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Administrative discussions

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#RfC closure review request at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 433#Closing (archived) RfC: Mondoweiss

(Initiated 29 days ago on 16 April 2024) - already the oldest thread on the page, and at the time of this comment, there has only been one comment in the past nine days. starship.paint (RUN) 03:15, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

 Doing... —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 01:25, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Requests for comment

Talk:Awdal#RFC - Habr Awal/Isaaq clan

(Initiated 142 days ago on 24 December 2023) ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 21:17, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

RfC: Tasnim News Agency

(Initiated 92 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)

RfC: Change INFOBOXUSE to recommend the use of infoboxes?

(Initiated 60 days ago on 15 March 2024) Ready to be closed. Charcoal feather (talk) 17:02, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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

Talk:Libertarian Party (Australia)#Conservatism

(Initiated 46 days ago on 29 March 2024) RfC template expired. TarnishedPath^talk 01:22, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

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)

WP:RSN#RFC:_The_Anti-Defamation_League

(Initiated 38 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)

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)

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)

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

(Initiated 29 days ago on 15 April 2024) No new comments in eight days. TarnishedPath^talk 01:33, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

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)

Deletion discussions

XFD backlog

V	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Total
CfD	0	0	19	21	40
TfD	0	0	0	1	1
MfD	0	0	2	3	5
FfD	0	0	2	2	4
RfD	0	0	23	48	71
AfD	0	0	0	0	0

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

(Initiated 55 days ago on 21 March 2024) HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 20:38, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

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

(Initiated 54 days ago on 22 March 2024) HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 20:38, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

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

(Initiated 52 days ago on 23 March 2024) HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 13:39, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

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

(Initiated 21 days ago on 24 April 2024) HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 20:38, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Other types of closing requests

Talk:Maersk Hangzhou#Second merge proposal

(Initiated 111 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)

@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)

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)

Talk:1985_Pacific_hurricane_season#Proposed_merge_of_Hurricane_Ignacio_(1985)_into_1985_Pacific_hurricane_season

(Initiated 105 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)

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)

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

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)

Talk:Rupert_Sheldrake#Talkpage_"This_article_has_been_mentioned_by_a_media_organization:"_BRD

(Initiated 28 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)

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)

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)

Talk:Press_Your_Luck_scandal#Separate_articles

(Initiated 12 days ago on 2 May 2024) Please review this discussion. --Jax 0677 (talk) 01:42, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

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)

Pages recently put under extended-confirmed protection

Report

Pages recently put under extended confirmed protection (30 out of 7751 total) () WATCH Page Protected Expiry Type Summary Admin Draft:CaseOh 2024-05-15 02:40 indefinite create Repeatedly recreated Dennis Brown Poot 2024-05-15 00:14 2025-05-15 00:14 edit,move Persistent sock puppetry; requested at WP:RfPP Daniel Quinlan Spore (2008 video game) 2024-05-14 23:39 2024-11-14 23:39 edit,move Persistent vandalism from (auto)confirmed accounts; requested at WP:RfPP Daniel Quinlan Jewish Institute for National Security of America 2024-05-14 06:51 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement Doug Weller Nava Mau 2024-05-14 03:45 indefinite edit,move Persistent disruptive editing: per RFPP; will also log as CTOPS action Daniel Case Andrey Belousov 2024-05-14 03:31 indefinite edit,move Community sanctions enforcement: per RFPP and WP:RUSUKR Daniel Case Category:Hamas 2024-05-13 23:01 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement Izno Sde Teiman detention camp 2024-05-13 20:49 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: WP:ARBPIA Ymblanter Çankaya Mansion 2024-05-13 14:18 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement, WP:GS/AA Rosguill Second Battle of Latakia 2024-05-13 13:39 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement ScottishFinnishRadish Alien 2024-05-13 13:23 indefinite move lower to semi, time heals; requested at WP:RfPP The Night Watch Shays' Rebellion 2024-05-13 08:08 2025-05-13 08:08 move dang it. Not used to move protection, I guess.... Dennis Brown Chuck Buchanan Jr. 2024-05-13 02:01 indefinite create Repeatedly recreated; requested at WP:RfPP Daniel Quinlan Animal stereotypes of Jews in Palestinian discourse 2024-05-13 01:24 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: per ARBPIA Daniel Case Michael Ealy 2024-05-13 01:22 2025-05-13 01:22 edit,move Persistent vandalism: racist swinery Drmies Template:Nelson, New Zealand 2024-05-13 00:51 indefinite move Highly visible template that is vulnerable to macron vandalism Schwede66 Hebrew University of Jerusalem 2024-05-12 21:47 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: per ARBPIA Daniel Case Interracial marriage 2024-05-12 19:14 2024-11-12 19:14 edit,move Persistent sockpuppetry RoySmith Template:FAQ/FAQ 2024-05-12 10:48 indefinite create Repeatedly recreated Justlettersandnumbers User:Arjayay/Rang HD 2024-05-12 10:46 indefinite edit,move Persistent sockpuppetry: WP:Sockpuppet investigations/Rang HD -- requested at WP:RFPP Favonian Rangiya 2024-05-12 09:27 2024-10-16 06:56 edit,move Persistent sockpuppetry: confirmed socks edit the article Ymblanter Vaush 2024-05-12 07:35 indefinite edit,move per WP:CT/BLP Primefac Timeline of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in January–June 2015 2024-05-12 04:52 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement Johnuniq Later-no-harm criterion 2024-05-12 03:07 2024-06-12 03:07 edit,move Edit warring / content dispute: Protected per a complaint at WP:AN3 EdJohnston Draft:Lewis Raymond Taylor 2024-05-11 20:41 2024-08-11 20:41 edit,move Persistent sock puppetry; requested at WP:RfPP Daniel Quinlan Lewis Raymond Taylor 2024-05-11 20:35 indefinite create Persistent sockpuppetry JJMC89 2024 Kharkiv offensive 2024-05-11 12:11 indefinite edit,move Community sanctions enforcement: WP:GS/RUSUKR --requested at WP:RFPP Favonian Drake (musician) 2024-05-11 09:32 indefinite edit,move Contentious topics enforcement for WP:CT/BLP; requested at WP:RfPP Daniel Quinlan Slovenia 2024-05-11 09:29 2024-05-18 09:29 edit edit wars on the page Tone Timeline of the Israel–Hamas war (7 May 2024 – present) 2024-05-11 03:48 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: per RFPP and ARBPIA Daniel Case

WP:AN/CXT

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

There is consensus to move forward with Mathglot's proposal (see #Proposal), which will cause a mass deletion of the pages on Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review, with the option to save certain pages from deletion within a two-week window. As part of the proposal, there is also a consensus to amend WP:X2 in the manner S Marshall specifies in this edit.

Opposition to this change revolved around the argument that the articles which would qualify for mass deletion should be improved instead of deleted. Elinruby proposed alternatively that we should focus on recruiting editors fluent in foreign languages, Mathglot initially proposed to mass-draftify the articles instead of deleting, and Sam Walton argued that the articles contained valid content that didn't deserve mass deletion.

A majority of other editors, however, argued that many of the articles involved are poorly sourced BLPs that have the potential to harm their subjects if left unimproved. Given the large number of articles and low number of editors involved, it will likely be months before these articles are improved. Additionally, a user who is not fluent in both of the languages involved in a translation will not be able to adequately evaluate the validity of the machine-translated content; the article may appear unproblematic to such a user, but the content translation tool could have subtly altered the meaning of statements to something false.

In short, the consensus is that in the long run, the encyclopedia would be better off if these articles were mass deleted. Respectfully, Mz7 (talk) 23:22, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

Addendum: The process for working out how to cause the mass deletion has been established. To mark an article for retention, please strike it out. To unambiguously identify an article for deletion, include the word "kill" in the same line as the article. The articles will be deleted on or after June 6, 2017. Thank you for your patience. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:16, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

---

Hi, Wikipedians. I wanted to give you an update on WP:AN/CXT. Since that discussion was closed about eight months or so ago, we've cleared out about 10% of the articles involved, which were the easiest 10%. The work is now slowing down as more careful examination is needed and as the number of editors drops off, and I'm sad to report that we're still finding BLP issues. The temporary speedy deletion criterion, X2, is of little use because it's phrased as a special case of WP:SNOW and I'm not being allowed to improve it. The "it's notable/AFD is not for cleanup" culture at AFD is making it hard for me to remove these articles as well, so I'm spending hours trying to get rid of material generated by a script in seconds. I'm sorry but I'm discouraged and I give up. Recommend the remainder are nuked to protect the encyclopaedia.—S Marshall T/C 23:15, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

For more context on this issue, please see Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#X2 revision. Cheers, Tazerdadog (talk) 23:33, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Update: This link is now located at .../Archive_61#X2 revision. Mathglot (talk) 01:10, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your work on this, S Marshall, and I don't fault you for your choice. - Dank (push to talk) 19:49, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

• Isn't there some way to use the sortware to delete all of these in bulk, if only as a one-time thing? Seems like a huge waste of time if it's being done manually by hand. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 00:07, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

• Easily doable as a batch-deletion. I could have it wrapped up in 15 minutes. Unfortunately community consensus did not lean towards approving that option. In fact, most CXT creations which have been reviewed needed cleanup but turned out to be acceptable articles. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 21:00, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

I would support a nuke, a mass draftification, or some loosening of X2. The current situation is not really tenable due to the density of BLP violations. However, ultimately, the broader community needs to discuss what the appropriate action is under the assumption that we are not going to get much more volunteer time to manually check these articles. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:54, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

• No, the broader community doesn't need to discuss that. It's completely needless and the community has had a huge discussion already. All that needs to happen is for WT:CSD to let me make one bold edit to a CSD that was badly-worded from the get-go, and we'll all be back on track. That's it. The only problem we have is that there are so many editors who want to tell me how to do it, and so few editors willing to get off their butts and do it.—S Marshall T/C 19:34, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

• Restored from archive, as it's unhelpful for this to remain unresolved.—S Marshall T/C 17:30, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

• Support systematic nuke/ revision of X2 to enable this mess to be cleared up. It's not fair that @S Marshall: is being prevented from improving the encyclopedia like this. Amisom (talk) 15:21, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
• Support @S Marshall:'s revision or a nuke from orbit. I wasn't active when this situation was being discussed originally, but having now read over the discourse on the matter, it is clear that our current approach isn't working. No one else is stepping up to help S Marshall do this absurd amount of reviewing, leaving us stuck with thousands of machine-translated BLP violations. It's all well and good to say that AfD isn't cleanup and deletion solves nothing and we should let articles flower patiently into beautiful gardens, but if no one's pulling the weeds and watering the sprouts, the garden isn't a garden, it's a weed-riddled disaster. Give the gardener a weed whacker already. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 09:17, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
• Support the bold edit required to X2; it's true, of course, that AfD is not clean up- but neither should it be a barrier to clean up. In any case, moving a backlog from one place to another is hardly helpful. — O Fortuna! ^{Imperatrix mundi.} 09:39, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
• Question @Elinruby and Yngvadottir: As users who (from a quick glance) seem to have been active looking through these articles, do you think the quality is on average worse than a typical random encyclopedia article, and if so, bad enough that speedy deletion would be preferable to allowing them to be improved over time as with any other article? I don't mean to imply that this is necessarily the case, but I think it should be the bar for concluding whether mass speedy deletion is the correct answer. Sam Walton (talk) 11:22, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
• (I wish I'd seen this earlier; thanks for the ping. I feel I have totally let down S Marshall; I just couldn't stand it any more.) On the whole ... yes. Support deletion of those remaining that have not been marked as ok/fixed. As I tried to explain in the initial discussion, the basic premise here is incorrect: as it states somewhere at Pages needing translation into English, a machine translation is worse than no article. It will almost always be either almost impossible to read, incorrect (for example, mistranslating names as ordinary nouns, or omitting negatives ...) or both. Some of these translations have been ok; many have been woefully incomplete (just the start of the lede), and they all require extremely careful checking. Yes, what lies in wait may include BLP violations. I sympathize with the article creators, and I am usually an inclusionist; I put hours of work into checking and improving some of these, and I'm not the only one. But please, enough. We'd wind up with decent articles faster if these were deleted, and the majority that are bad do a disservice to their topics. Yngvadottir (talk) 12:52, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

• You haven't let me down. You've given me a truckload of support with this.—S Marshall T/C 13:47, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

• Still oppose mass deletion -- @Sam Walton: What she said: Thank you the ping; this discussion was seeming a bit reiterative and I had mentally checked out. Like @Yngvadottir: I have put considerable effort into some of these articles. In fact, two or three of them are my own translations, which I would not have attempted without the translation tool, btw. Some are from my translations on French law, and I think 1) they cover important and previously missing topics and 2) they are high-quality technical translations. In most cases they speak for themselves. A couple are not perfect, reflecting the state of the French article, yes, and need work. But while these articles -- I am speaking here specifically of my own translations that appear on this list -- may be imperfect they are still reasonable stubs that can be built upon, and they also support more important articles by helping to prevent redlinks in some of the top-level articles on French law and also the French colonial legacy in Rwanda and the Congos etc. See Biens mal acquis for example. That was painful but I am proud of that translation. I have also encountered other people's translations on that list that made me proud of Wikipedia; the one on a cryptology algorithm for example comes to mind, or Essai sur les mœurs et l'esprit des nations. I am an inclusionist, I have to admit, and yes yes, great wrongs and all, but I do think it is important that (for example) articles on Congolese history mention that there have been civil wars (beyond "unrest", and no, I am not kidding). The worst BLP problems I am aware of are in the articles on Dilma Rousseff and I don't believe they are on this list or were created with the tool. Some of the worst PNT pages I have seen predate the translation tool, for instance Notre-Dame de la Garde, which took me years to finish, and Annees folles which is as we speak an incredible mess requiring research in addition to copy-editing and translation. Yngvadottir is correct in saying that inappropriately translated proper nouns is a frequent problem. I recall a Hubert de Garde de Vins who became "wine", and yes, this did reduce the sentence to gibberish. It's annoying enough to make me wanna regex. But. Not mass deletion. I suggest case-by-case intervention in the case of egregious problems with particular users. It's not as though more that a very few users even try to translate. Or perhaps we should revise the criteria for translation user privileges. But even there -- one of the people tagged as delete on sight has created a number of skeleton articles about Quebec. These articles should be be fleshed out not deleted; we should have articles about Quebec. Some of the authors are unquestionably notable, the equivalent in my small culture of Simone de Beauvoir or Colette or Andre Gide. It seems to me that an article that says: this author was born, drank coffee, won the Governor-General's award and wrote these books, is better than having nothing at all. The placeholder takes the topic from unknown unknown to known unknown, or little-known in this context, I guess. We do know a little more about the folk dances of Honduras because there is a very bad article, for which I have done what I could. There are many different problems with the articles on this list. Someone has created multiple articles about, apparently every madrassa in central Tunis. Who am I? Some of the articles I have rescued at PNT were about the medieval wines of Provence, which might seem equally trivial to some. Some of the important but very flawed articles I have noted maybe should not be in the article mainspace -- I am thinking of the ones about the Virgin of Guadeloupe, pretty much everything flagged Mexican historical documents, the Spanish procession of the flowers, etc)--but an interested Spanish speaker could build these out. These topics are unquestionably notable. We should have an article about the Virgin of Guadeloupe, really, people, we should. My suggestion would be recruiting. We desperately need a Portuguese speaker and additional help with Spanish. Some of the unreferenced BLPs sitting around appear to be very fine even though they are unreferenced, and may in fact veer into fluff. But they don't approach liability for libel if that's the concern. I avoid them, personally, because I have in the past deciphered Abidjan l33t about a beloved soccer player, only to be told that we don't as a matter of policy consider these leagues notable. Fine then, they should not be on the PNT to-do list. I'd love to see the translation workflow improved but we should be encouraging the people expanding our horizons is what I think. I am sorry for the very long answer but I appear to be a voice wailing in the desert on this topic and I have now said pretty much the above many times now. Nobody seems to care so oh well, it's not like I don't have other work I can do on the history of the Congo and figuring out what Dilma Rousseff had to say about her impeachment. Reliable sources say she was railroaded (NPR for one) and that is not included in the article at all right now. The articles on Congolese history airily write off genocide and slaughter as "some unrest". In a world where these things are true I really don't care whether on not we find a reference for that Eurovision winner. Someone who cares can do that and I think ethnocentrism is a bigger issue on Wikipedia that these translation attempts. Move the ones that don't meet a minimum standard to some draft space or something. Educate the people who are creating this articles instead of shaking your finger at them. The article creation process is daunting enough and I myself have had to explain to new page patrollers that this punk band is in fact seminal whether you have heard of them or not and whether or not they sing in a language that you can understand. But I have been here enough to do that and I assure you, most people will not. Wikipedia wants to know why its editors grow fewer cough cough wikipedia, lookee here. I will shortly wikilink some of the examples I mention above for easier show-and-tell, for the benefit of anyone who has read this far. Thanks. Elinruby (talk) 20:38, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

• Support removal of these attempted articles (especially to avoid BLP problems laying around). Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:00, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
• Support [1] I'd say "do a disservice to their topics" is a mild way of putting it. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 14:08, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose blanket deletion. Having just checked a bunch of the remaining articles I found plenty of perfectly reasonable, non-BLP articles here, and any bad articles I did find were certainly not in greater number than you would find by hitting Random Article, nor were they particularly awful; the worst offenses I found were poor but understandable English. There's a lot of valid content here, especially on non-English topics which we need to do a better job of writing about. FWIW I'll happily put some time into going through this list. Sam Walton (talk) 14:12, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Please take a look at the 20 articles I just reviewed here; none had any issues greater than needing a quick copyedit. Sam Walton (talk) 14:38, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
    • @Samwalton9: Thanks. It's been a long, hard slog. I appreciate it if any of these can be saved. However, did you check for accuracy? It's possible for a machine translation to be misleadingly wrong. And the miserable translation tool the WMF provides usually doesn't even attempt filmographies: look at that specific section of Asier Etxeandia. This is not acceptable in a BLP. Somebody who reads the original language (Spanish? Catalan?) needs to go through that article sentence by sentence and film by film. Unfortunately it's not a matter of notability (that's almost always attested to by the original article), it's a matter of whether we have time to save this article. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:27, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
      • That names of works likely don't get automatically translated properly is a good point that I hadn't considered, thanks for pointing that out. If that's one of the primary issues then I'd favour a semi-automated removal of "filmography" or similar sections, if possible. It just seems that there's a lot of perfectly good content in here. Sam Walton (talk) 15:47, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
        • I looked at the first one you listed, it is a mass of non-BLP compliant (non-neutral, no-inline source) material. Letting stuff like that hang around is not just bad for that BLP but as an example for other BLPs to be created and remain non-compliant. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:08, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
          • Sam Walton, you didn't answer Yngvadottir's question. Can you speak the source languages? Remember that because of the defective way that software feature was implemented, you cannot assume that the translator speaks English and in many cases they obviously couldn't. (In practice the source language matters a lot because the software accuracy varies by the language pair. Indo-European languages are often but not always okay, and Spanish-English translations have particularly high accuracy, approaching 80%. Japanese-English, for example, has much, much lower accuracy.) So the correctness of the translation must be, and can only be, checked by someone with dual fluency in the source language and English.

