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Ongoing harassment of administrator by editor

• Thewolfchild (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Toddst1 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Summary. Twc and Todd had an acrimonious dispute on an article talk page. Since that time, Twc has been harassing Todd by refactoring Todd's talk page, not staying away from Todd's talk page, and by refactoring comments on Twc's own talk page.

Disclosure. Todd asked me to look into this. To my knowledge, I've never had any contact with Twc before this.

Details. The dispute began on September 20 on the talk page of Intellectual disability and revolved around the term "mental retardation". Todd noted that the term was politically incorrect but that it was still widely used. Twc jumped in on October 2 and rather than focus on whether the term is still used and supported by reliable sources went off on a soapbox about how the word "retarded" is offensive, particularly to the disabled community. Twc equated the word "retarded" to the word "nigger".

Todd tried to bring the discussion back to what the article should say per reliable sources, and said that Twc's WP:ADVOCACY was irrelevant to Wikipedia. Twc criticized Todd for not being civil (Todd asked if Twc was "incapable of reading the OP", which is, in my view, mildly uncivil and unnecessary, although provoked). There was also a fight over Twc's allusion to Michelle Bachmann (he called her ignorant for apparently using the word). Todd told Twc that it was a violation of WP:BLP for Twc to say that. (My view: not a major violation of BLP - stronger argument is it was irrelevant and evinced continued soapboxing by Twc.) Todd left a template warning on Twc's talk page regarding Bachmann. Twc complained about it on the Intellectual disability talk page and called it administrative abuse. Twc then left a warning on Todd's talk page about Todd's comments at the article talk page.

Skipping over some of the intervening details, Twc then left another warning on Todd's talk page (same idea - first one had been removed by Todd). Todd removed it, and Twc escalated the warnings here. Todd replaced the warnings with a new section entitled "thewolfchildish behavior" (not a great idea, in my view) here. Todd concluded his new section by telling Twc to stay off his talk page unless he was notifying him of an ANI discussion. Twc ignored Todd's directive here, promptly removed by Todd. Twc then changed the section header to "thewolfchild behavior" here. @EatsShootsAndLeaves: reverted here. Twc reverted back here, claiming that Todd's word choice was a personal attack. Todd then changed the header to "thewolfchild's inappropriate behavior" here. Twc removed the word "inappropriate" here. Todd restored the word and again told Twc to stay off his talk page here. There was then a battle with ESAL having the last word.

It was after this (same day, though) that I got involved and left this comment on Twc's talk page. After Twc responded (not helpfully in my view, but you can read it in the history), @Writ Keeper: commented, essentially telling Twc to leave Todd's talk page alone (here). Twc removed WK's comment (no problem with that) but also changed my section header from "Toddst1" to "Abusive Admin" (here). That pissed me off, and I changed it back and told Twc not to do it again here. Twc then removed the section (what was left of it) from their talk page and pasted it on mine here with a parting shot, "The hypocrisy is starting to give me nausea anyway." There were a few side discussions as well with other users. You can see it in Twc's contribution history, but I'm leaving them out as this is probably already too much detail.

Proposal. Twc's behavior is wrong on two fronts. From an article standpoint, it's never a good idea for our world views to interfere with our ability to edit Wikipedia neutrally. Also, expressing our personal views on article talk pages is unhelpful at best. From a pure conduct standpoint, Twc's notion that they can attack other editors, admin or not, just because they don't like what they're saying is disruptive. Twc has been blocked a few times in the past for harassment, although it's been over a year. Apparently, they haven't learned. Although they appear to have stopped posting to Todd's talk page, I don't sense that they have learned anything from this experience, which does not bode well for future disruption. I leave it to others to decide whether sanctions are warranted and, if so, what they should be.--Bbb23 (talk) 18:48, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

• So I guess what you're asking for is an independent analysis of who's being a bigger dick to the other? OK. I've looked at the whole conversation at the article talk page, Toddst1's talk page, and TWC's talk page, and I'd say it's 65% Thewolfchild's fault, and 35% Toddst1's. Maybe 60-40 or 70-30, it's hard to be precise.

I'd be inclined to say that since it is not overwhelmingly one person's fault, and since the section of the article talk page in question has been archived so it isn't disrupting other editors any more, and since either one could stop this by not reacting to the other anymore, that we should stay out of it until they both get bored and move on. But I don't imagine that will get much traction. --Floquenbeam (talk) 19:56, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

I appreciate the independent analysis, @Floquenbeam: and I don't disagree (as you can see from my self-interpolation) that Todd has not behaved perfectly. I didn't relish taking this to ANI because these kinds of disputes, no matter how much mud is slung, generally come off sounding petty. And I wouldn't have brought it here if it hadn't been for the sly shot Twc took in changing my section header on their talk page. Before that, I was going to leave it up to Todd to take whatever action he deemed appropriate, including none, given that, as you say, Twc was no longer editing Todd's talk page (finally) and the discussion at the article talk page had been shut down. But, right or wrong, the section header change, after everything else, altered my thinking and led to my opening this thread.--Bbb23 (talk) 20:29, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

• Comment - I see it differently from Floquenbeam. In reviewing twc's recent edits, my first thought was that his account had been hijacked. This is the third time twc has been at ANI (previously here and here), and the last time he escalated the situation until he was indeffed for gross incivility and for maintaining an obnoxious WikiWarrior mentality. Given that background does it make any sense at all to return to this behavior with a vengeance and to furthermore make repeated self-destructive requests from multiple (1, 2, 3, etc.) editors and administrators in the last few days to please please bring him back to ANI? If this isn't a hijacked account, this kind of action demonstrates a remarkable lack of WP:CLUE. And the more you scrutinize his edits, the deeper the rabbit hole goes.
  I've been skimming through twc's talk page for the last few minutes and I have to say I'm inclined to agree with Bbb23 that it really doesn't look like anything has changed at all since the last indef block. Nearly every single interaction twc has had with other editors seems to result in a massive epic-length battle. This isn't an editor who is interested in collaborating. This is an editor who is interested in getting his own way all of the time and at any cost. Rhetoric and advocacy for one's positions is one thing, but the level of acrimony twc brings to the project is distinctly unhelpful. Toddst1's use of the term "thewolfchildish" isn't model behavior, but it appears he had good cause to be frustrated and honestly I find the term apt given twc's childish punning of previous foe User:Nick Thorne's username into "a prick" on twc's talkpage record of past battles. These heavily edited, propaganda-spun summaries of twc's phyrric bridge-burning "victories" that he hangs as badges on his talk page under "old news" make for pretty outrageous reading for anyone who believes in collaborative consensus-building. That this "Nick Thorne - prick" equivalence comes simultaneously with twc's claims that Toddst1 has breached WP:CIVIL with his "wolfchildish" term is just the height of hypocrisy - something that twc has ironically claimed nauseates him. If this was just a single incident then I'd recommend a slap on the wrist, but this is his third appearance at ANI for the exact same behavior and he's only been here for a little over a year. A review of his interaction with other editors throughout his career here demonstrates fairly clearly that this is pattern behavior. I do see a single example of him reaching out to another editor he previously had conflicts with, and they seem to have put the conflict behind them so I'd like to hear her thoughts on the matter. Are there any redeeming qualities to this editor that have been overlooked here? -Thibbs (talk) 20:24, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

