the close) and yet some editors act like the world will end if they can't reject a source based on where it's published or what country its authors are from. We can treat sources from other countries just like we have been treating industry funded research for years: reject it because it's a primary study, reject it because it's published in a disreputable journal, but not because it's funded by Pfizer or Coca Cola. The world will go on and keep spinning, I promise. LesVegas (talk) 11:14, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks LesVegas. This does make your position slightly clearer. I'm sorry, but to outlaw the obvious and valid conclusions of highly significant RS such as BMJ. 1999 Jul 17; 319(7203): 160–161. Review of randomised controlled trials of traditional Chinese medicine. Jin-Ling Tang, Si-Yan Zhan, and Edzard Ernst is, frankly, not compatible with writing a good article. The acupuncture article needs a lot of rewriting to give a coherent presentation - at present there is no coherent story, it's "balanced" between desperately selected pro and anti assertions and the overall result is a mess. I hope we can spend our time building an encyclopedia, starting with a well-written, comprehensive, NPOV article on acupuncture. Richard Keatinge (talk) 11:26, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you too, Richard. Did you notice your new link was 1) from 1999 and 2) was also involving RCT's (primary studies)? I appreciate the intention to hope for good quality sources on our articles. I just want to mention again that those specific objections are based on terrible research we'd reject for several other reasons, other than country of origin. And I should mention that the BMJ is routinely rejected as a source on the acupuncture article (but only when it shows positive findings). Not saying it's unreliable, I think the BMJ is highly reliable, just saying others on the page feel otherwise. I do very much agree with you that the acupuncture article is terribly imbalanced. The story and history of it do take a backseat to "pro" and "anti" arguments and conflicting minutiae in a wide variety (but not the widest variety) of evidence. My entire efforts were aimed at widening the variety. Perhaps there are better ways, though. By the way, initially, when I read the decision (or proposal?) by Jamesday, I was glad to finally see some resolution. Now I'm starting to wonder if it doesn't open up a path to even more conflicts and arguments, when we need to all be focusing on "building an encyclopedia" anyway? While I agree that things need to be done by consensus, I guess I'm skeptical if that will ever happen in the case these sources, or if we need to find some better way in which we can all agree on how to improve articles like this. LesVegas (talk) 12:11, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There has been far too much time wasted in attempts to ignore the well-supported fact that some academic jurisdictions show systematic and extreme bias on some subjects. (What on earth do you mean by "terrible research?) We should use this fact to improve the article. To make useful progress with your argument you would need to present RS that convincingly state that the relevant academic jurisdictions are now free from bias in these subjects. I will be very surprised if you can present any such RS (but do give it a try, I might well change my opinion). In the meantime, some bold rewriting may be a more constructive use of everyone's time. We might even come up with a consensus on a good article. Richard Keatinge (talk) 12:46, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

By terrible research, I'm talking about the RCT's themselves. By MEDRS standards, they're very old and they're primary studies and probably not from reliable journals either. We wouldn't use them anyway. I'm actually agreeing with you it's better to focus on working towards consensus on improving articles like Acupuncture. LesVegas (talk) 12:55, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I see. Thanks again. Are we coming to a consensus that RS can be used to identify a large group of studies as very dubious? And, while I'm at it, that the results of those dubious studies are not improved by being included in further reviews? If so, we may make some serious progress. Richard Keatinge (talk) 13:00, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well maybe we can agree on the ends, maybe we always have, but I always believed (and still do) that rejecting high level research on the grounds of low level research possibly having publication bias, is wrong. I am more inclined to believe we should reject it on those grounds in the case of industry funding, for which there is a slew of well regarded, respectably published, and current reviews which show unreliability of trials in those cases, and yet we are specifically prohibited from doing so by MEDRS, so I always believed "country of origin" wasn't a valid reason, in and of itself, to reject research on that basis alone. I still don't. But, yeah, I will concede there's probably a lot of crap that got published in China. But I think MEDRS already keeps that off our encyclopedia anyway. I have always said it was never my intention to have low-quality, low-level research on this encyclopedia or on the acupuncture article. Nobody believed that, and because nobody AGF, we're here. At any rate, I think we both probably have the same goals, maybe just different ways of getting there, so perhaps we should discuss how to go about achieving better consensus on the means and methods instead? LesVegas (talk) 14:06, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The concern here is that people are trying to rewrite a guideline to prevent us taking account of the verified fact that there is systemic bias in some jurisdictions. This will introduce an inevitable tension between WP:V, WP:RS and a subject-specific guideline which is being attacked by people who wish the evidence were not developing as it is. Guy (Help!) 14:40, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. We may however be getting somewhere. LesVegas, forgive me for pressing a point, but would you agree that aggregated / reviewed / meta-analyzed publications that are based on probably-invalid primary studies share the invalidity of their primary studies? The idea that invalid studies can be aggregated into valid ones strikes me as simple nonsense, not even rising to the level of a fallacy. Richard Keatinge (talk) 14:57, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Richard, I would be willing to agree entirely to the idea that invalid primary studies would make for bad outcomes in meta-analyses or systematic reviews that did not take their invalidity into account. But that's, as I said, an idea, and the reality we're dealing with is a bit more complicated. Here's why:

1. We don't actually have any sources saying, definitively, publication bias is the reason Chinese, Russian, Taiwanese, etc studies in a review published in 1998 had statistically significant positive outcomes. 100 percent positive outcomes do sound very suspicious, I agree wholeheartedly. But it's important to remember that there may, indeed, be other reasons. One might very well be the political and cultural environment in the China back then. While that's used as an argument to oppose inclusion, it can work the other way too. The government of China, in an effort to validate acupuncture, might very well have only funded studies on things like back pain, frozen shoulder, migraine headaches, and so on, because they knew acupuncture worked for these conditions. They might not have funded studies to see if acupuncture worked for, say, Alzheimer's or Crohn's Colitis or ventricular tachycardia, because it would have been a waste of their money. So that could be a factor for extremely high positive results. It's actually somewhat likely that was the case because they, comparatively, weren't even doing many studies back then and were still relatively new to modern research methods, i.e., so you don't want to waste your money on negative findings anyway.
2. But let's say for the sake of argument that all of the studies in the Vickers review are crap. While the study you and Guy refer to was published 18 years ago, the primary studies Vickers uses for his findings goes back all the way to 1966! Trying to invalidate published meta-analyses in 2016 based on primary research conducted 50 years ago is a very problematic argument.
3. There's no evidence the primary studies from 1966 to 1995 have been aggregated into meta-analyses in 2016. If they did, they should probably not be considered high quality sources for using such old, stale research anyway. Even if they were high-quality-type studies (meta-analyses, reviews), they wouldn't be high quality, and would and should be invalidated for those reasons.
4. Final point: yes, I'm sure there have been garbage Chinese studies published at various times throughout history. I'm also sure some garbage studies are still published in China, although I'm also sure it's less than it once was. But I'm also sure garbage sources are published in the West. Invalid primary studies conducted by industries that promote their products are already protected in MEDRS. We cannot reject high quality systematic reviews or meta-analyses based on funding sources, even if "invalid" primary research composes these higher quality-type sources. Even if that were the right thing to do, it would be highly impractical to go through every single study and determine if it's tainted or not. So what do we do? Hold bad Western studies in high regard and piss on bad Chinese studies, and pretend there's no hypocrisy? NPOV states we have to be consistent, and there's no better place to do it than in our guidelines.

You might not agree with everything I said, but at least you know why I believe as I do. That said, here's what we can probably agree on: I would prefer to not see low-quality Chinese research that comes to wild conclusions on the acupuncture article, so I think that's our likely starting point in a compromise. But for the reasons I outlined above, I'm not really budging on the "country of origin" issue, and I many other editors feel strongly on that point too. So I think we'll need an out-of-the-box solution to achieve an end we both would like to see. It's probably not the right forum for that, here, but I do have something in mind that you'd probably agree with. I'll ping you about it later. LesVegas (talk) 18:01, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oh dear. Leaving aside the related, but separate issue of funding sources, I repeat that when RS tell us that an identifiable group of studies is so biased as to be invalid, we should use this, and when this is uncontested (sorry, but your speculations above aren't really helpful) we should use it to frame our discussion of the studies in question. I don't doubt your good faith, but your arguments are clutches at nonexistent straws. I hope that you can maintain enough detachment to help give the article its desperately needed rewrite. Richard Keatinge (talk) 18:22, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Edit warring after uninvolved admin action

Sadly the page had a slow edit warring to reverse the actions in the sections above. I requested page protection, but its only for 3 days. An uninvolved admin should look into this and perhaps formally close this section, and if the result is to reopen, close he RFC again. AlbinoFerret 01:50, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

LesVegas violated talk page consensus.[2][3] See Wikipedia_talk:Identifying_reliable_sources_(medicine)#On_country_of_origin. There were also previous edits against consensus.[4][5] I am surprised LesVegas has not been topic banned. QuackGuru (talk) 19:43, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Quackguru, I would note you have been topic banned from a couple of topics now, so given your judgement on Wikipedia rules I'm not at all concerned you think so poorly of my editing. I would also note that you have a history of "border lining" and this topic, which is not explicitly "Acupuncture" has involved a great deal of discussion about it, and you have borderlined in those discussions, which could be a violation of your ban. LesVegas (talk) 21:10, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There's a lot of motivated reasoning going on with that guideline, and a concerted attempt to change it to gain an advantage in a content dispute, rather than in line with good practice and common sense, which is what guidelines should be for. Guy (Help!) 09:36, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Martin Hogbin

Also see Proposed topic ban of Martin Hogbin, December 2014

Martin Hogbin (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log).

The user consistently makes disruptive edits and his contribution to Wikipedia on the talk pages of the applicable articles is normally nothing constructive but him unreasonably claiming everything is too promotional. If you search for the word "promotional" within his edits, you'll see a large amount of those cases. One of the last incidents involved him trying to completely remove the occupations of those on the list of vegans, where his actions had already led to a large portion of the useful information being removed, such as the band names for musicians that aren't known for their solo work.
He has been warned yet continued to make numerous disruptive edits ([6][7][8]). Not only that, but he appears to be extremely biased when it comes to editing articles about animal rights and such, which falls under the definition of "Bias-based" from WP:COMPETENCE. An admin already put a link to that page on Martin's talk page. --Rose (talk) 04:39, 14 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Even after I started this discussion and Martin was made aware of it, he continued being disruptive and made an edit asking to "find [him] some reliable sources" to support the commodity status of animals. As Sammy mentions below, this subject was discussed at length and put to rest back in June-July and Martin was among the people involved; as SarahSV summarized back then: "Martin, you've been offered sources, from the United Nations to commodity markets to academic sources, including several in the article. The onus is on you now to provide sources to support what you're saying.". The bottom line is that this is exactly the pattern of his behavior that almost everyone talked about below. --Rose (talk) 16:25, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing actionable here My interactions with Martin may be found primarily at Talk:Carnism (where I was usually agreeing with him) and Talk:Veganism (where I sometimes was). He is not exceptionally good at building consensus in controversial areas, but I don't think there's any fair case to be made that he edits in bad faith. He is consistently civil, even when others are less so (e.g. User talk:Martin Hogbin#Final warning). His contributions are almost always from the same POV, "disagreeing with editors who are promoting a green political agenda" [9], but they are generally reasonable. He has a tendency to spend a lot of time on frustratingly subjective points (are livestock "commodities"?, etc), but that's no grounds for admin action.

Do I think it would usually be easier to reach consensus without his input? Regrettably, yes. Does that imply the articles would be better without him? Not at all. FourViolas (talk) 06:25, 14 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I forgot to mention that at one point he expressed the view that there should be no positive information about veganism in that article. That was the definition of neutrality to him. Just because some of his (reverted) edits lead to people paying more attention to some sentences doesn't mean that he's the reason it happens. It's just like some inexperienced vandal putting insults on a page about someone, another user reverting those yet noticing some other issues while doing so and making changes to improve the article. Should we thank the vandal for that and take no action? I don't think so. The problem with Martin is even worse as he's not new here so he deliberately makes those disruptive edits and starts practically pointless conversations repeating the same words ("too promotional") over and over again for months if not years now. --Rose (talk) 06:37, 14 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Also, to add to the above and respond to you saying "He has a tendency to spend a lot of time on frustratingly subjective points, but that's no grounds for admin action."; I disagree with that. His behavior forces other editors to dedicate a lot of their time just to try to make a case to him because otherwise he would (as the past has shown) make the same kind of unacceptable edits that would have to stay in the article. After days of multiple users proving something to him, as it was in the discussion about whether animals are treated as commodities, he may lay low but then he comes back and brings up the same subjects. This is the very definition of disruptive editing. --Rose (talk) 07:01, 14 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately I think FourViolas, as usual, is exceptionally patient. Martin has a long history of strong views on green topics broadly construed, dating back years (see e.g. his global warming skepticism [10],[11],[12]) and several editors have mentioned his disruption on articles such as BP. He argues at tremendous length and frequently raises the same issue over and over. Notably, I have almost never seen him support his views with sources of any kind. To mention just one recent example pertinent to veganism, he attempted to present the fact that animals are commodities as a "vegan opinion" here, and then argued this at length at Talk:Veganism/Archive_10#Commodity_status_of_animals. Despite being offered high quality non-vegan sources showing that animals are regarded as commodities, including with the specific phrase "commodity status" which he insisted on, he maintained that there was something implicit in "commodity" which implied that animals are mistreated, or treated exactly the same as inanimate objects. As always, he never provided a source for the idea that the word has this connotation, or that this was intended. When an editor arrived who wanted the UK-based Vegan Society's definition, "the doctrine that man should live without exploiting animals", to be given priority in the lede, Martin endorsed this - blatantly contradicting his view that the lede should not contain vegan "opinions" as noted by SlimVirgin. He then suggested several sources which he presumably knew could not be used - several primary sources from other vegan societies [13] and a couple dictionary definitions [14] including a disparaging joke from Urban Dictionary. This is literally the only time I have ever witnessed him cite a reference for anything. And this is just one of many episodes - generally speaking, he argues at tremendous length without familiarizing himself with the topic or supporting his views. As in this comment where (in the course of dredging up another discussion which had gone on ad nauseam) he suggests that other editors "could find (an RS) somewhere to support what (my acquaintances) say", he does not seriously engage with the project, and makes never-ending demands on other editors' time. --Sammy1339 (talk) 07:30, 14 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment There isn't a competence or civility issue IMO. My interactions with Martin Hogbin are limited to articles involving veganism and I do not regard him as having a destructive influence on these articles, even in cases where I disagree with him (and there have been several occasions over the last couple of years). In regards to him removing the occupations from the image captions at List of vegans I actually disagreed with this action but I found it well-intentioned and he did not edit-war when challenged. Animal rights are an emotive issue at the best of times and there will always be regular disputes on these articles. I would be more concerned if these articles were exclusively edited by editors all of the same mindset. The example raised above about "whether animals are treated as commodities" is a good example of this: some editors—I being one of them—expressed some concerns about what we felt was "broad" language used to define "Veganism" in the lead of the article. Some editors may have disagreed with those concerns, or even consider then unfounded—and it's perfectly fine to adopt a different position in a debate—but ultimately disagreement is not disruption. Betty Logan (talk) 07:38, 14 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's perfectly fine for sure but this isn't about him simply disagreeing with some editors. Pretty much all the editors that have made comments in the Final warning section on his page have different views within the so-called "green" subjects but currently nobody's trying to say they take it over the top and act in a manner that is very disruptive. --Rose (talk) 07:51, 14 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The problems are long-term and wide-ranging, not only to do with environmental issues. Martin arrives at articles about which he has strong views but no knowledge, and proceeds to equate his personal opinions with NPOV. He often appears not to have read the key sources even when someone else has typed up what they say; or he misinterprets them or suggests inappropriate sources and edits; and he misunderstands policy. This continues for months or even years. It stymies article development because editors spend so much time dealing with it, and people become unwilling to develop the article because new material will give him more ammunition.
For an example, see Talk:Battle of Britain, where in June 2015 Martin wants to add some counterfactual history, [15] having already suggested it at great length in 2014. [16] See Trekphiler's responses, e.g. "More to the point, this has been already (fairly exhaustively) hashed out, yet Martin Hogbin refuses to let it die," and "Have you just ignored everything I've written on this subject?" and "the dead horse comes to life again." Those exchanges illustrate the problem well (WP:TENDENTIOUS, particularly WP:REHASH). Pinging Binksternet and Coretheapple, who I believe have also encountered it. SarahSV ^(talk) 08:26, 14 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
My own interactions with Martin Hogbin have been limited to the Battle of Britain page. I can't say if it rises to the level of disruptive, but I sense a strong strain of refusal to acknowledge views other than his own. I'm not immune to strong views, nor really inclined to change them, so I appreciate it's not exactly easy; I get the sense it approaches willful ignorance, a "don't confuse me with evidence" attitude. That said, I should say I've seen his edits on other pages, & they don't seem contentious or controversial; it may be this only arises with "pet projects". That may be trouble enough... TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 19:10, 14 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Immediate action needed. I sincerely appreciate the opinion of FourViolas up above. Since he has rarely encountered Mr. Hogbin, I suspect his opinion is typical for those not familiar with the long-term problem. However, for those of us who are aware of this problem, particularly editors who focus on content building like SlimVirgin, it is frustrating that Mr. Hogbin has spent 57% of his contributions,[17] the majority of his long Wikipedia career, using talk pages to push unusual, often contradictory POV that keeps editors running around in circles wasting time. It is difficult to determine if he is consciously doing this on purpose or if there is something else at work. Although I have encountered him in many places, it was my experience with him on March Against Monsanto (especially on the talk page, likely archived now) that led me to believe we have a serious problem. I would like to first propose limits on his talk page interaction. For example, "Martin Hogbin is limited to one talk page comment per day per article." That would go a long way towards mitigating the immediate issue. Viriditas (talk) 19:26, 14 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Just saw the ping. I agree with Viriditas above in all respects, based upon experiences at Talk:BP. Coretheapple (talk) 14:38, 15 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I worked with Martin on the BP article. He seems like a very nice person but as an editor he was the type that constantly made me feel like I wanted to tear my hair out. Same issues as discussed above. Gandydancer (talk) 16:37, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I hope you still have some hair left Gandydancer. We have to accept that people may have fundamentally different opinions on a subject. The way to deal with that in WP is by civil discussion. I can assure you that I understand how frustrating it can be when someone else does not seem to understand what is perfectly obvious to you but there is never any need to resort to personal attacks, insults, or threats like some editors (not you) are doing here. Martin Hogbin (talk) 17:11, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Martin, the problem isn't that you have an opinion. The problem is that you are engaging in explicit civil POV pushing and ignoring talk page discussion by keeping a discussion open in perpetuity and constantly changing the framework of the discussion to allow it to continue indefinitely until you get your way. Viriditas (talk) 19:47, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't seen diffs of bad behavior on talk pages. I also don't understand people's wishes to limit other's participation on talk page of all the places. In addition I also don't understand accusations of POV pushing because whenever someone accuses of that I guarantee you they push their own POV all the time. --Mr. Magoo and McBarker (talk) 14:47, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've encountered Martin Hogbin in a few places covering topics such as probability, mathematical physics, Midway, and a third opinion response. He devotes a lot of energy to his positions, but that can be good or bad. I agree with some of his positions, disagree with some others, and am out of my depth in still others. I don't see anything outrageous in the diffs above, and the talk page dialog does not appear disruptive. He can be pointed, intense, and demanding, but it takes two to tango on a talk page. If someone responds to Martin, then he will respond. If the other person stops responding, then Martin will stop responding. It might be annoying, but trying to revisit a topic 6 months later does not seem outrageous. Martin can be difficult and he can be wrong, but I don't see the behavior here being actionable. Glrx (talk) 04:02, 20 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Many months ago, I interacted with Martin Hogbin, around British articles. I found him to be quite pleasant & easy to collaborate with. GoodDay (talk) 16:17, 20 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Martin Hogbin