            In the real world you can establish some rules-of-thumb. For example, you can quite safely assume that everything translated by Rosiestep is appropriate and can be retained. The editorial skills of the different translators varied very widely.

            All in all the best solution is for a human who's fluent in the source language and English to look at each of these articles and form an intelligent judgment. The thing that's preventing this solution is that, having looked at the content and formed the judgment, I can't then remove a defective article, because the defective wording in WP:CSD#X2 encourage sysops to decline the deletion unless it's a WP:SNOW case... so I've got to start a full AfD. Every. Single. Time. The effort for me to clean up is out of all proportion to the effort editors put into creating the damn things with a script.

            If you don't want the articles nuked (and that's a reasonable position), then please support the X2 revision I have proposed.—S Marshall T/C 17:37, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

When you say "the first one you listed" are you talking about Tomokazu Matsuyama? Yes, if so. it is indeed an unreferenced BLP but... I suspect five minutes of quality time with Google would take it out of that category, and it's essentially a resume, something like the placeholder articles I mentioned above. I think that perhaps we are better off knowing that this Japanese contemporary artist exists. Why not do a wikiproject to improve these like the one we just had on Africa top-level articles? It does seem to me that you could use a break from this wikitask and a little gamification might well get er done. I share your sentiment that in some ways we have our fingers in the dyke here, but the dyke does serve a purpose I think...In short I respectfully disagree with the current approach to these articles. Elinruby (talk) 21:05, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Break

@Alanscottwalker: I found a reference for his influences in less time than it took to add the ref code....Elinruby (talk) 19:43, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Elinruby: Did you mean to ping me back here, many days after I commented, to tell me you found a pretty crappy commercial source? When I looked at it awhile ago, the article was filled with non-npov/non-referenced/BLP violating text. It is, thus, no comfort that since I commented, awhile ago, someone has according to their edit 'removed the worst of the puffery', and you added that crappy commercial source - its still not policy compliant (even if it is marginally better, since I flagged it) Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:03, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

@Alanscottwalker: I brought you back here to tell you that while it may be have been unsourced, fixing this is extremely trivial. I don't give a hoot about this particular article, but his gallery is not a "crappy commercial source" imho and if you want people to fix then article then you should enunciate your problem with it. Sorry if that doesn't fit your preconceptions Elinruby (talk) 00:51, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Adding a non-independent crappy commercial source is not fixing. It is selling. We are not in the business of selling. What you call "trivial" sourcing does nothing to fix just makes it worse - "trivial" should have tipped you off. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 08:25, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

@AlanscottWalker: Um no.... I was using the term in its software development meaning. I apologize for picking the wrong dialect to make my point. I thought, since you were critiquing the software tool, you might know something about software even though you don't seem to be familiar with the features of this instance of it, or for that matter with a representative sample of its users. Commericial, hmm. The same could be said of my article about the thousand-year-old Papal vintages, you know. That vineyard is selling wine today. Is that article also commercial crap? Since it is a direct translation from French Wikipedia, are you saying that French Wikipedia is commercial crap? You really don't want to make me argue this point, seriously. Incidentally what is with the arbitrary insertion of a break in the discussion? Consider, for just a moment, that I might actually have a point. Entertain the notion for a minute. Why are you belittling my statement? Elinruby (talk) 21:57, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Critiquing software tool? No, I was clearly critiquing an article in English on the English Wikipedia. And I was referring to the crappy commercial source - you pinged me, remember, so that I would know you added it to the article. That was not done in French, it was done in English. As for break, that is your doing, why should I have any idea why you added the crappy source, and then wanted to tell me about it in this break. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:54, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

@Alanscottwalker: Let me use small words. CTX is software. Bad translation can happen with or without software. Lack of sources can happen without software. In software development "trivial" means "easy". Do you see now? Be careful who you patronize next time. 01:07, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

@S Marshall:I'd consider supporting your proposal, perhaps, once I have read it, but could you provide a link for we mere mortals who don't normally follow these proposals? I also disagree that all of these articles require a bilingual editor; some just need a few references and/or a copy edit. But you know I disagree at this point. And if you do, god help us, nuke all of these articles as opposed to one of the other courses of action I have (again) suggested above, please move mine to my draft space if you find them that objectionable. Some sort of clue as to what your issue is would also be nice. Elinruby (talk) 19:43, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

• The revision I want to make is this one. The intended effect is so that a human editor, who has reviewed the script-generated content and given it due consideration and exercise of judgment, can recommend the content for deletion and receive assistance rather than bureaucracy from our admin corps.

  The basic problem with these articles is that they are script generated and the scripts are unreliable. Exactly how unreliable they are varies according to the language pair, so for example Spanish-English translations are relatively good, while for example Japanese-English translations are relatively poor; and whether the articles contain specific grammatical constructions that the scripts have trouble with.

  You can test its accuracy, and I recommend you do. The script it used, during the problem period, was Google translate. I've just picked some sample text and run it through Google translate in various language pairs, first into a different language and then the translated text back into English, to see how it did. These were the results:-

Source text	Korean	Punjabi	Farsi
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition	Fourth and seventh years ago, our ancestors left the continent, a new country born in Liberty.	Four score and seven years on this continent, first our father a new nation, brought freedom and dedicated to the proposition	Four score and seven years ago our fathers on this continent, a new nation, the freedom brought, and dedicated to the proposition
And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him: And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.	And when he saw the multitude, he went up to the mountain, and his disciples came, and opened his mouth, and taught him, saying, Blessed are the souls of the poor: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.	Jesus saw the crowds up on the mountain, and when he sat, his disciples came to him and he opened his mouth, and the poor in spirit was teaching, that theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Yes: interestingly the algorithm interpolated "Jesus" into the text.)	And seeing the multitudes, he went to the mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came to him and he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying: Blessed are the poor in spirit: for the kingdom of heaven.
Editors agree not to publish biographical material concerning living people unless it is accurate	The editors agree not to post electrical materials about living people unless they are the correct person.	To publish the biographical material about the editor, it is right to disagree,	Editors agree to publish biographies of living people, unless it is accurate.

I encourage you to try these and other examples with different language pairs. Can you see why you need to speak the original language in order to copyedit accurately?—S Marshall T/C 22:00, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

But that is not a fair test since it magnifies any word choice errors. There *will* be errors, yes. We clean them up at WP:PNT --- ALL THE TIME. And no, it is not necessary to speak the language always, though it certainly help. I really suggest that maybe you just need a wikibreak from this task. Bad english can mostly be fixed. There are the occasional mysteries, yes. There are colloquialisms, yes. This does not justify wholesale destruction of good content. I was just here to get the link as I mentioned your proposal to one of my PNT colleagues; I need to go but I'll look at your proposal the next time I log in Elinruby (talk) 00:46, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

The liquor was strong but the meat was rotten.

Translation wonks will recognize the (apocryphal) story behind the sentence above, concerning literal mistranslations exacerbated from there-and-back translation. (The story perhaps originated after the NY World's Fair of 1964, which had a computer translation exhibit in the Russian Pavilion.) In any case, I'm just getting up to speed on this topic and will comment in more detail later.

Briefly: yes, you definitely have to speak the language to copyedit accurately. I'm actually in favor of a modification to WP:MACHINETRANSLATION to make it stronger. I fully agree with the worse than nothing statement in the policy now, but I'd go one step further: the only thing worse than a machine translation in an encyclopedia, is a machine translation that has been copyedited by a capable and talented monolingual (even worse: by someone who knows a bit of the language and doesn't know what s/he doesn't know) so that the result is beautiful, grammatical, smooth, stylish, wonderful English prose. As a translator, puh-LEEZ leave the crappy, horrible, machine-gobbledygook so that a translator can spot it easily, and fix it accurately. Copyediting it into proper English makes our job much harder.

If it's too painful to leave it exposed in main space, perhaps moving to Draft space could be an alternative. In fact, rather than a mass-delete, why not a mass-Draft-ify? (Apologies if someone has already said this, I'm still reading the thread.) More later. Mathglot (talk) 01:31, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

mass-Draftify would work for me. And yeah I disagree with you too a little, but I knew that. My point is, we all agree that an issue exists so what do we do? I also have some more reading to do before I comment on what S Marshall (talk · contribs) is proposing. I have a story about the policy but I want to make sure it pertains to this discussion. Elinruby (talk) 22:03, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

• Elinruby is certainly correct to say this "wasn't a fair test", because going through the algorithm twice doubles the error rate. But a lot of people reading this discussion will speak only English so this is the only way I can show them what the problem is ---- without that context, they may well find this, and the original discussion at WP:AN/CXT, rather impenetrable because they won't understand the gravity of the concerns.

  It was even more unfair because it was me who selected the examples and I don't like machine translations. In order to illustrate my point I went with non-European languages and convoluted sentence structures. If you tried the same exercise with a verse from "Green Eggs and Ham" then you'd get perfect translations 99% of the time. (It tripped me up with the Sermon on the Mount because quite clearly, the algorithm recognised that it was dealing with a Bible verse, which I found fascinating.)

  The script is particularly likely to do badly with double-negatives, not-unless constructions, adverbs of time ("since", "during", "for a hundred years"), and the present progressive tense, in some language pairs.

  It would certainly be possible to construct a fairer text using more random samples of language.—S Marshall T/C 10:27, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

@S Marshall: alright, I grant you that there aren't many bilinguals here. This *is* the problem in my view. I'll also specify that I don't claim expertise outside the Romance languages, and very little for some of those. But allow me please, since I know you speak or at least read French, to propose a better example. There are common translation errors that can occur, depending on which tool exactly was used. The improperly-translated name (nom propre) problem was real but is now mostly fixed. The fact that a writer whose novels were written in French gave them titles in French should come as a shock to nobody. The correct format for a bibliography in such cases *is* title in the actual language of the words in the book, webpage or whatever. Translated title, if the title is not in English, goes in the optional trans-title (or is it trans_title?) field of the cite template. Language switch to be set if at all possible. If it is not, let me know, and I can reduce the number of foreign words that English wikipedia needs to look at. So. In all languages, pretty much, words like fire and sky and take tend to be both native to the original people and likely to carry additional meanings, as in take an oath, take a bus, take a break etc. On the other hand what the software tool does do extremely well is know the correct translation for arcane or specialized terms, often loanwords, like caravel or apse or stronghold. These words are in my recognition vocabulary not my working vocabulary and using the tool in certain instances saves many lookups. When there is a strong degree of ambiguity or divergence in meaning (like the example on my user page) then THEN yes a fluent or very advanced user is needed. There are known divergences that a bilingual would spot that an English speaker would not. Sure. "Je l'aime beaucoup, mon mari" is a good example. But the fact that this is true does not prove that every line of every one of these articles still needs to be checked before they can be permitted to continue to sully Wikipedia, or that each of these lines needs to be checked by you personally. If you feel overwhelmed, take a break. Elinruby (talk) 21:57, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

• I speak English, French, German, Gibberish and Filth.  :) Joking aside -- I'm not concerned about noms propres. I'm concerned when the script perverts or even inverts the meaning of the source text. It's quite hard to give you an example because the examples I've discovered have all been deleted, and there's only the one non-English language we share, but perhaps an administrator will confirm for you the sorry history of Daphné Bürki. It was created as a machine translation of fr:Daphné Bürki and the en.wiki version said she was married to Sylvain Quimène, citing this source. Check it out; the source doesn't say that. In fact she was married to Travis Bürki, at least at one time (can't say whether she's still married to him). We had a biographical article where the subject was married to the wrong bloke. It's not okay to keep these around.

  Draftification is exactly the same as deleting them. Nobody is going to fix these up in draft space. The number of editors who're competent to fix them is small, and the amount of other translation work those editors have on their hands is very large, and it includes a lot of mainspace work that's more urgent than fixing raw machine translations in draft space, and it always will; we can get back to fixing draft space articles about individual artworks when every Leibniz-prizewinning scientist and every European politician with a seat on their national parliament has a biography. (We're on target never to achieve that. The democratic process means new politicians get elected and replaced faster than their biographies get translated from foreign-language wikipedias.)

  I don't object to draftifying these articles if that's the face-saving solution that lets us pretend we're being all inclusionist about it, but it would be more honest to nuke them all from orbit.—S Marshall T/C 00:51, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

• I am just coming back to this. I agree about the relatively few translators and the large amount of work, and yet, we so fundamentally disagree. Some of the designated articles do are, in my opinion, within the top percentiles in article quality. Others have in fact been fixed up. You and I consulted about one once. Others, yes, need work, and I at least do get to articles that I say I will get to. Slowly, at times, sure. I have no problem with articles that don't meet a certain standard not going to mainspace, but I don't see why you singly out the translation tool as your criterion. I mention noms propres because I have mentioned one above from Notre-Dame de la Garde where Commander de Vins came across as wine, and this did make the sentence gibberish. But that article did not come out of the CTX tool. Ihave no idea what the Leibniz prize is, but I am not sure it's more notable, in the abstract, than Marcel Proust, but fine. Work on that all you like, sure. But don't tell me it's more important that some mention in Congolese history that there have been civil wars, or I will just laugh at you. The sort of error you mention above with Daphné Büki -- I'll look at it myself shortly, if it's from French I don't need an admin -- can be made by anyone who knows less than they think they do. Automated translation not needed. Now, I propose that since we are talking about this we work out some sort of saner translation process. For instance, if African football leagues are by policy not notable, as someone once told me, fine then, the article should not be in the translation queue. Put something in there about a minimum number of references, require the use of trans-title in the references, whatever is agreed upon is ok with me. Your proposed change would preserve most of by not all of the articles that have been worked on, which is a slight improvement I guess, except you'll also nuke the 3-4 articles that needed nothing and a whole lot of biography that I've avoid because people tend to write me snooty messages to inform me that the person isn't notable, and why waste work when articles like History of Nicaragua are so lacking? Elinruby (talk) 01:01, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Proposal

Okay, I've gone through this and thought about it, and I'm conditionally a Yes on change to X2 and nuking the list, with an option to save certain files.

S Marshall, I take your point about draftification being pointless, as they'll just sit there with most of them never being edited ever.

I believe you've also persuaded me that the nuke is appropriate, given some conditions below. In order to keep Elinruby and Sam Walton (and me, and others) happy about not deleting certain files we are working on or wish to work on, I had an idea: what if we agree to allow a delay of two weeks to allow interested parties to go through and mark files in the list we want to keep so when the nuke-a-bot comes through, it can pass over the files thus marked. (I don't know if we can gin this up for two weeks from yesterday, but that would be auspicious.)

More specifically, to Elinruby's (22:03, 1 April) "So what do we do?" question, I think here's what we do:

• Those of us who want to retain files, mark them with {{bots|deny=X2-nukebot}} to vaccinate them against nuking.
• Change X2 accordingly
• Somebody develops the nuke script
• Nuke script should nuke "without prejudice" so that if someone changes their mind later and wants to recreate a file, it shouldn't be "salted" or require admin action to "undelete"; you just recreate it in the normal way you create any new file.
• If needed, we run a pre-nuke test against sandbox files, or can we just trust the vaccination will be respected?
• Start the script up and let 'er rip

Elinruby, if this proposal were accepted, would you change your no to X2 modif to a yes? Sam Walton, would you?

Naturally for this to have any value, we'd have to agree to not vaccinate the whole list, but just the ones we reasonably expect to work on, or judge worthy of keeping. If desired, I can envisage a way to greatly speed up the first step (vaccination) for all of us. Personally, I won't mark any file translated from a language I don't know well enough to evaluate the translation. But, going through all 3500 files is a burden, since there's no point my even clicking on the ones in languages I don't know. If I knew in advance which ones are from Spanish, French, etc., that would be a huge help. If you look at 1300-1350, you'll see that I've marked them with a language code (and a byte count; but that was for something else). I could commit to marking another 200 or 300 with the lang code, maybe more. If we could break up the work that way and everybody just mark the files for lang code, then once that's done, we could all go through the whole list much more quickly, to see which ones we wanted to evaluate for vaccination.

I really think this could be wrapped up in a couple of weeks, if we get agreement. Mathglot (talk) 18:17, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

• Entirely happy with this idea.—S Marshall T/C 19:33, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
• Agree. Amisom (talk) 11:31, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
• This is fine with me. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:03, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Are there any objections to moving forward with this? Tazerdadog (talk) 01:48, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Almost two weeks of SILENCE sounds like "go for it". Primefac (talk) 02:28, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm still good with this as proposer, of course, but just to reiterate: we'd still need a two-week moratorium *after acceptance* of the proposal before nuking, to allow interested parties to vaccinate such articles as they chose to. I assumed that was clear, but that "go for it" got me a little scared, so thought I'd better raise it again.