It's unfortunate you have taken the point of view you have, as there is a great deal of needless negativity in your summary of what you think I'm all about. I will try to address a few points, in the hope that you can try to take a more neutral approach to your evaluation. Yes, I was open to anyone opening an ANI on this issue. I was at my wit's end trying to deal with this on my own. I simply wanted the abuse of my username, and these empty accusations to stop. A major part of the problem here is incivility. I don't think that calling me (or Toddst1) a "dick", or continuing to refer to me as "a child", or "childish", is going to help solve any civility issues. You are right about the subject header I used, on the list of comments, by Nick Thorne, that I have. As with most of the headers, I simply employ a tongue-in-cheek type of pun. That's what I was attempting to do here - equate the stinging sensation of when you are pricked by a thorn, to the 'stinging' comments he had made. I had no intention of trying to imply Nick is a "pr*ck". We all know that would not last very long, and would be subject to sanctions. Whether you choose to accept my thanks or not, I will tank you just the same for pointing it out. Quite simply, I missed it. Whether you choose to accept it or not, I did. That was not my intent, and as such, I have changed it. Should Nick choose to contact me regarding it, I would certainly offer my apologies. As for the rest of the threads I have 'archived', there is no malicious reasoning behind that at all, despite your suspicions. They are not "heavily edited, propaganda-spun summaries of [my] phyrric bridge-burning "victories" that [I] hang as badges". They are, for the most part, simply 'copy & pasted' from other talk pages, as is. I simply keep them for review. I do realize that from time to time, I do become engaged in content disputes, that in some cases, are lengthy. After my last block, I though it would be a good idea to keep a copy of some of these, so that I can review what works and what doesn't. They are somewhat of a learning tool, and I didn't realize there was a policy forbidding this. If there is, I will remove them. If there isn't, I don't see why they would need to be so heavily and prominently focused on here, on an ANI about something else entirely. I don't see how they are disruptive to the project. And, if I am using them for improvement, how is that a bad thing? (I wonder... if I did not have those threads for you to so easily access, would you hold the same harsh opinions?) While I realize that at ANI, just about everything is open to scrutiny, that also leads to problems sometimes as well, as the issue at hand came become so diluted, that it is not always properly addressed (though there are some limits on just how much digging off topic is appropriate) Since everything is looked at, that includes everyone. I hope that you won't use the perceived misdeeds of one user, to gloss over the actual misdeeds of another. Unfortunately, I already see that occurring, but I hope it won't continue. I thought these ANI's were supposed to be neutral, I hoping this one will be - thewolfchild 07:30, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure I'm being neutral here. I've never interacted with either of you to my knowledge and my intent in examining both of your edits was to see whether this incident was a one-time thing or whether either or both of you have intractable editing problems. The first thing I noticed is that whereas Toddst1 has a clean block log, you have previously been indefinitely blocked for incivility and battlegrounding. My next step was to review your talk page which you had altered considerably from its original form. By reformatting and recondensing these comments under tongue-in-cheek headers you've greatly obscured the record of back-and-forths and of course you've removed numerous comments that you apparently didn't think appropriate to archive. So I went back through a few of the article talk page discussions. I first examined your discussions at the aircraft carrier articles. What I saw was a textbook example of caustic battleground behavior. I then examined your battle over Christine Aguilera and again found it to showcase the way of the warrior rather than a collaboration-oriented consensus-seeking discussion. The same behavior is evident at the "Justin Timberlake", "The Avengers (2012 film)", and "Clausewitz" squabbles among others. The pattern behavior is quite evident. So in trying to determine the background of this current issue I see two editors who have both obnoxiously templated each other. One seems to have lost his cool, and the other seems to be an unrepentant WikiWarrior. I was particularly struck by the hypocrisy of the fact that this "thewolfchildish behavior" term appeared to be the crux of your battle when less than a week ago you had titled the summary of a dispute between you and User:Nick Thorne "Botany 101: Beware of thorns, you might get a prick" - arguably a more offensive bastardization of another editor's username. I accept your thanks in pointing this out to you, but I feel your explanation rings falsely. From my perspective the whole argument between you and Toddst1 is just another example of your longstanding battleground mentality - something which must end whether through your own resolve or by another indefinite block. Toddst1's "crimes," which amount to a tongue-in-cheek type of pun on your name and calling a member of congress an idiot, are completely trivial compared to the lengthy and rancorous battles that you engage yourself in wherever you edit. Anyway that's what it looks like to an uninvolved outsider. -Thibbs (talk) 11:45, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, but I don't particularly find you being all that neutral. You have not only been quite heavy with your criticism, but completely one-sided. And above all, I do not appreciate being called a liar. You raised an issue about my archiving discussions on my talk page, that I don't even think is an issue. You have cited, again, the subject heading involving Nick Thorne, without mentioning the actions I have since taken to correct it. Despite that, you depict it as "arguably a more offensive bastardization of another editor's username". - "Arguably" indeed. If you can't see the difference, then I am at a loss on how to further address this with you, so I won't. You complain about my "cherry-picking" certain quotes, but you yourself are now guilty of that, right here, right now. You mention discussions such as "Avengers" and "Clausewitz", yet they are from a year and a half ago (and prior my last block), and you throw them out here as if they are obvious examples of wrong-doing, solely on my part, when they are not. You mentioned a "battle at Christina Aguilera"... it was actually a discussion at the BLP Project talk page, and it involved the BLP's of many actors and entertainers, Aguilera and Timberlake, included among them. You failed to notice that as lengthy as it was, it involved one other person, an admin, and we didn't result to personal attacks, nor did he post false warnings on my talk page and threaten to abuse his admin tools. I don't see you condemning him for remaining in the discussion as long as I did, nor do I see you mentioning the multiple users that supported my position in that debate. It's relatively easy to go thru any user's contribs, pick and choose a handful of edits that suit your need, and then call it a "pattern". But your opinion of me as an "unrepentant wiki-warrior", is one that I will be taking with a grain of salt. I will say however, that as much as I disagree with you, I am not completely dismissing all of your comments. I will take them under advisement, and in the future, try and avoid any actions on my part that may actually validate your concerns. I thank you again for your contributions here, and hope that you will now give others an opportunity it to contribute. - thewolfchild 23:14, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I can understand why you would have a difficult time evaluating the neutrality of my observations given that you are heavily invested in one side of the dispute and given that I am finding that side more at fault than the other side. Obviously I have no motivation to be non-neutral except as warranted by the facts of the case, though, so I will be taking your implicit accusation of bias with a grain of salt myself. You are quite right that it takes more than one editor to battle and that the battlegrounds mentioned above involve other editors. But there is one common element that runs through all of these battles, and that element is User:Thewolfchild. I haven't mentioned the admins you were doing battle with because they only took part in individual battles whereas you seem to be in the habit of engaging in battles wherever you edit. And I should note that I get this impression primarily from your own battle archives that you've now wiped from your talk page. You're still pretty new here and there is no good reason why you should have engaged in upward of 10 acrimonious and epic-length arguments so far nor why this should be your third visit to AN/I. At a certain point you have to stop pointing the finger at everyone else and accept that it is your behavior that is most likely at least partially to blame. I'm encouraged by your claim that you aren't completely dismissing all my comments and that you'll take them into advisement. I really hope you do because, again, as an outside observer I see very little in the way of improvement since your last indef. block. You're walking on eggshells and you're carrying a bludgeon. Not a clever vantage point from which to be challenging administrators to bring you to AN/I for evaluation. -Thibbs (talk) 00:16, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

This is becoming circular, and consequently, lengthy. I could, again, disagree with you point by point but... to what end? I see an accusation forming on the horizon of this thread being another example of my treating WP as a battleground (whereas, you of course are merely "just contributing", right?). As far as this ANI is concerned, did I "harass" another user? No, I don't believe that I did. Did I care if an ANI was created? Initially, no, I didn't, as I had hoped it would bring an end to the personal attacks and empty accusations being posted about me. Perhaps I was naïve in thinking this, but then again... what do I know? I'm "still pretty new here". - thewolfchild 02:29, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

I hope you haven't take offense at that observation. It was just a comparison of your total edit count to your number of battles and your number of visits to AN/I. You're not brand new of course, but you do have a particularly high level of conflict for your level of involvement with Wikipedia. If you were brand new then this wouldn't be as big of a deal, but you should be starting to understand the culture by now. I hope you are beginning to see that this isn't a gladiator's arena.

Regarding my contributions, I'm no model Wikipedian but I invite you to review my block log, my AN/I record, and the number of huge and nasty arguments I've been involved with during my tenure here at Wikipedia. Anyway I agree that a point-by-point refutation would be a waste of time for all parties. If you emerge from this unscathed then think it's time you hung up the battle axe once and for all, accepted (even if just internally) that you need to find a more peaceable and collaborative approach to editing, and avoided any further situations that could land you in AN/I regardless of your feelings of injury and innocence. Let's imagine, for example, that instead of edit warring with Toddst1 over the mild insult of calling your behavior "wolfchildish" you instead acted like an adult and just walked away. There's nothing admirable about escalating your every disagreement. Had you just let it go it would have been obvious to anyone which of you was the childish one and there would have been no reason whatsoever for me to review your sordid edit history. -Thibbs (talk) 04:22, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

• Comment Twc is well aware of both WP:TPG and WP:UP ...and if he wasn't before today, he became more aware here. Nevertheless, even with that knowledge, he has continued his harassing behaviour. I honestly felt Twc could be brought on board, even with his issues over the past year - this, however, is turning into WP:CIR and WP:BATTLE. Absolutely fricking clueless behaviour, even though clue has been liberally applied ES&L 23:57, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

thewolfchild reply

The term "ongoing harassment" is being used here both irresponsibly and quite cavalierly. This ANI is being presently with one hell of a slant that the facts simply do not support. While Bbb23 is obviously (in his own words) "pissed off", it is also obvious that this ANI is really in response to this edit, specifically the last paragraph, posted by me on his talk page at 18:13, 13 October 2013 (UTC).