I am involved in a content dispute in the Veganism article with the editors who are making this unpleaseant personal attack on me. Unlike some here, who have resorted to persistent personal attacks, my contibutions there have conformed to the normal standards of discussion and will continue to do so. Through civil discussion we are now beginning to make some progress on that page. Martin Hogbin (talk) 09:25, 14 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The section where you said "now we seem to be working better together" and that you're now referring to didn't even involve any contributions by you. The only comment you made there was irrelevant and didn't lead to any progress in that regard whatsoever. --Rose (talk) 09:41, 14 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed that. It actually begged the suggestion that people were working better together because of your your lack of participation, rather than in spite of it... _Fortuna ^{Imperatrix Mundi} 19:12, 14 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I support the suggestion to begin with restricting/curtailing Martin Hogbin's article talk page privileges. It appears he has good intentions but his behavior is disruptive to the project. IjonTichy (talk) 04:20, 15 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This now seems to have turned into a vendetta against me by every user that I have ever disgreed with. My editing and talk page comments are based on the fundamental principles that: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view, editors should treat each other with respect and civility, and that what we write in article should be supported by reliable sources rather than an expression of our personal opinions. I believe that disputes are better resolved by civil discussion than by edit warring, threats or personal attacks. That is what I am doing and it is what will continue to do. We either stick to the original principles of Wikipedia or we give in to mob rule. Martin Hogbin (talk) 23:38, 15 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

On the other hand, you have repeatedly and quite openly expressed a POV bordering on an agenda, and you've repeatedly misused the article talk page to push your agenda. By limiting your participation on article talk pages to one comment a day, we can begin to restore normalcy and consensus building. Viriditas (talk) 01:29, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"There has been considerable support for this article being a lipogram, not just from JJB. I think you should assume some good faith on his part. Just that he wants one thing and you want another is not a fair fair reason to assume bad faith on hos part. So, why should this article not be a lipogram? Martin Hogbin (talk) 19:32, 1 October 2010 (UTC) ". You kids are adorbs.Dan Murphy (talk) 04:56, 20 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Break

De-archived January 28. Martin Hogbin continues to be a disruptive presence. He comports himself in an overtly polite manner while manipulating the system to disruptively push his idiosyncratic points of view, which have ranged from climate change skepticism to counterfactual history to the opinion alluded to by Dan Murphy above - I didn't know the half of it. In present case of veganism, where for the past six months he has been pushing the idea that calling animals "commodities" is rhetoric - in defiance of all sources - he refuses to drop the stick. He has been soapboxing about the issue on other pages, for example here and here, in the hope of persuading other editors to support him in the ongoing RfC. Notice how in the second diff he even discourages the other editor from taking the issue to the appropriate talk page. He also abusively AfD'd commodity status of animals, offering nothing that approaches a valid deletion reason. And he has now gone back to fighting over a related issue with the lede sentence which was raised and resolved six months ago:[18]. Individually, his actions may seem minor or harmless - collectively, they form a campaign. Too many editors have sunk too much time into dealing with this. --Sammy1339 (talk) 15:45, 28 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I want to clarify that when I write "manipulating the system" I am referring to his way of using multiple fora over the long term, avoiding overt rule-breaking behavior, and appealing to others who may be sympathetic because they don't know the context of the problem. There is an essay on this: WP:Civil POV pushing. --Sammy1339 (talk) 16:35, 28 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I am in the same position as Martin Hogbin. I am constantly being accused of POV-pushing by people who want to push their own POV. Biscuittin (talk) 17:05, 28 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

comment/request@User talk:Sammy1339 Sammy, please can I respectfully suggest that you drop the references to other editors being "overly polite" or WP:Civil POV pushing. I am also on the receiving end of such name calling (not from you, of course) and it is really unpleasant and inflammatory. When has it ever been a crime to remain civil? Please take this message in the way it is intended.DrChrissy ^(talk) 17:33, 28 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@DrChrissy: I can understand how this essay can be misused, and that is probably why it is not policy. From what I've seen I think the accusations against you are without merit. However, the contents of this essay describe Martin's behavior almost to a T. The crime isn't remaining civil - the purpose of mentioning civility is to alert people to the fact that his politesse is superficial. It is impossible for me to imagine that all his endless needling objections are genuine. I don't claim to know why he's doing it - to be generous to him, maybe there's no ulterior motive and he simply enjoys arguing for its own sake. However it's not constructive and he is pushing particular (and often peculiar) points of view for months and years on end. --Sammy1339 (talk) 17:42, 28 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sammy - thanks for the reply. I think your much greater long-term experience of editing in this area makes you much more qualified to comment on this than myself.DrChrissy ^(talk) 18:00, 28 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It seems clear at Veganism that Martin's aim is to disrupt. Just one example: he complained that the first sentence seemed to describe only one form of veganism. Sammy noticed that someone had removed the word both: that veganism is "both the practice of abstaining from the use of animal products, particularly in diet, and an associated philosophy that rejects the commodity status of animals." So Sammy restored the word both. Martin removed it again, [19] even though it solved the issue he had raised.
So now we may have to devote weeks to discussing that single word with him. When that ends, he'll start another about an equally minor or obvious issue. It has been going on now for over a year. He is the 4th highest commentator on talk, with 234 edits since October 2014. The three editors with more talk-page edits than him – Kellen (390), myself (295) and Viriditas (272) – have all been editing the page since 2007. [20]
I would mind less if he were reading the literature and bringing himself up to speed. But there is no sign of his having read any of the sources, even when people type up what they say on talk. SarahSV ^(talk) 21:56, 28 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's worth reading this AN/I from December 2014: Proposed topic ban of Martin Hogbin. He decided that "Scottish" is not a nationality, and would not let it go. There was extreme repetition, forum shopping, RfCs, canvassing, etc. The proposal for a topic ban failed, but it was exactly the problem described above. SarahSV ^(talk) 00:08, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

He is canvassing again here. --Sammy1339 (talk) 15:16, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal

In line with the suggestion above, I propose that Martin Hogbin's talk page interactions be limited. I suggest a limit of 20 40 talk page edits in any 30 day period, with no more than 5 allowed per day. Pinging previous participants: Rose, 4V, Betty Logan, SlimVirgin, Binksternet, Coretheapple, Trekphiler, Viriditas, Gandydancer, Mr. Magoo and McBarker, GoodDay, Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi, IjonTichyIjonTichy, Dan Murphy.

Support. --Sammy1339 (talk) 03:27, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - I acknowledge that I might be biased here. In the past at WP:UKNAT, I collaborated & got along well with Martin Hogbin. GoodDay (talk) 03:32, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose 20 talk page edits in a month is lunacy. Limiting his talk page participation also still doesn't seem to make sense. I've seen nothing to indicate bad behavior or spam on talk pages. I think he has simply dared to talk in a bad Wikipedia neighborhood and now they are trying to ban his right to free speech. --Mr. Magoo and McBarker (talk) 04:00, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

20 per month may be too strict. This was meant to be similar to Viriditas's suggestion of one per day, except I allowed multiple per day because I thought that it would be awkward for him to keep people waiting. Since no one has supported yet, I'm taking the liberty of changing the proposal to 40. --Sammy1339 (talk) 04:06, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Even 40's too little and I now visited the talk page and I saw that he's absolutely right. There is a group of editors trying to force their view that all vegans reject pet ownership, even though all sources state that it's simply rejection of animal products and not pet ownership. --Mr. Magoo and McBarker (talk) 04:51, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Your user name does exactly what it says on the tin. :-) Viriditas (talk) 07:43, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)I regret that this must be as frustrating for User:Mr. Magoo and McBarker as it is for us. His involvement is an example of the general problem where good-faith editors get drawn into Martin's trumped-up controversies, which not only wastes a tremendous amount of time but also feeds the problem by giving others the impression that there must be substance to the debate. --Sammy1339 (talk) 07:47, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is the first time anyone's told me I've got good faith; I might put that on a placard. My pessimism often leads me to trouble. --Mr. Magoo and McBarker (talk) 07:54, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Considering that Martin is aware of this discussion and other discussions on the matter of his disruptive behavior, and that it doesn't stop him from acting exactly as described here, digging out the same, long buried issues, anything that puts a limit on this should be beneficial for Wikipedia. It should allow editors to continue improving veganism and other pages instead of having to get involved in pointless discussions for months. --Rose (talk) 04:11, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This happens at a wide range of articles. He sees his opinion as ipso facto neutral, won't read the sources, which means he often misunderstands the issues, and is willing to make the same point repeatedly for many months. A talk-page post limit will help. SarahSV ^(talk) 04:19, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose and note that he appears likely to be correct on many of the "issues" some are upset about above. For example - it is am individual "person" who may be vegan - their "group association" of whatever nature has nothing to do with veganism unless the article on that group makes such an association for that group. Collect (talk) 14:06, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Martin Hogbin's Civil POV pushing is disruptive. IjonTichy (talk) 21:50, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support. I think this has the potential to reduce drama. Several of his recent statements seem to me to be advocating a POV antithetical to Wikipedia's commitment to neutrality, this may be down to ambiguity or careless use of words, I think this limit should result in a clearer impression of what he actually means, and possibly therefore a clearer view of whether he is in fact advocating, e.g., climate change denial - something no Wikipedia editor should be doing by this stage. Guy (Help!) 23:29, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Comment The more I deal with these people attacking Martin Hogbin the more I believe in his innocence. They removed 4 of my sources for the definition of veganism by general veganism organizations for being "unreliable" but when I removed 6 of theirs which had nothing to even do with veganism but with animal rights with one more that talked about making clothing or commodities out of animals and not the property status they have, of course I got reverted and by none other than the sysop (one can only wonder how the person has gotten the rights even after having a history of blocks). --Mr. Magoo and McBarker (talk) 03:29, 31 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I took a look at your diffs in both the context of the page history in which your edits occurred and in the context of the talk page discusson(s) where consensus has been reached. In so doing, I discovered that you appear to be intentionally disrupting the article and proxying for Mr. Hogbin, ignoring the consensus on the talk page as well as the sources, and engaging in IDHT behavior and pot-stirring. What appears to have been a simple case of Hobgin's obsession with Veganism is now turning into a focused assault on the subject, with the help of canvassing and tag teaming. Viriditas (talk) 04:17, 31 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Concensus reached? What? There is no concensus with 10 voting NO and 11 voting YES; and you yourself have voted against Martin and thus are obviously biased in the matter. This matter is also unrelated to the vote of the RfC matter because the text in question wasn't changed in any direction. Only sources were being added and removed. In addition I have posted numerous examples of why they're wrong and they haven't responded to those bits even though they've clearly seen them. --Mr. Magoo and McBarker (talk) 05:08, 31 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Support due to the latest shenanigans by Mr. Magoo. Hogbin has taken this from simple POV pushing to another level, from simple disruption to outright canvassing and campaigning. Viriditas (talk) 04:22, 31 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Don't kid yourself. You had most likely simply forgotten to vote before now. Above this section you had called for "immediate action needed" against Martin and wanted a limit of one talk edit per day. --Mr. Magoo and McBarker (talk) 05:08, 31 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Viriditas: I don't think Mr. Magoo has malign intentions. He's just badly uninformed:[21]. --Sammy1339 (talk) 06:49, 31 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

But that is what all our sources except for one radical vegan, a ~~veganarchist~~ abolitionist states. Francione is on the fringe, an extremist. If you are about the commodity status then you are not only a vegan but a ~~veganarchist~~ abolitionist. We have the ~~Veganarchism~~ Abolitionism (animal rights) article for that. --Mr. Magoo and McBarker (talk) 01:02, 1 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please keep your wrong opinions about a content dispute on the article talk page. This page is for discussing how to limit and end the recursive Hogbin problem, which continues to muck up the gears of consensus and perpetuate its disruption through canvassing and wikilawyering. Viriditas (talk) 01:17, 1 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Weak Support Notwithstanding this dismaying AFD, I believe Martin is sincerely trying to improve content in these areas. However, I think it would be much easier to reach agreement on his (often quite subjective) concerns if he made his points more directly, with RS to back them up instead of walls of opinion-based rhetoric. It seems plausible that this proposal could promote that end. FourViolas (talk) 22:18, 1 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment from Martin Hogbin

This is another personal attack from the same group of people. I freely admit that I disagree with the editors above who want my editing curtailed but I am not a lone tendentious editor. if you look at the RfC at veganism, you will see that I have considerable support. Even when I try to get wider community opinion by rigorously following the procedure suggested in Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment#Publicizing_an_RfC I am accused of canvassing. Please do go to the RfC and give your opinion. Martin Hogbin (talk) 10:41, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please nominate the name of an editor (or admin) who will guide the discussion towards closure. Some of us have other things to do rather than discuss the same thing over and over again. Viriditas (talk) 11:09, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Tangential argument about treatment of Mr. Magoo and McBarker.