On Tazerdadog's point, what is the procedure for deciding when to go forward with a proposal? Are we there now? Whatever the procedure is, and whenever we deem "acceptance" to happen, can someone close it at that point and box it up like I see on Rfcs, so we can then start the two-week, innoculation period timer ticking without having more opinions straggle in after it's already been decided? Or what's the right way to do this? Mathglot (talk) 07:00, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

• Request formal close, per Mathglot. Do I need to post on ANRFC?—S Marshall T/C 18:40, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

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

X2-nuke interim period

Wow, cool! Glad we made some progress, and just trying to nail down the next steps to keep things moving smoothly. To recap my understanding:

• we are now in the "inoculation period" with a fortnight-timer which expires 23:22, 6 May 2017 (UTC) an interim period where we figure out how to implement this.
• during this period, anyone may tag articles in the list at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review with the proper tag to prevent nuking two weeks hence

A couple of questions:

• do we have to recruit someone to write a script to do the actual nuking?
• what form should the actual "vaccination" tag have? In the proposal above, I just kind of threw out that expression: {{bots|deny=X2-nukebot}} but I have no idea how we really need to tag the articles, and maybe that's a question for the script writer?
• will the bot also observe strikeout type as an indicator not to nuke? A possible issue is inconsistent usage among editors: for example, some editors have not used strikeout for articles they have reviewed and clearly wish to save (e.g. see #1601-1622)

As for me, I will continue to tag a couple hundred more articles with language-tags as I did previously in the 1301-1600 range, to make it easier for everyone to find articles translated from languages they are comfortable working with, and that they therefore might wish to tag. Mathglot (talk) 02:28, 23 April 2017 (UTC) Updated by Mathglot (talk) 09:02, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

• Let's make two lists, one of articles to delete and the other of articles to retain for the moment. I don't think that it will be necessary to formally request a bot. We have quite a few sysops who could clean them all out with or without scripted assistance.—S Marshall T/C 15:55, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

  I would implement it as a giant sortable wikitable - Something that looks like this:

Name	Language	Vaccinated	Notes
Jimbo Wales	es	Tazerdadog (talk)	Translation checked
Earth	ar	--	Probably Notable
My mother's garage band	fr	--	X2'd, not notable

Tazerdadog (talk) 17:17, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Isn't the current list easier to deal with than creating a new table, or two new ones? Can we just go based on strikeout type, or add some unambiguous token like, nuke=yes in the content of the items in the enumerated list that need to be deleted? I'm just trying to think what would be the least work to set up, and easiest to mark for those interested in vaccinating articles.

If we decide to go with a table, I might be able to use a fancy regex to create a table from the current bullet list. Although I definitely see why a table is easier to view and interpret once it's set up, I'm not (yet) persuaded that there's an advantage to setting one up in the first place. For one thing, it's harder to edit a table than a bullet list, because of the risk of screwing up cells or rows. Mathglot (talk) 18:59, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

The real advantage of the table is the ability to sort by language. This way, if we have a volunteer who speaks (for example) only English and Spanish, they can just sort the table by language, and all of the Spanish articles will be shown together. It's harder to edit, but in my opinion, the ease of viewing and extracting the information far outweighs this.

I have created a list that removes all struck items at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review/Tazerdadog cleanup list. I'm currently working on getting rid of the redlinks as well. Once that is done, we can move to a vaccination model on the articles that have not been cleaned up in the articles thus far. The vaccination can take virtually any form as long as everyone agrees on what it is - I'd recommend that we vaccinate at the central list/table rather than on the article however. Once the two weeks expire, it's trivial to extract the unvaccinated articles and poke a sysop for deletion. Tazerdadog (talk) 00:07, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog: This was posted over at Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review as well but wanted to mention it here. Timotheus Canens has created a language-sortable table in their sandbox at User:Timotheus Canens/sandbox that I think is similar to what you were thinking. Mz7 (talk) 04:06, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

And we may have to recreate the table, as I didn't notice it and have been continuing to mark language codes on the main list (and shall continue to do so, unless someone yells "Stop!"). Also, not sure how trivial it is: given a full set of instructions what to do, then, yes, it's trivial, but this is not formatted data (yet) and there are all sorts of questions a sysop might have, such as, what to do with ones marked "moved", or "redirected", and other situations I've come across while going through the list that don't spring to mind. We don't want to burden the sysop with an illy-defined task, so all of those situations should be spelled out before we ask them to take their time to do it, as if there are too many questions, they'll either give up, or they'll do whatever they feel like. Mathglot (talk) 06:20, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

@Timotheus Canens: Tazerdadog (talk) 05:55, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

And am still doing so on the main page, and so have at least six others since the message just above this one was written. Mathglot (talk) 11:53, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

X2 countdown and vaccinate indicators

Floating a proposal to get the clock started on the two weeks. Any user can write "Vaccinated" (or anything equivalent , as long as the meaning is understood) on the list on the same line as the Strike out any article they want to vaccinate. I can then go through and use regex to remove the vaccinated articles line-by-line from the delete list. I will then separate out the articles with no substantive commentary attached (anything beyond a language or a byte count is substantive) for an admin to delete or draftify. Any article which has been individually substantively discussed will be evaluated independently. If this is OK, we can start the clock. Tazerdadog (talk) 22:23, 6 May 2017 (UTC) Updated Tazerdadog (talk) 06:07, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

People are already using strikeout type as the "vaccinate" flag so no additional method is needed though I see nothing wrong with using both, if someone has already started with the the other method. Mathglot (talk) 22:51, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Also, I have been placing substantive commentary on plenty of articles, with the intention of facilitating the work of the group as a whole, in order to aid people in deciding whether that article is worth their time to look at and evaluate. In my case at least, substantive commentary does not indicate a desire to save, and if you intend to use it that way in the general case, then you need to suggest another indication I can use as a "poison pill" indicator to ensure it is nuked despite the substantive commentary. Mathglot (talk) 23:31, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Strikeout works even better than my idea, as it is easier to write the regex for. I was figuring that substantive commentary at least deserved to be read before we nuked them, although unless a comment was actively positive on the article I would have sorted it as a delete. If you want every article you commented on to be deleted, I can use your signature as the poison pill. Otherwise, use what you want, just make sure it is clear what it is. Ideally, place it at the start of a line, so I don't have to think when writing the regex. Tazerdadog (talk) 06:07, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog: If you need a tester, feel free to shoot me a pattern; I'm a bit of a regex wonk myself, plus I have a nice test app for it. Can't use my sig as poison pill, cuz often my commentary is unsigned cuz I did them 20 or 50 at a time, with the edit summary carefully explaining what was done, but no sig on the individual line items. Beyond that, quite a few have commentary by multiple people, so even if I did comment (and even sign) others may have, too. The only clear way to do this, afaics, is to have an unequivocal keep (or nuke) indicator (or more than one is okay, if you want to OR them) but anything judg-y like "substantive commentary" seems risky to me. In the latter case, we should just get everyone to review all their edits they forgot to strike, and strike them now, or forever hold their peace. In my own case, no matter how positive my comment, or how long, if there's no strike on the article title, it's a "nuke". It occurs to me we should poll everyone and get positive buy-in from all concerned that they understand the indicator system, to make sure everyone knows "strike" equals "keep" and anything else is nuke (or whatever we decide). It won't do to have 2,000 articles nuked, and then the day after, "Oh, but I thought..." Know what I mean?Mathglot (talk) 06:50, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: I think the solution is to draftify until everyone agrees that no mistakes have been made, then delete. I'm happy to do the grunt work of the manual checking of longer entries, and I don't think it is particularly risky to do so. However, the vast majority are short, and can and should be handed with a little regex script. We do need to make sure that the expectation of strikeout = delete instead of strikeout = resolved was clear to all parties. As for a deleteword, literally anything will do if it is unique and impossible to misinterpret. I would recommend "kill" as this deleteword, as it is clear what the meaning is, possible to write the regex for, and currently has only a couple of false hits in the page that can be worked around easily. Does this work for you?

The reasoning for checking longer entries is to try to catch entries like this:

|Battle_of_Urica -seems fine, at least not a translation issueElinruby (talk) 19:14, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Tazerdadog (talk) 08:02, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog: If by "draftify" you mean quarantine, i.e., staging/moving all the to-be-deleted files someplace prior to the hard delete, I totally agree. (Whether that should actually be the current Draft namespace is debatable, but might be the right solution.) As far as regexes, I count 738 <s> tags, 732 </s> tags, 587 keepers, and 2785 nukers as of May 7 ver. 779254187. Mathglot (talk) 22:40, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Ok, sounds good. By draftify, i meant "Move out of mainspace to a different namespace where the content is accessible for translators, but unlikely to be stumbled upon accidentally by someone who thins they are reading an actual encyclopedia article." it also should be noted that when any of these pages are deleted, it should be a WP:SOFTDELETE, i.e. if someone asks for a small number to be restored after they have been deleted so that they can work on them they can just ask any admin to do so. I think that's all that needs to be resolved for now, so I'm going to go ahead and start the two week countdown until someone yells at me to stop. Pinging some participants: @S Marshall:@Elinruby:@Yngvadottir: Tazerdadog (talk) 23:12, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

For clarity, the process is: At the deadline, June 6, 2017 all struck articles listed at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review will be retained, and all unstruck articles will be deleted. Articles with significant commentary attached will have the commentary read before the deletion, but the default is the struck/unstruck status unless the commentary indicates clearly the opposite result is better. The work "kill" may be added to unambiguously mark an article for deletion. On or after June 6th, the regex nerds will compile a list of articles to delete and retain. The delete list will be moved to draft space (or subpages of Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review), where it will be audited briefly just to make sure nobody made a systematic error, then deleted. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:12, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Per #deadline it's June 6. Your clarifications on "draftify" and the process all sound good, otherwise.
P.S. Note that one article matches /kill/i but none matches /\bkill\b/i. Mathglot (talk) 23:28, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Fixed, I was unaware of that discussion, thank you. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:34, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot and Tazerdog: so for purposes of making life easier I will strike what I think should be struck. At one point people were checking my work so I was rather tentative initially. I am following the regex discussion but haven't used it in a while so save me the trouble of looking this up -- did you conclude that "kill" would be useful, or not? Elinruby (talk) 00:58, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

@Elinruby: If the title is strikeout type, it will be kept; if it isn't, it won't. Placing "Kill" on an article has no effect at nuke time, but it does have a beneficial effect now:, i.e., it saves time for others. It lets others know that you have looked at this one and found it wanting, so they should save their breath and not even bother looking at it. For example: You marked #18 Stevia_cultivation_in_Paraguay "really, really bad". That was enough for me not to bother looking at it, so you saved me time, there. If you want to place "kill" on the non-deserving items you pass by, that will help everybody else. I may do the same. But in the end, on Nuke day, the "kill" markings won't have any effect. Make sense? Mathglot (talk) 01:20, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: yeah it does, thanks. And indeed I seem to be the most inclusionist in the discussion so if I think it's more work than it's worth I doubt that anyone else in the discussion would disagree. Elinruby (talk) 01:31, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Re-pinging@Tazerdadog: on Elinruby's behalf for confirmation. Due to the ping typo above, he may not have seen this, and it's really his call, not mine. Mathglot (talk) 01:35, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Mathglot's interpretation above is basically correct. Please do not duplicate work you've already done just to add the kill flag, but please strike entities that could be ambiguous (I will manually evaluate your intention based on comments that you left, but the default is the struck/unstruck status unless you are clear in your comments otherwise). Please do use these flags from now on, or on any where your intention is unclear. Tazerdadog (talk) 02:15, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Tazerdadog I'm looking at formation of the strikeout tags enclosing the linked titles, and found 43 anomalies that might trip up the nuke pattern. I'll probably starting fixing these tomorrow. Mathglot (talk) 09:44, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

assumption for User space items

@Tazerdadog: I notice that various contributors are strikeout-tagging Userspace items: see #14, 15, 691, and 695 for example. I have not been tagging any of them, my assumption being that all User space items will be kept automatically regardless of presence/absence of strikeout title (and ignoring any "kill"), and since it's trivial to skip over them with the regex it's not necessary to tag them. If you agree, please make a note at WT:CXT/PTR, or let me know and I will, so everyone can save their breath marking these. Mathglot (talk) 01:25, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

That was my assumption as well, all entries outside of mainspace should be fine. Tazerdadog (talk) 01:39, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

rescuing clobbers by CXT

@Tazerdadog: I just rescued #2611 Garbacz. This was a good stub created in 2008, then clobbered in 2016 by ContentTranslation tool, leaving a rubbish translation deserving of deletion. I just rescued it by reverting it back to the last good version before the clobber, and struck it as a keeper.

I'm concerned that there may be an unknown number of formerly good articles of long standing in the list that we don't want to delete, simply because they got clobbered by CXT at some point and thus ended up in the list, and time ran out before anybody got a chance to look at them. If I can get a list of potential clobbers in the next week, I will check them all out. (Am betting it's less than a couple hundred, total; but maybe S Marshall would help out, if it turns out to be more than that.) Shouldn't be too hard to create such a list:

pseudocode to generate a list of possible CXT clobbers

# Print out names of Titles in CXT/PTR that may be clobbers of good, older articles. # (Doesn't handle the case where oldest version is CXT, followed by user edits to make it good, # followed by 2nd cxt later which clobbers the good version; but that's probably rare.) # For each item in WP:CXT/PTR list do: $line = text from next <ol> item in list If the bracketed article title near the beginning of $line is within s-tags, next loop Extract $title from the $line If $title is not in article space, next loop Read Rev History of $title into array @RevHist Get $oldest_es = edit summary string of oldest version (last index in @RevHist) If 'ContentTranslation' is a substring of $oldest_es, next loop Pop @RevHist: drop oldest summary from @RevHist so it now contains all versions except the oldest one If 'ContentTranslation' is a substring of @RevHist viewed as a single string, do: Print "$title possibly clobbered by CXT" End For

Are you able to create a list like this, or do you know someone who could? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 21:56, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

• Why not just ask the deleting administrators to check the translation is the first revision before they push the button?—S Marshall T/C 23:32, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

That would be a shitton of work for the deleting admin. Tazerdadog (talk) 00:57, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

3.6 metric shit tonnes, to be exact. ;-) And thanks for the ping, Taz. Mathglot (talk) 01:56, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog: I think I've maybe got your query: I see from Samtar's query that you use MySQL. If that's the case, then to do this, I think you can take Samtar's query 11275 exactly as it is, with one more WHERE clause, to exclude the oldest revision:

AND WHERE rev.date > @MIN_REV_DATE

where @MIN_REV_DATE is either separately selected and assigned to a variable [as there would be one min value per title, it would have to either be an array variable or more likely a 2-col temp table with title and MIN date, which could be joined to rev.] Edited by Mathglot (talk) 18:50, 19 May 2017 (UTC), or probably more efficiently, a subquery getting the oldest rev date for that page using standard "minimum value of a column" techniques. So the result will be a subset of Samtar's original query, limited to cases where ct_tag was equal to 'ContentTranslation' somewhere other than in the oldest revision for that page. (By the way, I don't have access to your file structure, so I have no idea if 'rev.date' really exists, but what I mean by that, is the TIMESTAMP of that particular revision, whatever the field is really called. Also, again depending on the file structure, you might need to use techqniques for groupwise minimum of a column to get the min rev date for each page.) Mathglot (talk) 03:09, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Unfortunately, I've never used MySQL before. I was hoping I could muddle through with some luck and googling, but I had no such luck. Tazerdadog (talk) 03:53, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog: And I could totally do it if I had the file structure but I don't; but my strong hunch is that this is very easy, and needs one additional "WHERE" plus another query (probably the groupwise MIN thing) to grab the min value to exclude in the new WHERE. OTOH, if you have access to Quarry, shoot me your query by email if you want, and I'll fix it up, and you can take that and try again, and with several back-and-forths I bet we can get it. Or if you've got zip, I can try a few establishing queries for you to try, and then we can try to build the real one depending on the results you get from those. (Or, we can just wait for someone else to do it, if they will; it really should only take minutes.) Mathglot (talk) 05:11, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

@Tazerdadog and S Marshall: I don't think this is getting enough attention, and your previous request appears to have stalled at V Pump. This is not good. We need to get this list. Is there someone you can lean on, or request help from, to kick-start this? Alternatively, if someone will give me access to Quarry, a MySQL account permitting SELECT and CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE (or even better, MEMORY table) and a pointer to the file structure descriptions, I can do this myself and create a list to protect these articles. Mathglot (talk) 06:32, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

*Bump* Mathglot (talk) 18:19, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, Cryptic for db report 19060. We now have the list of clobbers, and can attend to it. Please see WP:CXT/PTR/Clobbers. Mathglot (talk) 05:18, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Re-requesting closure of Wikipedia talk:Conflict of interest#Investigating COI policy

Someone already requested a closure of Wikipedia talk:Conflict of interest#Investigating COI policy, which concerns outing/paid editor/harassment/COI... whatever. However, Casliber says that more than one closer, preferably three-person, may be needed. I wonder whether more than one closer is necessary. If so, this indicates that the discussion would be another one of more difficult discussions we've seen lately. Thoughts? --George Ho (talk) 13:44, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

It's not obvious from the discussion and the number of editors participating and the number of proposals made that it's a difficult and controversial topic? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 19:59, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

To me, closing the whole discussion is very difficult because of the controversy of the topic. However, I concentrated more on milieus and proposals. To be honest, I saw two milieus and one concrete proposal receiving support from the majority. I concentrated on the straw polls and arguments. How about this: close separate milieus and proposals separately? They aren't that difficult to separately close due to other milieus and proposals not likely to pass. --George Ho (talk) 20:17, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Closing each one separately probably makes more sense from a numbers perspective. However, it should still be one group of editors that does it, since there is the possibility (mentioned on the discussion) that some of the milieus could contradict each other depending on what gets passed. Primefac (talk) 01:57, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Milieus 1, 2, and 5 are easy to close as the majority opposes them individually. Milieu 3 and concrete proposal 1 received majority support, so those would be also easy to close. But you're right; one same group of editors should do the individual closures. However, I won't be part of the closing group, so I'll await the uninvolved closers then. --George Ho (talk) 04:44, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

I would be willing to be involved in a group closure on this. Tazerdadog (talk) 19:02, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

I cast a !vote in the discussion which I had forgotten about - it would therefore be grossly inappropriate for me to participate in this closure Tazerdadog (talk) 01:04, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

I guess this means we're putting the band back together ;) Primefac (talk) 19:04, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

We still need one more volunteer for this. Tazerdadog (talk) 10:01, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

I'll step up, if you like.—S Marshall T/C 17:34, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