The discussion at Talk:Intellectual_disability#Mental_retardation_as_a_term (ID), speaks for itself. I can certainly admit that I wish that thread had gone differently, but I was not the driving force behind the terrible, downward spiral it took. Toddst1 created that thread, out of what can only be described as a bizarre, self-contradictory agenda, intent on confrontation. Unfortunately, I happened to the one to respond. My first post was completely proper, reasonable and supported. This was met with unsupported accusations of advocacy and bias, followed by increasingly rude, dismissive and condescending comments, with edit summaries that are just as bad, if not worse.

In my opinion however, a major turning point was Michelle Bachman. He used a faux pas from one of her campaign speeches, found on youtube, to support his position of wide usage of the term mental retardation (MR). My response was that it was ignorant of her to use that term. Somehow, he felt that was a "violation of BLP", and posted a warning on my talk page, threatening to block me. I found this to be completely inappropriate. He is an admin, he is in a dispute, and in the middle of that dispute, he places a trumped-up warning on the talk of the user he is in the dispute with, and threatens to block them? Not only is this a complete violation of policy, but the threat of abuse, by an admin, is in of itself, admin abuse. What makes this worse though, is the fact that in his own edit summary, Toddst1 wrote; "Michele Bachmann is an idiot but...". That is a clear violation of BLP, and should result in both a block, and at minimum, a review of Toddst1's admin privileges. Not only is this an offensive violation, but now we have an administrative representative of the project, referring to a sitting member of congress as an "idiot". That's putting WP at risk and is inexcusable.

I removed the warning from my talk page, and placed it back on Toddst1's talk page. While I'm sure some here may find that action questionable, this pales in comparison to some of the actions by Toddst1. If, I am advised that this was wrong, I have no problem acquiescing to this, as I have never done this before, and would promise not to do it again. Anyways, as I found his warning to be an improper use of a template, I placed a notice, advising him of such, on his talk page. A notice that I feel was proper and, as of today, remains on his talk page.

Following that, I clearly tried to steer the discussion back on topic, at the ID talk page. However, this is where I was met with more abuse, as seen with this edit, and in particular, the edit summaries; "More false accusations and disruption from the child" and "enough bullshit". Following this is where Toddst1 began to bastardize my username, to use it as a personal attack. (ie: calling me "a child", referring to me "as childish", etc.) This carried over to Toddst1's talk page, where he created a section titled "thewolfchildsish behavior". I asked him stop, as did another editor. Despite our requests, and the fact that this violated WP:NPA, his response was to tell me to "shut up" (several times) and to "change my username is I don't it".

Further to the insults, abuse of my username, rudeness, condescension, constant profanity, unsupported accusations, threats, etc., etc... Toddst1 has demonstrated that he will, and has, used the term "retard" (or "retarded"), as a pejorative, (despite the crux of the very discussion this all started with). This is seen with this edit, or more seriously, with this edit, in which he clearly is referring to me, and is well beyond any boundaries of civility here. Toddst1's behavior became so offensive, that I finally had to state that I would no longer interact with him, in the ID talk page, and I withdrew (closing the thread).

Aside from the ID page, I did try to have Toddst1 cease his continued insults, personal attacks and obscene behavior. I placed two (2) warning templates, with supporting diffs, on his talk page, first a level 3, and then a level 4, after he failed to comply with the level 3. I felt these were proper, reasonable and within policy, but he simply deleted them. This edit shows all the templates that I added to Toddst1's talk page.

Following the deletion of the warnings, the "thewolfchildish behavior" section title still remained, and with this edit, Toddst1 posted comments directed at me. Since he did request that I no longer post on his page, I replied to that comment, and acknowledged his request, at the conclusion my post. With my reply, I had attempted to explain my position, in one last hope that he would be reasonable, and discontinue his behavior. The continued abuse of my username was nothing short or taunting, baiting, uncivil and unreasonable conduct on his part. He simply deleted that post as well.

At this point, I'm not sure if the accusation of harassment in this ANI stems from my own accusation of admin abuse, (which I stand behind), or the subsequent edits I made to Toddst1's talk page, which I will explain now. I made 5 additional edits. The first edit, I simply removed the "-ish" from "thewolfchildish". With respect to Toddst1's request, I added no comments. I felt this was within my right to do so, and I states as much with my edit summary: "WP:NPA violation".

Following this, user EatsShootsAndLeaves (EASL) reverted my edit. At this point, I was not sure why EASL would suddenly involve himself in this matter, and in such an odd way, but I soon found out.

My second edit was to revert EASL's revert, and again remove, the "-ish", with all the same reasoning from my first edit still applied.

Following this, the section title was changed from "thewolfchildish behavior" to "thewolfchild's inappropriate behavior". Again, I found this to improper, baiting, unsupported accusation using my username. My third edit was to remove the word "inappropriate", but I in the edit summary, I wrote "inappropriate how?". Again, I posted no content, as requested. I was hoping for at least some sort of explanation. Quite frankly, at this point, I had pretty much decided to let the whole matter drop. We were done on the ID talk page. I had not taken any admin abuse accusations to ANI. I had posted no further warnings. I did not engage Toddst1 anywhere else on the project. I wanted to know why he could not just let this go, and discontinue the abuse and accusations with my username. This matter could have been put to rest, had Toddst1 been willing to end this provoking behavior.

Following this, Toddst1 posted a comment, and as it was directed to me, I responded, to that comment, with my fourth edit. Unfortunately, within 20 minutes, my reply was deleted. Not by Toddst1, but by EatsShootsAndLeaves (!). This was somewhat bizarre, as I do not even know if Toddst1 had an opportunity to read that comment, before it was deleted.

By this point, I am ready to give up. I had simply wanted to know why Toddst1 felt that my requests for him to stop abusing my username, somehow equated to "inappropriate behavior" on may part, and beyond that, I still certainly wanted him to stop what he was doing. As a last ditch effort, I resolved to stop trying to deal with this on his user page, and instead, I emailed a copy of the last comment to him. My fifth, and final edit, was to simply add the {{You've got mail}} template to his talk page, but even that was deleted within the hour, again by someone else.

As far as I'm concerned, these 5 edits were completely justified, and even if that is disputed, they could hardly be considered as "harassing". If anything, I am the one being harassed.

As for EatsShootsAndLeaves, he simply has no business being involved here. As was pointed out, I was blocked over a year ago for NPA, and, part of the reason I was blocked, was because I was supposedly rude to EatsShootsAndLeaves, who then was going by the name of Bwilkins. There was an ongoing situation between us that was quite antagonistic. I asked repeatedly for him to stay away from me, while I also committed that I would stay away from him. He could hardly be considered neutral here, as based on our history, he is clearly biased. The last thing he should be doing, is involving himself here, hiding behind a alternative sock identity, surreptitiously baiting and passive-aggressively provoking things. No wonder he keeps popping up, deleting content from other users talk pages, and is now taking a position opposing me in this ANI. I will ask again, that EatsShootsAndLeaves/Bwilkins please stay away from me.

As for Toddst1, while this did mainly start at the Intellectual Disability (ID) talk page, there was one recent, previous incident between this Toddst1 and myself, involving this edit. To my knowledge, I had no previous interaction with Toddst1, prior to this somewhat obnoxious comment that he abruptly posted on my talk page. To me, it appeared to basic trolling, with the not-so-veiled insult regarding my education. Please note that in response, I did not engage him in the hostilities that he was apparently seeking, but instead, I simply asked him to no longer post on my talk page.

That pretty much concludes my statement. The sad thing is, as lengthy as it is, it still does not cover every instance on abusive, insulting, disruptive, obscene, editing on the part of Toddst1. Nor the questionable actions of the users who have shown up on both my and his talk pages, clearly in support of him, regardless of how neutral and uninvolved they claim to be. But to be honest, I don't really care. I am only participating here to defend myself. Despite the many opportunities, (and dares), I had to bring this to ANI myself, I didn`t, because I am not really interested in this sort of stuff (actually, speaking of interesting, it's curious how it wasn't Toddst1 that brought this ANI either, but Bbb23. and there is also the timing - right after my post on his talk page...) I don't really care what comes out of this. The community can/will review what I have done, but should certainly review, in great depth and detail, what Toddst1 has done, along with his companions, and in the end, what even happens, happens. For me, I don't feel I deserve to be blocked... all I want is that my username is no longer abused. - thewolfchild 06:24, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I appreciate the reply, and as lengthy as it is, I actually read the whole thing. I'd like to address just a few of your points. First, the easiest one. I assure you that what prompted my coming here (tipped the balance) was precisely what I said, your changing of the section header. The copying of the discussion to my talk page didn't bother me a bit. Your comment at the bottom was unhelpful, but it wouldn't have been enough in and of itself for me to go to all the work to create this thread. I deleted the whole thing from my talk page, but that was only because I opened this up, and it made no sense to have multiple discussions.