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

I agree after now getting personally attacked myself. Anyone who disagrees at the talk page there will be hurt. --Mr. Magoo and McBarker (talk) 04:10, 1 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I see you have been getting a bit of a bashing on the talk page too. This could become a case for Arbcom soon. Martin Hogbin (talk) 18:39, 1 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Mr. Magoo and McBarker: I am sorry that you felt that this was a personal attack. I am doing my best to accommodate your concerns, such as they are. --Sammy1339 (talk) 21:12, 1 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well, no. Just look at this edit by Viriditas. He tried removing a large section — which points out the fact that "commodity" has a single source whose author in other context states the exact opposite — most likely because he has some sort of personal motivations I've described. In addition this kind of removal of the other's opinion can be called nothing but a straight-up attack. And in addition your edit was heavy distortion of what I had written and it was in response to the very section Viriditas tried removing. Your only retort against my pointing out the bad sources was to personally attack me as well. That is how it is there. --Mr. Magoo and McBarker (talk) 23:41, 1 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

In addition I noticed that Viriditas has written on your talk — which I just now visited to talk myself — that apparently the first section I had made on the talk is to "gambit to flood the talk page with meaningless, trivial questions". He called for "What is needed in this situation is to tightly control and structure the discussion page through archiving, collapsing, and movement to user talk pages." What that is, is just silencing the opposition. This is worthy of a block from editing the talk page! --Mr. Magoo and McBarker (talk) 23:47, 1 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please note I reverted that edit of his within one minute, but he was reasonably arguing that the relevant section was a distraction and should be refactored. Although I believe that you, personally, do not have bad intentions, everything else he wrote on my talk page is true. This line of discussion is not relevant toMartin Hogbin, so if you want to continue it, we should do so elsewhere. --Sammy1339 (talk) 00:42, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

He stated he was going to move it to MY talk page (in addition he never did). My talk page is obviously and plainly not the place for that conversation. And the only reason I posted this here was because in your opinion that diff you posted was the sole personal attack. --Mr. Magoo and McBarker (talk) 01:03, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Why would I move it to your talk page if I was instantly reverted? Would that have made much sense? Has it occurred to you that I was in the middle of copying the discussion to your talk page when I received the red notification indicating I was reverted? Please try to read for comprehension and think before you reply in the future. Viriditas (talk) 01:25, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A minute after. If you were copypasting it, did it really take you over a minute to traverse to my talk page? Maybe you stopped to enjoy the sight of the talk page without disagreers for a minute. --Mr. Magoo and McBarker (talk) 01:34, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Magoo, please read Wikipedia:Refactoring talk pages. It is best practice to prevent trolls from disrupting talk pages. I realize you oppose it for personal reasons. Viriditas (talk) 00:51, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That's your line in the sand here. Anyone who disagrees, presenting themselves with a proper argument, is a troll. --Mr. Magoo and McBarker (talk) 01:03, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've never seen you make a proper argument, only fallacious ones. Viriditas (talk) 01:25, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

So essentially you're just stating I'm wrong without even pointing out what fallacy I'm committing. --Mr. Magoo and McBarker (talk) 01:28, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Martin, would you care to take Viriditas' suggestion and nominate an admin to close this discussion? If not, I'll list it at requests for closure. --Sammy1339 (talk) 06:09, 1 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please feel free to do as you wish. Martin Hogbin (talk) 18:39, 1 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Close

This ANI report appears to be evolving into an extention of an article content dispute. Recommend it be closed. GoodDay (talk) 01:34, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. I put in a request at AN/RfC. --Sammy1339 (talk) 01:36, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Magioladitis

Magioladitis (talk · contribs · count · logs · page moves · block log) and his bot Yobot (talk · contribs · count · logs · page moves · block log) have been blocked many times for issues relating to violations of the bot policy and AWB's rules of use. The most common complaint is that he makes many trivial ("cosmetic") changes which do not change the appearance of an article but clog up editors' watchlists. The most recent block was for one month. He was unblocked three days ago on the back of strict conditions that he would not perform any automated or semi-automated edits for the duration of the block length (see User talk:Magioladitis#Unblock request for details). However I have just reblocked because he was not adhering to these conditions.

In usual circumstances I would remove access to AWB, but as Magioladitis is an administrator this is not possible. I have suggested to him in the past that it would be better to cease all automated editing from his main account. However he has not acquiesced to this yet, and judging from recent events I wonder if he is able to restrain himself in this way voluntarily.

I would like to stress that I believe Magioladitis is acting in good faith, his non-automated edits are beneficial and his administrator actions are not concerning. However the automated editing is proving problematic and we should find a way to manage this.

I'm here to propose to the community that Magioladitis be topic banned from making all automated and semi-automated edits from his main account indefinitely. Any bot jobs approved at WP:BRFA may continue, and we gain from his experience as a long-term editor, admin and BAG member. If this does not achieve consensus, then let's brainstorm other avenues to deal with this.

I am notifying the following editors who have been involved in the past: xaosflux — Materialscientist — The Earwig — GoingBatty — Frietjes — Fram — Bgwhite — intgr — JohnBlackburne — GB fan: and I will notify Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard too. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:44, 28 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps Mag could be unblocked only to participate in this discussion? I'd like to know why he is so persistent in applying cosmetic changes, whether he's trying to climb a leaderboard or is just slightly obsessive about articles being "just so" in terms of whitespace, bypassing harmless redirects, etc. No matter the reason, it's not setting a good example as a member of BAG. And it's a significant annoyance and timesink as people review the edits and have to determine what the reason was (when there is really, none). –xeno^talk 21:09, 28 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have reminded Magioladitis of WP:COSMETICBOT bot several times over the years, more than anyone else, so I'll join the crowd here. These pointless edits have to stop. I'm fine with the occasional bot malfunction, or the occasional misclick on 'save' when you meant 'skip' with AWB. But there's a larger issue at play with Magio's bot in that the bot logic rarely seems to be tested to prevent trivial changes before being unleashed on the wiki. As a BAG member, Magio should understand that WP:COSMETICBOT is not an optional rule and has to be anticipated and tested for just like one needs to test their bots against replacing [[www]] with [[w[[WW (album)|''WW'']]]] on all pages when you wanted to replace [[WW]] with [[WW (album)|''WW'']] on some pages.

I'm not going to say Magio should be removed from BAG at this point, but it's certainly an option I'm willing to consider if Magio keeps running their bots without making sure they first comply with all aspects of WP:BOTPOL, including WP:COSMETICBOT. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 22:41, 28 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I second xeno's suggestion to allow Magioladitis to participate in this discussion on this page. GoingBatty (talk) 01:22, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I do not oppose an unblock on condition that he only edit this page and his own talk page. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:50, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the ping, I do recognize the positive contributions that Magioladitis brings to the project, which is why I tried to work with him on a limited topic ban as his unblock condition (see WP:EDR#Final_warnings_.2F_Unblock_conditions). As clearly stated in the unblock, condition violation may lead to additional sanctions including re-blocking. As one of the WP:AWB developers, I would expect he would need to make minimal AWB edits (possibly via LEGITSOCKS) for testing and troubleshooting purposes even if he ends up under a long term editing restriction, possibly under specific conditions? — xaosflux ^Talk 22:46, 28 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note, I have delisted the prior temporary WP:RESTRICTIONS as Magioladitis was reblocked and unblocked under NEW conditions. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:00, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's a real shame and sad to see energetic editors who like to make mass-fixes get blocked for it. Though the fixes I see here would be so low on my priority list that I couldn't envision them ever rising in my work queue to get even close to approaching the top of the list. Is there any real concern here, though, besides cluttering up watchlists? Can't you just scan or skim the edit summaries in your watchlists and just disregard or ignore "Cleaned up using AutoEd"? If Magio needs something more important and substantial to clean up, then I have several tasks in my overloaded work queue I'd love to outsource to him. Wbm1058 (talk) 23:01, 28 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, thank you for the ping MSGJ. I'm not sure what to do. As people have said, he makes positive contributions. Since he was unblocked, Maigoladits has probably done ~2,000 semi-manually edits via Yobot's account. Most of this is due to the latest dumpfile via CheckWiki. This is the first dump since ISSN checks were added, which contributed to this message on Yobot's talk page. So, ~2,000 good contributions vs ~20 pointless ones. I don't want to see him blocked because of his overall contributions, but on the other hand, something must be done.

MSGJ, AWB's CheckPage does allow for blacklisted names. I'm not sure if a blacklisted name takes precedent over an admin. Rjwilmsi is the person to ask. Plus, as the main AWB programmer, he could come up with suggestions.

WPCleaner and AutoEd don't have a permission system. But, AutoEd needs to be added to a person's common.js/vector.js file to work. Removing this from the .js file and making it sure it isn't added back should be easy. WPCleaner doesn't make the "trivial" changes or general fixes as the other two programs do. I don't see a problem in not letting Magioladitis keep using that. Bgwhite (talk) 23:34, 28 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is refreshing because it's the first time I've seen you accept that there is a problem. In the past you have steadfastly defended him. I'm hopeful we can work together to find a solution. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:42, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

MSGJ Actually, last time I made only one comment and that was to defend one type of edit as non-trivial. The time before I suggested a topic ban on editing talk pages. Talk pages are Magioladitis' kryptonite. Kryptonite and OCD is a dangerous mix. Bgwhite (talk) 21:57, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I interacted with him on this issue several times when I was an administrator. The problem has been going on for years, both with edits from Magoioladitis' main account and from his bot, Yobot. For example, search for "cosmetic edit" on Magioladitis' talk page [22], or look at the block log for Yobot [23]. The responses that always seem to be given are that the edits were a mistake, or are from bug in the software that is being used, or are necessary because of some other bug in the software that is being used. I would expect to see these same excuses again if he comments on this thread. After years of seeing them, I have yet to see Magioladitis take responsibility for his errors by making the changes necessary prevent them (e.g. fixing the years-longstanding bugs in his software that allow cosmetic edits to be saved, making his edit summaries more descriptive, etc.). I believe that any long-term resolution to the problem will require very tight edit restrictions on both his main account and his bot account. Otherwise, you will be back here again soon enough. Good luck, — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:44, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There is also the repeated violations of WP:BOTREQUIRE, in particular for bots to be conservative in their edit speeds. Non-urgent tasks such as the bot does should be done at the rate of no more than once every ten seconds, so six a minute. But only yesterday it was making edits several times faster than this, with dozens of edits per minute. This has been raised before, and is surely easily fixable – any code on any computer can query the system clock to at least second accuracy. It is just he thinks WP:BOTREQUIRE does not apply to his bot and can be ignored, as well as the above problems with cosmetic edits and edit descriptions.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 05:30, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(Non-administrator comment) Based on the circumstances outlined here, I really think the only solution is desysopping, followed by loss of AWB privileges. Adminship shouldn't be a "shield" which protects one from the kind of restrictions that a "regular" editor in the same circumstances would see. I suspect Arbcom could handle this by motion, though they might want to make a "full case" out of it... But, ultimately, this is boiling down to "trust" and "judgement" (and it's come up repeatedly) and Admins that display neither probably need to lose the bit. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 05:37, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have raised this issue with him several times in the past. Lots of pointless AWB edits that add no value whatsoever. He stops for a time, then restarts after the dust settles. Thankfully I'm not alone with these concerns. Rulez iz rulez for AWB, but this user seems to be "untouchable" due to their so-called admin status. Once again, it's one rule for AWB running bots and one rule for the rest of us. At one point I put my foot through my laptop and sent him the bill. PS - Do I win a fiver? Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 08:12, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Considering the block log, Lugnuts, that user/admin is clearly not untouchable. If they were, we wouldn't be here. Drmies (talk) 22:19, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Go on, give him a 53rd chance. He's an admin afterall! Like to see how quickly a non-admin would have been indef'd for similar bahaviour. Or even to have their block lifted so they could participate at ANI. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 10:32, 31 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have till now held back from calling for his administrator status to be removed, and am still hopeful this won't be necessary. Obviously I expected the issue to come up, and I acknowledge the apparent inconsistency in the treatment he is receiving. We are looking for the best solution for the project and there is absolutely nothing wrong with his admin actions. (Okay he unblocked his own bot once, a long time ago, but I don't remember the exact circumstances.) Personally I'd like to have a try with some editing restrictions before we turn to Arbcom. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:42, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

So far we have lots of editors pointing out the problems, but not many solutions being proposed. It might be useful if you could indicate whether or not you support the proposal in the first paragraph. Regards — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:44, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Remove AWB and ban from operating bots. Problem disappears. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:06, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I would support a ban on automated edits, meaning both tools such as AWB, AutoEd and through a bot, as the problems occur on both accounts.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 10:30, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, support AWB and bot removal. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 12:15, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

JohnBlackburne you can also kick me out of Wikipedia. Problem disappears too. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:23, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have unblocked Magioladitis (after the agreement of the blocking admin in this discussion above) solely to participate in this discussion. Magioladitis has agreed to only edit this discussion (and their user talk page) until the end of the original block (15 February). Fram (talk) 12:17, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Here are my points in brief. I'll try to expand the, later:

No, I am not interested to climbing any virtual ladder.
The last unblock violation was a misunderstanding. I thought the restriction has to do only with AWB. It would be stupid of me to violate the rule just to make 3 edits with AutoEd.
I edit a lot. People who edit a lot get a lot of complains anyway. Yesterday I fixed 1,500 pages with invalid ISSN. Yes, there were 20 mistakes. Yes, I went back and fixed them. This is my typical day.
I do a lot of mistakes. I run on multiple tasks and I usually use brutal force (I ignore the skip conditions). This is my main negative. I know about it.
I reply to every single comment in my talk page I never escaped any complain.
I make an effort to pass most the tasks I do to others. I encouraged people to take over.
I have published almost every single script I use. I want others to use my tools. I don't want to be that guy that when they leave Wikipedia they take the tools with them.
Not all complains are valid. Many times I get complains because the editor did not understand what I did (example: removed a duplicated category). I try to use the edit summary a lot. Better than some people who don't use it all.
I wrote on my talk page a lot of stuff I would like the community to agree for. It's not about me. I see a lot of complains around about AWB and tools in general. Some are valid, some are not. I want specific rules. NOTBROKEN has changed. COSMETICBOT has changed. The rules have relaxed. Some of you may know that,some may don't, some may want to deny this fact. Yes, it is a fact.
A lot of people when banned, blocked for using the tools all these years. Even there were different reasons behind, some people may have the impression that the reason was the same: The tools. No, it's not the tools.
When this started I got the impression that some of the blocking admins want me out of Wikipedia. I apologise for that. I see now that this is not the case. I am happy to see that the vats majority does not think I act on bad faith. I still believe though that some editors might want me out. They may believe this would be the solution. Well, it's not.
I typed this in less than 5 minutes I hope it's not too emotional. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:37, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I would propose the following as a possible set of edit restrictions:

AWB may only be used by the Yobot account, and only for tasks that have bot approval. No semi-automated tools of any kind may be used on the main account.
All "general fixes" and other changes apart from the literally approved bot task must be disabled within AWB when Yobot runs.
No edits that consist entirely of cosmetic changes may be made with either the main account or the bot account. These include edits that only affect white space and underscores, changes that only bypass redirects, and other changes that do not affect any visible aspect of the rendered page.
All Yobot edits must refer to the specific request for bot approval that authorizes them (in the edit summary).
All CHECKWIKI edits must be clearly marked with the specific CHECKWIKI task they carry out (in the edit summary). Different CHECKWIKI tasks should be handled by different runs of the bot to permit clear edit summaries to be used.
Yobot may only save changes to a page when the specific bot task it is carrying out has been applied to that page, and must skip pages to which the bot task does not apply.