And... we're back down to 2. Primefac (talk) 02:30, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Needed: Another closer please!—S Marshall T/C 15:35, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

I suggest you just go ahead with however many closers you have now. I further suggest that the "milieux" were intended to get a "general view of the community" and were very vaguely worded, so that if all you can say is "there was no apparent consensus", then so be it. As far as concrete proposal 1, which I proposed, the 28-6 result seems to make the close obvious. You might as well just go ahead and close it. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:53, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

• @Primefac: thoughts? Nobody else is stepping up.—S Marshall T/C 19:36, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Meh, let's just go for it. I think I've still got your email kicking about. I'll send you my thoughts hopefully in the next 24 hours. Primefac (talk) 20:46, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

I'll write mine independently over the same period, and we can see if we agree.  :)—S Marshall T/C 21:39, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

• Sorry, I've re-opened the RFC. Re-opening interest for other editors willing to work on a close. Primefac (talk) 22:31, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Take your time. ;) Meanwhile, what happened to closing separate, individual milieux and proposals? George Ho (talk) 10:35, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

I'll go back to what I said 4 comment above. The milieux can be very difficult to close because of the wording. I thought the reverted close was a very good attempt to make sense out of M.3 in that it focused on what the consensus there actually agreed on, but that aroused a storm and nobody seems to be able to agree on what was actually agreed on. Concrete proposal 1, which I proposed, is very much the opposite and I think can be easily closed. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:27, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

I'll help close it, but I think the section below the actual RFC should be considered as well, since they're actively discussing the RFC and how to proceed. Maybe we should wait just a little while longer to see how that develops. Katie^talk 23:23, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm fine with that. No point in cutting off productive discourse. Primefac (talk) 11:48, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

@Primefac, KrakatoaKatie, and S Marshall: I'm going to close a couple separate milieus that receive huge opposition. Casliber, the proposer, is fine with it. However, may I summarize the tally votes as just short rationales? I'll leave the others open. --George Ho (talk) 22:18, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Fine by me, George Ho. It'll make the overall close a bit cleaner. Primefac (talk) 23:08, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Closed milieu 1 and milieu 5. I closed milieu 2 as "no consensus", but I commented that another closer can summarize that better than me. --George Ho (talk) 00:51, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

I changed my mind and briefly summarized milieu 2. --George Ho (talk) 01:18, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Milieu 3, Concrete proposal 1, and Concrete proposal 2 are closed by Winged Blades of Godric. Give Godric thanks for the closures. George Ho (talk) 19:08, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

I've been thinking. After closing all the milieus and concrete proposals, I wonder whether closing the remainder of the whole discussion as a whole is possible. If not, how about separately closing "RfC discussion" (including Break 1), Break 2, and Break 3? George Ho (talk) 02:53, 25 April 2017 (UTC); rescinding this consideration. 18:22, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Milieu 4 and Concrete proposal 3 still remain. --George Ho (talk) 04:00, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

I would like to thank Gamebuster19901 for closing Milieu 4 (closed as "there is consensus") and Proposal 3 (closed as "no consensus"). Now I shall ping Primefac, KrakatoaKatie, and S Marshall about this, so they can do the teamwork closure more efficiently. --George Ho (talk) 03:07, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

While I think three closers should suffice, I welcome and don't object to one or more additional closers if necessary. --George Ho (talk) 04:52, 8 June 2017 (UTC); edited, 18:11, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Never mind. The whole discussion is archived into Wikipedia talk:Conflict of interest/Archive 27. Re-pinging Primefac, KrakatoaKatie, and S Marshall for the latest update. To re-summarize, milieus #1, #2, and #5 did not receive consensus. Neither did concrete proposals #2 and #3. I'll recap milieus #3 and #4, which received support from consensus:

Milieu 3:

"The balancing COI and privacy/outing means that the only option is that people investigating COI must submit information in private to the relevant people. Currently this is the arbitration committee and/or the WMF, but other bodies could be considered if there is consensus for this."

Closing rationale: "There is consensus for the proposal with the obvious caveat, that this approach needs a lot more details and clarification.Many have clarified that other bodies shall only refer to editors who have been vetted by the community to handle sensitive and personally identifying information.There has been concerns about the use of the word only as it seems to nullify on-wiki processes based on CU and behaviorial evidence."

Milieu 4:

"We need to balance privacy provided to those editing in good faith against the requirements of addressing undisclosed paid promotional editing. To do so can be achieved with a private investigation with some release of results publicly to help with the detection of further related accounts. These details may include the name of the Wikipedia editing company with which the account is associated (such as for example the connections drawn here)"

Closing rationale: "There is consensus for the above proposal, with a condition that the proposal must be clarified to remove vaugeness, and that any information released must be limited to "employer, client, and affiliation".

More specifically, the information that is to be clarified is:

1. Who is doing the investigating? (this looks like it's covered by Milieu 3)
2. What information is to be released? The proposer has stated in the discussion below (and other editors agreed) that the information that is released is to be limited to "employer, client, and affiliation". This renders the argument of wp:outing invalid, which really was the only argument brought up on the oppose side.

"

The following is already posted to Wikipedia:Harassment#Posting of personal_information per consensus: "There are job posting sites where employers publicly post advertisements to recruit paid Wikipedia editors. Linking to such an ad in a forum such as WP:Conflict of interest noticeboard is not a violation of this policy." However, even when archived, because of the nature of the whole issue discussed at RfC discussion, I would believe that more discussion is needed to resolve discrepancy between the WMF essay and WP:OUTING. Thank you all participants for voting on all milieus and proposals, all volunteers (including myself) for closures (and attempted closures ^_^), the proposers, etc. Now I should announce the results elsewhere. --George Ho (talk) 23:43, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Needing more than one to close RfC discussion at WT:V

The discussion "Wikipedia talk:Verifiability#Recent changes to policy about verifiability as a reason for inclusion" started in April. Then the discussion got larger and larger, making the discussion very complex. I discussed it with the proposer S Marshall, who says that several closers are needed. I welcome at least two volunteers. --George Ho (talk) 14:33, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

@George Ho:--I am willing to serve as a closer.Winged Blades ^Godric 09:06, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, Godric, and I welcome that. I also need another or more closers for teamwork closure. --George Ho (talk) 15:07, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Also, I created the subsection Wikipedia talk:Verifiability#How to best close this discussion? for team closers to discuss preparing the closure. --George Ho (talk) 02:51, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

@George Ho: I am willing to serve as a closer as well, but I will defer to almost anyone else who wants to do it. Tazerdadog (talk) 02:28, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, Tazerdadog. I notified the participants about this. --George Ho (talk) 02:35, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

@Godric: Tazerdadog will team with you on the closure. George Ho (talk) 03:01, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

If necessary, time for one or two more. George Ho (talk) 07:41, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

I read a word that Primefac will be the third teammate. That should suffice, though I welcome more teammates if necessary. --George Ho (talk) 04:11, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Appeal my 1RR restriction

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

---

Just over one year ago, following my successful appeal here against a ban and block, I had three restrictions applied as conditions of the unban and unblock granted. I was told that I could appeal each of those restrictions independently after one year. Today I would like to appeal my 1RR restriction. I have, to the best of my knowledge, never contravened this restriction, turning to discussion rather than reverting, at every opportunity. To be honest, I plan to continue limiting the reverts and using the discussion route to improve articles, as I have found discussion to be more productive and resulting in a more stable content than a continual flip-flop of content. The main reason for my appeal is to continue along the path back to full good standing within the community. -- de Facto (talk). 19:43, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

• Support - Glad you took my advice to withdraw the last discussion, break it apart and deal with one appeal at a time. I had been involved at SPI and in other admin-like duties in your past, so I am familiar with the case. At this time, I feel comfortable supporting the removal of this particular sanction and I'm hopeful for the future. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 20:57, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support. It's been a long time with no problems, so I say yes (especially as Dennis, who has experience in the case, supports). Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 04:26, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
• Weak support Only weak because I'm not familiar with the situation - but the support of Dennis and BSZ counts for much here, in my view. GoldenRing (talk) 13:13, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support No issues seem to have arisen with regards to this restriction; I'm confident that you can continue in the same vein if it's lifted. Yunshui ^雲_水 13:22, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support - the contrition seems genuine. I see no reason not to lift the restriction. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:56, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support - Restricted more than one year ago, time served. Capitals00 (talk) 17:49, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Discussion

• He has a total of three restrictions. I would be less inclined to lift the others today, but I think this is the best one to start with and we can revisit another in 6 months. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 14:33, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

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

Disputed RFC close at Controversial Reddit communities

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

---

This is a request to review the closure at Talk:Controversial Reddit communities#RfC Including SRS as a Controversial Reddit Community to determine whether it has been closer correctly. After heavy lobbying from an IP hopping user USER:Winged_Blades_of_Godric has chosen to ignore the majority of arguments and votes and declare the RFC “No consensus”. His motivation for this is that he believes those arguments, including my own, are illegitimate due to wp:canvasing by user:Koncorde - a user he singles out in the close message.

The matter has been discussed with Wings Blades here: User Talk:Winged Blades of Godric#Canvassing

The “canvassing” in question raising concerns about the IP hopper’s activities on various users talk pages. Note that in my own case I’ve had numerous past disagreements with Koncorde and there is no reason whatsoever for him to suspect I am going to agree with him on anything. I have, on the other hand, had plenty of experience on pages where POV pushing SPA’s and IPs have been an issue. Personally I would not make a user page post like that myself but I believe it falls just short of the types of action WP:CANVAS is supposed to prevent. I do not believe it warrants Winged Victory disregarding the RFC arguments of myself or others and would like the close to reflect the consensus. Additionally I do not believe the editorializing in the close message calling put a particular user is appropriate and would like to see it removed.

Thank you all in advance for your input. Artw (talk) 17:57, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

• note I have laced a notice here for the IP hopper, I am not going to track down all the other IP talk pages and place notices there as well. FWIW I believe the reliance on multiple IPs may be a startegy to make dealing with this user more difficult. Artw (talk) 18:11, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

I have, personally, no issue with any warning I get / got, I'll let edit history and contributions stand for myself. Regarding canvassing (I first note a discussion above relating to this very issue); I engaged with a series of Editors from the similarly themed Gamergate Controversy and did so based on most recent contributions to the talk page. I posted the same message to each. I have been clear in each case on both personal talk pages [2],[3] and on the article talk page itself [4], [5], [6] that this was about a due RFC process regardless of their agreement or disagreement with my stance. Under Godric talk page I have pointed out the IP's modus operandi and highlighted my serious concern that the user was a motivated SPA and potential sock (who has so far used around 30 IP addresses, several core ones are listed here [7] but I know this to be incomplete). Thank you. Koncorde (talk) 18:39, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

I am indifferent to that RFC (I was one of the people you notified, though I didn't weigh in on it). But I would point out that if you're worried that someone else is canvassing or otherwise abusing the RFC rules in the future, the best solution is probably to post neutral-ish notifications about the RFC on various relevant centralized discussion forums - the Village Pump, various noticeboards, and the talk pages of relevant articles. This reduces the impact of canvassing or other abuse by attracting more comments for the RFC overall, without the risk of running afoul of the canvassing rules yourself. In particular, if you felt that it was closely related to another conflict, posting on that page is fine, ie. if you felt it was relevant to Gamergate Controversy, the best thing to do would have been to post a notice on that article's talk page rather than contacting individual editors from there. You can sometimes notify individual editors without running afoul of WP:CANVASS, but it's more difficult. --Aquillion (talk) 20:42, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Noted. And as I had attempted to get attention of admins related to the potential sock activity with no success, it was a relatively last act after becoming aware of canvassing by IP, and 8chan discussion etc. It may have been quicker on Gamergate, but was liable to draw more "attention" on the Gamergate monitoring thread. In the end, don't want my actions to detract from the not-RFC. Koncorde (talk) 21:50, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

• Comment by Closer--Regretably, while I initially concurred with the views of Artw--that the IP is plainly tedious,disruptive et al; that does not overshadow the blatant canvassing by Koncorde.That the IPs could not be established as socks(Result was inconclusive) do not necessarily confer any user to venture out on righting a perceived wrong.I don't know but a statement ---SPA has canvassed to overturn 3 years of consensus on a 4 day vote in the mass-call-out is canvassing.The best way to post such messages has been clearly discussed by Aquillion.Lastly, while the technicality of the close may vary, the outcome is same-- the content remains excluded.So, until and unless I'm faced with more compelling arguments; I'm refraining from changing my closure.Addiionally, it is not under the purview of my limited abilities and technical scope to draw on-wiki conclusions from off-wiki activities.Winged Blades ^Godric 08:14, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

If you lack the skills to assess the situation possibly you should have requested help before pressing forwards with a contentious close that assumes bad faith of users? Artw (talk) 15:19, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Artw, it's getting to the point of WP:IDHT.I don't think you will find any volunteer from the community(I read somewhere that it's forbidden due to privacy related issues)(other than those serving at ArbCom) willing to link off-wiki evidence with on-wiki behaviour.If that means you expect an arb to close the RFC, your time and efforts would be spent better, somewhere else, than this thread.Winged Blades ^Godric 16:55, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

There WAS bad faith. By you, Artw. You unilaterally changed the result of an RFC. 2600:1012:B01B:6D00:DC4E:1497:F42E:EF8A (talk) 15:54, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Thinking it was improper, yes, I did. That was subsequently reverted and now we are discussing it here. Artw (talk) 16:01, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Comment our IP hopping freind appears to be forum shopping like crazy over at WP:Teahouse, someone should probably check in on that. Artw (talk)

• The matter was raised at the Teahouse before it was raised here, if I am not mistaken, two days before this thread was opened. I suggested an ANI discussion in my response at the Teahouse. I don't think that constitutes Forum Shopping, and in any case the Teahouse is always open to people with questions about how to use Wikipedia, including questions about ongoing DR processes. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 16:23, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

The links to the AN and demands for help with it appear to postdate the creation of the AN. As I understand it the teahouse is for helping new users who are confused about policy, what IP is neither. Artw (talk) 16:45, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Obviously one cannot link to a discussion that hasn't happened yet. But those were continuations of an existing thread at the Teahouse asking for help with the close in question. The Teahouse has a very broad remit, it is for assisting any user (not just new users) who has a problem with how to do things, any things, on Wikipedia. This includes askign for admin attention to an issue. In any case, i was already considering raising this issue here or at ANI before this thread was opened, nor did the IP editor ask for the Teahouse volunteers to make any decision, merely to look over the matter and advise or respond here. So there is no forum shopping involved, and the Teahouse posts were in no way improper, nor is my commenting here. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 18:04, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Looks like he's directly appealing to you from these edits. [8] [9] [10] I also very much do not appreciate his defamation of me as an editor and question the appropriateness of the Teahouse as a forum for that. Artw (talk) 18:25, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

The IP editor did ping me, yes, presumably because I responded to the first Teahouse post on this issue, and perhaps because I ahd expressed the view that a change of close by an involved editor was generally not proper before I ever knew what page was involve, or your username, Artw. As for defamation, I suppose you refer to the IP editor's comment that ArtW has essentially made me a target for his wrath and the IP's statement later in the same paragraph that Keep in mind this editor (ArtW) has a history of tenditious and aggressive editing, particular toward those who don't know the system as well as he does. Be assured that I gave no significant weight to those opnions, and my views here have been based solely on the edits at Talk:Controversial Reddit communities#RfC Including SRS as a Controversial Reddit Community, largely the ones I have linked to below. I really don't think debating whether the IP editor in some way acted poorly at the Teahouse is highly relevant to whether the edits changing the close statement were or were nor proper. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 18:46, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

It appears to demonstarate a double standard on your part as regards to WP:CANVAS and further underlines that the IP Users own canvasing efforts have been ignored. Also that the IP user is engaged in this form of manipulation also underlines that Koncorde was right to have suspicions about them. Artw (talk) 18:53, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

I have not been addressing any canvassing or alleged canvassing by anyone. If the IP engaged in improper canvassing, that can be taken note of, and sanctions applied if need be. Asking an experienced user to review a situation and act as the merits may appear does not seem to me to be a violation of WP:CANVAS, nor does drawing attention to a situation on a public forum. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 19:13, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

• Now to a more substantial issue. In this edit Artw reverted the close of an RfC, and in this edit replaced it with a quite different close, changing "no consensus" to "opposed". All this after Artw had commented in the RfC, and was therefore WP:INVOLVED. There are processes for challenging closures that seem to be in error, starting with a simple discussion with the closer. Just reverting a close, by an involved editor no less, is not a proper way to handle such a situation, no matter how mistaken the close may seem to be. On the merits of the close, i see significant arguments made for inclusion, and for non-inclusion, with sources cited and disagreements about the quality and meaning of those sources, on each side. "No consensus" seems well within the discretion of a rational closer. I haven't read all the sources, and i don't know how I would have closed it myself. But my main point here is that involved editors should not simply revert closes they belive mistaken. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 16:23, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
  • It seems to me that this is exactly the kind of case where Process is important applies. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 16:30, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
    • Process is great. Selectively applied process is a problem. Artw (talk) 18:54, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
      • It can be, yes. What aspects of process do you feel are being ignored here, if any? What would you like done about them? Do you disagree that the change of close was, shall we say, injudicious? DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 19:13, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
        • Yes, I beleve by reclosing the debate after lobbying from the IP user and disregarding one side of the argument in the favor of other on the grounds of “CANVASING” , when said IP user is engaged in a canvasing campaign of their own is extremely injudicious and appears to be a snap decision that ignores all context, That the same IP User has now canvased you and you appear to be responding to it is the cherry on the cake. Artw (talk)

IP is manipulating all concerned [11], [12], [13], [14] etc etc. Koncorde (talk) 19:47, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

IP user IMMEDIATELY (5 minutes) reverted three of those edits with an apology. I had not received any sort of response from my initial inquiry so I engaged two other forums/users and DISCLOSED (hint hint Artw) that I had brought the issue to the attention of other forums. Further I stated plainly if engaging separate users was inappropriate I would immediTely revert which I then did. 2600:1012:B01B:6D00:B144:599F:75ED:8217 (talk) 20:00, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

You canvas like a motherfucker mate. You just apply a level of low-key deniability to it that a child could see through. Artw (talk) 20:02, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