I'm having trouble figuring out Todd's edit summaries (when he uses the word "retarded") and your reaction to them. I'm curious what others think. I'm not a fan of obliqueness (I tend to be direct), and I generally avoid it.

Overall, you appear to have strong feelings about certain issues and a stubborn streak in defending your behavior when those issues are involved. It would be helpful if you had a little more insight into those two areas and were more willing to deal with them appropriately on Wikipedia. You can't change who you are, but you can change your behavior here. Regardless of your perceptions of Todd's behavior and your dissatisfaction with what he did on his talk page regarding your user name, you should have dropped it. Ignoring these sorts of things is almost always the best thing to do. Sometimes it's hard, but most of these sorts of things just fade away if you let them, and if you really think someone is intentionally provoking you, the most effective response is not to be provoked.

Finally, I intentionally did not request a block or a ban. Obviously, I have an opinion on how you could improve your behavior, but I don't have a strong opinion about sanctions. As I stated at the beginning, I'll leave that to the community.--Bbb23 (talk) 10:45, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I posted the comment I did, because I was, (and still am) somewhat confused at your position regarding the section titles on both Tossst1's and my talk pages;

- On his talk page, he had a section titled "thewofchildish behavior", posted as a follow-on to his referring to me as "a child". I found this to be an unacceptable manipulation of my username, specifically for the purposes of a personal attack. Apparently, you have no issue with that.

- Yet, there was a section on my talk page, titled "Toddst1". The discussion involved my contention that he was abusive as an admin, and as such, I changed the title to "Admin Abuse"... and you find that so unacceptable, that you had to create a ANI over it? You don't see an imbalance there? I do, and while "nauseating hypocrisy" might not be the best way to characterize it, there is still a troubling deficit, none-the-less.

I have no problem figuring out Toddst1's edit summaries. He regularly uses them to post obscene and insulting comments, ostensibly comfortable in the assumption that talk page summaries don't get looked at very often, if at all. That's no excuse, and many of his comments are clearly inappropriate.

As for my "stubbornness"... you and I see the debate on the ID talk differently. I did not start the thread. I did not make constant, poorly supported arguments in favour of retaining a term that is no longer used professionally, is both legally and morally censured and is now widely considered an insult. I supported my position, and once the fake templates, threats and insults started flying, I was the one that disengaged from the debate, and even closed it. So, really... how do you find that stubborn?

What I was stubborn about, however, was my pursuit to have Toddst1 stop his insulting abuse of my username and his continued, provocational and unsupported accusations towards me. The fact that, in response to his comments to me, I tried emailing him, instead of making another edit, shows that I had "dropped it". Once he posted the WP:HARASS comment, I left his talk page and tried to find another means to reason with him, to have him stop what he was doing.

Yes, I have been blocked before, but just like Toddst1, you, ESAL, and everyone else, I am not perfect. I am always working towards improvement, just as everyone should be doing. But ultimately, this isn't about me vandalizing an article, disrupting a discussion or even actually harassing anyone. I was in fact, trying to get another user to stop harassing me. There is a huge difference between adding harassing comments, and simply removing three letters, from your own username. - thewolfchild 21:07, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Just to addresss one point. If you want to say that Todd's behavior is inappropriate on your talk page, as he did about you on his talk page, or if you want to say that Todd is being childish on your talk page, as he did on his talk page, that would not be a violation of any policy or guideline. Even calling him abusive might be acceptable on your own talk page (at some point certain kinds of polemics can be problematic), but that's not what you did. You made it look like I called Todd abusive. You changed my comment on your talk page. That is absolutely unacceptable. It was deceitful.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:42, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

As to just what is a policy or guideline, what is a violation of a policy or guideline, and just what so-called violations get addressed, where, where, why and how... seems to be subject to constant interpretation here. While some users may find satisfaction, or dare I say justice, among these ANI's, one thing that is never found here is consistency. That said, I did not "change your comment", I changed the ==section heading==, above it. And since all I did was change a section header, on my talk page, to say "Admin Abuse", where the subsequent thread discusses "admin abuse"... I don't see how that constitutes "Ongoing harassment of administrator by editor" That is why you started this ANI, right? - thewolfchild 03:25, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

If Bbb23 added the section header, your changing the section header is changing his comment. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 14:51, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Based on your recent actions, I would not expect you to say otherwise. But, just the same, I disagree. - thewolfchild 20:34, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I did create the section header when I opened the topic, and the topic was not about administrator abuse. It was my failed attempt to mediate the interaction between Todd and Twc.

When I opened this topic here at ANI, I did not request any specific sanctions. Based on Twc's conduct here, I believe sanctions are warranted. They have shown no insight into their own behavior. Effectively, they are right and everyone else is wrong, whether it be Todd, me, Thibbs, ES&L, or most recently Bushranger. They have engaged in wikilawyering and compounded that by being wrong in their analysis. I am beginning to understand why Todd was provoked.

I also went back to August 2012 when Twc was unblocked by @Amatulic: after being indefinitely blocked for personal attacks or harassment in June. In their unblock request, they wrote: "I have 'taken some time off', acknowledged wrong-doing, accepted responsibility, offerred an apology and gave a commitment to abide by the the rules and policies of wikipedia." In unblocking, Amatulic wrote: "In the spirit of Wikipedia's guideline Wikipedia:Assume good faith, I am lifting your block. Please understand that any further violation of our policies/guidelines WP:CIVIL, WP:AGF, and WP:BATTLEGROUND will likely result in a new indefinite block that cannot be appealed." (see here)

Twc has made a grand total of 2,056 edits in the few years they've been here, of which 782 have been to article space. Even assuming some of those contributions have been constructive, based on their history, their recent conduct, and the obvious WP:IDHT, I wonder if it's time, even a year later, to impose Amatulic's threatened sanction.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:21, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

• This is certainly not the first time I've seen Toddst1 involved in abusive behaviour. Is s/he fit to be an admin? Tony (talk) 09:13, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
  • I'll be uncharacteristically brief: yes they are (he is). Drmies (talk) 18:36, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
• Interesting attempt by twc to deflect away from his behaviour. As I'm an adult who doesn't hold grudges, I do not recall previous negative interactions with twc ... I'll take it from their response that they indeed do hold a grudge, and that some form of negative interaction may have occurred. Nevertheless, that's a red-herring. Toddst1 was well within their rights to request that twc STOP editing their talkpage; period. My only reversions of twc's posts were AFTER that message was loudly and clearly stated. Toddst1 went so far as to link to WP:HARASS, so it was clear to the world that he was 100% serious. My reversions were protective in nature - indeed, they were an attempt to protect twc from further action under harassment. Unfortunately, he believes that ethics and rules don't apply to him, and although "no (posting) means no (posting)", he doesn't give a shit. If he had a problem with the discussion on a page he was not permitted to post on, then he should have escalated it to a place where he WAS permitted, rather than repeatedly break the rules. ES&L 11:42, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Similar occurrences

I want to start this off by saying that this is my first time contributing to an AN/I so I hope I'm doing this right with diffs and links and such. I've been watching this AN/I thread for a bit now but it wasn't until this thread that I realize the extent of twc's behavior with the indef block and long history of WP:BATTLEGROUND mentality etc. My experiences with twc started in September 2013 and I've run across twc and gotten into arguments of various length with twc on numerous articles so it's now very clear to me after seeing this AN/I and finding out about twc's past that this seems to be twc's modus operandi. Even after our interactions ceased at the end of September, the last one to my knowledge being on File_talk:Thief_1981.jpg where I even helped them out and they were still accusatory as if I was following twc around WP.

In the past month and a half I've seen him display all the aforementioned behavior from the toddst1 situation on roughly half a dozen MILHIST articles. Some were relatively short (talk:United States special operations forces#DEVGRU, talk:Delta Force#Proper_name) and others were longer with multiple sections on talk:Special Mission Unit and talk:Aircraft carrier (which is still ongoing I might add for 1.5 months now).