— Carl (CBM · talk) 15:08, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wow. So on one hand we have a person who won't stop making tiny harmless, but not very helpful changes. On the other hand we have people that want to really insist that tiny harmless, but not very helpful changes are not made. It seems to me that either side could let this one go and everything would be fine, or both sides can be stubborn and we probably lose an editor. HighInBC 15:59, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Or we could insist that Admins follow the same rules as everyone else, and get treated for infractions like everyone else – the fact is, if this didn't involve an Admin, this situation would have been dealt with a long time ago. (And, before anyone brings it up, I'm pretty sure I've seen non-Admins blocked for edits not all that dissimilar to the ones mentioned in this case.) Instead, this is another shining example of where someone has been cut multiple "breaks" simply because of the usergroup they're in... Bringing this back around though, in terms of "solutions", anything less than the loss of AWB privileges in this case would be unsatisfactory – that combined with an understanding that "self-granting" AWB privileges at a later date without community consensus first would result in immediate desysopping. Anything less than this would be unacceptable IMO. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 16:20, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

IJBall they were blocked. I don't see how they are being treated any different for being an admin. Not everything needs to boil down to admin v non-admin. HighInBC 16:31, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Of course Magioladitis has – a "regular" editor would already have lost AWB privileges. And I'm of the strong opinion that an Admin that gets blocked multiple times (esp. for the same infraction) should no longer have Admin privileges. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 18:40, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Then you should file a case with ArbCom, since they're the only people who can take the bit away. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 23:25, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I could, if I had unlimited time to burn on Wikipedia activities that will likely only end in aggravation. Fortunately, I have a real job for that instead! --IJBall (contribs • talk) 23:52, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Instead of taking away his admin privileges (which are not the reason we're here), how about doing the exact opposite and saying "Magioladitis, here's the mop! When your block is over, could you please help us clean up [fill in the blank]? Your work there would be much more valuable to the project than these minor edits." GoingBatty (talk) 18:31, 31 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

- IJBall I would like to know example of editors who lost AWB right. It's one of the reason I insist that we resolve the situation by strong consensus. I do not like to see people losing their AWB rights. AWB is a browser so in some level equivalent to FireFox or Chrome. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:24, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  - Of course the main use of AWB is to perform bot-like editing, either with manual review or in a fully automated way, not to "browse" in a normal sense. The first sentence of WP:AWB describes AWB as an "editor", which is indeed the main purpose of the tool. The AWB rules of use on WP:AWB directly state "Repeated abuse of these rules could result, without warning, in your software being disabled. ", and the reason for this thread is repeated abuse of the rules. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:28, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    - Agree with HighInBC The edit's are harmeless, let 'em go. If he was harming Wikipedia with those edits, then I could see imposing the conditions stated here, but he isn't. The main complaint that I saw was that it was clogging up people's watch lists. Big deal, I ran across that a while ago, some one was doing a mass update of templates and it was filling my watchlist, big deal, I skipped those and looked only at articles (I was doing a vandal run at the time ) and ignored their edits. As long as Magioladitis isn't harming the encyclopedia, let it go . KoshVorlon 16:41, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If clogging up the watchlists was blockable I would have blocked User:MediaWiki message delivery ages ago. HighInBC 16:44, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Clogging up watchlists is blockable if what is clogging them are trivial edits. If the MediaWiki Message Delivery System only added or removed whitespace, it would get blocked/disabled under WP:COSMETICBOT just like Magio was for edits like [24]. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 17:03, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Again, no big deal. Magioladitis could stop doing it, people could stop caring, either way everything is fine. HighInBC 17:17, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Awesome attitude you have. I guess if you brought an issue here, but no-one cared about it/you, then you'd be fine with it? No, thought not. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 19:50, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I see you have already answered your question to me on my behalf, but you failed to predict my response so I will answer it myself. If said harm was this insignificant then I would not expect people to get too worked up about it. HighInBC 19:59, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

As the issues with this users edits have been raised time and time again, by multiple different users, I can only conclude you don't know the definition of insignificant. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 20:09, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Lugnuts: Your premise that if people get worked up about something then it must not be insignificant is flawed. People get worked up over insignificant things all the time, humans are kind of famous for it. HighInBC 16:40, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Headbomb that particular one was a very specific bug that was fixed in a few hours after you reported it. That's the problem here: If any of the scripts has a bug it may result in something like this. Is this common? No it's not if we discuss percentages here. Ofcourse for a bot with 4 million edits, 1% is 40,000 pages. Can this be prevented? Well, yes and no. CHECKWIKI scripts are not done by me. My method is based a lot in the fact the list created actually contains the error in question. But, since I fix every single error and I fixed this immediately after the report why just re-reported this? -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:22, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Still this one is a very good example that I want to get more people involved in Wikipedia. I keep reporting new errors to User_talk:Knife-in-the-drawer#New_ISBN_tracking_categories even they have not edited since June. Check the entire talk page. I want mot motivate more and more people to work for Wikipedia. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:25, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

See also the fact that I encouraged a lot of people to make copies of my bot tasks. GoingBatty, Bgwhite know this at hand I believe. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:28, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Like I said earlier here "I'm fine with the occasional bot malfunction, or the occasional misclick on 'save' when you meant 'skip' with AWB." This happens to everyone. But the larger issue is that the bot logic rarely seems to be tested to prevent trivial changes before being unleashed on the wiki. And should understand that WP:COSMETICBOT is not an optional rule and has to be anticipated and tested for just like one needs to test their bots against replacing [[www]] with [[w[[WW (album)|''WW'']]]] on all pages when you wanted to replace [[WW]] with [[WW (album)|''WW'']] on some pages."

Solution? Don't brute force. Don't ignore skip conditions, especially if the condition is "whitespace only". Do a semi-automated test run if need be. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 17:30, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Headbomb yes I can sort this out. The problem nowadays (speaking about mainspace edits) has been reduced to newly introduced CHECKWIKI errors. The ISSN errors were rather new and my script was a hell of a mess. I already sent it to Bgwhhite via email for review. Redrose64 also did some comments. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:34, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Headbomb and something personal here: OK I got that a few (I think 40 out of 1,5000) edits of the ISSN fixes were "pointless", but I would enjoy a more polite way to hear this. Something like "hey, your bot failed to fix something in this page. What was about?". Thanks, Magioladitis (talk) 17:32, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe so, but after this, this, this, this, this, and many others, I'm sure you can understand why I'm opting for the direct approach.

Look, I'm not looking to shit on you. Your bots clearly do more good than harm. But the harm is doing is in many, many cases preventable. Look at it from our perspective. You get blocked/warned for cosmetic changes, get unblocked on good faith [with restrictions], then reblocked for violating restrictions less than a week after the unblock. No one here wants to be back on your page next week/month because the bot once again ran amok. You say you acknowledge the issue, but no steps seem to be taken to prevent the issue from occurring in the first place. I give you full credit for fixing specific problems when flagged, but the root of the issue remains unaddressed. No other bot op is so often warned for cosmetic changes. What are we to do?

Bluntly put, we're at a crossroad here. You can commit to follow WP:COSMETICBOT / not ignore skip conditions / not using a brute force approach / do semi-automated testing of things where you personally review a substantial amount of edits before letting a fully-automated process take over / whatever other voodoo magic is necessary. Expecting < X/1000 trivial edits is not something I'm willing to put forth as a criteria of success, but their frequency has to be drastically reduced.

Or do we have to revoke your AWB access? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:13, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Headbomb I of course appreciate your comments and I am excited every time you report something. This is because some people do not even bother to report bugs. Have you ever reported a bug about Visual Editor or Content Translator? I have. And many times. Most of them are still unfixed and there is a group of WMF professionals working on VE and CX. I am a volunteer. I hope you can at least appreciate that I make effort to fix everything as fast as possible. The diffs you provided had examples of Yobot doing "pointless edits". All 4 cases were fixed not only as part of my skip conditions but as part of the software itself. And this is better because at some point I may not be around to edit or use my bot. Someone else will try to use AWB. Bug fixing is better than adding skip conditions to a single bot. Bug fixes have global positive effect. In the first case I noticed I found the software bug and fixed it in less than a day. Sometimes, I am faster. :) -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:29, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Just to bottom line this, it seems like the main issue, at heart, is the complaint by some editors/admins that Magioladitis does not follow the letter or the spirit of their unblock restrictions. Can these restrictions be made more specific to cover those edits these editors have problems with and can Magioladitis assure the participants in this discussion that they can abide by these restrictions, not temporarily but until such restrictions are formally removed? It seems like this would solve the problem, the end of "pointless" edits without Wikipedia losing a very productive editor and unproblematic admin. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 18:26, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Removal of AWB from his user account and removal of AutoEd from User and bot accounts should be step one. Cannot use these at all from his user account. I'm not sure how to put "restrictions" on bot account activities or how to word it. For example, besides what the bot does, he does semi-manually fix maintenance categories and does requests. Bgwhite (talk) 22:11, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I wrote a specific proposal above. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:23, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Too complex for no reason. The only necessary restriction is #3. Don't edit in violation of WP:COSMETICBOT. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 23:30, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That won't solve the whole problem. There is an equal problem with poor edit summaries that make it impossible to tell what the bot was *trying* to do. The more effective single sanction would be to disable all general fixes whenever AWB is run - but that will also not address the entire problem, and will leave us back here soon enough. If Magioladitis was able to work with just "don't violate the existing rules", we wouldn't be here. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:49, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Carl: I commend you for posting a detailed proposal. For #1, could you think of a more specific description for "No semi-automated tools"? Magioladitis didn't understand this included AutoEd, and I wonder if this would include Twinkle or Hotcat. I would also ask that Magioladitis be allowed to edit the User:Yobot page if he would like to indicate which bot tasks he is choosing to discontinue and which bot tasks he could improve per the suggestions here. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 00:25, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It is very hard to find an airtight wording. Perhaps it would work to say that Twinkle and tools whose main purpose is to interact with users or handle vandalism are OK, but tools such as AutoEd or Hotcat that are primarily for editing should be avoided. In the end, a lot will depend (regardless of the sanctions that are used) on how much Magioladitis wants to resolve the situation by not pushing boundaries. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:46, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I recently requested this T124868. If this is implemented I won't be doing anymore trivial edits when working with maintenance categories. This is still not the root of the problem but a step forward. Also if other take over my talk page fixes which are my weakest point we save a lot of bad edits done by me. I promised to work on it. I sent GoingBatty an email with my settings file to review it and I hope they take over (GB, did you receive it?). As someone else wrote GoingBatty has better communication skills than I do and they are more careful than I am. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:48, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Magioladitis: Your request is a great one - I hope it can be added to AWB. Thank you for sending me your settings. Once my current WP:BRFA is complete, I'll play with yours to see if I can get it to work with the proper skip conditions. GoingBatty (talk) 00:08, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

GoingBatty someone's comment that "GoingBatty can play out the community better than you" rang as a huge bell in my head. :D -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:13, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think it speaks well of any editor or admin that they are aware of their editing strengths as well as those areas where there is room for improvement and they can be honest about themselves. A technical solution might be the best answer here. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:28, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good to me. — Earwig ^talk 00:33, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Remember non-admins - just admit your faults when dragged though AN/ANI and you'll ~~get away with it~~ be OK. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 17:55, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A built-in AWB solution for most of the errors is underway thanks to the AWB team. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:38, 31 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note the conditions of the temp unblock was to To participate in the AN discussion ONLY, yet this edit was made after this condition was agreed. @Fram:? Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 08:00, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Lugnuts check the edit that was done 30 seconds later in the same page. Plese be more careful in the future. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:23, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I need to be more careful?! That's rich. So why did you make the edit in the first place against the sanction of your unblock? I guess you'll weasel out of this one too. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 08:24, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Lugnuts I was pinged by Redrose64 in commons and I replied in the wrong window. Is this OK with you or do you think I have to be blocked for this too? -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:30, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You know what I think. However, no one will action this. Admins win again! Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 08:31, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Lugnuts is clearly out to get anybody who uses AWB. It says at the top of his talk page, "FUCK AWB". He just left a message on my talk page accusing me of doing one trivial edit. No hi or what you doing? Just judge and jury. He then left, Fine, but your edits are now being monitored. Look forward to seeing you at ANI when you fuck up again. I can't remember the last time anybody accused me of a trivial edit... 8-12 months? Guess I'll be hauled into ANI later today. Bgwhite (talk) 09:23, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I hate to correct you, again, but it's anyone who misuses AWB. There's a difference. And you don't seem to know the difference. As you've been using AWB for a long, long time, you should be more than familiar with the rules of use. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 09:30, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You only saw the edit, you never, ever asked why. If you would have asked, you would see that it wasn't a misuse. Shot first and don't ask questions later.... Bgwhite (talk) 11:37, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No, I saw the edit and then pointed it out to you. Are you now trying to cover up your errors after Fram pointed it out to you too? Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 12:24, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Stop with the threats. Why is it that you have falsely accuse people and threaten them every time. Fram understood with what I'm doing. You've accused me of yet another mindless bot edit even thou it did exactly what the edit summary did. You've threatened me with ANI again. You said I broke 3RR with only two edits by me. I've asked 5 times to stop writing on my talk page. Stay away from me. Bgwhite (talk) 08:18, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

And here you are stalking me! Pot. Kettle. Black. How pathetic. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 08:21, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

So what's the outcome of this user's editing? We all bend over and let him continue until the next time he's brought here? Or the time after that? Or the time after that? Seems this isn't really being addressed now. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 15:12, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The technical issue on the CHECKWIKI error fixes: There are 100+ errors checked and every month there are alternations to the code generating the list. Since Bgwhite now does a reproceccing of the dump files i.e. cleaner lists I deicded with him and I ll get a message of when my bot should start fixing. Till now by bot was triggered automattically in the large lists resulting a large percentaage of "did nothing" edits. This can be addressed at list at the part of the list.
The technical issue on the deprecated parameters: Rjwilmsi created a custom module that enusres that we will have skip conditions. I asked GoingBatty to help in testing. So on that part we can have 100% of good edits.
The technical issue on the the talk page fixes / tagging. This is tricky because consensus on the placement of the banners changes very often, AWB's code is incomplete, most edtors who requested tagging of a WikiProject have given me bad lists. This can be partially addressed with GoigBatty's help if he uses my scripts and reports bugs and fixes some things.
On my editing: I can promise not to perform any large scale editing from my main account (i.e. automated edits will be done mainly from my bot account) and I can los stay away from AutoEd. In fact, I ve been using AutoEd mainly to get ideas to implement in AWB so it's not a big lose for me. I still believe AuoEd needs update in many places. Frietjes has better AutoEd-like scripts. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:43, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hats off. See you back here in a month. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 07:50, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Lugnuts why is that? I have not received any serious complains about my editing for years. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:13, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

In that case, you should pay closer attention to your talkpage. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 08:15, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Magioladitis, could you help myself and others understand the thinking behind the assertion "not received any serious complains"? (ie. is there a word missing somewhere?—The assertion as it stands appears to be inconsistent with the public record – available for all to view – in the history of User talk:Magioladitis). —Sladen (talk) 09:44, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The implication is clear: Mag does not consider complaints about trivial or cosmetic edits to be 'serious', which really highlights the problem being discussed here. –xeno^talk 13:02, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Sladen and Xeno: How many complains go I get per year? Should I count? I do hundreds of edits per day. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:20, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ah I see. By "serious" I meant "major". All reports are serious ofcourse. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:24, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for that Magioladitis. Looking back over the responses in this discussion above and distilling out the important parts from your responses:

"hundreds of edits per day." – automated edit rate has been too fast/too high for review.
"a lot of mistakes." – the automated edits had some $error-rate.
"All reports are serious" – there was feedback about the edits/errors.
"every time you report" – that feedback was frequent/repeated.
"Should I count?" – feedback was so large, it would require an explicit effort to count.
"it's not the tools." – compliance with WP:BOTREQUIRE/ WP:COSMETICBOT/ WP:AWB#Rules of use/ WP:NOTBROKEN has been proved achievable by other editors, using with the same automated toolset.