I've canvassed literally no one. The ONE possible exception was asking Wordsmith to take a look at the SRS deal. That is the only time. I've disclosed every edit I've made from every IP address I've used (I frequently edit from a cell phone). Your accusations are without merit and everyone can see this. More importantly, you've managed to use misdirection to change the subject of the discussion at hand (completely improper closure, blatant disregard for policy, and disrespect toward other editors) into something completely unrelated 2600:1012:B01B:6D00:B144:599F:75ED:8217 (talk) 20:12, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Ah, I remember now what was going on that prompted me more than anything. IP pinged Wordsmith, who then responded, and then changed his vote to Supporting the RFC. The IP then voted using a new IP address, and attempted to close the RFC itself using its other IP [15]. At the same time, the ping on Wordsmiths page attracted the attention of Mark Bernstein and Jorm. Good times. Koncorde (talk) 20:29, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Is there anything to their claim that they are disclosing their Ips somewhere and are therefore trustworthy? I would have thought a username a better way of doing that. Also I hope the RfC close took the double vote into consideration. Artw (talk) 20:36, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

There was ONE vote from ONE IP address. More lies from you. There was no "double-voting". 2600:1012:B01B:6D00:B144:599F:75ED:8217 (talk) 20:42, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

From the edit history this [16] is absolutely one of yours. Note the vote. Artw (talk) 20:45, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

They likely doesn't consider their non-neutral RFC or arguments from different IP's as a vote, which is fair enough, but clearly misleading. Regarding openness of their IP's, they are known only where I raised the list on the Sock investigation [17]. Approx list of those I am aware of are here in my sandbox. User has been informed / advised on at least 3 occasions to create an account, including by myself back in November 2016 when at that time was only the two IP. Koncorde (talk) 20:51, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Fair enough. If there was an actual user attached I would be requesting an immediate ban for the maneuver where they vote under one IP/user and immediately attempt to close under another. I'm surprised that didn't go straight to AN/I. Artw (talk) 20:56, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

"Immediately" sounds sinister but if these are the relevant edits they're more than 3 hours apart: vote, close. The related claim "The IP then voted using a new IP address" is accurate but should be clarified: the IP only voted once in the RFC, 3 hours prior to a defensible (but IMHO inappropriate) snow close. Full disclosure: I participated in the RfC. James J. Lambden (talk) 21:23, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

• Comment All the above is great fun and all, but the initial request was for a reassessment of the RFC voted based on arguments. Are there any univolved Adkins out there who could actually do that? Artw (talk) 20:59, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

NO it was not. You REOPENED an RFC, then CHANGED the result. That's what this is about. 2600:1012:B01B:6D00:B144:599F:75ED:8217 (talk) 21:11, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

I did indeed. And it was reverted (two days ago I’d add) and i was informed of the proper procedure for reviewing an RfC, and here we are. As it turns out you did far worse with an actual intent to deceive. But no matter: It would be nice if we could get to the actual review part without further derails. Artw (talk) 21:20, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

it does matter. You are exhibiting behavior that suggests either lunacy or a pathological dishonesty. There was never, on my part any intent to deceive. Nor does any evidence support such a ridiculous assertion. You, on the other hand, RE-OPENED an RFC, CHANGED THE RESULT, and then RECLOSED it. This does not just suggest bad faith or dishonesty- your behavior IS deception. The actual literal definition of it. That is why we are here. To see if there will be some level of accountability for your blatant disregard of all five pillars of Wikipedia. 2602:301:772D:62D0:DD89:DC80:6EF:3F30 (talk) 21:32, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Civility is also a pillar, so strike your comment now or I will block you. There is no justification for your personal attacks here. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 21:35, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Dennis Brown: he's responding to an editor who wrote above: "You canvas like a motherfucker mate. You just apply a level of low-key deniability to it that a child could see through" – which appears to be the first personal attack in this conversation. James J. Lambden (talk) 21:48, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

I saw that after I wrote my notice, and just ended up blocking both of them for 24 hours. We don't need this kind of behavior here. One doesn't excuse the other. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 21:59, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict)In this thread we have seen the following comments that are at least uncivil, and in some cases fairly clear attacks:

The comments

I believe the reliance on multiple IPs may be a startegy to make dealing with this user more difficult. If you lack the skills to assess the situation possibly you should have requested help before pressing forwards with a contentious close that assumes bad faith of users? There WAS bad faith. By you, Artw. You unilaterally changed the result of an RFC. You canvas like a motherfucker mate. You just apply a level of low-key deniability to it that a child could see through. More lies from you. you did far worse with an actual intent to deceive. You are exhibiting behavior that suggests either lunacy or a pathological dishonesty

Perhaps i missed a few, but I think that is quite enough from all involved. 22:13, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

IP editor, it has been made very clear that Artw reverted a close and reclsoed it differently. Those changes have now been reverted, and Artw says i was informed of the proper procedure for reviewing an RfC, and here we are. If Artw should in future revert or change a close while involved, This discussion will not doubt be cited so show that s/he should have known better. Now can everyone stop throwing insults and aspersions around?

Artw has asked for an impartial review of the close, and given the various people arguing with the close, that is a reasonable request. I could have done such a review, but given my exchanges with Artw above, I might now be considered WP:INVOLVED. Will any clearly uninvolved admin or experienced closer step up, please? This isn't by any means the most involved or intractable RfC ever seen on Wikipedia, after all. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 21:40, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Closers should be advised of the admitted ("This is rather blatant canvassing by myself") and significant (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) canvassing by Koncorde in that RfC, in addition to the alleged off-site canvassing for the other side. (Again, full disclosure: I was involved in the RfC) James J. Lambden (talk) 21:48, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

I would prefer it if you had left the full context of that sentence in James, "This is rather blatant canvassing by myself to support a due RFC process that has seen the IP canvas on his behalf. Otherwise, you wouldn't find me doing such a thing". I have previously provided such summary to Godric and in each summary or response to anyone in any talk. Only ArtW responded to my request (much to his now assumed misery I am sure) at the RFC. All other users were actually attracted by the canvassing by the IP at the Wordsmiths talk page or (I assume) have the page on their watch-list in some fashion.

I did not "canvas" for a win, I allege no "side" other than correct process (such as not deleting the RFC header, and declaring it "closed" so as to not invite further commenters), any suggestion that I picked people who would agree with me is patently not true (as revealed by their actual responses to me). If the RFC was for inclusion, then it gets included, but it should be included appropriately and ideally via consensus not because an IP improperly followed RFC process and tried to WP:SNOW.. Koncorde (talk) 22:46, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Canvassing in response to canvassing--is not a good argument to put forward.You did show me no-evidence of on-wiki canvassing(other than on Wordsmith's talk) and if you demand all the supporters of inclusion arrived from that particular venue;I may as well say, that the chance that all the opposers arrived from the multiple venues where you canvassed is pretty higher.May-be that was an absolutely good-faith effort from you but somehow the language of the callout et al. do not give that look! Winged Blades ^Godric 06:24, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

I'll let 11 years of uninterrupted continuous editing wikipedia and wider contributions to the project speak for myself. As stated, I don't actually care about any such admonishment, and whatever negative response from Editors received is irrelevant to the question of how the RFC was conducted, how it was closed initially, and subsequent questions over the re-closing and changing of the result (which actually bothered me far less than ArtW) subsequent to the IP's appeals across several Talk pages and noticeboards (including at least 3 personally criticising yourself).

However; my argument is not merely canvassing vs canvassing, that is an oversimplification. Reducing it down to that does not reflect even a cursory glance at the issues with the RFC that, from the onset, did not meet the standards expected (and I would expect any Closer to recognise that behaviour).

I was responding to an IP who demonstrated sock-like behaviour, I was receiving no response to any cases I posted to the noticeboards about the user, the IP had brought the same argument to the table 7 months earlier, rejected a Third Opinion (at the time I was UNINVOLVED), on return created a POV RFC, canvassed Danaa, Wordsmith (and due to nature of IP, an unknown number of others, I believe there was at least one other clear example that you could see from the list of IP's on my sandbox but you'd have to click through all 30+), made arguments in support from several IP, on receiving a few votes in favour despite the issue with the RFC being pointed out to him, voted on own RFC under another completely different IP, then declared it closed under (again) another IP and removed its header from its public venue to cease supporting the veneer of the RFC being legitimate. Mark Bernstein and Jorm (opposers) came from Wordsmith. There is no indication that any user, apart from ArtW, came from my canvassing (and instead I received comments back regarding why it was inappropriate which I readily accepted).

That the RFC vote, per your response to ArtW was apparently a headcount, rather than WP:not counting heads is of a wider concern. I argued a case from policy (and had done for months over several instances). The weight of the arguments are meant to be the basis of the decision, and adhering to the policies of wikipedia relating to the content is supposed to be paramount. Koncorde (talk) 08:05, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

• From reading the RFC, imho, Godric's close accurately reflected the consensus, taking into account the various canvassing allegations. The only real ongoing solution to a canvassed RFC, is to set up a new one and advertise it in all the relevant locations. Unless someone is actually going to do that, all the above is hot air. Only in death does duty end (talk) 09:04, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
• OID has it right. The RFC was so compromised from the very beginning by bad behavior on both sides, that this was the only close reasonably possible. I find Artw's reclosing to suit his preferred outcome grossly improper, though he does say he was not aware it was inappropriate. My suggestion is to have a new RFC, properly advertised in the correct venues (and only them), to establish a true consensus. Demands that the IP editor create an account are spurious, since creating an account has never been a requirement to participate in discussions. A dynamic IP is not sockpuppetry in any way, shape or form and those accusations need to stop. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 20:06, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Would agree that we don't seem likely to see any progress here. I withdraw my request for review, feel free to close. Artw (talk) 22:28, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

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

CU backlog

Hi all, there is a CU backlog at WP:SPI. Your kind attention (and laborious efforts) would be appreciated. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 13:59, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

See also. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 18:16, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

User:LanceLaytner has moved his user page to draft Draft:LanceLaytner

Please could an admin try and sort out a bit of a mess. User:LanceLaytner has moved his user page to draft Draft:LanceLaytner to make a second incorrectly titled copy of a draft of Draft:Jeremy Josse. Theroadislong (talk) 17:59, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

• Fixed - moved back, and blanked. Black Kite (talk) 18:01, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Cleanup on 2017 Qatar diplomatic crisis ?

Could someone with free time take a look at the 2017 Qatar diplomatic crisis page? The volume of events (and edits) has calmed down enough that it should be possible to have some stability in the article. Power~enwiki (talk) 00:50, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

What's wrong with it? If I understand you rightly, there's something rather obviously wrong that anyone should be able to see (since you asked for outside review without specifying any details), but I saw no blatantly bad problems, no cleanup tags aside from occasional inline content problems (e.g. {{fact}}), and nothing else that could easily and quickly be fixed. So obviously I'm missing something here, one way or the other. Nyttend (talk) 03:32, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

• I think he's just wanting an uninvolved admin to work the talk page, stay uninvolved and mop and archive the talk page, like I'm doing on Talk:2017 Congressional baseball shooting. He asked me, but I'm a bit busy to monitor two of these. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 09:42, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Yeah. I've been editing it for the past week as events develop and would like to take a break. It could use a copy-editor ( User:Emir of Wikipedia is doing some of this) and a separate un-involved editor to clean up the talk page. Power~enwiki (talk) 20:00, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Appeal my TBan

Half a year ago, I was TBanned from all deletion related processes. I have been told that I could apply to have my TBan lifted after 6 months, which is today. Ever since I was TBanned, I have focused my attention in improving voice actor articles by citing reliable sources, as well as placing a new template in them which encourages contributors to source their information. If I do succeed in lifting my current restrictions, I would still continue to contribute to Wikipedia by improving/writing voice actor articles (which can be viewed on my userpage), more often than AFD procedures as I believe that I am more capable in the former. I believe that I have proven that I could contribute to other areas in the encyclopedia, which was a concern when it was believed that I am too obsessed with the deletion process. I hope the community and admins will consider my appeal, and I look forward to continuing working with you all. Sk8erPrince (talk) 04:12, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Why do you want the topic ban lifted? What has it prevented you from doing that would have benefited Wikipedia? Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:16, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

So that I may contest PRODs on articles that I care about and participate in AFD discussions, which are both currently undoable due to my TBan. Even though my main area of focus has shifted, I would still like to redeem the privileges that I once had. Sk8erPrince (talk) 05:22, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

• How do you expect to move forward without running into the same problems of a battleground attitude, mass nominations and rudeness [18] that got you the ban in the first place? Dennis Brown - 2¢ 09:39, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

As mentioned above, since my primary focus is no longer AFDing (and will no longer be if this appeal is approved), mass nominations won't be a problem as I will be spending most of my time here citing reliable sources on voice actor articles than nominating articles for deletion. I have no intention of being rude in AFDs ever again; rather, I would approach those discussions in a calmer, civil manner, I promise. This is how I plan to move forward. Sk8erPrince (talk) 10:25, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

• I'm inclined to support this appeal, backed up with a reminder that any resumption of the previous behaviour will quickly result in the TBAN being replaced, perhaps alongside a block for abusive behaviour. But, that's not a threat. I'd expect the same to be applied to me; if I started mass-nominating, I'd expect to be sanctioned. What tips it into 'support', for me, is that this user has hundreds of edits since the TBAN was placed, and no blocks. There was a concern in early January that maybe the editor had violated the TBAN. Rather than become combative, the user discussed the situation. And that was early in the ban. I would encourage the user (encourage, but not require, and not request a response about) to consider what steps they will take if they find themselves heading down the wrong road again. In my experience, it helps to have a plan ahead of time to avoid getting in trouble again. --Yamla (talk) 11:42, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
• I'm tending to support too, partly because the appeal has been presented in a credible way, partly because of Yamla's reasoning, partly because I really do believe in second chances (unless it's obviously a bad idea), and partly because Sk8erPrince will be aware that any repetition of the problems that led to the ban is likely to result in its reinstatement with very little chance of being lifted again. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:50, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
• Supporting purely out of benefit of the doubt and believing everyone deserves a 2nd chance. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 15:08, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support per improvements and acknowledging that next time, the ban will be indefinite and appeal time will be 1 year or longer. Capitals00 (talk) 17:14, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support - AGF regarding OP's improved attitude. Beyond My Ken (talk) 19:20, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

• Sorry, OP blew it with their comment below. Deletion may be a necessary thing, but it's not something to celebrate. I guess their attitude hasn't really changed much at all. Thanks to TheGracefulSlick for point it out. Oppose. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:32, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

:::If my attitude hasn't changed, I would have said that it wasn't Grace's business (that was actually what I said in the Tban discussion). Instead, I calmly explained my reasoning for keeping such a list. I fail to see how listing articles that I have managed to delete has anything to do with a battleground attitude or general rudeness, which were concerns when I was Tbanned. Keeping personal records doesn't mean I'm celebrating, nor does it mean that I am gloating that I am very good at the process. Sk8erPrince (talk) 08:08, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

• Comment - I'm not entirely sure if I'm just making a big deal out of it but did anyone else notice Sk8er still has all the articles he has deleted listed on his userpage -- almost like they were points or victories? I think it is right to ask: Sk8erPrince why do you find it is neccessary to keep such a list of "successful" AfDs and CSDs? I'm willing to support you as long as you have the right attitude toward the deleting processes.TheGracefulSlick (talk) 02:14, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

I'll have a second go at answering that question. It's not necessary to keep that deletion list as long as there's viewable records of my AFD stats. I have removed it, so it no longer poses as a potential issue. Sk8erPrince (talk) 04:33, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

::The same could be asked for listing articles that I have tremendously improved, really. As long as it's a significant achievement, I'll list it in my userpage. Sk8erPrince (talk) 02:19, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Question: Would you please explain how these deleted articles are "a significant achievement", equal to that of articles you've "tremendously improved"? BlackcurrantTea (talk) 07:11, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

::::They're not equal achievements. They're entirely different processes; also, at present day, I think article expansion is more contributive (at least, I have been able to contribute more effectively in that area). However, the AFD process was what I had been doing before I started getting actively involved in article contribution. Since AFD was the only way for me to contribute (that's what I thought, at least), those were the only achievements I've made, and they were significant in my POV. It is simply a personal record, nothing more (so I don't forget what I did manage to achieve). Sk8erPrince (talk) 08:08, 17 June 2017 (UTC) *Clarification: I just found out that the TBan discussion had listed keeping my personal list of successful deletions as an issue when combined with other more immediate issues such as rudeness, combative, refusal to integrate into the community and having a battleground mentality (it should also be noted that the main concerns took up most of the OP's post and those that support placing a TBan on me, and that my personal list was only briefly mentioned in just a few sentences). I would like to take this opportunity, since Grace has pointed this out, to clarify the purpose of keeping a list. I don't deny that I was unpleasant back then, and that I was rather immature and inexperienced when dealing with AFD procedures (mass nominations without having conducted enough research is one of them). Despite that, I still managed to achieve something in the end, and keeping those AFDs as personal records helps me learn and move forward when looking back. It is part of the learning experience.Sk8erPrince (talk) 08:40, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

• Guy, it's revealing of your mindset being unchanged, ESPECIALLY since you title it "Pages I've deleted myself [emphasis added]" --Calton | Talk 23:23, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. Successful AFDs are "significant achievements"? If you had linked to the titles themselves -- perhaps as a watchlist against re-creation or as a guide for future re-creation if circumstances change -- I might have thought you had a point. But it's a list of links to the AFD pages, so serves no purpose other than that of a trophy list, like a fighter pilot painting his kills on his aircraft. --Calton | Talk 23:23, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
• Update: I just remembered that my personal AFD records could be viewed using the AFD stats tool, so I've removed the deletion list on my userpage. I don't want to give the wrong impression that I'm keeping victory lists. Sk8erPrince (talk) 01:48, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

• So exactly the same attitude, just hiding it better? Not the winning rhetorical strategy you think it is.--Calton | Talk 08:14, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

• Comment I have no opinion on the Tban but since I was aware of this discussion I was surprised to see Sk8erPrince add himself to the Active AfC reviewer list which I reverted [19] Keeping a list of AfD nominations is pretty silly. They are not trophies, just spam fighting. I can see, however, putting together a list to disprove accusations of making bad AfDs. I wish Sk8erPrince all the luck. Fighting spam attracts all kinds of unwanted attention. Legacypac (talk) 07:22, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, you're right. They are not trophies, so if keeping such a list attracts unwanted (negative) attention, I'd rather just delete it off of my userpage, which I did. I mean, there's other ways of viewing my AFD stats anyway, so it's not all that necessary to keep it.