My interactions with twc on the US SOF article was the first time I ever had to resort to an outside individual having to resolve a dispute. Shortly after crossing paths there he edited the Special Mission Unit article with the edit summary "work in progress..." but five hours later another editor (SOTGMichael) who frequents that article reverted twc with an incredibly uncivil summary which I would say prompted a vendetta of sorts on that article. The reason I say prompted a vendetta is because after twc attempted to expand the article twc went to the talk page and the first sentence was "how can we save this article?" and throughout the discussion kept mentioning AfD etc. I even mentioned to him that it was odd that someone who attempted to expand the article would pull a 180 and go the opposite direction and mention deletion, etc. After a while I just started to ignore twc on the SMU article, figuring if I didn't respond he would just go away. After I expanded the article a bit he left this post on the talk page where he again said it was a nice attempt to "Save the article" etc and twc stated that I wasn't responding because I was "busy researching" to expand the article. I responded to twc by stating "I haven't been responding because I'm tired of talking to you to be honest. I don't come to Wikipedia to argue with people and that's all that our conversations seem to be. I almost didn't want to respond to you here because of it. Thats why I no longer comment on the delta force/aircraft carrier talk pages and haven't responded here for some time." A little over a week later (and after the Delta Force dispute mentioned below ended) twc tagged the SMU article for AfD (AfD link) where twc continued his BATTLEGROUND even there with most of us who !voted against his delete rationale.

During our argument on the SMU article twc posted on another article on my watchlist, Delta Force. Where twc started a few sections regarding the article title and how it should not be Delta Force and instead their official name. I responded initially cautioning twc that someone had already performed the move and that it was reverted citing WP:COMMONNAME. This started yet another battleground discussion about what COMMONNAME was and how it should be interpreted. After his post I left the discussion not wanting to continue yet another long dispute with him. However, two other users, User:Aoidh and User:Rklawton, discussed with twc about COMMONNAME and after a few days of circular discussions going nowhere Rklawton just called for a !vote for consensus of what the articles name should be which remained at Delta Force.

The last time from my recollection that I encountered twc was at File talk:Thief 1981.jpg which twc tagged for administrator assistance to move the file which was uploaded with a spelling error. I helped twc by tagging the article using template:rename media so File Movers would also see the request via Category:Wikipedia files requiring renaming. After that I posted on the talk page and made no mention of our past disputes and said it was odd running into him. His reaction was inferring that I didn't just run into him but was stalking him evidently. I went on to explain that when he added template:admin help to the page it added the page to Category:Wikipedians looking for help from administrators, which I look at along with Category:Wikipedians looking for help. He never responded to it, which is fine.

I did not follow the discussions at talk:Aircraft carrier once again because I was tired of dealing with TWC, however, since I was watching his talk page because of past interactions there I saw User:Nick Thorne (involved in the Aircraft carrier discussion) post a message for twc not to post anything on his talk page anymore. After this notification twc once again posted on Nick's talk page. Nick again reverted the edit and warned twc again via his talk page not to post on his talk page.

It has become clear to me that in the one and a half months that I have known twc this behavior is common and more often than not causes excessive drama for all involved. Sincerely, —  dainomite   21:10, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

@Dainomite: Other than being a bit long, that's rather an impressive debut at ANI.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:45, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you Bbb23, after I wrote it all I realized it was a lot of information. I just didn't know what I could remove without taking out some context from the overall "picture" of the post. >.< —  dainomite   01:51, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

• Like Agreed ES&L 00:00, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Solution

In light of an e-mail I received this morning, this topic has more to be added in the sections above. However, to prevent early archiving, and to move things forward, I see no real solution being put to the community ... now might be a good time ES&L 09:18, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

As the target of this harassment, (and someone who could have been more patient/diplomatic with TWC as Bbb23 rightly pointed out) I've been standing back from this thread.

TWC is already on a "WP:CIVIL, WP:AGF, and WP:BATTLEGROUND" parole as part of his/her unblock in 2012. It's hard not to see this as a recurrence of those problems. However, it's clear that TWC is in general a positive contributor, except when s/he engages in this type of conflict.

To attempt to prevent further recurrences of these problems, I'lfl suggest the following editing restrictions for thewolfchild:

1. thewolfchild is subject to a 0rr on talk pages indefinitely.
2. thewolfchild may be blocked without warning for further violations of WP:CIVIL, WP:AGF, WP:BATTLEGROUND or WP:HARASS, broadly constructed.

Toddst1 (talk) 15:56, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

What's concerning is that they were unblocked with the understanding that any such repeat of CIVIL and BATTLE would mean an indef block immediately with no chance of unblock. It appears that those were not formally logged ... but that does not mean they were not in force. Is the the final WP:ROPE? ES&L 20:08, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I think the thing that concerns me the most is that twc still doesn't seem to understand that his record of past behavior is problematic. As recently as 3 days ago his userpage had a vanity userbox describing himself as having been blocked zero times. An asterisked note pointed out that he was only counting "legitimate blocks." Bbb23 points out above that the request leading to twc's unblock suggested that twc had "acknowledged wrong-doing, accepted responsibility, offerred an apology", but in light of his behavior this acknowledgment and acceptance appears to have been only superficial and self-serving. Recognition by twc of his problems seems to have been a major sticking point in the lifting of his block. It required 3 separate unblock requests which twc treated derisively as bothersome formalities that had to be undertaken by an innocent party. If his behavior had changed dramatically for the better after this brush with indef. blockage then it would have been clear that he had at least internalized the issue and had reformed himself. I see no evidence of that in twc's history of interactions with his peers since the block. It's telling that as recently as 3 days ago the "quotable quotes" section of twc's usertalk was riddled with battleground sentiments including "The best form of defence is attack", "Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth", and "you will know my name is the Wolf when I lay my vengeance upon thee"... I like the idea of giving problem editors second chances, but I see little basis to give him a third chance in this case. Perhaps I'd reconsider if twc could provide evidence of how his behavior has improved since his indef. block because at this point I see little or nothing to suggest a changed attitude. -Thibbs (talk) 21:59, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Consensus: do we have a consensus that TWC should be blocked indef per his repeated violation of the terms of his unblock? Rklawton (talk) 21:30, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

• Block given that TWC's recent behavior represents his absolute best possible behavior (given the terms of his unblock), I favor an indefinite block as we just don't need him badly enough to put up with him. Rklawton (talk) 21:36, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support: I support such a block per ESL & especially Thibbs' comments. Wikipedia has no place for anyone who plans to "lay my vengeance upon thee." I've struck my proposal above. Toddst1 (talk) 23:16, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support It appears that the editor's last unblock request was simply to appease admins, as opposed to an actual change of thought and behaviour towards the other editors on this project. There's no place for false promises and continual WP:BATTLE behaviour, and most definitely not room for people who refuse to accept responsibility for their behaviour. I appreciate Dainomite's willingness to share their rather unfortunate experiences - this shows that even non-admins and "otherwise friendly third parties" are also being victimized. Their evidence certainly shows that though twc appears at times to be here to assist the project, they do not have the required even the most BASIC grasp of the community nature of the site. Give them a couple of years to move from wolfchild to something more mature - they may have learned how to work nicely with others by then. Based on the above, I'd be willing to extend this to a community ban, but an indef will be easily supportable by anyone who has read the evidence. Someday I may have to go back and re-read whatever interactions I have had with twc, but it doesn't seem important based on their continual behaviour ES&L 23:29, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose Flo already provided the solution days ago [1]. no, here--> [1] Given that the stated purpose of this thread was to get thewolfchild to disengage from Toddst1, and they now seem to focusing on productive interaction and editing at Aircraft Carrier, it would be best if we just let the thread die its natural death. NE Ent 23:44, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Is that the right diff you meant to link NE Ent? Forgive me for asking such a silly question but what's the solution in the link? It looks like a non-involved editor added a question to your userpage that ES&L reverted which is why im confused. —  dainomite   04:19, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
    • Sorry no, too many tabs open I guess. NE Ent 10:33, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support. As my last response to Twc indicated, I was leaning toward proposing an indefinite block myself. The post by Dainomite reinforces my view that at best Twc is non-collaborative and disruptively stubborn and, unfortunately, at worst is attacking and dishonest. Based on Twc's comments here, I see no indication that they intend to change their behavior.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:51, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
• Comment—Has there been a response from Toddst1 to removing the material on his talk page that Wolfchild finds provocative?? WP:RPA does say that personal attacks can be removed.

  I hope this isn't veering into lynch-mob mentality, which is almost always very bad for the social fabric. I don't see much evidence of good adminning, which would be to resolve this without punitive measures. Wolfchild does some good work; Toddst1 has a record of bad behaviour not befitting an admin (although I don't have a wide sample, admittedly).