Could you confirm whether this is a correct synopsis of the situation? —Sladen (talk) 10:20, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sladen.

Yes. Many people do that too. I do not think that this necessary bad.
The mistakes are usually mainly when something changes in the code. Long-standing scripts work fine. So usually there are many mistakes of ONE kind i.e. easily fixable.
Yes. I reply to all reports. I try sometime to reply in a few minutes after the report. Not all reports are valid though.
Yes. I fixed all errors reported. Mainly bug fixing or revisited a page to finish the task. Most fixes were really quick. Not all reports refer to the same thing. Take this under consideration. (See below).
True. In the past I kept logs of the bot edits. But this logs were manual and there were getting too large.
Almost true. Most of the times I am the guy who uses AWB against newly generated lists. I am also the guy who said that I trust WikiProjects to generate their lists for me and I won't double check them assuming good faith. During the years I established some extra rules for that.

To resolve one main part of the latter I already contacted Bgwhite to refine lists before feeding them to my bot. I also contacted GoingBatty and other to distribute the talk page related tasks.

There are many bugs of different nature. If the bot/script/module/AWB/etc. fails to fix a page the result is usually the same: "Cosmetic changes". This gives the impression that the root of the problem is the same while it's not.

Please, also read my report on the situation. I try to separate the errors by their kind. Just calling them all just "errors" or "trivial edits" does not help. It's like reporting a hug by saying "the program does not work. Fix it". Thanks, Magioladitis (talk) 12:45, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"There are many bugs of different nature. If the bot/script/module/AWB/etc. fails to fix a page the result is usually the same: "Cosmetic changes"."

And this underlies the frustration that I (and probably other people) have with Magioladitis. Every time that he does trivial edits and I have reported it, he claims he has fixed it, but in a few days, the same kinds of trivial edits show up again. Every time Magio cheerfully claims that he has resolved all reported problems, but to me it looks like nothing changed. But underlying the specific bugs that he is "fixing", there is a systemic problem should be addressed on a more general level: to skip saving a page if the edit would consist of only trivial changes.

There are also some other recurring problems reflected here, such as denial of responsibility: "Most of the times I am the guy who uses AWB against newly generated lists. I am also the guy who said that I trust WikiProjects to generate their lists for me and I won't double check them assuming good faith." -- intgr [talk] 14:17, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rule one of WP:AWB could not be more clear: "You are responsible for every edit made. Do not sacrifice quality for speed and make sure you understand the changes." Seems there's a core of AWB users who chose to ignore this or think it doesn't apply to them. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 14:36, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

intgr for the first: As I wrote there a custom module underway. This will reduce the error drastically. For the second, I always WP:AGF when someone asks me to fix a list. I do not care about the tagging myself. I find WikiProject boring and useless when it is done in thousand pages. Anyone wishes to take this task is more than welcome. All my code and "house rules" are online. I had to participate in creating rules for talk page fixes. I try to help others. This is not denial of responsibility. I guess you are aware that many BOTREQs remain unanswered. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:36, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Check also that in 2009 I did work for others Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Yobot 7. I see Wikipedia as a cooperaive projectwith people who trust each other. I later expanded this in a more general way. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:39, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Magioladitis breaching the terms of his unblock

Hatting per Fram's request. --Izno (talk) 13:10, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Right, now that we've finished being side-tracker by some pusillanimous trolling, lets address the issue at hand. Magioladitis was unblocked purely to contribute to this discussion only. However, this edit was made after this condition was agreed, thus violating the terms of the unblock. So it's safe to assume he should be re-blocked for 1) breaking the terms of his unblock and 2) his contributions here have now concluded. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 08:44, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose: I don't approve of much that Magioladitis does, but I believe this instance was a honest mistake and should be forgiven. Magioladitis himself undid the edit 1 minute later. While technically a violation of the unblock conditions, he didn't violate the intent of the conditions: he wasn't editing article content or running a bot. -- intgr [talk] 09:00, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"An honest mistake". Lets look at that. So he can't make automated edits without them being brought into question and when not editing with AWB he makes more mistakes. Obviously a big competency issue here. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 09:07, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well that last bit is irrelevant, but given his edit-summary comment on the reversion, it does seem to have been an honest mistake - I've written in the wrong tab sometimes before and only noticed later. I'd say as long as it isn't repeated, then no foul should be considered here. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 09:15, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Have you ever "written in the wrong tab sometimes before" in direct violation to the conditions of an unblock on your account? Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 09:22, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Lugnuts so why I did it? Because I am trolling? -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:25, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No, I don't think you're trolling, I think you are not competent. As your failure to read basic instructions shows. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 09:26, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Lugnuts I disagree. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:27, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Of course you do. You're not going to sit there and admit to being incompetent! I do give you some credit. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 09:28, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"I misread your reply" In the same token of I misread the word ONLY in "To participate in the AN discussion ONLY". Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 09:40, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Lugnuts, I can hardly be accused of being a blind follower of fellow admins, a supporter of valueless automated edits, or someone who believes that restrictions or conditions can be ignored. But this case is utterly trivial. All you do by continuing this is creating sympathy for Magioladitis and antipathy towards yourself and your complaints about the real problems (those that lead to the block). Please drop this non-issue. Fram (talk) 10:07, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hardly trivial when this editor goes against the very sanctions you imposed in the first place. But it's OK, he's an admin, so lets ignore this and not do anything about it. Maybe you can explain exactly what you meant by To participate in the AN discussion ONLY in your edit summary, as now it's not so clear. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 10:09, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's perfectly clear to everyone but you, and I guess it is clear to you too. It certainly is clear to Magioladitis, otherwise he wouldn't have immediately undone that error. I wouldn't have blocked anyone over this, no matter if they are an admin or not. It doesn't even merit a warning, since it is obvious that it was an error, not a breaching experiment. Fram (talk) 10:27, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Fram. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 10:33, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Bludgeoning editors [25] [26] [27] who are trying to improve the project over a minor automated edit? If an editor does not want to see minor edits on their watchlists I think there is a setting for that. Many editors make minor edits [28] and even totally pointless ones [29] Legacypac (talk) 11:07, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Look who's crawled out! My fucking hero! Still bitter I see after you got blocked. Oh hum. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 11:10, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please cut it out, both of you. Legacypac, ignoring minor edits is ideal to give every vandal every chance to do whatever they like. Yes, one can choose not to see those on their watchlist, but often this is not a good idea. Minor edits may well hide vandalism or mistakes, bot edits have the potential to make the same error very fast on many articles. Fram (talk) 11:17, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

And there's a hell of a lot of bad minor edits done by established editors. Two spring to mind straight away. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 11:20, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The point of the block was to stop the problematic AWB editing. Asking a question about CC licenses on a talk page is light years removed from being disruptive. Get off your high horse Javert, because you're making it impossible to focus on the issues by calling for heads to roll because of trivialities. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 12:22, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Finished with the personal attacks now? Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 12:49, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Can someone uninvolved please hat this subsection? It generates (much) more heat than light, with PAs going back and forth, people harassing other people (though it isn't easy to tell who harassed first or most), and nothing concrete about the Magioladitis situation likely to be achieved in this part of the discussion. Fram (talk) 13:04, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Standard offer request for Bazaan

Consensus is to unblock with a topic ban from Bangladesh related articles, and a limit of one account. Sam Walton (talk) 18:45, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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

Hello,

I am passing along a Standard offer unblock request from Bazaan (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). This request was sent to UTRS. The user has requested that the content of the unblock request be forwarded to the noticeboard. The relevant content is as follows:

I agree to another Standard Offer if necessary, although it would be the second time. I would like the content of my unblock request to be forwarded to the noticeboard. I promise to never repeat the behaviour which led to my initial block, and the subsequent indefinite block.
Why do you believe you should be unblocked? It's been six months, please give me another chance. At least give me a rope.
If you are unblocked, what articles do you intend to edit? Most South Asian, but wide ranging
Why do you think there is a block currently affecting you? If you believe it's in error, tell us how. I purposefully brought a sock puppetry ban on my account. It's my fault. I have suffered enough, including tremendous personal attacks.
Is there anything else you would like us to consider when reviewing your block? Plenty of accounts have been blocked in my name, although most aren't mine.
The ones used by me are Bazaan, Rainmaker23, Uck22, JKhan20 and Merchant of Asia.

The user has not received any additional blocks on the account and is therefore tentatively eligible for Standard Offer consideration. Thanks, Nakon 01:23, 9 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

See Sockpuppet investigations/Bazaan. BMK (talk) 01:46, 9 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There were issues concerning Bazaan and his or her socks other then sockpuppetry itself, which the editor doesn't mention. Search on "Bazaan" in the noticeboard files. I'd like to hear what the editor has to say about that behavior. BMK (talk) 01:52, 9 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I've modified Bazaan's block to permit him to edit his talk page: if we're willing to consider unblocking someone, the situation isn't so bad that talk access should remain disabled, and it's easier if the user can post messages on his own talk page instead of relying on UTRS assistance. Nakon, would you mind sending Bazaan an email asking him to make further replies on his talk page? Nyttend (talk) 02:31, 9 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I've sent User:Bazaan an email update regarding their talk page. Thanks, Nakon 02:34, 9 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Apart from the sockpuppetry, there was some copyright issues way, way back. Is there anything else, from a content perspective, that would merit a conditional unblock? By which I mean, an "unblock conditional on an acceptance of a topic ban in articles relating to XYZ." Blackmane (talk) 06:01, 9 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - I may be unusually strict, but I oppose any sort of standard offer when there has been sockpuppetry/ I don't think that anyone who has engaged in sockpuppetry can be trusted at their end, at least not until the twenty-second century. That is my opinion. It just reflects a distinction between editors who make mistakes and editors who choose to game the system. I know that other editors are more forgiving than I am, and I am very forgiving of flaming, but not of sockpuppetryl Robert McClenon (talk) 06:48, 9 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Further note from Bazaan's talk page:
I am responding to issues raised in ANI. I again commit myself to never repeating the behavior which caused my indefinite block. In 2013 and 2014, I had differences with a few editors of WP:Bangladesh, which unfortunately swelled into a rather traumatic cycle of personal hostilities. This included pointless edit wars and conflicts over what pictures to be placed in what article. The absence of Wikipedia administrative or arbitration personnel caused the situation to deteriorate further. Initially when I joined Wikipedia around 2007, I was much younger and faced several issues like copyright infringement. But I now have a stronger understanding of Wikipedia policies. I believe I have matured over time. My contributions were never questioned for pushing an unacceptable POV, but a few people at times disagreed with its relevance. However, I used reliable and credible references. If my editing privileges are restored, you will not see any dramatic rise in editing activity. If there are any issues, it will be brought to either DRN or ANI. I've learnt my lesson truly well. I don't deserve a topic ban as I never had serious content disputes. It was mostly personal attacks over pictures and relevant sentences. Lastly regarding sockpuppetry, please have a look at the first investigation. As one administrator notes, he didn't even consider what happened to be sockpuppetry. I opened a second account after being blocked. My mistake. I have always made good faith contributions. Never in bad faith of gaming the system.
This was left as an unblock request, which I've declined because it wouldn't be right for me to unblock him as this discussion's still ongoing. It was a procedural decline (don't think of it as a frivolous request), and I've asked him to use {{helpme}} when writing future comments for this discussion. Nyttend (talk) 13:40, 9 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Bazaan writes "I believe I have matured over time", but he also writes "The absence of Wikipedia administrative or arbitration personnel caused the situation to deteriorate further" and "I don't deserve a topic ban as I never had serious content disputes. It was mostly personal attacks over pictures and relevant sentences." These don't appear to me to be the statements of someone who has "learnt [their] lesson truly well", as they are still blaming others and not taking responsibility for their actions. And for an editor who used multiple sockpuppets to write "Lastly regarding sockpuppetry, please have a look at the first investigation. As one administrator notes, he didn't even consider what happened to be sockpuppetry. I opened a second account after being blocked. My mistake." is not acceptable. Perhaps we can accept that one sockpuppet was a "mistake", but what about the other three they admit to? (That's assuming we can take their word that other accounts which were blocked as theirs were incorrectly identified.) I'm not yet closing the door on this, but, at least so far, I do not find the editor's comments to be persuasive. BMK (talk) 00:43, 10 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Although I'm often in agreement with BMK's opinions, in this case I do believe a few of Bazaan's statements are somewhat excusable. Articles about the sub continent can be very contentious considering articles about India and Pakistan ended up at Arbcom. Perhaps Bangladeshi articles should fall into that category given the nation's history with India, but that's a discussion for another page. The sockpuppetry issue is certainly of concern. Perhaps a quick check by a CheckUser would alleviate this concern. [Iff] no socking is revealed in the last 6 months, I could probably support a conditional unblock. Bazaan has admitted to having issues in Bangladeshi articles in the past and letting him back into this area may not be healthiest. If no socking is revealed, then I could support an unblock provided a 3 month topic ban from Bangladeshi articles is levied to encourage Bazaan to edit somewhere else so the community could regain some confidence and to truly prove that he has "matured over time". However, if socking is revealed within the last 6 months, then the offer is off the table. Blackmane (talk) 05:29, 10 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have similar concerns to Blackmane; given how controversial such articles can be, and the past troubles this editor has had while editing them, Most South Asian, but wide ranging doesn't seem the best space to dive straight back into. Perhaps a 3-month topic ban from all sub-continent / South Asian articles would be a good place to start? GoldenRing (talk) 11:12, 12 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

oppose unblock - I had edited with him and I would say that it was a bad experience. Yes he has evaded his block enough times for like a year, I can see that some of his nationalistic edits on Bangladesh subjects had been removed, a few more are still left to be checked. You need to read his unblock request, "My contributions were never questioned for pushing an unacceptable POV" or "I opened a second account after being blocked" and "I have always made good faith contributions. Never in bad faith of gaming the system"[30] tells that he rejects that he was totally wrong with his blatant policy violations that he has made, which includes vandalism and block evasion. How he can be trusted with this? I understand that I had socked too but blaming others or failing to accept it is not good. Capitals00 (talk) 03:57, 17 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose unblock - this is a historically highly disruptive user. Normally I'm quite lenient with supporting standard offers, but this is not a case of an editor going off the deep end one time and then seeing the error of their ways. Here we have an editor who was indef'd for outright vandalism who attempted to abuse a process to erase their history, and then socked through their siteban for almost another full year. That behaviour ended less than a year ago, and I don't think we should even be considering the standard offer until at least that much time has gone by. Call it punitive, whatever: I do think a very strong message needs to be sent to this user. Nevertheless, I have a proposal: that Bazaan be conditionally unblocked, under the conditions that they are indefinitely topic banned from any topics related to Bangladesh, broadly construed, and may not operate more than one account for any purpose; conditions may be appealed after no less than one year. They are encouraged to contribute constructively in other areas and to follow all content and behavioural guidelines during this time. (Non-administrator comment) Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 23:16, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose unblock as requested Several of the requesters statements seem to indicate that they do no realize which behaviour of theirs was disruptive. Capitals00 has gone over some of those statements. I would not oppose a conditional unblock that involves a topic ban from areas this user was disruptive in in the past. HighInBC 23:21, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Support unblock, and accept standard offer, though only with close scrutiny, and the understanding that if he even so much as leaves a major edit marked as minor, would be enough for a total site ban. Besides that, I sensed a of ring of truth and sincerity that gave me a rather brief reprieve, but just enough to give him another chance, but only ONE chance.. after this, this is it.. gone for good. I think his gaming the system and bad behaviour in the past is simply his way of beating the system.. he had a genuine interest in improving the project but for whatever reason his way of going about it is breaking some site rules that he seems to feel are not as binding (to him) as they inevitably are; plus his intellect and wit would get him past it it without a scratch, and got a rude awakening that he can't just breeze his way past our site policies. Anyway.. my characterizations may be totally off-beat here but this was my two cents and initial impressions that colored by my decision to support. Thanks very much. -- œ^™ 04:33, 20 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Let me clarify a few things here. First, it is not a good idea to expect Bazaan or any other editor here to be completely perfect. Second, like some others have requested, I would oppose topic ban and it is not needed because he was not topic banned when he was blocked. If he makes disruptive edits we have always got AN or AE for seeking sanction like topic ban. Instead I would say that he should make another promising unblock request, not before next 6 months. He should confirm that he understood the damage that he has done and try not to justify with anything better that he presumably did here. Capitals00 (talk) 16:20, 20 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose unconditional unblock, support conditional unblock. Just to make a my position clear. Unblock on the condition that a minimum 3 month topic ban from all Bangladesh relate articles broadly construed be levied. My support is also conditional on no socking within 6 months prior to the unblock request. If socking is discovered, then the clock is reset by another 6 months per the Standard Offer. However, I would be willing to overlook the socking if Bazaan proactively reveals any socks they may have used in the 3 months leading up to the unblock request. Blackmane (talk) 02:10, 1 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Support unblock with close monitoring and a complete understanding on his part that the leash is very, very short. Katie^talk 13:54, 1 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Further discussion