"putting together a list to disprove accusations of making bad AfDs"

Thank you for understanding. That was actually another reason why I put together that list. Regardless, since the list has been removed, I think it would be for the best for all of us to not dwell on how it might be concerning. Sk8erPrince (talk) 09:05, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

• Except that it's a list of the DISCUSSIONS, not the articles or topics, and he's labelled them "significant achievements": that's not "spamfighting" no matter how you parse it. --Calton | Talk 08:14, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

30 AfDs are not "significant achievements". I can do that many while bored in a board meeting. Get Twinkle, go to NPP feed, select Unreviewed Pages by New Editors and you can AfD all the junk you can stand to scan. Legacypac (talk) 08:47, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose - Sorry Sk8er but that was not a response that would give me any confidence in seeing the Tban being lifted. With all the struck comments here, I feel you are just looking for a response that appeases editors instead of one that reflects upon your current mindset.TheGracefulSlick (talk) 14:03, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support per Dennis Brown and Beyond My Ken. -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 14:26, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

• Just to be clear, I changed my !vote from "support" to "oppose". Given the discussion that's gone on since, I continue to think that change was the correct call. Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:40, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

• I'm still willing to give them a chance. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 13:58, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

• "You're a better man than I am, Dennis Brown." - Rudyard Kipling. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:16, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

I doubt that. I'm just not afraid to be proven a fool. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 22:17, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Queryable move and edit request about articles about letters of the Roman alphabet

• The IPA user User:92.229.96.232 asked for the move Template:Latin alphabet to Template:Latin script; I obeyed. Then User:92.229.96.232 asked me in my user talk page to replace "alphabet" by "script" in the protected pages A B C G L and Roman numerals. So I got doubtful about such a request from an IPA user and reverted the original move and decided to query the matter here. And see Special:Contributions/92.229.96.232 for what he has done so far. His user talk page User talk:92.229.96.232 has no edits (undeleted or deleted). His request to me was "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Latin_alphabet could you replace in the protected articles A, B, C, G, L, Roman numerals "{Latin alphabet}" with "{Latin script}"? ". Anthony Appleyard (talk) 16:04, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

• I would stick with "Latin alphabet". I am unfamiliar with the use of "Latin script". Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:29, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

• "Script" is correct, but it's a jargony term. "Latin alphabet" is probably just as valid and no doubt easier for the average reader to find. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 13:28, 17 June 2017 (UTC).

@Lankiveil, the "jargony term" is used as the title of the main article and main category to which the template is related, namely Latin script and Category:Latin script. Maybe Anthony Appleyard can explain why he named it like Latin alphabet, which is a subtopic.

@Beyond My Ken - if you are unfamiliar with the use of "Latin script", you can obtain information at: Latin script, Category:Latin script, Template:Latin script 77.179.202.221 (talk) 13:44, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

If you want this move made, you must present more cohesive arguments, not simply cite Wikipedia articles. Beyond My Ken (talk) 17:21, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Also, since this is now obviously a controversial move, you must open a RM discussion in a centralized place, such as Talk:Latin script, with neutral pointers to the discussion on Talk:Latin alphabet and the talk pages of the various articles in question. This is no longer an admin concern, this must be decided by WP:consensus. Beyond My Ken (talk) 17:24, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Beyond My Ken, I don't think I have too, the more "cohesive arguments" have been made in the WP:RM that Anthony Appleyard deleted. "controversial" is the move that Anthony Appleyard made from Template:Latin script to Template:Latin alphabet. 77.179.202.221 (talk) 00:50, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

 Comment: Anthony Appleyard removed the request including the rational from WP:RM and performed the move. Later he unilaterally reverted the move, but did not revert the removal from the list at WP:RM nor copied the original request to the talk page so it could properly be discussed. Is that a correct procedure? 77.179.202.221 (talk) 13:44, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm with Lankiveil on this one. While it is true that we have constructed a (rather technical and somewhat idiosyncratic) distinction between Latin alphabet (i.e. the original writing system of the Latin language in antiquity) and Latin script (the abstract superset of the Latin-based writing systems of modern languages worldwide) in these main articles, there really is no need to push this distinction into all sorts of other places where readers won't expect it. As for template names (such as that of {{Latin alphabet}}), they are arbitrary strings and not even supposed to be displayed to readers, so simplicity is certainly the most important consideration here. If you want it moved, you can of course propose a regular WP:RM on the template talkpage. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:10, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Fut.Perf. Regarding "(rather technical and somewhat idiosyncratic) distinction between Latin alphabet" https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Latin_script&oldid=779263998#The_latin_script_is_NOT_an_alphabet Good luck! 77.179.202.221 (talk) 00:49, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

• @Beyond My Ken, Future Perfect at Sunrise, and Lankiveil: I did not call it "alphabet"; it was called "alphabet" before I saw the pages involved. If the verdict here is "leave the word as "alphabet"", someone may have to go through Special:Contributions/92.229.96.232 and revert the various changes of "alphabet" to "script" listed therein. Shall I start a discussion in Talk:Latin script, or leave the discussion here?, perhaps pointed to from Talk:Latin script? Anthony Appleyard (talk) 21:40, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

  Anthony Appleyard, you named the template Template:Latin alphabet, that fact is easily visible in the page history. 77.179.202.221 (talk) 00:49, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

  @Anthony Appleyard: As that is a content matter, I think it's better discussed on the article talk page rather than here. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 08:58, 18 June 2017 (UTC).

 Comment: Is the noticeboard taking over the work of members of the Wikiproject Writing Systems? Why is this at ANI at all? Anthony Appleyard? 77.179.202.221 (talk) 00:49, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

 Comment: Anthony Appleyard performed a "controversial" move from Template:Latin script to Template:Latin alphabet. Is this allowed because he is an admin? 77.179.202.221 (talk) 00:54, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

I see no discussion of this move on Template talk:Latin alphabet. I oppose any convoluted move proposal without discussions on the talk page, and support User:Anthony Appleyard in not conducting the move and removing it from WP:RM at this time. Power~enwiki (talk) 04:43, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

• The page was named Template:Latin alphabet from way back. As stated above, I routinely obeyed a request to move it to Template:Latin script, but soon afterwards I reverted that move. I did not invent the idea of using the word "alphabet". It was not moved before, except way back at 14:38, 4 October 2006 when User:Dbachmann moved Template:Latin alphabet to Template:Unicode Latin (which at 06:50, 11 April 2007 was deleted), and changed the resulting left-behind redirect into a new template Template:Latin alphabet. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 04:47, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Note: This IP user's profile (and IP location) seems rather reminiscent of Tobias Conradi (talk · contribs), a long-term banned sockpuppeter. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:56, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

• @Future Perfect at Sunrise: See Special:Contributions/92.229.96.232; all his contributions were in one big rush between 21:00 and 22:17 on 13 June 2017, and none since or before. Should I revert those edits? Anthony Appleyard (talk) 03:57, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Some sort of glitch in mobile view

Not particularly administrative; I've moved this to WP:VPT. Nyttend (talk) 10:39, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Category creation

Resolved

 – Page created. Primefac (talk) 00:50, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm performing some {{R from fictional character}} tasks and added multiple Tiny Toon Adventures character redirects to Category:Tiny Toon Adventures character redirects to lists. Creation of this category is currently restricted to admins, perhaps because of past vandalism? This is standard naming as subcat of Category:Fictional character redirects to lists, actually generated by the Rcat template itself by using {{R from fictional character|Tiny Toon Adventures}}. Can someone please create this category for me? Thanks.— TAnthony^Talk 00:45, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

 Done. TAnthony, no idea why "Tiny Toon" is on the title blacklist (I suspect "porn" reasons), but I've created the page for ya. Feel free to expand the page as appropriate. Primefac (talk) 00:50, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks!— TAnthony^Talk 00:51, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

It was added by @MuZemike: back in 2012 but with no explanation as to why. I've removed the entry as it is far too broad to be put in the titleblacklist without an explanation. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:26, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Edit filters and the Ross fans

Moved to Wikipedia:Edit filter noticeboard

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Xaosflux (talk • contribs) 00:30, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Relisted RM at Template talk:2016 US Election AE

The ongoing RM discussion at Template talk:2016 US Election AE is relisted, so feel free to comment there until closure. --George Ho (talk) 01:13, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

G13 eligible help?

I personally cleared a 1200 page backlog at [20] than discovered there were hundreds more G13 eligible pages not added to the category. Something got fixed and today the list has balloned from zero to over 1100 pages. I just found out a bot used to CSD this junk. Is there any way someone can automate the CSDing again? It's only a matter of time before some bot or well meaning AWB user or delinking effort touches the pages and restarts the 6 months clock. Legacypac (talk) 07:12, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

I've deleted... somewhere upward of 1,000 of these. Twinkle's D-Batch makes this easy - perhaps too easy. I figured that if a bot used to do this then D-Batch could do it just as well. If I've done wrong, could someone let me know? GoldenRing (talk) 19:20, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

HasteurBot only tagged these, it didn't delete them. In theory, at least, the admin patrolling these is supposed to take at least a cursory glance at what he's doing and defer anything with potential, not robodelete more than 1300 pages in under two minutes without even the standard pointer to WP:REFUND for retrieval. —Cryptic 19:40, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

If consensus is that batch deletion is the wrong approach I'm very happy to undelete them and start working through them more slowly. GoldenRing (talk) 19:48, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Undeleting en masse would be overkill, but taking a second look at the deleted articles might be worthwhile. I looked through the first (most recent chronologically) 150 in that log; only Draft:Three Rivers Regional Library System struck me as salvageable, and that only if someone feels like finding some non-primary sources for it. (It's not the same subject as the existing mainspace article Three Rivers Regional Library System.) There were a couple more near misses - drafts that would have survived AFD as-is, but had better mainspace articles created after the drafts were rejected. Draft:The Search For Everything (at The Search for Everything) and Draft:Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology were typical. Also a handful of images to be brought to FFD or c:COM:DR. This was about the same percentage of drafts that need a little more attention that I see when deleting tagged G13s. —Cryptic 20:58, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

so there is no misunderstanding I was looking for a CSD tag to be applied enmass. An Admin would then assess them quickly. I've been manually assessing and CSDing but then the Admin also assesses which is duplicating my work. Very very occasionally I see something worth promoting or postponing but presumably the Admin would make the same judgement as I would to postpone. There remain many G13 eligible pages in AfC declined categories. I found several in the last few minutes. Hesteurbot has more to do to ID these. Legacypac (talk) 20:14, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Looking over the list I see a bunch of redirects from user to draft space deleted dependant on a deleted page. There is no point even looking at those. Legacypac (talk) 21:03, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Well, no, but there's no way to exclude them from the log listing. They're a fairly small minority, anyway: 1106 of the 1329 deletions in that run were summarized "G13 (TW)". —Cryptic 21:34, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Thats about typical for % of pages moved to draft vs started in draft. I'm working hard to clean up AfC backlogs. If we want to push thru ACTRIAL in some form we need AfC in better shape not stuffed full of garbage and unreviewed drafts. Legacypac (talk) 21:41, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

@Legacypac: I think that drafts not awaiting review don't contribute towards the backlog total. jcc (tea and biscuits) 22:04, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

@Jcc: yes and no. The +/-1800 waiting for review excludes the rest, but many of the pages in the larger pool will be resubmitted multiple times perhaps for years without reaching N or correcting other issues. If we miss the chance to delete them at 6 months many will add back into the review backlog. A large percentage of the review backlog is resubmissions. Make sense? Legacypac (talk) 22:29, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Got it- thanks. jcc (tea and biscuits) 22:30, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

@Legacypac and GoldenRing: Can I simply make the comment that if G13-eligible pages were meant to be deleted automatically, Category:G13 eligible AfC submissions would not exist and {{AfC submission}} would place old drafts in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as abandoned AfC submissions directly. Now if someone wants to make a proposal for G13 CSD nominations made by extended confirmed users for pages that have never had G13 postponed to be auto-nuked by a bot, then I'd be open to that, but I don't think auto-nuking everything without any review is appropriate. The signal-to-noise ratio in Category:G13 eligible AfC submissions may be about 1 to 20, but that 1 article is important. TheDragonFire (talk) 13:32, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Deletion is a serious business event, and one that very few (if any) bots ever get approved for. HasteurBot simply evaluted the page to determine if it was eligible under a higher bar than the current wording of G13 (6 months completely unedited). At 5 months unedited, it'd drop a notice on the creating user's talk page letting them know that their page is in danger of being nominated under G13. At the 6 month mark unedited, it would go through and procedurally nominate for G13. Admins were usually pretty calm about HB's nominations because we took the more conservative position in nominations. I can take some time and dust off my processes, but I'd prefer to wait for this proposal to finish before I start tinkering with the process. Hasteur (talk) 18:24, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Okay, pretty clearly I misunderstood what the bot used to do and batch deletion was the wrong option here. My reading of the above discussion is that it's not worth undeleting then all but that I should go back through my deletion log and check them all to see if there's anything salvageable - so unless anyone strenuously objects to that procedure, I'll get on with it. GoldenRing (talk) 08:49, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

and for clarity I was only hoping a bot could do the work I, as a lowly user, was doing - CSD nominations. Legacypac (talk) 16:53, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

User Roadcreature / Guido den Broeder

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

---

Some of you may remember User:Guido den Broeder. He was later renamed to User:Roadcreature. The userpage of the later says "Originally banned by the community on December 19, 2008. Unbanned by the Arbitration Committee on May 21, 2009. Re-banned by the Arbitration Committee on June 1, 2009." As late as November 2015h he was still socking here (Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Roadcreature/Archive), confirmed both by checkuser and by editing behaviour (the user also was sockblocked at nlwiki, where the master account was also indef blocked a long time ago). One of thie discussions about the socks are Jolly Bard here, with the socks editing about Paraduin and Liberland. Note that at no point the socks have admitted being Guido den Broeder though.

I will not reiterate everything from 2008 or before, let me just point to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Guido den Broeder, a 2008 RfC about his extensive COI editing / self-promotion in mainspace, which only was closed without a formal summary because he was indef blocked anyway. Other evidence of the period can (by admins only) be seen at this page.

His original ban was based on an already extensive block log, including for making legal threats / taking legal action against other editors, edit warring, and conducting a rather disruoptive "social experiment" with enwiki. Arbcom tried an unblock with restrictions, which lasted from 21 May 2009 to 1 June 2009; 2 months later his email had to be disabled, 3 years later his talk page access, and another 3 years later we had the above socking.

Despite all this, ArbCom thought it wise to unblock him without consulting or even informing the community about this, on 23 April 2017.

Guido den Broeder has used his time since then to create an article about a non notable micro-nation Paraduin of which he is the founder and "prince", and which links to obviously primary sources but also to e.g. an article written by Guido den Broeder, and the main page of Wikisage, a partial wikipedia clone / substitute founded by Guido den Broeder, and supposedly the basic "economic" activity of Paraduin. Paraduin has supposedly also contributed to a movie with Kristina Pimenova, an 11-year old model sometimes described as "the most beautiful girl in the world" apparently, whose page has also been substantially edited by Den Broeder. One of the sources he added was again written by "Ogidius", i.e. himself. Another article he edited was Liberland, another micronation which claims the same bit of land Paraduin does (and which has received a lot of attention, contrary to Paraduin). There as well he added two sources by himself. Paraduin has already been submitted to prod, which Guido of course reverted, and most editors commenting at the page seem to agree that it is an utterly non notable topic. He is already edit warring to keep it in other lists and templates, see [21][22][23].