  This should be resolved by an independent, third-party admin or two who know how to penetrate the issues with balance and resolve the tension. Tony (talk) 03:51, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I think you'd have to prove that it was a personal attack being removed ... twc seems to have his own bizarre interpretation of WP:WIAPA. Your further claims against Toddst1 without context or diffs actually are a personal attack. Yes, the behaviour of both sides is taken into account on ANI, but there's nothing specifically related to Toddst1's behaviour in this dispute to earn anything but the smack in the head (which he has already graciously accepted) ES&L 09:10, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose - Why are we going all the way to indef here on a user with a block log showing 3 blocks, 2 of which are by a notoriously aggressive admin? Look, I think political correctness is retarded, and if that's what's at the root here, that needs to stop. But the answer to someone who won't stop refactoring a talk page from which he has been asked to leave is an interaction ban and the answer to a POV warrior (if that's what we have here, I am unclear) is a topic ban. We should not be burning productive editors needlessly. That's what this remedy looks like to me. How about a more focused remedy??? Carrite (talk) 05:18, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

If you're going to question the legitimacy of the previous blocks, you should do so with evidence, not reputation. Note that your defamation of the previous blocking admin does not apply to the admin that imposed the previous indef block for the same issues.

Two of the opposes so far seem to be laced with anti-administrator sentiment. Toddst1 (talk) 17:29, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

You can mark me down as expressing "anti-lynch mob" sentiment. I certainly don't care who does or doesn't have a couple extra buttons — although I will acknowledge a fundamental disbelief that extra buttons increase one's inclusive fitness (sorry guys!)... Blind acceptance of a block log is as dumb as blind rejection, in my opinion. Is an indef block (i.e. the death penalty) warranted here? Is there not more logic in a measured, targeted solution? Carrite (talk) 02:58, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Upon further review of this too, too long thread, I'll answer my own question: No, an indef block is definitely not warranted here. Both parties are to blame for this. [HERE'S A LINK FOR THOSE WHO THINK I'M BEING DEFAMATORY (absolutely unacceptable edit summaries for an administrator). An interaction ban or file 13 for this case... Carrite (talk) 06:06, 20 October 2013 (UTC) Last edit: Carrite (talk) 06:09, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose Toddst1 has a long history of bullying editors. His name is often seen in admin-abuse complaints. Not long ago, Toddst1 improperly added "sockpuppet" tags to a user's page, and compounded the felony by threatening to block said editor if he removed them (although the editor was perfectly within his rights to do so). Not surprisingly, Bbb23 (his proxy in this complaint) defended him; if I recall correctly, he was the only one to do so. Bbb23 is hardly neutral here. Toddst1 has issued enough bad blocks and inappropriate threats. He should have had his admin bit removed long ago. That people are blaming the victim here is sad, but unsurprising. Joefromrandb (talk) 05:47, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

"This page is for reporting and discussing incidents..." (emphasis mine). This is not the place for RFC/Us on thewolfchild or Toddst1. This thread is waay past it's sell-by date. NE Ent 10:42, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

NE Ent, by continuing to post comments here, you are keeping this topic alive, which seems to be counterproductive to your views on the issues. The only reason I'm commenting is to disagree with one of your other statements about the "stated purpose" of this topic. The purpose was not to have Twc disengage from Todd. Their interaction was one of the triggers (although not the last one) of my starting this thread. The purpose was to discuss Twc's recent behavior in light of their history and to determine if sanctions are appropriate and, if so, what they should be. Rklawton has proposed indefinite sanctions, which is certainly in keeping with the "purpose" of this topic. As for the barbs against various editors, including the one against you just below this comment, I'm not happy with that, but, unfortunately, it's hard to imagine a discussion at ANI without them.--Bbb23 (talk) 14:22, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

This is the devil's den. Ent can hack it, thriving in it for this long. Thick skin goes a long way when you choose to make this a playpen. Jus' sayin'... Doc talk 14:33, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

9% article contributions, Ent. You're working your way up from that, right? Doc talk 10:55, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't know why you struck that, Doc. It's a hell of a good point. Joefromrandb (talk) 19:57, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Legal threat

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

---

41.196.154.171 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) recently made a pretty blatant legal threat. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 15:59, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Blocked.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 17:05, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

@Sphilbrick: Please un-indef-ify that. Give him five years for all I care, but indef IP blocks are excessive. — PinkAmpers&^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 14:31, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

This is ironic, as I am usually opposed to indefs but I thought the convention was, in the case of legal threats, to indef until the threat retracted. I'd be happy to change it, but I'd like to hear from someone else, in case my recollection is flawed.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 14:51, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I believe right now, even community consensus is a bit ambiguous on this. But I believe that the current feeling is that you indef accounts for legal threats and you block IPs for a year or more depending on if it's a static or dynamic IP.--v/r - TP 14:57, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Agree with TP - by all means indef an account for violating NLT, but to indef an IP is extreme. GiantSnowman 14:58, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Works for me. Changed to one year.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 15:14, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

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

User:Martinvl and long term disruption of WT:MOSNUM

Current discussions of relevance:

Talk:United Kingdom#Units of measure dispute WT:MOSNUM#Imperial measurements Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK geography#RFC - Clarifying Units of Measure

Like many users I am tired of being dragged into a ridiculous argument I simply do not care about. However, User:Martinvl's obsession with convincing wikipedia to remove any preference for imperial measurements on UK articles is now becoming utterly disruptive. It has been forum shopped in numerous places and the latest RFC is simply gaming the system.

I urge that a community sanction be considered banning User:Martinvl from any and all discussions related to WP:MOSNUM. I cannot perceive of any productive discussion, whilst he is present. Wee Curry Monster talk 15:14, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I notice that User:Wee Curry Monster has let a number of people know about this debate here, here and here. While it is appropriate to inform "Editors who have made substantial edits to the topic or article" about a particular posting, WP:CANVASS insists that "the audience must not be selected on the basis of their opinions". I look forward to Wee Curry Monster notifying everybody associated with the debate. Martinvl (talk) 15:34, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Whatever shortcomings WCM may have made in this notice Martinvl, nothing excuses the incivility you showed in the UK discussion along with your owning attitude at it. I don't think anyone in the UK article dispute article can stand up for your actions no-one backed you up as far as I could tell and at least 3 editors including me and WCM backed calls or where thinking of reporting you for your disruptive comments, accusations, and failure to even acknowledge your fault and apologise for it, all of which equate to bad faith and antagonistic behaviour. Even with everyone notified, nothing excuses your behaviour at that talk page never mind what appears to be an never-ending campaign against Imperial measurements on this site. Mabuska ^(talk) 16:47, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Now that Martin has asked WCM to notify a wider group of editors, then sadly I must express my view that WCM is correct to describe Martin's contributions as disruptive. As time has gone by Martin's attitude and actions have got closer and closer to the stubbornness of his old adversary DeFacto, with an equally destructive effect on the community, and unfortunately he has refused to accept that consensus does not necessarily mean unanimity, and he has continued to act as if he has a veto on any agreement. I agree with WCM that it now appears that nothing less than a topic ban will suffice, and I fear that it needs to be wider than merely WP:MOSNUM, because I am convinced that he would continue his pro-metrication campaign elsewhere, such as his recent attempt to move the debate to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK geography now that he has seen that he won't convince people at WP:MOSNUM. - David Biddulph (talk) 17:32, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I am (very) involved here, having borne the brunt of this campaign for far longer than most, so I won't say much unless others ask me to. But I will add my support to the comments by David Biddulph and others and call for such a topic ban to be enacted. Kahastok talk 17:41, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

• I am heavily involved in this matter at this point, though I never intended to be. I've tried to negotiate the tense line between the two camps of editors on this issue. I've tried to be accommodating to Martin and others. Furthermore, it was I who suggested that a discussion at UKGEO be held. However, despite all of my good faith efforts I am now convinced that Martin's behavior is both repetitive and out-of-line. He will stop at nothing to continue his campaign, and if one gives him even a sliver of leeway, as I did, he will take it as a go-ahead to open a biased and heavily skewed RfC to implement metric units on a broad basis. He has even gone so far as to quote me in attempt to justify his own position, skewing what he's known I've said. It is quite clear that he cannot move beyond his own position, and can't think outside of it. Overall, I endorse the comments that are above me. RGloucester — ☎ 18:34, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

As a result of User:Wee Curry Monster making this posting, the debate in question on WP:UNITS spilled over onto United Kingdom. Two parrallel debates ranged, one on each page - hardly conducive to getting a consensus. Editors on both pages were involved in the debate, but I notice that Wee Curry Monster has only circulated those editors who contributed to the debate on the United Kingdom page, not those who contributed on the WP:UNITS page. I look forward to him contacting everybody who was involved in the debate on both pages. Martinvl (talk) 22:19, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