This was listed at ANRFC, though I can't quite find sufficient consensus to close it one way or the other. Most users have opposed an unconditional unblock, though some would support an unblock on the condition of a topic ban from the most problematic areas. I'd like to see some further discussion on this before closing. Should Bazaan be kept blocked, or would an unblock with a topic ban be acceptable, and if so what would the terms of this topic ban be? Sam Walton (talk) 17:53, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Good question. Let's hope some more folks will look into it. Personally, if a former socker asks for an unblock and hasn't been socking, I see no reason to be extra-strict and say no. After all, if they were sockers to the core, they wouldn't have to be asking for an unblock. Drmies (talk) 22:10, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'll restate my suggestion from above, since it came late in the thread: that Bazaan be reinstated but topic-banned indefinitely from Bangladesh. They were disruptive in that topic to the point of earning a siteban, and then socked through it persistently for over a year. It's apparent that they shouldn't edit in that topic area until they build experience editing in topics less personal to them. If they can show they're able to contribute constructively in other areas, then requesting lifting of this sanction should be very simple a year from now. I say a year because that's the length of time that they abused multiple accounts to be intentionally disruptive through a siteban, and it hasn't been a year yet from when they finally gave that up. (Non-administrator comment) Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 20:14, 1 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I am with Blackmane here; let him potter along quietly, away from the contentious areas, for some time. Gives him the possibility to build more experience and "feeling" for wikipedia. Lectonar (talk) 11:26, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- I've made an unblock offer in line with the above opinions, awaiting a response. Sam Walton (talk) 09:36, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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

Unexplained reverts on Comedian and false accusations

I made a constructive edit on Comedian today. MarnetteD chose to revert me with no helpful edit summary whereas I had made my point clear. Then, another user called Curro2 did the same. In the meanwhile, I've been the only one who had undo-ed and ~~readded~~ removed the ~~content~~ two words with an edit summary. First, I was warned my edits were vandalism (wth?!), then apparently I was blanking templates/content (oh, is it?) and was warned twice over that. Also, that templated warning says I didn't provide an edit summary. The two editors have not maintained good faith and accused me falsely. I call for my edits to be reinstated and that the editors in question are reprimanded. Thank you. --117.194.236.244 (talk) 05:55, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Google search is not a reliable source, and the original wording that the other editors have been restoring is the correct one. Referring to your edit as vandalism is erronious and shouldn't be done, but when it comes to the actual content they are correct and not you. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 06:09, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I know that it isn't. I meant that the users can themselves see the links returned by the search query. [31], [32], [33], [34], [35]. Yes, now you'll say they're personal blogs but if you could point me to a single source that says with complete affirmation that they're the same, I'll rest my case. --117.194.236.244 (talk) 07:00, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Generally, if a Gsearch you executed provides reliable links, you should insert them into the article yourself, not simply a link to the search. Erpert ^{blah, blah, blah...} 05:34, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Massive CFD backlog

CFD currently has almost 150 discussions awaiting closure, including 6 which could have been closed a couple months ago. It would be nice if more admins would help out there. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:13, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Admins have got far better things to do than getting involved with issues like this. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 12:54, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

24hrs later and no-one has tackled the issue - I guess they have got better things to do. I've listed them at the closure page. Hopefully that'll get the ball rolling. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 12:34, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Lugnuts, I saw the massive list: good work. Drew my attention! Two things--compared to AfD, CfD can be surprisingly complex, for me at least, and closing them is not as simple as closing AfDs. I can't speak for other admins, but for me, this is not something I can do in a few lost minutes. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 16:02, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- I can help in two weeks from now. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:04, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Block review of Brad Dyer

Bad Dryer (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Brad Dyer (also called Bad Dryer) was indef blocked by Drmies due to this thread.

The matter is rather delicate. I will give a capsule summary here. It concerns an Israeli human rights activist Ezra Nawi who was accused of statutory rape against a Palestinian minor. It was a long court battle (five years, including two appeals), and the minor was reluctant to testify against Nawi. Eventually a plea deal was reached and Nawi was sentenced to six months in prison, of which he served three.

The discussion on the talkpage was heated at times and all kinds of insinuations were made, as is only normal in an area in the intersection of child abuse and Israel/Palestine. Still, I think the discussion was overall in good faith.

In the course of the discussion Bad Dryer made some ill-advised comments about Nishidani, which they are remorseful about and indicate they would be happy to strike. (Whether or not one believes the sincerety of the remorse is another question). I think the indef block by Drmies was hasty (only one other person had opined on the matter at the time, and they didn't see the personal attack), harsh, and only served to increase the drama. See for instance, the section now at WP:ANI.

There is an important background to this matter. Brad Dyer was indeffed a few months ago, due to a spat with Malik Shabazz which led to the latter's desysopping and an ArbCom case. He was unblocked after a month or so, but the events cast a shadow on the current situation. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 11:12, 3 February 2016 (UTC) Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 11:17, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

So I guess you are part of the "hasten the day" crowd on Wikipediocracy? 207.38.156.219 (talk) 12:44, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

IP, play nice, please. Drmies (talk) 15:30, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

What's not nice? You're one of their favorites! 207.38.156.219 (talk) 00:11, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've been known to have that effect on men, I know--it's my cross to bear. :) Drmies (talk) 02:51, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I think the operative words above are "(Whether or not one believes the sincerety of the remorse is another question)". The initial unblock request 2 days prior was anything but sincere or even comprehending of the issue. There was or has been so much revdelling in the Malik case and so much retrospective he-said she-said confusion that it's hard to extrapolate decisively from that, but since personal attacks have resumed, with increasing self-justification, it seems unlikely this will not continue down the line if unblocked. Softlavender (talk) 12:28, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- Well block appeals are basically 'Agree with the block, say sorry' or they fail, so its hardly unsurprising that a first appeal where he doesnt think he did anything wrong would be less than contrite. Personally I think his comments that led to the block had weight behind them if not quite expressed in the best way. When as an editor you make the same arguments that a pro 'sex with minors' group makes (in support of your editing), expect some pushback. Only in death does duty end (talk) 12:45, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The operative part, imo, is that they said they had not intended it as a personal attack (another uninvolved admin had opined similarly on WP:ANI), but are willing to strike anything which could be construed as such. Absolutely nothing is gained by coercing them into an insincere apology or putting a requirement for groveling before unblocking. See WP:Editors have pride. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 12:53, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The operative part is that he only said that after his first unblock request, which continued with the PAs, was refused. To quote the admin who declined the unblock: "Repeating the personal attack that caused you to be blocked in your unblock request is a guarantee that your request will not be granted. Saying you will strike comments upon request while continuing to repeat those comments is not a means of making amends or ensuring that you will not repeat this behavior." Softlavender (talk) 12:59, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You are incorrect. He said in the very first unblock request which you yourself linked above. I quote: I don't believe I have personally attacked any editor (and note the concurring opinion of an administrator on this matter), but will strike out or remove any offensive comment if unblocked. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 13:17, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Here is exactly what he wrote:

I don't believe I have personally attacked any editor (and note the concurring opinion of an administrator on this matter here:[2]) , but will strike out or remove any offensive comment if unblocked (a courtesy not extended to me by people using vicious antisemitic slurs against me ([3]).

I noted that Nishidani takes a different view of consensual Man-boy sexual relations as evidenced by the fact that he repeatedly referred to these actions (which are a criminal offense in most countries) as "victimless", and going as far as putting the word "victim" , used by multiple reliable sources without quotes, in scare quotes in our article and then delivering a passionate defense of why such scare quotes are needed ([4]). He has also cited favorably the notion of Sotadic zone - the hypothesis that there exists a geographic zone in which pederasty is prevalent and celebrated among the indigenous inhabitants. This is common in NAMBLA literature, and I don't believe should be part of an encyclopedia, other than in an article about NAMBLA, of course. However, I will strike out those comments if editors believe they crossed the line. Bad Dryer (talk) 22:15, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

-- Softlavender (talk) 00:57, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Whatever one makes of the back story here, the reason given in the second block decline ("I have every confidence that you will stir up another shit storm if you are unblocked") is pretty compelling, and it's solid reasoning in connection with blocking policy. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 12:55, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- Why is that compelling? That's not BadDryer's opinion, that's another person's opinion. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 15:08, 3 February 2016 (UTC)}}[reply]
  - Huh? Of course that's another person's opinion. Drmies (talk) 15:45, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This person(by any name) has a history of starting major stinks and then apologizing to get unblocked. Looking that the recent unblock request you can see a progression from denying the charges to a tactical apology. History shows that their promises to be unblocked are lip service. In my opinion they are expert at pushing buttons and know just what to say to cause the most disruption. I have every confidence that if they are unblocked that they will find another way to be disruptive. HighInBC 15:36, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

- - - Right, but why should someone else saying I don't trust you be a compelling reason to not unblock? Sir Joseph ^(talk) 16:33, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

How should we do it? Should we base it off if the blocked person thinks they should be trusted? We pretty much have to base our blocking decisions on what people other than the blocked person think. HighInBC 17:10, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, and I think based on the whole story of this topic, not his past history, I think the block was a bit too much. I also think that saying he'll be bad in the future is not a valid reason for him to stay blocked. The talk page was mostly civil in a heated discussion, he said he'd strike the comments, and I think he should be given the chance. Plus, Wikipedia does need more editors on the other side of the issue, every time one pops up one of the other side labels the a sock or scares them away so of course it's a bit heated so I think a bit leeway is sometimes needed as well. And for the record, I'm not a sock. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 17:17, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I am not saying "bad in the future" is a valid reason to not unblock. I am saying "he was bad in the past, promised not to do it again to get unblocked, was bad again, and is now making the same promise again" is a valid reason not to unblock. This is not an isolated incident, it is part of a long term pattern of disruption and duplicity. This person has shown themselves to be insincere. HighInBC 17:22, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Could very well be, but did you read the talk page? Putting victim in quotes and continuing to justify it does make other editors jumpy. What would you do when you edit a page about a rapist and someone puts victim in quotes because they say it was consensual because the 15 year old kid liked it and didn't testify? Sir Joseph ^(talk) 17:30, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If you think the behaviour of another editor needs to be looked at then start another thread. HighInBC 17:33, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No, I don't think Nishidani did anything wrong, I perhaps thing BD was just exasperated and that might have made him use those words and influenced him. That is why I think the indef is unwarranted. I think he did his time and I think he should be unblocked. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 17:37, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

For those not familiar with the history, this editor was indeffed in the past for making racial comments at another editor. They were unblocked after apologies and promises. They have since changed their name. HighInBC 15:38, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Weren't the racial comments after the antisemitic comments? Sir Joseph ^(talk) 17:38, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No. Brad's comments were first. Not that it matters, people are responsible for their own behaviour. HighInBC 16:42, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'll just say that for me, the previous history didn't matter. An accusation of pedophilia (or however you want to rephrase what was said) is an instantly blockable offense, and the needling beforehand indicated it wasn't something said in anger or haste. But as always, I will not stand in the way of another admin being of a different opinion and unblocking if they think it is an appropriate thing to do. Drmies (talk) 15:45, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- I don't think there was an accusation of pedophilia. I think there was an exasperation that Nishidani put victim in quotes and stood by that merely because the victim didn't testify and stated the sex was consensual and BD stated, from what I recollect, that perhaps that came from NAMBLA literature. I don't think that is indef ban worthy at all. Nishidani should have stood down, and should have realized that indeed something is indeed a bit off. Perhaps both should have stood down. BD has been blocked, he aplogized and we don't need to lose yet another editor here. Sir Joseph ^(talk)

I was going to stay away from this, because I hate the IP bullshit. But your posts are bordering on the same accusations that Bad Dryer has made. Both here, on his Talk page and other places. I totally support the block and block decline, this user has consistently used racial and other chilling tactics to degrade his seen 'opposition', and I think an admin should also block you if you continue to accuse other editors of have pedophillia sympthathies. It's a disgusting tactic and needs to stop NOW. Dave Dial (talk) 16:48, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Why don't you follow the conversation? I'm not casting aspersions. But if someone puts victim in quotes because he says it was consensual, and he didn't testify, something is a bit off. All I said was that Nishidani has to understand that those claims don't make sense and that there is no such thing as consensual sex with a minor/underage and not testifying is not proof of anything. What BD said is that what Nishidani said is what NAMBLA says all the time, is what BD said bad, probably, but so is saying a kid didn't get raped because it was consensual. I was just continuously trying to point out to Nishidani how his viewpoint seems to others. Don't try threatening me with blocks for discussing something civilly as I've done here and on the talk page. I don't have a problem with anybody. I just want him to realize how his views seem, not that he shares those views. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 17:04, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If you don't know the relevant legal issues, you shouldn't pontificate. Statutory rape is not the same as rape. Everyone, including Brad Dyer and the WP article and the Israeli court itself, agrees that the sex was consensual. I agree with the last part of the comment, which is what I have been trying to impress upon people here. What Brad Dyer was saying, as I saw it, was that the argument is distasteful, because NAMBLA uses the same arguments. This is not the same as making an accusation of pedophilia. I can guarantee that if you stop 10 random people in the street, at least half of them will find Nishidani's argument distasteful - which of course says nothing about its correctness. The block button is not the correct tool here. Besides, there are plenty of solutions short of indef block, including article ban and topic ban - why were they not used? Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 17:47, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Kingsindian:You say "Everyone, including Brad Dyer and the WP article and the Israeli court itself, agrees that the sex was consensual." No...we don't. I can cite more psychiatric and scientific studies than you could count on your hands and feet that illustrate MOST (operative word, since every human develops at a different pace biologically speaking) 15 year old brains are not as chemically "balanced" or "wired" as they are in adulthood [[36]], meaning to many people, including myself, most 15-year-olds are not capable of giving "consent" to a sexual act with an adult...and ergo cannot be deemed "consensual". I don't care to discuss the legality of the issue or debate science vs court system; I simply want to negate your emphatic assertion that "everyone" agrees the sex was consensual. As much as I disapprove of the behavior of the individual we are talking about here, we did come down on the same side of the argument here, albeit with different tactics.Trinacrialucente (talk) 09:12, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, and Nishidani said something similar, when he said sex with under 18 is not good for different reasons. I too think the ban hammer was used much too easily, it is similar to the US Judicial System being an adversarial system where a judge will ask a question (similar to Scalia asking about something distasteful) and then the Facebook trending will think Scalia thinks that. Bottom line is that the ban was unjust and should be overturned. To that we can agree. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 17:54, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thats not really an argument anyone wants to get into here tbh so we should probably drop it. Minors under the age of consent cannot *give* consent in many jurisdictions. They can physically say 'yes' and willingly engage in the act to a common understanding of 'consent', but legally thats not consent any more than someone who agrees to any form of contract (physical or otherwise) while drunk. Legally they lack the judgement required in order to make an informed choice. Only in death does duty end (talk) 17:52, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There's no reason to believe that the person operating the Bad Dryer account is capable of successfully and consistently mimicking the behavior of a decent human being in this environment to the extent that is necessary to ensure that editors like Nishidani, Zero0000, Huldra, Nableezy and their other usual targets are not harassed or attacked. They will continue to get it wrong and someone will suffer. Editors in ARBPIA should not have to be exposed to and collaborate with people who can't even pretend to be decent human beings, let alone decent Wikipedians. Unblocking this account (again) would in my view be an example of the community failing in their duty of care to protect editors (again). The person operating the Bad Dryer account is very likely to already have one or more sock accounts they can switch to, so the block on this account will merely slow them down, but it is better than facilitating them and exposing editors to harassment and attacks through this account. Sean.hoyland - talk 17:38, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The bans legit and there has been no actual reason provided to unblock other than emotional sympathies in my view. In the event of an unblock the community should take action to that will at least attempt to stop any further disruption. A topic ban perhaps, considering the comments of Sean.hoyland, of ARBPIA. Perhaps a interaction ban from the 4 individuals that Sean has named above. Perhaps a topic ban of all articles under any sanctions? Reading the discussion Brad seems to have been banned before for similar issues as well as desysopped. All seem somewhat recent as well. Seems little reason to unban but in the event it's considered the conversation really should be more than, "Well he said sorry."-Serialjoepsycho- (talk) 18:11, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse block. I quote my colleague: "There's no reason to believe that the person operating the Bad Dryer account is capable of successfully and consistently mimicking the behavior of a decent human being in this environment to the extent that is necessary to ensure that editors like Nishidani, Zero0000, Huldra, Nableezy and their other usual targets are not harassed or attacked. They will continue to get it wrong and someone will suffer." Begoon ^talk 18:42, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
dudes a NoCal100 sock anyway, who cares. nableezy - 19:52, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