I don't know why Arbcom thought it wise to quietly unblock a long-term banned editor, who socked as recently as 2015 (and denied the socking, even though the evidence is extremely obvious); but since it turns out that his return is not to help Wikipedia, but to promote his own, well, let's call them "ideas" or "interests", I see no reason to let him continue editing, or to wait until all previous problems, not just the severe COI editing and the edit warring, reappear. There is no evidence that anything has changed since 2008 (or since 2015), so I suggest to simply reinstate the community ban. Fram (talk) 09:17, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

You write that he is currently banned since June 1, 2009 when a test run failed. So the previous ban was reinstated by ArbCom if I read the archives correctly. So what change are you actually requesting? Regards SoWhy 09:53, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

The text comes from User:Roadcreature. However, in April Arbcom silently unbanned User:Guido den Broeder. You can find the link in his block log (which ArbCom updated), not on his user page or talk page. So at the moment Guido den Broeder is no longer blocked or banned (though technically the community ban never was lifted I think, only the ArbCom ban was undone?). Fram (talk) 10:11, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Well it wasnt silent as such, he did lodge a formal request in public. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:28, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

And it is still on the talk page, see User talk:Guido den Broeder#Unbanned. Regards SoWhy 10:36, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Ah I see what happened. He logged it at requests, but it was closed less than 2 days later by a clerk (correctly) saying per WP:UNBAN it needs to be done via email. Which is probably why no one noticed it. (Since Arbcom bans are not subject to community involvement in lifting.) So not so much silent as 'working per the current written process'. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:51, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

"Silent" as in not announced here, which is what usually happens when ArbCom unbans someone (an ArbCom announcement here and at their noticeboard, and a discussion if necessary at the talk page of the noticeboard). And that's not taking into account the fact that he was community banned in the first place of course. Fram (talk) 11:01, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Well unfortunately the unbanning process at the time for community imposed bans was... Arbcom. So cant do much about that. Banned by community, unbanned by Arbcom per the process at the time, rebanned by arbcom, unbanned by Arbcom per the current process. Granted from looking at this COI editing I'm with FPAS that he should probably be re-banned. (Pimenova has been on my watchlist since User:Lyrda was banned.) Only in death does duty end (talk) 11:07, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

In any case we shouldn't hold whether the unban was silent or not against Guido den Broeder, so I probably shouldn't have included that bit anyway. Fram (talk) 12:06, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

So is that whats behind the Kristina Pimenova stuff recently? If he is back to the same problems that got him banned in the first place, then thats probably the best option. (Original community ban here for reference.) Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:14, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Polling

• Support re-ban, this is pretty horrible COI editing, and if that's what he wants to be doing here, he should go. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:33, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support community ban, per FPaS. BTW, Paraduin is at AfD. [24]. Beyond My Ken (talk) 13:59, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support ban Never should have been un-banned to begin with. RickinBaltimore (talk) 14:16, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support re-ban. Been watching Kristina Pimenova for a while, and them being involved that article's COI-editing rings all sorts of alarm-bells. Lectonar (talk) 14:22, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support community ban - So that this can be over once for all again. Capitals00 (talk) 17:01, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support ban. Once again, Arbcom neglects transparency. If they had done their usual due diligence and posted a notification on WP:ACN, people may have been able to monitor this user and raise a red flag before this became an issue. Evidently we get notified of new clerk trainees, but not a long term community banned editor being unbanned. The user's conduct is clearly unacceptable for Wikipedia, whether in 2008 or 2017. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 17:04, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support re-ban - As you can see above, he still denies most of the socking, despite ArbCom/functionaries confirming that Guido den Broeder = Roadcreature = The Jolly Bard. This involved cross-wiki data (CUWiki). You can read my summary of the investigation. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 18:18, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support RE Lectonar and my previous comments above. Only in death does duty end (talk) 21:24, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
• Support per above. Ealdgyth - Talk 21:30, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Discussion

Please don't WP:bludgeon the polling. Since you insist on commenting on every vote, please do so here. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 18:54, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

• (to Only in Death) At the time, some people misinterpreted an essay I wrote. Guido den Broeder (talk) 18:27, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
• (to Lectonar) I also uploaded the image, and my COI's are properly declared on my user page. Guido den Broeder (talk) 18:12, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
•  Comment: Since there is no conflict, I suggest a normal evaluation of my edits after three months by User:Opabinia regalis. Guido den Broeder (talk) 14:39, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
•  Comment: For the record, I am not User:The Jolly Bard. Guido den Broeder (talk) 18:09, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
• (to Salvidrim) Well, you're a poor investigator, as really all you had to do to solve this was mail me. Regardless, he didn't create any problems either, and this was taken into consideration when the decision to unban me was made. Guido den Broeder (talk) 18:32, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
• (to The Wordsmith) This shows exactly why you weren't notified, for what we have here is a lynch mob, while there is absolutely nothing to see. Guido den Broeder (talk) 18:37, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
•  Comment: Again, for the record, I have never made a legal threat in my life. Guido den Broeder (talk) 18:44, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
•  Comment: Nor do I editwar, despite being baited regularly including by several participants in this thread. I am always the one initiating discussion and trying to build consensus. Guido den Broeder (talk) 18:50, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
•  Comment: In conclusion, I have yet to see a single diff of any wrongdoing on my part. The same was true in 2009. People just jumped on the bandwagon then, as you are doing now. Do I edit articles that I have a potential COI with? Yes. Is that a problem? No. It's normal. The difference is that I declare any COI, while other editors don't. Bottom line, the bulk of my edits stand, the articles are in much better shape than before and with far more consensus. Guido den Broeder (talk) 19:02, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

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

GoldenRing appointed trainee clerk

The arbitration clerks are excited to welcome GoldenRing (talk · contribs) to the clerk team as a trainee!

The arbitration clerk team is often in need of new members, and any editor who would like to join the clerk team is welcome to apply by e-mail to clerks-llists.wikimedia.org.

For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 16:26, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#GoldenRing appointed trainee clerk

WP:ITNC

Currently five items ready to be posted at ITN. It's now becoming less "In The News" and more "Was In The News". The Rambling Man (talk) 19:33, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Is this thing on? The Rambling Man (talk) 21:22, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Speaking only for myself, I'm interested in helping build an encyclopedia and I don't see ITN as part of that goal --S Philbrick(Talk) 00:21, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

How helpful. Thanks for your response. Anyone else? The Rambling Man (talk) 07:53, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

If nobody has actioned this by the time I get home (in about ~7 hours), I'll take a look. Is there any documentation over what needs to be done? Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 01:26, 21 June 2017 (UTC).

Lankiveil, thanks for offering, but I think that the situation is under control (at the time of writing, at least!) Wikipedia:In the news/Administrator instructions is what you might be looking for. Bencherlite^Talk 08:59, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, glad someone was able to come to the rescue! Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 09:44, 21 June 2017 (UTC).

Thank you Lankiveil and Bencherlite for your interest and support. The Rambling Man (talk) 10:04, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Banned (or rangeblocked) IP still able to edit?

User 41.138.78.20 has edited their talkpage with questions, I have noticed that Bbb23 had rangeblocked 41.138.78.0/24 but the IP is still able to edit? Is there an issue here, or am I missing the meaning of "rangeblocking"? Thanks Nördic Nightfury 10:27, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Blocked users can edit their own talk pages (unless that setting is disabled which isn't done except in special circumstances) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:36, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Appears I am losing the plot then :). Thanks MSGJ. Nördic Nightfury 11:14, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Is this banner a violation of WP:CIVIL

Just a quick question:

• Please see the following banner from User:SkepticalRaptor's userpage:

Rules for this Talk Page DO NOT LEAVE ANY COMMENTS ABOUT ANYTHING TO DO WITH ANY ARTICLE OR ANY EDIT THAT I HAVE MADE. I watch all articles that I edit (and some that I haven't). If you have an issue, be mature and post it to the article's talk page, where all editors might participate. Violate this rule, and I just delete your complaints, rants, or even polite suggestions with no comment whatsoever. Deal with it. Do not come to this page to say hi, because no one is a friend of mine here–any attempt in being friendly is fairly annoying. If I want to drop by and be friendly, I have Twitter and Facebook that are part of my skeptical and personal life. I don't know any of you here, and I probably wouldn't want to know any of you. Nothing personal, but Wikipedia is not a social website (I believe that's a rule). Do not come here to criticize anything I've done, because I'm uninterested in anything but editing. Do not drop barnstars, pictures, or anything on this page, because those are just lame. Don't warn me about anything, because other than editing, I don't engage in any other discussions. Unless you're an official admin. Then I might listen, as long as I respect you. If you're a 15 year old, you don't deserve or warrant any respect whatsoever, even if you're an admin. Besides, any 15 year old wasting time as an admin, ought to go get exercise before you turn into a fat, diabetic, atherosclerotic 20 year old. Moreover, what can a snot nosed 15 year old teach me? How to play video games? Unless you're a Stephen Hawking prodigy, once again, go get some exercise. In other words, get off your lazy ass and leave Wikipedia to educated adults. Who am I kidding? Kids could care less what this old fart says. If you don't like my edits, revert them with a valid explanation, I'll probably fine tune it or move on. I have no emotional concern about any article, but if you do, I will enjoy making you appear to be the biggest ass and fool on Wikipedia. I've already done that recently. In conclusion, just stay away from my page, because I just am uninterested in engaging in conversation with anyone. Again, unless you're a mature, respectful admin. From my observation, that's about 10 of you.

Is this a violation of WP:CIVILITY and indicating WP:NOTHERE?

Thanks, Carl Fredrik ^talk 07:52, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Point 5 is certainly problematic. But why are you edit warring on Chronic Lyme disease? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:00, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

The argument put forth against inclusion of the term (a synonym) is that "it is not in common use" — but frankly that is irrelevant. I came to discuss the issue and found this banner – which at the very least dissuaded me from discussing the issue as I would have otherwise. If the issue persists I will go through ordinary channels to solve it, and I'm not really ready to call this minor dispute an edit-war. This post was not meant to be a way to WP:GAME in order to win that dispute. You are however correct that I should have been forthcoming that this was how I came across the banner — but I thought it would be clear to anyone who visited the talk-page, because of my post there.

To me, the reason why I saw the banner as problematic — and also why I did not want to post on the article talk page: the issue isn't about the article at all. It's about adhering to WP:MEDMOS — and discussion on user-talk-pages is often more amenable to such information that does not need to be discussed with all editors of an article. This is what I found to be WP:UNCIVIL, and if everyone behaved in this manner it would be very disruptive to the general editing process, because we could never gently inform editors of policy or guidelines. To ask for a unique process, where others must be involved even in issues where there is nothing but lack of knowledge of specific policies or guidelines — is disruptive and indicates WP:NOTHERE. Carl Fredrik ^talk 08:15, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

You are edit warring and the fact that you stopped at 3RR and did not exceed it, only mitigates slightly. I will have a word with SkepticalRaptor (as you could have done before coming here) and ask him/her to tone down that message and consider removing point 5 entirely. Regards — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:19, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Partially struck above as you only made two reverts. But the second revert was not a good idea. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:26, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

• Point 5 is just ignorable. Since many processes (that dont involve admins) require posting to their talkpage. Otherwise, since that banner clearly indicates they are not a nice person, why would you want to talk to them unless you are required to by process? If it bothers you, nominate it at MFD for being functionally incompatible with wikipedia's collaborative process. Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:32, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

  We would not delete a user talk page so I am not sure I understand the purpose of MFD in this case. The best approach is to discuss with the user in question, followed by a discussion here if necessary. Both of these have now happened (though in the wrong order) so suggest waiting for response from SkepticalRaptor. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:37, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

• MfD can also be used to delete part of a user talk page, so if someone objects to this sufficiently, nominating it at MfD is an option. Personally, I'd just ignore the entire box, as it's clearly not enforceable, and the editor is obviously an asshole. Beyond My Ken (talk) 08:49, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
• Ah, the top says 'userpage' rather than talk page. So yeah, MFDs probably not the best option. But generally if a user has on their talkpage a 'dont talk to me' notice, it gets ignored as unenforceable. If it makes them feel happy... The real problem with notices like that is that it may deter newer editors who dont know that it is complete rubbish. Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:52, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Just ignore if it bothers you. You aren't going to change what they think or how they maintain their talk page. Does it really matter that they epressed a general opinion without any corresponding action? --DHeyward (talk) 09:02, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

• I think that the box serves a very useful purpose in that it serves to illustrate that this is not a person worth interacting with if you can help it. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 09:42, 21 June 2017 (UTC).
• his ethnicity on his user page is more of a problem. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 12:45, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

So, they're definitely not Jewish and using the terms ironically? ;) — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 13:20, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I have no idea.Sir Joseph ^(talk) 13:27, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Exactly. No one does. Because no-one's asked. We have an article that might be relevant here: Reappropriation. — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 13:33, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

For my money (which is not much!), I think anonymity is a wonderful thing and support it very much. But I also think it means you don't get to use the identity defense in situations like this, especially where the language is inflammatory. Thanks. Dumuzid (talk) 13:49, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

• Suggest immediate removal of point 5 per WP:NPA - clearly an attack on younger users. As for the others, well, they are still aggressive in tone, so they too should be deleted. A particular editor - naming no names - was recently criticised for saying "don't bother coming here if you want to throw a wobbler" on their talk page - this is much worse than that, so I am surprised at the laissez-faire attitude of a lot of people here. Patient Zero^talk 13:06, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
• I find the whole thing abrasive, but I can't call it a personal attack because it isn't singling anyone out, so it isn't "personal". I suggest ignoring it. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 13:09, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
• "In conclusion, just stay away from my page, because I just am uninterested in engaging in conversation with anyone" Maybe I'm naive, or reading this wrong, but isn't this a violation WP:NOTHERE with Little or no interest in working collaboratively or Major or irreconcilable conflict of attitude or intention, Point #5 especially?
• (edit conflict) I do respect your opinion, Dennis - sometimes it is easier to simply ignore such comments, but quite frankly it is a grossly inappropriate statement - and as Sir Joseph said, questions need to be raised about the attack on Jewish individuals within his user page. I do think both of these need removing by an administrator, as, like I said previously, comments that were nowhere near as bad as this, made by other users, have had to be removed before. A warning on incivility is also in order. Patient Zero^talk 13:16, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Counteracted, however, by their perhaps somewhat emphatic insistence on taking discussions to article talk pages, which is very much what we advise. — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 13:22, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

• • I don't like it either, but I don't like lots of things here. He does say to leave discussions on the article talk page, which is the better way so everyone can participate, and frankly, you can ignore his banner and leave any template you want if it applies. His banner isn't enforceable. I'm not against trying to coax him into modifying 5, I'm just not comfortable sanctioning or forcing a change over it. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 13:21, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
• Notwthstanding the merits or otherwise of this banner, I do wish people would stop applying to NOTHERE their own idiosyncratic interpretation of what it actually says. It does not say 'An editor who says things I don't like' and does not apply here. This (~five years' tenure, >3.5K edits, no blocks) says they are very much WP:NOTNOTHERE. — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 13:17, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
• I don't see this banner on his talk page currently, but as another edited above noted, he does have his ethnicity listed on his User page as kike and lox-eating big nose amongst other things, this should likely be actionable as unambiguous racial slurs deserve very little leniency. Seraphim System ^(talk) 13:21, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
  • I'm guessing this is done as parody, given he also lists it as "Member of the Worldwide Conspiracy" and others. I'm more inclined to agree that this is a problem than the talk page header. I will go edit this myself. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 13:27, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

@Dennis Brown: Please see Reappropriation :) — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 13:34, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Totally aware of that and understand, but this isn't really a Free Speech area. If someone self-identified as a nigger on their user page, people would be up in arms over it, and that is a very classic example of re-appropriation. There is a time and place for everything, but my opinion is that the consensus of editors do not believe Wikipedia is that place. Also, we can't verify that someone really is Jewish, or using that as a mask to put hateful words on a page. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 13:37, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Ha, at least he's honest about being obnoxious. GoodDay (talk) 13:29, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

• MSGJ(Martin) has left a reasonable request on his page. I think that is probably all we need to get the process started. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 13:32, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
• My thoughts can be succintly summarised as: there are better things to waste peoples' time with. Mr rnddude (talk) 13:55, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
• Point #5 is definitely a violation of WP:CIVIL, and the whole thing seems jerkish. caknuck _° needs to be running more often 15:50, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
• 15-year-olds are too stupid and don't know anything, eh? Well, then I guess the ones who are running websites using their own money are just getting lucky because they don't know anything. Please. I've seen 10-year-olds more mature doing adult-type stuff like coding websites and the like. May not be using their own money at that age, but that's beside the point. Amaury (talk | contribs) 15:58, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that 15 year olds are too stupid, but there are some things you get better at as you get older, like writing and how to evaluate and use secondary sources. You will get better at something after studying it for 15 years. Coding a website is not really comparable—it would take further years to begin to develop critical analysis—this is where maturity is an asset. We do need this as editors when using sources, because usually standards here are very high. We have to be able to distinguish between what is OR and evaluate what is due weight, and that can be challenging even for professions academics and PhDs. But there is no need to call other editors stupid, just because you are an adult does not necessarily mean you are better at these things. Some teenagers are very talented, and we don't pass these kinds of judgments on editors because of age, education, professional background—only quality of their edits, so I think it does cross the line. The best thing would be for the editor to follow community advice and moderate the tone of his comments. Seraphim System ^(talk) 16:21, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

That was basically my point. And just to be on the safe side, I should clarify that the first part of my comment was sarcasm. I can see, though, how it could be taken as me calling them stupid if read just the right way. I wasn't, though I'm not saying you were implying that, either. Amaury (talk | contribs) 16:39, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

• Eh. It pushes the envelope a bit, but in the end there is a line separating merely obnoxious from NPA. I don't think this crosses that line. Further I agree with some of the above comments that this serves a useful purpose in that it is like a giant flashing neon warning sign alerting anyone who might have stumbled onto the page that it is the home of a someone that pretty much any normal person is not going to want to interact with if avoidable. Beyond that, while it's not a guideline and therefor not actionable. I would point the user to WP:DICK. -Ad Orientem (talk) 16:45, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Given the absurdly untrue personal attacks often made at ANi that are ignored or celebrated there is nothing actionable on that banner. Parts of it are even a good idea. I agree with him about 15 year olds. I remember being 15 a long time ago - it took me months beyond 15 to finish high school and start selling real estate. Legacypac (talk) 16:47, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I really don't think lecturing 15 year olds about their life style decisions and personal comments about weight/exercise are appropriate. Wikipedia is not an appropriate place for that, and I do think it crosses the line between the normal obnoxious comments that editors make to one another in the course of content disputes and ANI discussions, to something that is offensive and without any redeeming value. Seraphim System ^(talk) 17:03, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

There are also comments like this [25] [26] [27] [28] -basically calling others editors comments nts and edits "bullshit" regularly is not ok. This seems like a case of a competent editor who seems to believe he is within his rights to put down other editors. I know how frustrating editing can be, I have been frustrated many times myself, but there are certain standards of civility that all editors are expected to maintain. Seraphim System ^(talk) 17:37, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

There is absolutely no way I would sanction or even warn someone for those three year old diffs. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 17:48, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Are they that old? I didnt notice, thought it was within the last 1500 edits at most. I think have over 5,000 edits and I havent even been here a full year...seems peculiar.Seraphim System ^(talk) 17:53, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Even if they happened today, I wouldn't warn. We aren't school marms, we don't paddle people for saying "bullshit". It might be gruff, rough, crass, or however you want to phrase it, but we generally don't sanction for anything less than a flat out personal attack. Even then, we don't automatically sanction unless it is a pattern. People are people, they are blunt sometimes, they pop off sometimes. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 17:59, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I didnt say anything about sanctioning him, but he should tone it down. The fact that you think something is bullshit or ridiculous does not mean you should say that, this is part of our WP:CIVIL policy and the fact that we often pretend violations of that are "generally ok" for seemingly arbitrary reasons usually ends with disputes escalating to a point where sanctions do become necessary. Sure, everyone should let it go, but the editors on the other end become frustrated too, and sometimes they are the ones who are sanctioned in the end, and we know that can be 1) bad for editor retention and 2)counterproductive. Seraphim System ^(talk) 18:20, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Even if item 5 were civil (it's not--we've had discussions about aspersions on groups of persons), there is also WP:SOAPBOX, and I might make the claim that he is soapboxing from a very tall soapbox in the item. --Izno (talk) 18:42, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Which subsection of WP:SOAPBOX are you referring to? He isn't promoting an idea, which is what that policy is about. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 18:58, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Out of the bulleted items, I would suggest #2. However, both the first sentence of that section (Wikipedia is not a soapbox, a battleground [...]. This applies to [...] talk page discussions, [...] and user pages. as well as the final closing statement of the section (Non-disruptive statements of opinion on internal Wikipedia policies and guidelines may be made on user pages [...], as they are relevant to the current and future operation of the project. However, article talk pages should not be used by editors as platforms for their personal views on a subject (see Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines).) indicate some intent that the template's bullet #5 is off the mark. My 2 cents. --Izno (talk) 19:11, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

• This is much ado about nothing. We don't need to police user talk page banners so strictly. As noted multiple times already, this banner serves to inform any visitor to the page that the editor in question is not worth their time and trouble. The condescending user page is similarly useful. We've already given this contemptuous, contemptible individual enough attention. Lepricavark (talk) 22:17, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Category:Requests for unblock is backlogged

There are 33 unblock requests pending at the time of this posting. —MRD2014 ( T / C ) 14:43, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Please consider refusing an open unblock request if it's been sitting open for a week or more and you are simply disinclined to unblock the account. At least then, they'd know the unblock request was insufficiently convincing and they are free to make a new one. Several of us try to keep up with the new ones, but a number aren't obvious and then we leave them to others, who are also unconvinced. Leading to a backlog. --Yamla (talk) 18:18, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Also note that the number of open requests does not equate to the number that require attention. Many are already being acted on and include an in progress discussion between the blocked editor and others (this is especially true of spam username blocks).--Jezebel's Ponyo^{bons mots} 19:29, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

ITN, inappropriate admin actions and shutdown of any discussion.