• I do not want to comment on personalities. However, I must state that the atmosphere on MOSNUM when it comes to discussing units of measure is incredibly polarised. It is also fair to state that while I prefer metric measures, I acknowledge the split use of both metric and imperial measures in the UK. I can't say I am aware of anything that Martin has written that I find objectionable. I can see nothing objectionable in this [2] or this [3] or this[4] or this [5] or this [6]. That includes edits that Martin has made in the last 50 edits on MOSNUM talk. Going back further I could see nothing objectionable in Martin's edit here [7] or here [8] or here [9]. In the last 500 edits on MOSNUM talk, Martin made 36. This is more than some but less than others so I can't see that this is excessive. (Another contributor made 99 of the last 500 edits!) There are complaints, but no diffs to back them up. As Martin appears to put his point of view without rancour, I can't understand how this complaint can be sustained. Michael Glass (talk) 02:37, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I've participated in this debate, why didn't Wee Curry Monster notify me? Michael's figures just above don't seem to justify a ban, or at least not just banning one contributor. What happens if we ban him? Does the discussion go away? Dougweller (talk) 09:41, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I fear that this case may have to go to ArbCom eventually, as it has been going on for years. --Rschen7754 09:49, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I have now checked Martin's contribution to WikiProject_UK_geography#RFC. Martin made a proposal, other editors opposed it and he clarified what he intended. Once again, one person disagreed and others made comments about the measurement situation in the UK. At no time did Martin write anything objectionable there. I think it is perfectly in order for an editor to make a proposal. On the basis on what is written there the complaint cannot be sustained. Michael Glass (talk) 10:29, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

In the third place there was a nasty spat between editors that followed an edit or edits that Martin opposed. Without going into details or trying to take sides, there did seem to be a genuine misunderstanding here and this led to several editors getting quite annoyed with Martin. As a result, everyone became hypersensitive to perceived slights. I think it must be stated that Martin appeared to be in a minority of one in his request that the article be returned to what it was before. I think he genuinely believed that the status quo ante should have been restored. However, this was not what happened, and now that several editors have given their opinions, there appears to be no chance for the article to be changed back. It is hard to take when people who had not previously edited an article come along and change it, but in this case they had the numbers and also MOSNUM on their side.

I know that people have become upset, but I think there was more than one misunderstanding. I do not believe that Martin set out to offend people. This can be demonstrated by his comments elsewhere. Michael Glass (talk) 10:29, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

No offence Michael Glass but "to be a genuine misunderstanding here and this led to several editors getting quite annoyed with Martin" seems quite skewed to overlook Martinvl's behaviour at the UK article discussion where they make at least two false accusations of one editor being a hypocrite and then that I suppossedly implied it, as well as stating that I had no right to leave a response and that it was "unsolicited". Hardly a genuine misunderstanding.

• Martinvl stated that if User:Ddstretch is suggesting a certain situation then they must be a hypocrite [10].
• In that same edit Martinvl starts trying to be a smart-alack towards me making idiotic assumptions and adopting a quite condescending tone. I retorted in kind but without being condescending. [11], though a revision later [12] I added to my lip back, after which I retracted my acknowledgement that Martinvl was correct and added a bit more lip [13]. I then left a personal message on Martinvl's talk page stating that I would desist from responding like a smart-ass if they did so in kind. As a sign of good faith I then striked my smartass retorts except the one in regards to being English [14]. It should be noted Martinvl did not respond to this.
• [15] DDStretch requests Martinvl retract their hypocrite allegation as they see it as a personal attack. Martinvl would only apologise [16] for calling DDStretch the wrong name. Despite that things seem to calm down and responses are mostly on topic.
• Despite the fact Martinvl is blatantly ignoring WP:MOSNUM and arguing that the article is reverted to his preferred version per WP:BRD despite the fact it violates WP:MOSNUM until a consensus is reached (despite the fact he was the only editor who backed his stance), they decide to restore their preferred version with this [17] as their reasoning. This is the instance where they blatantly distort User:RGloucester's comment (which RGloucester) responds to here [18]). In response User:David Biddulph responds [19] on this distortion of User:RGloucester's comment and Martinvl's ignoring of what a consensus is. Martinvl keeps arguing that WP:BRD should apply [20] as it would restore the article to their preferred version which violates WP:MOSNUM. User:N-HH then comments in response to the "no consensus" argument of Martinvl's disagreeing with them [21], and then comments on Martinvl's behaviour [22].
• User:Ddstretch points out [23] that Martinvl has still not retracted or apologized for his hypocrite comment. In response [24] Martinvl tries to defend himself by stating " I was accusing User:Mabuska of implying that you were a hypocrite by twisting what you had said. Please re-read the comments and you will see that my comment was directed at Mabuska, not you" - though a reread of his comment [25] clearly shows it was directed at Ddstretch and nowhere did he say he was implying me. I responded angrily [26] and respost the comments that involve me, DDStretch and Martinvl [27]. I also ask that they withdraw their false accusation against me, and getting quite annoyed [28]. I followed up with a suggestion for Martinvl to just apologise and drop the issue [29] and then we can go our own way.
• Ddstretch responds to Martinvl [30] and then Martinvl responds [31] where they state You should have let DDStretch answer for himself and not butted in. If you strike the unsolicited pre-emptive answer that you made on behalf of DDStretch, I will strike out my response to you and DDStretch can then explain himself as originally requested.. Now I don't know about you but I take "not butted in" as a personal attack, also add in they say that my comment is unsolicited.
• Ddstretch responds to Martinvl about their failure to apologise and withdraw [32], whilst stating [33] there is nothing wrong with me "butting in". Martinvl then tries to argue on [34] making a false accusation that WCM was bringing an edit-war to the article (despite the fact WCM only made one edit), to which WCM commented [35]. From this point 4 editors (including myself) make comments about some form of action against Martinvl possibly being neccessary: [36], [37], [38], and my last comment.

Having said that in my last comment, I notice WCM suggested an RFC/U not an AN/I.

Since then Martinvl took it upon himself keep being uncivil by moving User:Kahastok's comment to an entirely different section of the related discussion [39], which User:Kahastok raised at Martinvl's talk page.

In regards to the actual UK article itself, I only became involved in the discussion as I saw that Martinvl reverted an edit by WCM, and after a brief foray into the Falkland Islands articles a while back, and recently backing the continuation of WCM's topic-ban in regards to those islands, I recognized Martinvl as being active with WCM in the past and believed that Martinvl may have been hounding WCM. Had another editor made the edit originally, it is quite possible that Martinvl wouldn't have noticed or got involved.

This editor deserves some form of censure for their behaviour and failure to apologise and withdraw their accusations whilst trying to wriggle away from it. They have instilled nothing but bad faith and distrust for me and no doubt others in regards to this editor. Mabuska ^(talk) 13:56, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I have witnessed Martinvl's conduct in this area myself, briefly (see here). I have never ever seen an argument about the merits of metric versus imperial measurements that did not end in high drama, warfare and bloodshed. I don't think that this needs to go to ArbCom just yet, but a topic ban might suffice. With that in mind, I would like to propose that Martinvl is topic-banned from all edits and discussions related to units of measurement, broadly construed. Who agrees? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:09, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't. This ANI discussion is about prolonged debates over which units of measurement should be used in Wikipedia articles. WCM's proposal is to restrict those debates. Ritchie333's proposal goes far beyond WCM's and would deprive us of Martinvl's contributions to articles that are specifically about units of measurement. NebY (talk) 15:27, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I can only speak to behaviour at WT:MOSNUM, which is the subject of this complaint. This is above all a content dispute. It started when an IP editor (with no apparent or suspected connection with anyone else) raised the issue of why imperial units were still used. Several editors later raised concerns that the current text of the guideline might be too broad or too unclear in its recommendation of imperial units as primary units in certain UK-related contexts (such as non-road distances and weights of sportspeople) and adduced valid arguments to support their positions; it is the behaviour in dealing with this content dispute at WP:MOSNUM that is the subject of this complaint. Based on the discussion at WT:MOSNUM, I don't think I would lay failure to engage in a constructive, evidence-based discussion of the issue at Martinvl's door. I do not think raising an RfC should be regarded as forum shopping. An RfC is a normal part of dispute resolution, and there was a specific recommendation to clarify this issue (and possibly some others) in the relevant projects, because some editors felt that they would be more competetent to clarify actual usage. The wording of the RfC could, perhaps, have been more neutral, but I see nothing egregiously objectionable that would warrant sanctions. I think it might be appropriate to post a message at WT:MOSNUM encouraging all editors to assume good faith, refrain from questioning others' motives, engage in constructive discussion, and use the usual methods (e.g. straw polls, RfCs) to clarify the different opinions and move the discussion forward in a constructive and efficient manner. —Boson (talk) 14:50, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

• While I respect both Boson and Michael Glass, I do not agree with their statements here. Martin has taken advantage of good faith, even if his tone is not one of "rancor". In multiple attempts to forge a compromise, I've tried to reach out to Martin. Each time, he's taken my words and skewed them. For example, with regard to the RfC. I suggest that a discussion be had at UKGEO, whereby Martin should see what editors there thought. Then, I thought it should be brought back to MOSNUM and discussed. Of course, there is nothing technically wrong with Martin's opening of the RfC, however, he did so on the basis of my comments, and essentially used them as justification for RfC to introduce solely metric units for geographic uses, which has been heavily opposed. The fact that Martin either cannot or refuses to understand what others are saying in attempts to compromise makes discussing with Martin almost impossible. Mabuska quoted an instance where Martin selectively took words I had said, himself having participated in the debate, and used them to justify edit warring at United Kingdom. He intentionally skewed my words, despite knowing that my opinion was not expressed by them. Sure, his tone is not one of "rancor", however an editor that takes advantage of good faith to push his own POV, that does not try to compromise and that does not listen to what others are saying for the sake of pushing his own POV is a severe detriment to the discussion, and makes it almost impossible to make progress. It is this disruption that I believe is being brought up here, not his "technical" wrongs. RGloucester — ☎ 15:29, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Whilst I have nothing against Martinvl creating sub-sections for admins and the result of this discussion, personally I find it quite condescending for Martinvl to dictate what they are for when it is obvious, almost as if none of us have a clue.