User:Bishonen, this is what I mean. Isn't there a policy about calling someone a sock? Sir Joseph ^(talk) 20:23, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
This has always been at least Possible based on what (not great) technical evidence I could scrounge up. Not certain, but quite firmly on the possible to likely continuum. At any rate, Sir Joseph, it's absolutely not a baseless accusation. Courcelles (talk) 21:00, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Again, that could be but it also seems like a constant witch hunt that certain people take up. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 21:25, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oh puleeez, a witch hunt, "certain people"--name them or keep it zipped, Sir Joseph. I'm going to paste an NPA template on your talk page to symbolize, emblematize, signify, or even enshrine the lack of good faith you keep espousing. The IP who commented above can direct you to a place where your conspiracy theories are more welcome. Drmies (talk) 02:54, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

paste all you want, I pinged bishonen for a reason and I didn't need to name anyone, I replied to this right here.How exactly is it a personal attack to say that people are accused of being a sock? I didn't attack anyone and I'm not being disruptive, so I'd ask you to assume good faith, as you're supposed to. I said it seems like a witch hunt, are we now not allowed to post what we think?Sir Joseph ^(talk) 03:57, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

you mean me, so just say that. As far as witch hunt, I think you can check my track record with NoCal socks, Im not one to accuse without evidence. But more to the point, theres something you want to say, so just come out and say it. nableezy - 04:19, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I said all I have to day on this matter. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 04:25, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is not a free-speech zone where you can say anything you like. Plus, you're talking about someone who apparently has been taking up time and resources for years--"witch hunt" is a ridiculous term to use for someone who needs an LTA page dedicated to themselves, someone who needs to get a different hobby. These jeremiads, which remind me of the ones we hear from prolific sockers and disruptors, are...what is the word? Drmies (talk) 04:29, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

FYI, I had opened an SPI myself last August, which fell through the cracks somewhere. I stated then and am still not sure that this is NoCal100, and have been proceeding on the basis of benefit of doubt. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 04:34, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse block The WP:ARBPIA area is sufficiently toxic without encouraging editors to taunt opponents with outrageous attacks phrased in a manner that can be brushed off later with a "sorry"—particularly a sorry extracted after "I don't believe I have personally attacked any editor" (diff). This is the second such attack which led to an indefinite block, and it should be the last. Johnuniq (talk) 00:58, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse block After the debacle that led to Malik's desysop, the arbcom case and aftermath, I would have thought indef blocking would have put paid to this part of the PI drama. BD's unblock requests smack of "I don't think i did anything wrong", "I'm sure I did nothing wrong" then "Oh I better say something appropriate to try to convince the admins to unblock me". If BD had been truly sincere, he'd have voluntarily offered up a community endorsed one way interaction ban with Nishdani as well as a self imposed but community endorsed indefinite topic ban from all PI articles, broadly construed. Blackmane (talk) 05:30, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse block I've read about and thought about this for a few days, and the drama surrounding this guy is too much. He doesn't think he's done anything to warrant his block, he's offering platitudes to get back in our good graces, and I have no doubt that, if unblocked, he'll go right back to what he's done twice before. Enough. Katie^talk 14:31, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse block (Non-administrator comment) - even in one of our most consistently awful topic areas, this editor's attacks have managed to stand out on multiple occasions. I don't know why they're not sitebanned. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 21:02, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse block (Non-administrator comment) - Bad Dryer left an oddly worded threat on my talk page [[37]] as he has done with others he disagrees with. And while his comment to Malik was not a "pass" for Malik's subsequent tirade/unbalanced response, it was yet another example of this user "going for the jugular" for maximum cruelty via ad hominem. He has repeatedly "crossed the line" in behavior and content. I have no doubt he has other WP:SOCKPUPPETs and will be back (has been back) using anonymous IPs, so even a block will not curtail the behavior...but it will send out a warning for like-minded individuals. On a related note, the response @Drmies: left on Bad Dryer's page was foul, vulgar and low-class language which is not WP:CIVIL. Granted, neither is/was Bad Dryer...but Admins here need to realize they are setting the bar in both directions, so when it is lowered, other editors use foul-language and say "hey, Admin X used it, so I can to". Just saying, this is supposed to be an academic encyclopedia, so let's try and foster an appropriate environment.Trinacrialucente (talk) 06:53, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- What on earth are you talking about, Trinacrialucente? I made one edit to that talk page: this one. Drmies (talk) 16:05, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  - @Drmies:, I think @Trinacrialucente: was actually referring to @HighInBC:? If so, I think you are owed an unequivocal apology as it as pretty clumsy to blame you for something you didn't say. Ncmvocalist (talk) 16:09, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    - Huh? In recent history I left two notes: [38] and [39]. If "shit storm" is what is considered "foul, vulgar and low-class language" then I suggest it is only so because it is an accurate description of "foul, vulgar and low-class behaviour". There is a difference between naughty words and incivility, a difference between describing a person and their actions. If you think not swearing should be required for civility you can suggest it at the policy talk page, but that idea has been rejected in the past. HighInBC 16:15, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
      - For the avoidance of doubt, I don't share Trinacrialucente's opinion; I just preferred you respond to it directly so that it can be nipped in the bud sooner. Ncmvocalist (talk) 16:22, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
        Consider the bud nipped. To avoid hijacking this thread @Trinacrialucente: is welcome on my talk page to discuss the finer points of words/intent. HighInBC 16:25, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
        AN is the last place we'd want to have a shit storm. Drmies (talk) 16:27, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This latest 'endorsement' is one agenda driven SPA endorsing the indef of another agenda driven SPA. Which is why I try to stay away from the IP area, and have sympathy for those who wade into that mess. Dave Dial (talk) 16:30, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Need someone to nuke mass contributions from banned user.

See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Bowei Huang 2, a recently blocked sock needs their pointless redirects (the MO of Bowei Huang 2) WP:NUKEd. Will an admin experienced with the nuke function take care of this? Thanks! Here are the page creations of the most recent sock. Thanks again in advance. --Jayron 32 13:31, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Did you hear the bang from all the way over there? Guy (Help!) 13:45, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

They look better quality then most of the Neelix redirects... anyone want to nuke some of the remaining unchecked ones? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Anomie/Neelix_list Legacypac (talk) 14:01, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Tag them for speedy as noted elsewhere. Nuking all contribs of an account is easy, deciding which of thousands need nuking, not so much. Guy (Help!) 01:35, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Duplicate RFC

This just came to my attention at the dispute resolution noticeboard. About a month ago, there was an RFC to remove the galleries of images of ethnic groups. The RFC was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Ethnic_groups#Proposal_for_the_deletion_of_all_the_galleries_of_personalities_from_the_infoboxes_of_articles_about_ethnic_groups

It was closed with a consensus to remove the galleries of images. The close was then challenged, and upheld at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=&oldid=698198748#There_is_likely_to_be_trouble_ahead

There is now another RFC about removing the galleries of images. It is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Images#.22Articles_about_ethnic_groups_or_similarly_large_human_populations_should_not_be_illustrated_by_a_gallery_of_images_of_group_members.22

Can some admin come along and close it as having been recently decided? Robert McClenon (talk) 16:20, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

These are not duplicates. The former RFC was about ethnic groups in specific; the latter RFC is about any group of persons. --Izno (talk) 16:35, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

So is the latter RFC intended to expand the former one by widening the rule against image galleries? If so, that should be noted in the RFC; I will reread it to see if it is. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:06, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This RfC is about the broader application of the original RfC, a broadening signaled by Sandstein in many of the voters in the original RfC. I'd close it as supporting that broader application, but lo and behold, I found my own name in there. Drmies (talk) 19:25, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

In light of CONLIMITED and Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Guide/WikiProject#Violating_policies I, personally, have some doubt about the ability of the initial RFC to set guidelines or policy for the encyclopedia (and I say that even though I support the result reached there). I do not take the position that policies and guidelines cannot be made at wikiprojects, but I do take the position that for them to do it that they have to be very careful to publicize the discussion by listing it under "pol" in the RFC tag, by placing a notice and link to the discussion at Village Pump policy, by placing a notice and link to the discussion on the talk pages of any policies being modified by the discussion, and by listing it at Central Discussion. The first of those was done, but I don't think any of the rest were done, though perhaps I missed them (I did not take part in the initial RFC). I've had folks take the position that my position on this is over-bureaucratic but the fact is that, at least in the case of policy or guideline modifications, allowing wiki-project discussions to modify policy or guidelines without clearly notifying the community as a whole and, especially, without notifying the folks who care about the policy or guideline in question enough to watchlist that policy it is bad for the process, as is illustrated here where the second RFC which grew out of an attempt to implement and expand the first discussion at the affected guideline page is struggling to find consensus and is throwing doubt on the original RFC. We're already seeing disputes arising out of the first RFC and disagreements over whether or not it ought to be implemented. I'm hoping that the second RFC will be adopted by consensus (the good Drmies says, above, that he feels that it should be, but the last time I looked I thought it was pretty close) but, frankly, I'm hoping for that more to legitimize the original RFC and avoid the disruption that will otherwise result as I am the fact that I support the result that was reached in the first RFC. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 23:51, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There is no bar on choosing a WikiProject as the venue for a properly constituted RfC. In fact, the procedure for starting an RfC on a policy issue as outlined at Wikipedia:Requests for comment #Request comment on articles, policies, or other non-user issues begins "1. Edit the talk page of the article or project page that you are interested in. Create a new section at the bottom of the talk page." (my emphasis). Is anyone seriously contending that WP:WikiProject Ethnic groups is not a good venue for discussing more general issues arising at articles such as African Americans?

The procedure continues "2. Choose a category and insert an RfC template at the top of the new talk page section". There can be no doubt that this step was followed: This is the diff.

There is no requirement to do anything more once the question has been posed. Nevertheless, Wikipedia:Requests for comment does offer some further guidance at Wikipedia:Requests for comment #Publicizing an RfC: "there may not be enough editors to get sufficient input. To get more input, you may publicize the RfC by posting a notice at one or more of the following locations:" and lists Village Pump; Noticeboards; WikiProject talk; editors listed at the Feedback Request Service; talk pages of related articles. It is pertinent that the following advice is also given "Centralized discussion may be used for policy-related RfCs ..."". here is the diff of the notification at CD.

The RfC already was publicised wider than was required by our procedures and attracted a commensurably large response. Your short list of requirements represents good practice, but even if an RfC fell short of your standards, it still would not be invalidated. As it happens, the RfC in question met almost all of your concerns. - given that there are only 71 active watchers at Wikipedia talk:Image use policy, I'm not convinced that we lost much input to the RfC by not advertising the RfC there. The purpose of advertising an RfC is to attract a broad range of participants and I see no complaint that the RfC failed to do that. --RexxS (talk) 02:49, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Requests for comment page is not a policy or guideline. CONLIMITED is policy, being part of the Consensus policy, and it reads in pertinent part, "Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale. For instance, unless they can convince the broader community that such action is right, participants in a WikiProject cannot decide that some generally accepted policy or guideline does not apply to articles within its scope. WikiProject advice pages or template documentation written by a single individual or several participants who have not formally been approved by the community through the policy and guideline proposal process have no more status than an essay." (Emphasis added.) I acknowledge that the number of participants in the first RFC might make this not apply due to the "limited group" language in the first sentence and the "single individual or several participants" language in the second sentence, but if you look at the policy and guideline proposal process, which is also policy, it repeats what I said above and also says that the problem if it is not followed is that there may be "complaints about insufficient notice" and that is particularly true on controversial changes to policy. If the second RFC does not pass then we who work in dispute resolution are going to have to deal with the ambiguity caused by this and, I wouldn't be surprised if it does not end up before the Arbitration Committee to be resolved. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 21:03, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Policies and guidelines on Wikipedia are no more than reflections of practices and procedures that enjoy community consensus. When they have been proven, they are written down, but the text is not the policy. To say that WP:RfC is not policy or guideline and therefore has less standing than WP:CONLIMITED in determining whether an RfC is valid is to misunderstand the strength of our consensus process. No part of the process followed by the authors of the RfC on image galleries in infoboxes of ethnic articles was defective by the standards outlined at WP:RFC, nor for that matter was it defective by the standards of WP:CONLIMITED. You need to understand that CONLIMITED was developed to avoid the problems of "walled-gardens", where a small group (such as a WikiProject) might create their own policy that contradicted a more general project-wide consensus. There is no value to the project whatsoever of denigrating the consensus established by an RfC that had such a large participation, simply because of the venue. I do understand that working at the DRN makes you feel that you have to scrupulously follow the letter of whatever policy you can find, but that can devolve into process-wonkery, which benefits no-one. I could accept some of your argument if you could quote a precedent for any properly constituted RfC being declared invalid solely because it was conducted on the pages of a WikiProject, but I'm willing to have a small bet that you won't find one. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 23:58, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Promotion of Amortias and Miniapolis to full clerks

We are pleased to confirm trainees Amortias (talk · contribs) and Miniapolis (talk · contribs) as arbitration clerks, effective immediately. We also express our thanks and gratitude to all the other arbitration clerks for their diligent assistance with the arbitration process. For the Arbitration Committee, --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 02:41, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Cross-posted for the Arbitration Committee, Kharkiv07 (T) 02:47, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Promotion of Amortias and Miniapolis to full clerks

Need admin assist on GA nomination

Hey all, this isn't my area of expertise, so I could use some other adminly eyes. According to the messages from Legobot on this talk page, it appears that user Uploader & Solver (an editor with ~230 edits under his belt) has nominated Indian film Premam for GA status, then performed the review himself. That sounds highly sketchy. I also think it's sketchy that another user, Sm Sangeeth Sm77, who has a scant ~140 edits under his belt, commented at the GA a few minutes after Uploader made some changes. The two users have a number of weird editing intersections, so I have filed an SPI report about the two, but I would appreciate another admin taking a look at the GA nom/review and deciding what action should be taken on it. Much obliged, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 17:11, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Cyphoidbomb, I'm on it. I yanked the star already after seeing three or more grammatical errors in the first two paragraphs. Drmies (talk) 17:22, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Wait for the CU block--I'll let you do the SPI if you like, and you can throw in User:Abhi Kampurath, User:Salmanfaris143, and User:Pg krishna kumar as well. Drmies (talk) 17:29, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Standard offer unblock request from Md iet