Earlier today the article on the Finsbury park attack was posted to ITN despite a clear lack of consensus to do so. The admin's subsequent response is far below the expectation required for an explanation 'Go to ERRORS if you dont like it'. This has subsequently been disputed at the ITN until Bencherlite decided to shut down the discussion with a rationale that includes the laughable statement that 'ITN has traditionally be able to tell the difference between the trivial and the appropriate' - when even a brief look at ITN's history shows it is full of what is popular amongst the participating editors, trivial or appropriateness not being concerns of many of them. Firstly I would like an impartial review of the consensus at the time of posting, followed by pulling the item if it is found there was no consensus to post it. Only in death does duty end (talk) 18:39, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Consensus does not mean unanimity. Further discussion there is not likely to be productive, so the actions of Bencherlite are quite appropriate. – Muboshgu (talk) 18:42, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Actually from the way the comments were going, it was clear that further discussion was indicating the item should be pulled. Only in death does duty end (talk) 18:43, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

That's not how I read the section. I see people who wanted it pulled, but not indication that it "should be pulled". – Muboshgu (talk) 18:46, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

They wanted it pulled but secretly, and completely unstated, felt it 'should' stay? Any other imaginary motives you want to impart to them? Only in death does duty end (talk) 18:48, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I think the point is that it was all "pull because I opposed and I still do" which is not really how things work here. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:41, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

That is precisely what I meant. Consensus was post and some people won't accept that. – Muboshgu (talk) 20:55, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I agree that the posting admin hasn't provided a helpful reply when challenged on his talk page. However, as far as Bencherlite is concerned, he did provide a thorough rationale: Posted and will remain so. The arguments against posting are/were (1) an IP saying that the article was not sufficiently developed (not now relevant); (2) a comment that this was not a terrorist attack (well, it's being treated as one by police since it strongly appears to be a targeted attack on Muslims); (3) an argument that it was routine for London (not an argument that commanded support); (4) - and this was the main argument - that the same incident elsewhere in the world would not be posted and so it is trivial / lacking appropriate newsworthiness. The stronger arguments are the counter-arguments, namely that (a) newsworthiness will inevitably include a degree of location specificity i.e. what is newsworthy in London may not be so in a capital city elsewhere in the world and vice versa, and (b) ITN has traditionally be able to tell the difference between the trivial e.g. the Kardashian family's exploits and the appropriate e.g. a UK terrorist attack specifically targeting Muslims when the UK does not have a history of such attacks. Comparisons between events that were or were not posted is not always terribly helpful, since ITN can only work on the consensus of those who participate in any particular discussion, ITN does not run on a formal system of precedent (outside ITNR), and a failure to post can in some circumstances be explained by the absence of a nomination or a decent article. Overall, my view is that sufficient time has elapsed for discussion and that the consensus here, involving number and quality of arguments, is in favour of keeping this posted. Participants are welcome to discuss the general question of ITN's approach to stories in different countries but not under this heading, thank you. And, to me, his rationale seems to be sound. --BorgQueen (talk) 18:52, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict with BQ) A quick response to say: I stand by my decision; I won't lose any sleep, however, if the consensus is that my decision was wrong; more admins are always welcome to help out at ITNC; and please be assured that not every decision you will make at ITNC will be fought over like this! Bencherlite^Talk 18:53, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

The synopsis above seems sufficient that I don't need to repeat it, except to note that I was misquoted, a strange thing to do considering that my comments can be read. Unlike what Only in Death claims in his complaint, I never said what he said I did. Regarding why it was posted, I posted it because I judged consensus to support doing so. --Jayron32 19:00, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I was surprised to see it posted because the last time I checked, it was evenly split, which was far from consensus. There was no rationale for why there was consensus other than the admin just felt there was enough. The fact there were 7 Pull votes after it was posted shows consensus was premature. They were also rudely accused of having "sour grapes" for wanting it to be pulled. TL565 (talk) 19:03, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

The problem here is with personal preference. Some editors consider a terrorist attack on an ethnic minority using a vehicle in a country where such crimes are rare more important than a gun attack on a politician in a country where gun crimes aren't rare. There's a huge amount of subjectivity, and as we know, our audience is highly slewed towards US contributors who may associate more with the latter story than the former. That at least one of the "pull" voters had already voted as "oppose" was a completely transparent way of demonstrating "sour grapes", i.e. I had my say, it didn't go my way, so I object. Consensus is not formed simply from a binary comparison of yay's and nay's. And to top that all nicely, we have the "assassination attempt" shooting which was posted (with dubious consensus, at least similar to this) where, once posted, it was simply accepted, and we all moved on. There's nothing wrong here, if people object to the items being posted at ITN, (a) post more candidates (b) work to get people to support rather than yell about opposing and pulling. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:40, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Or (c) write some articles! The Rambling Man (talk) 19:49, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

There wasn't a consensus to post this. After the posting, many people objected - yet that was ignored. The support for this being posted is just that the specifics of this minor domestic event and its media coverage make it important. Will we report it if there are unusual types of attack against other religions or ethnicities? Unusual doesn't mean notable or important. Jim Michael (talk) 19:54, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

For the third time, the posting admin judged the quality of argument and deemed that there was a consensus. Arguing against that is pointless. The sooner we all realise that "consensus" does not equal "vote counting" the easier this kind of debate will be. As for claiming it to not be notable, please see WP:AFD. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:59, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I know what happened, but the judgement was wrong. The arguments to post were bogus. I never said or thought that consensus is the same a vote-counting. It shouldn't have been posted. After it was wrongly posted, it should have been pulled.Jim Michael (talk) 20:05, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, you actually said "The arguments to post were bogus"? Wow. That's sufficient for me to leave this to you to dig yourself out of that one! The Rambling Man (talk) 20:07, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, and I stand by that. Several people said that during the discussion (using different words). Jim Michael (talk) 20:09, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Can you provide at least four examples of "bogus" arguments please, with diffs? The Rambling Man (talk) 20:12, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm not going to do that, but the arguments included the amount of media coverage, this being rare/unique and the victims being Muslim and the perp non-Muslim. Jim Michael (talk) 20:15, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

You are presumably aware of the whole raison d'etre of ITN? You've covered a couple of them just there. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:17, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

This is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid newspaper. We'd be swamped by trivial stories about reality TV participants if we went by media coverage.Jim Michael (talk) 20:20, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

You realise this attack was covered by the BBC, The New York Times, etc etc? You are completely alone claiming this is all about "media coverage". The Rambling Man (talk) 20:22, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

So are huge numbers of events which aren't of major importance - especially in the summer. Jim Michael (talk) 20:27, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Aha, we're getting there now, your own personal interpretation of importance rather than adhering to the purpose of ITN. Say no more. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:30, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

A common sense interpretation, put forward by several people during the discussion. Jim Michael (talk) 21:00, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Anything with that many discussion comments, evenly divided between support and oppose, is likely to be news of a political nature, and should generally be covered for a brief period of time. A "no consensus" assessment should default to including it on the front page. Other stories (perhaps Travis Kalanick's resignation or Karen Handel's win in GA-06) will naturally push it off the front page in 24-48 hours. Power~enwiki (talk) 20:11, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

That would open the way for loads of events of marginal importance to be posted with little discussion. In order to be posted, it should have clear consensus in favour. Jim Michael (talk) 20:13, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Nobody is claiming there was "little discussion" in this case. Power~enwiki (talk) 20:16, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I was arguing against the suggestion in the comment immediately above mine. Jim Michael (talk) 20:19, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Please be more clearer. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:21, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I was very clear. That comment is indented & immediately below the one I was replying to. Jim Michael (talk) 20:24, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

(ec) That's a good viewpoint. That it has attracted so much discussion probably means it's attractive to our readers. Perhaps such over-discussed topics should, by default, be posted once they reach 10,000 bytes of meaningless "he said, she said, I don't like it"-style arguments! The Rambling Man (talk) 20:15, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/Fuck (film) and Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties spring to mind as much more controversial topics displayed on the main page where I closed the discussion after WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more bytes than this one... and nobody dragged me to AN or ARBCOM about those. Hey-ho... Bencherlite^Talk 20:36, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Bencherlite, I'll drag you to Arcbomb, it's been at least a week since I was a featured Abrcomber, and I have to say, I kind of miss those guys, especially the ones who have gone AWOL..... The Rambling Man (talk) 20:39, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

The details of Kim Kardashian's life are attractive to huge numbers of readers. We should be posting important events only. Jim Michael (talk) 20:17, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

And those items wouldn't be covered by Wikipedia per WP:N. Please, this is simple, if you believe the item to be non-notable, AFD is that way, if you believe the admins can't judge consensus, ARBCOM (!!) is the other way. If you just want to keep the encyclopedia ticking over with things that would GENUINELY INTEREST OUR ENGLISH LANGUAGE READERS, then please, think again about all this objection. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:20, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm saying that in this case, the decision was wrong, not that admins in general are wrong. That's why I'm in this discussion. Everyone makes mistakes. Jim Michael (talk) 20:25, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

But you realise that a huge portion of our readership is interested in this story, right? Like where it says at WP:ITN under "Purpose":

"To help readers find and quickly access content they are likely to be searching for because an item is in the news."

"To showcase quality Wikipedia content on current events."

"To point readers to subjects they might not have been looking for but nonetheless may interest them."

"To emphasize Wikipedia as a dynamic resource."

This story ticked all four boxes and was posted because strong arguments in favour of the story meeting the purpose of ITN were met, not just conceding to the "I don't like it" brigade. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:29, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

The large majority of stories that are in the news aren't posted at ITN. Jim Michael (talk) 20:31, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Quite rightly. Your point being? The Rambling Man (talk) 20:34, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

My point,?that I've made several times, is that this event is nowhere near important enough. Jim Michael (talk) 20:38, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I think you're conflating arguments now. We aren't discussing the majority of stories in the news, we aren't discussing whether this is "nowhere near important enough" (of course, it was, it was posted, had consensus, has an article, unless you've AFD'ed it?). Your position is so confusing that I think it's best if you just propose your new approach to ITN in an RFC so we can all discuss it and vote on it. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:41, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

It didn't have consensus, as several people said in the discussion after it was posted. I'm not arguing for the article to be deleted. I'm say?ing it's nowhere near important enough to be on ITN. Jim Michael (talk) 20:47, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Again, you're conflating arguments, either it was badly posted or not, either it had consensus or not, either the admin posting was negligent or not, this "nowhere near important enough" line, which is laughable considering the international coverage it received. It didn't go your way, or the way of some of the others, we get that. It was posted by one of the few trustworthy admins. If you don't think he did the right thing, please initiate his desysop at Arbcom. And if you don't like the way ITN works, re-work it via RFC. Right now, nothing wrong has happened. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:52, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

News coverage doesn't equal importance. This gained huge media coverage because it's the type of story that the media love to sensationalise. No-one is desysopped for one mistake. Jim Michael (talk) 20:57, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Hello Jim, I do agree that we should be posting important events only. But then, how do you define "important events"? --BorgQueen (talk) 20:28, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

That's what we need to create clear guidelines for. Jim Michael (talk) 20:29, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

We have them, see WP:ITN. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:31, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

We need better guidelines, so that we only include important events. Worse terror attacks than this one happen every single day. Jim Michael (talk) 20:37, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm happy to review your proposal. In the meantime, we have what we have, so tactically voting against it is harmful. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:38, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I made a clear and sound argument for not posting it - I didn't merely vote. Jim Michael (talk) 20:40, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

So your silence was your objection? Please, let us know your plan for new ITN guidelines. It's clear we're not getting anywhere at all here, so once you have the RFC in place, I'm certain it'll garner a huge amount of interest. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:43, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm wary of the idea that an item should be pulled from ITN because some believe there wasn't consensus. It's the job of the posting admin to judge that consensus - if you don't agree, just move on. Some you win, some you lose. Items should only be pulled if the article is of substandard quality, or if it was posted without sufficient discussion. Neither applies here. The quality is good, and there was ample time given for editors to air their views before a decision was takenPawnkingthree (talk) 21:44, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

New comment

My comment was (reasonably) mis-interpreted as being part of a thread above, I'm re-posting it here independently.

Anything with that many discussion comments, evenly divided between support and oppose, is likely to be news of a political nature, and should generally be covered for a brief period of time. A "no consensus" assessment should default to including it on the front page. Other stories (perhaps Travis Kalanick's resignation or Karen Handel's win in GA-06) will naturally push it off the front page in 24-48 hours. As multiple people are seriously injured or dead, this is definitely a news story and not merely tabloid gossip. Power~enwiki (talk) 20:27, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with that suggestion, for the reasons I've given above. Jim Michael (talk) 20:28, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Please clarify. Your remarks above as stated are unclear as to whether any point is replying to me or The Rambling Man. Power~enwiki (talk) 20:30, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

In this comment, I'm replying to you. Your suggestion would result in many things being posted after short discussions with few editors and no consensus. Jim Michael (talk) 20:32, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

It seems (to me) to be precisely the opposite. Should a nomination gather KB of discussion, it's probably a shoo-in for ITN as it's something our readers will be having the same kind of debate over. This isn't to do with "short discussions", "few editors" or "no consensus", it's to do with serving our readers. That's why we're here, right? The Rambling Man (talk) 20:36, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

No, because they could have been canvassed from outside WP. Jim Michael (talk) 20:41, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I believe that would be cause for over-turning a "no consensus" ruling. See WP:CONSENSUS. Power~enwiki (talk) 20:45, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

• Question - TRM's comment that opponents of this post should resort to AFD struck me as ludicrous, so as I newbie I did some research. The ITN standards say we should "address the notability of the event, the quality of the article, and whether it has been updated." #2 and #3 make sense, but on WP notability is a very specific concept. Is it the general consensus that the requirement for notability on ITN is the same as notability in general (i.e. meriting a unique article)? If so, this is clearly not understood by the voters at ITN/C. If not, a different word should be used in the ITN guidelines.GreatCaesarsGhost (talk) 23:11, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Ss112

Ss112 (talk · contribs · logs)

This editor is condescending and rude towards anyone he disagrees with. Anytime he undoes an edit he is passive aggressive and hostile in the most discrete way he can think. I have tried time and time again to explain to him how certain things in the music industry works but he calls everything he knows nothing about "not constructive" if you call him out for being passive aggressive in the undo edit explanations. I don't care if he's been here since 06. I actually make articles, meanwhile he runs around irritating people by nitpicking at the slightest pettiest things like undoing factual information because it won't show up in a source for another hour. The guy literally just assumes the worst of everyone and thinks any editor who hasn't been here for a decade just edits pages to trash them lol i'm done with his nonsense. I'm obviously not the first nor the 10th editor to become annoyed of him because I've seen his talk page in the past. So why doesn't someone tell him to be less condescending and stop assuming everyone's out to ruin wikipedia. BlaccCrab (talk) 19:56, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

@BlaccCrab: Could you provide some diffs which illustrate this behaviour? Also, I've notified the user of this discussion per the instructions at the top of the page -- There'sNoTime ^{(to explain)} 20:01, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I don't have time to go back and dig up specific instances because frankly most of them are from a few months back and I need to go about my day. He's going to come on here and talk about how uncivil I am but he knows damn well that he edits as if he's a professor scolding incompetent students and i'm tired of him getting away with it just because he's been here a decade. We're both 25 year old men, i am not a child. He can speak to me as a grown man would speak to another grown man if he disagrees with an edit I make. BlaccCrab (talk) 20:13, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Well I hope we'd all conduct ourselves as though we would in person - I'm not entirely sure what it is about Wikipedia which makes everyone so pent up, but WP:CALM has some rather good tips. I'll have a dig through their contributions, and hopefully we'll be hearing from Ss112 when they're next around. Maybe this report will make them consider the tone they take when communicating with other editors? -- There'sNoTime ^{(to explain)} 20:19, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I will make an effort to be less indignant if he would just take the time to be more straightforward and less uppity when editing. I don't want to cause any hassle for admins or for one another. BlaccCrab (talk) 23:20, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Hello, BlaccCrab and Ss112. I'm not sure whether to get involved with your disputes, especially this one and that one. I could provide more diffs if anyone wants me to. George Ho (talk) 20:53, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Exploring how the Edit filter can be used to combat harassment

Hello!

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Join the conversation at Wikipedia talk:Community health initiative on English Wikipedia#Exploring how the Edit filter can be used to combat harassment. I hope to see y’all there!

— TBolliger (WMF) (talk) 23:18, 21 June 2017 (UTC) on behalf of the Anti-Harassment Tools team