Md iet (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

Recently, Md iet has requested an unblock on his talk page. As this user was blocked for instances of sockpuppetry, I believe this falls under the purview of the standard offer and I'd like to get some community feedback before unblocking. From the technical data, there does not appear to be any additional accounts or logged out editing. In addition, the latest sockpuppetry case occurred in July 2015. Personally, I feel an unblock here is fine. I just want a few extra sets of eyes in case I may have missed something or if there's any outstanding concerns. Best, Mike V • Talk 17:20, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm one of the admins who blocked User:Md iet in the past. He is mentioned in this AN3 case. Part of his talk page has been restored at User talk:Md iet/Archive 1 to provide background for this review. (The old block and sanction notices are still visible there). He is currently under a ban from the Dawoodi Bohra on all pages of Wikipedia, per WP:ARBIPA, due to a long-term pattern of non-neutral editing. Possibly the topic ban could have led to the socking, which continued from December 2014 thorugh April 2015, judging from the entries in WP:Sockpuppet investigations/Md iet/Archive. In his unblock request, Md iet says that he will continue to contribute to the talk pages of Dawoodi Bohra topics but his ban does not allow this. EdJohnston (talk) 18:01, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It is clear from EdJohnston's post that this user is not yet aware of what is expected of them if they return. Until they properly understand the nature of their topic ban and agree to it then this request is a non-starter. HighInBC 18:03, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've left Md iet a note about the topic ban concerns. I, too, would like him to address that before we consider an unblock. Mike V • Talk 20:55, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Support unblock, maintain topic ban (Non-administrator comment) - I suggest supporting this request, with specific advice that their topic ban remains in effect. They were blocked only three months for violating the topic ban, then indefinitely for socking (which no doubt also violated the topic ban). The last report on the SPI casepage was closed without confirmation, so in effect they have not socked since April 2015 - that's ten months of respecting the block, and should be sufficient to lift it. If they resume editing in violation of the topic ban, they'll be re-blocked real quick. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 21:09, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Once it is clear that they understand what is expected then I will likely agree with you. HighInBC 16:44, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Harassment and Threats from User Duikelmaan

Since popping up in January among a swarm of sock puppets on the Carl Raschke page, Duikelmaan (talk · contribs) has shown a pattern of harassment ([40], [41], etc.), including posting a threat as recently as last night, as can be seen here. Enough is really enough—someone needs to step in and stop this. :bloodofox: (talk) 17:53, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

OK. Drmies (talk) 18:02, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- Thank you, Drmies. :bloodofox: (talk) 18:04, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I am too slow I guess, was reviewing the contributions and rapidly coming to the same conclusion as Drmies. HighInBC 18:05, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No worries, I appreciate you taking a look at the situation. :bloodofox: (talk) 18:11, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

My pleasure, Bloodofox--and I think we get $15 for a NOTHERE block. For those new to the program, NOTHERE is also kind of a rubbish bin for all kinds of completely unacceptable behavior. And those comments--We No Who U R. Drmies (talk) 18:23, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I present to you a high-five and a share of my recently gained sock heads for your admin board invocation of the Caveman, Drmies. :) :bloodofox: (talk) 18:32, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Interaction ban help

I recently closed a ban request as successful, resulting in the imposition of an interaction ban and a topic-ban. Some of the involved editors have left notes for me, asking about the scope of the ban; they're well within the WP:BANEX situation, so I don't have any complains about their actions or words. While I'm familiar with closing discussions, I'm not familiar with how we typically interpret the implications of Ibans and Tbans, so I couldn't give full and adequate responses. Would someone familiar with administrating Ibans and Tbans (the processes themselves; no prior experience with this specific situation is necessary) contact me at my talk page? It's nothing secret; I just don't want to have to wade through the pile of off-topic comments and strife that's likely to happen if we have the discussion here. Nyttend (talk) 20:20, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'd recommend that the 5 editors-in-question stay away from any discussion that directly or indirectly involves the winningest topic. When one's in doubt, don't hang about. GoodDay (talk) 20:28, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Edit warring / illegitimate removal of templates

A user, Jodibusch (talk · contribs), removed legitimate templates from Isis jade, an article he/she created.

Here is a list of diffs:

Thank you. 64.134.64.190 (talk) 21:35, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The user Jodibusch (talk · contribs) left a message on my talk page falsely accusing me of "bullying" her/him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:64.134.64.190#Using_ip_address_as_opposed_to_your_name_when_messaging_new_users

64.134.64.190 (talk) 21:44, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

the anonymous User 64.134.64.190 (talk · contribs) messaged me on my talk page falsely accusing me of deliberately removing tags that I was not aware were not supposed to be removed. I am writing my first article of many human trafficking advocates for GEMS and other organizations for fair policy inclusion under the guidance of an experienced wikipedia editor. Operating anonymously under an IP address is not acceptable when targeting a new writer for Wikipedia.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Jodibusch (talk • contribs) 21:49, 4 February 2016‎

With all due respect, this is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. This includes IP Users that choose not to create an account, and is completely acceptable if the IP user is editing within the guidelines of Wikipedia. RickinBaltimore (talk) 21:53, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Removal of well-sourced information (such as person's legal/birth name) / edit warring (?)

I am reporting user 204.195.144.134 (talk · contribs). That user has (more than once) removed the birth name/legal name of Ira Korff/Yitzhak Aharon Korff.

Diffs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yitzhak_Aharon_Korff&diff=703333513&oldid=703322236
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yitzhak_Aharon_Korff&diff=prev&oldid=703256695
Another clear edit-warring edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yitzhak_Aharon_Korff&diff=703336563&oldid=703335581 64.134.64.190 (talk) 22:29, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Removed sourced information, such as that Korff's book was published by The Jewish Advocate:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yitzhak_Aharon_Korff&diff=prev&oldid=703334509

Talk page: Talk:Yitzhak_Aharon_Korff#Please_refrain_from_removing_his_birth.2Flegal_name_.2B_source.28s.29

Thank you. 64.134.64.190 (talk) 22:09, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm so sorry - I didn't think I removed the other name just reorganized - it still appears. Sorry. And on the book the original book wasn't published by The Jewish Advocate, and I don't see publishers mentioned elsewhere when books are mentioned and besides it's in the Amazon link to the English translation. Again, sorry. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.195.144.134 (talk) 22:16, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Some of the things 204.195.144.134 (talk · contribs) has done: removed a category (Category:Redstone family), deleted sources, falsely inserted "Yitzchok A. Korff" as Ira Korff's name/deleted "Ira Korff" as his legal/birth name, deleted sources I added that back up that "Ira Korff" is the person's name, inserted unsourced information/claims repeatedly. User 204.195.144.134 is deleting important basic information. If you take a look at the edit history of Yitzhak Aharon Korff, you will see that this has been happening over and over and over again over a long period of time (with other users and/or other user names/users who are apparently religious followers of Korff?). Also- no source says that "Yitzchok A. Korff" is Ira Korff's birth/legal name: not one. I took time to find sources. It's not right to delete a person's actual name and background (Redstone family) from Wikipedia and also give apparently disingenuous edit summaries such as here. 64.134.64.190 (talk) 22:48, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Also, user 204.195.144.134 re-added the honorific "Rabbi"/"Grand Rabbi" titles that I had deleted. (You can see: Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Biographies#Honorific_titles) 64.134.64.190 (talk) 22:48, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Also edit-warring/removing sourced info at Shari Redstone, the ex-wife of Ira Korff

User 204.195.144.134 (talk · contribs) is removing sourced info from Shari Redstone's article. She is the wife of Ira Korff.

Diffs:

Thank you. 64.134.64.190 (talk) 22:35, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Appealing topic ban

I was topic banned by administrator Drmies for making sock accusations while editing Mudar Zahran which he claims is under the Israeli-Palestinian conflict arbitration. When I made my first accusation, he left me a warning on the talk page to not do it again. While arguing with him, I made a very vague contrast between the edit warriors involved, and he considered it another accusation. So he topic banned me. After explaining, I am not convinced that his call was the right thing to do. I didn't even accuse anyone, I was just comparing. Furthermore, it seems to me that Mudar Zahran is anything but relevant to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He is a opposition figure in Jordan, being quoted by some Israeli newspapers doesn't make him a part of the conflict.Makeandtoss (talk) 22:32, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sock and meat accusations, complete with charges of collusion via Facebook involving German and Canadian IPs and poor old Smartse. Last edit in the talk page conversation is this one. Drmies (talk) 23:09, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse topic ban - Makeandtoss was warned to stop making unsupported accusations of sockpuppetry or they would be topic banned, they made another accusation of sockpuppetry, and they were topic banned. Simple. I agree it could not be read differently given the context. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 23:17, 4 February 2016 (UTC) (Non-administrator comment)[reply]
I didn't accuse for second time, he literally just notified me, why would I do it again?!. Still doesn't change the fact that the article is irrelevant to IP conflict. Makeandtoss (talk) 23:21, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Someone perhaps like the ones operating a sockpuppetry network or the ones rejecting is what you said and has been interpreted as being an accusation of sock / meat puppetry. You really did walk into it yourself. Blackmane (talk) 03:43, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I was just using this for discussion purposes not for accusing purposes Makeandtoss (talk) 08:34, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You were told not to discuss it or mention it at all. Indeed, why would you do it again? Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 13:24, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm lol, perhaps I didn't, which is what I am arguing...Makeandtoss (talk) 17:49, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse topic ban. Makeandtoss made a clear accusation of off-site organized socking which clearly crossed the line into personal attack, continued to try to justify it, and then repeated the attack after being told to stop. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 09:07, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Can someone please start elaborating on how this is relevant to the Palestinian Israeli conflict. Thanks Makeandtoss (talk) 17:49, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No need to elaborate. The article falls under the scope laid out in WP:ARBPIA; see, for instance Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Palestine-Israel_articles#Findings_of_fact. The disruption you caused stemmed from edits related to that article, in that area, governed by those sanctions. It is entirely possible that you are disruptive in other areas as well, in which case you can fall victim to a more general block or ban, but I doubt that you want to pursue that option. Drmies (talk) 18:39, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Question from an old timer for all you kids with your fancy toys...

So, I was just wondering, is there any utility for admins that enables any kind of "batch protection" or something like that, that would make it easier to protect a whole mess of articles (about 100 or so) at once, or I'm I just going to have to do it the old fashioned way? I ask because there's an unresponsive editor who is actively vandalizing the entire set of Interstate Highway Articles. A few representative examples: [42] [43] [44] He edits under a wide range of IP addresses (both IPv4 and IPv6) and throwaway accounts. There's no way to rangeblock or anything like that. We're gonna have to semi protect the entire set. Is there an expedited way to do that, or are we just going to have to go through each one? Thanks in advance for ideas... --Jayron 32 01:23, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Jayron32: Yes, Twinkle has a mass protect function (I was cosnidering using it for this very case, having just blocked a few IPs at AIV). The best way to do it is to create a new page (eg User:HJ Mitchell/Sandbox 3), and add link to every page you want to protect (you can put in a bullet point list if you want it neat and tidy, but you don't need any formatting at all apart from the links). Then select "p-batch", assuming you have Twinkle installed. Or just stick them on my sandbox and I'll do it. I should be around for another half an hour. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 01:38, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

After blocking another sock, I used Twinkle to mass-protect all the articles in that category. Only for a week, but it's easy enough to do it again and for longer if need be. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 01:57, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You could also cascade protect a template that is on all of them. That's how they do the main page. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 02:04, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Which is, I guess, what HJ Mitchell was suggesting. My way is faster, though, if the template is already on the pages.

···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 02:06, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's not something I've ever tried to use, but I thought cascade protection only worked for full-protection? Courcelles (talk) 06:42, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly. It's been a while since I used it. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 06:45, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that is correct. If it worked for anything below full protection, a non-admin would be able to adjust the protection of any page at will by just editing the cascade-protected page ... and they're not supposed to be able to do that. Graham87 11:28, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Big thanks to everyone here who pitched in and helped out. Next beer's on me... --Jayron 32 11:50, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If you delete and then restore a page, make sure to recreate the link to Wikidata

When a page on en.wp gets deleted, the link to it from Wikidata is automatically deleted. However, when the page is restored the link to Wikidata is not restored with it and needs to be readded manually.

I've just become aware of this after I spotted the link to the Clapham Junction rail crash article here being removed from d:Q5125870 by user:DoRD. Upon checking what had happened (as I know them not to be a vandal) I spotted that they had deleted (accidentally) and then restored the article. I've recreated the link at Wikidata.

Accidents happen, and there are also legitimate reasons why pages might be deleted and then restored (for example history merges), so I'm posting here to make more people aware that if you do delete and then restore a page, for any reason, please remember to recreate the link at Wikidata. If you aren't sure how, just ping me or anyone else active at the project or ask at d:Wikidata:Project chat. Thryduulf (talk) 16:45, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I am assuming the automatic deletion occurs as Wikidata? Is there no way to delay the automatic deletion so that only pages deleted for more than say a day get deleted? I lack a technical understanding of how this works.

I don't really do cross project work, and I think it is unlikely that every admin is going to know to do this. A solution that does not involve that would be much more effective. HighInBC 16:49, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The deletion dose occur at Wikidata, and it is attributed to the person deleting the article here (the same thing happens when a page is moved). I have no idea if delaying this would be feasible or not. I think better might be for a restoration to automatically restore the link, but again I don't know how this would be done - and I'm not even sure who to ping to ask. Thryduulf (talk) 17:06, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a more useful place to put this? Not that it is not useful here, but I mean some sort of really obvious prompt REMEMBER TO RESTORE THE WIKIDATA LINKS when people undelete? Only in death does duty end (talk) 17:08, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Err, whichever MediaWiki namespace page generates text on special:Undelete is my only thought, but I'd rather not edit something like that without discussion first. Thryduulf (talk) 17:14, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for pointing this out, Thryduulf, and sorry for the trouble. I had 200+ sockpuppet-created redirects to delete, and the list I fed to the script must have included the target page by mistake. —DoRD (talk) 17:15, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Copy/paste move problems around Circuit City

I'm really not sure exactly what's happened here, but User:FoxNewsChannelFan has been doing some strange moves and copy/paste things at Circuit City and Circuit City Stores, Inc. On Feb 3, they moved page Circuit City to Circuit City Stores because "...it is a brand and I want to use the page as a brand", and then went on to create a new version of Circuit City. But in the recent history of the new version, there's a 30kb copy/paste from the original article (now moved to Circuit City Stores, Inc). And in FoxNewsChannelFan's edit history there are various moves, copy/pastes, and redirects between the various titles. I really don't have the brainpower to do anything right now, but something clearly needs to be unraveled - can anyone help? (I'm just about to notify FoxNewsChannelFan and ask them to stop what they're doing until it's sorted out). Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:24, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm wondering whether the best approach might be to nuke the new Circuit City, move the original back from Circuit City Stores, Inc, and then try to discuss things with FoxNewsChannelFan and see what they're trying to achieve? Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:30, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like we were on the same page. I deleted it and moved Circuit City, Inc. back and restored the inbetween revisions. -- John Reaves 17:36, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That's great, thanks. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 18:33, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Requesting revdel

This was revdeleted like the IP's other comments as purely disruptive, but this diff still has the signed version. 96.237.20.21 (talk) 17:54, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Done. -- John Reaves 17:59, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

v t e Noticeboards
Wikipedia's centralized discussion, request, and help venues. For a listing of ongoing discussions and current requests, see the dashboard. For a related set of forums which do not function as noticeboards see formal review processes.
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Category:Wikipedia noticeboards

v t e Noticeboards
Wikipedia's centralized discussion, request, and help venues. For a listing of ongoing discussions and current requests, see the dashboard. For a related set of forums which do not function as noticeboards see formal review processes.
General	Administrators Main Incidents Bots Bureaucrats Centralized discussion Closure requests Education Interface admins Main Page errors Open proxies VRT Oversight User permissions
Articles and content	Biographies of living persons Copyrights Questions on media Problems Dispute resolution External links Fringe theories Neutral point of view Original research Pending changes Reliable sources Resource requests Scalable vector graphics Spam Blacklist Whitelist Style Titleblacklist Translation
Page handling	History merges Mergers Splits Moves Protection Importation XfD Articles Redirects Categories Templates Files Miscellany Undeletion
User conduct	Conflict of interest Contributor copyright Edit warring and 3RR Sanctions Personal restrictions General sanctions Contentious topics Sockpuppets Usernames (Requests for comment) Vandalism
Other	Arbitration Committee noticeboard Requests Enforcement Edit filters Requested False positives Questions Help desk Teahouse Reference desk New articles Requests for comment Village pump Policy Technical Proposals Idea lab WMF Miscellaneous WikiProject proposals Discussions for discussion
Category:Wikipedia noticeboards