Regardless of that, any admin looking at this discussion will see that not once does Martinvl make mention of or try to defend his behaviour, instead focusing on trying to wriggle out of this AN/I by having it "thrown out" on technicalities in regards to WCM's posting of this AN/I. Yes Martinvl says they will mount a defence if this case isn't thrown out, but they shouldn't have to stall like this is they are as vindicated as they seem to believe they are. Martinvl has questions to answer in regards to their behaviour, especially at the UK article, and they are purposely avoiding them focusing on trying to get this "thrown out". Pure and simple gaming of the system. Mabuska ^(talk) 20:08, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

"To date he does not appear to have taken any notice of my request." - pretty much like yourself in regards to Ddstretch and my requests for an apology from you? Mabuska ^(talk) 20:15, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to draw attention to this edit, in which Martin edit wars to close an RFC that he opened, with a closing summary that I believe does not reflect the consensus there. Kahastok talk 20:45, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

• This is getting even more absurd as it goes on. With what essentially amounts to bad faith behavior with the closing of the UKGEO RfC, with the attempt to sidestep the issue and focus on technicalities, with bizarre division of this thread into subsections…it demonstrates that the message just is not getting through. I really wish I wasn't a part of any of this nonsense. There is nothing good to be had out of any of it, and it only continues to get worse. I wish an admin would step in. If not to explain to Martin the issue, to at least close the discussion at MOSNUM, and prevent it from spiraling out of control. RGloucester — ☎ 20:59, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

FWIW I've asked Martin on his talk to reconsider the move, and intend to take it to review per WP:CLOSE if he does not. If I do, I will (if I remember) mention that I brought it up here but that it got lost in a large piece of text. Kahastok talk 06:37, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I think it should be made clear that there is no problem with ending the RfC per se. The problem is with the summary explaining the reason. The RfC should be ended with the explanation "Withdrawn by poster". As Wikipedia:Requests for comment#Ending RfCs explains:

"There are several ways that RfCs end: the question may be withdrawn by the poster (e.g., if the community's response became obvious very quickly), the RfC participants can agree to end it, it can be formally closed by any uninvolved editor, or it may be moved to another dispute resolution forum, such as mediation. Most RfCs do not benefit from formal closure."

--Boson (talk) 11:38, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure of the value of ANI pile-ons, and the broader situation may be better suited to a User RFC, but (having been asked to comment here) I'd happily put on record my view that Martin's behaviour at the UK article was, basically, disruptive and a waste of WP space and editor time, including his own. He edit-warred to excise reference to miles in clear violation of consensus on that page, real-world usage in the UK and the MOS and sparked off a huge talk page thread. Most rational people working in a collaborative environment, when every single other person disagrees with them, especially over something so trivial, will drop their crusade. Some, of course won't – and will even go so far as to insist their personal alternative view must prevail, because their unilateral opposition to the more obviously correct option means that there is supposedly "no consensus" for the latter. Implicitly accusing another editor of being a "hypocrite" didn't help either (nor did his rather transparent attempts to rationalise that attack and, indeed, bizarrely shift the blame for it to yet another editor). That said, polite POV-pushing, activist agendas and time-wasting sophistry are all common enough on WP, even if arguably more pernicious than some types of more immediately obvious disruptive behavior. N-HH talk/edits 21:57, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

It looks to me as if Martinvl's basic battleground attitude is well-evidenced in the section below this #Defence by Martinvl, in which he tries to WP:OWN the section by intimidation: "This section is for the use of Martinvl. If anybody else posts here, I will delete their posts." Such an attitude is hardly conducive to collegial and collaborative co-operation. I suggest to Martinvl that he should do some deep-thinking about his relationship to the Wikipedia community, and commit himself to some radical attitude adjustment before he is topic banned or indeffed. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:50, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Martinvl is not a team player. He is unwilling or unable to accept or even consider any views on articles related to measurement systems which conflict with his hard line. He disrespects editors with contradictory views, dismissing their edits and contributions with short shrift. He often gets involved in protracted arguments, due to his inability to compromise or accept fault, and has a list of warnings and admonishments as long your arm on his talk page. He has a superiority complex, typified by his actions at Template:Systems of measurement; with first this edit, pushing 3 of his own articles into inappropriate and unduly prominent positions in a widely used template, then warring [40],[41],[42] each time his attempts at promoting his own articles was thwarted. Attempts to get him to discuss his changes are difficult and his arguments are arrogant and as if he has a veto on article and template contents. He has no qualms about gaming, lawyering. He is bad at providing justifying logic for his pushes, probably because there is none - other than his desire to see his opinions and his articles prevail. All in all an arrogant and difficult editor to coexist with. His inability to accept anything other than the metric system dogma that he seems to worship makes him unsuitable to edit measurement system related articles in an environment that relies on consensus, coexistence and good faith. EzEdit (talk) 19:47, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

I am involved. I didn't want to contribute to this discussion, because I had already realised that Martinvl's mode of operation when challenged on wikipedia is often to resort to disruptive POV-pushing. He uses game-playing and wiki-lawyering to deflect any discussion away from the confrontation of his own behaviour into trivial technical issues that he uses in an attempt to have dismissed any and all concerns about his own behaviour. He also uses unjustifiable highly biased and skewed descriptions of others' actions, and distorts people's previous statements to his own ends. He makes implied personal attacks, and seem to think he can bargain them away when the correct course of action for any of us who do this (and we are all at risk of doing so when things become heated) is to immediately apologize and withdraw them unreservedly and sort out anything else after the apology and withdrawal has happened. He edit wars (he reverted 6 times on AN/I for instance). He doesn't do what we all should do. You can find all the evidence that backs up my ideas about him in the postings of other interested parties already in this thread.

I thought a better use of my time would be to walk away and disengage, and to try to increase my productive work on wikipedia by writing content and to stay away from unnecessary drama on here or elsewhere. However, what has happened after Martinvl tried to impose the structure on this thread in AN/I, and who could post to bits of it, changed all that. Either by complete lack of insight, or by being over-arrogant, Martinvl spectacularly condemns himself in almost all of his postings to this thread as well as the comments he makes on his own talk page just before his 48 hour block, and certainly afterwards ( https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AMartinvl&diff=577840954&oldid=577439188 ). They have shown me that he cannot restrain a completely unacceptable bundle of behaviour and actions on his part that are completely at odds with key principles of how editors should interact on wikipedia. These actions are the hallmark of someone who believes he is battling for THE TRUTH as he sees it, someone who seems unwilling to work collaboratively and to accept compromise, and so they seem to be the actions of a kind of fanatic who would be unsuited to be an editor on wikipedia. I speak as someone who actually believes we should work more towards using the metric system in articles, but who completely accepts the compromise and collaborative nature required for good work between editors on wikipedia. As I have said before, we all have to accept that we must make compromises, that consensus does not mean unanimity, and that we will sometimes be in a minority position that we must gracefully abandon and defer easily to enable progress to be made. As Karl Popper once wrote "You may be right, and I may be wrong, and by an effort, we may closer to the truth." Sadly, I can see no signs that Martinvl shares much of this in his actions and behaviour in this current dispute. He appears to be condescending, over-aggressive, and even domineering in his attempots to control other editors' behaviours, especially, it seems, if he thinks these editors disagree with his own position.

Whether Martinvl can be persuaded away from this destructive path on wikipedia is up to him, but I originally sincerely believed and hoped he could, because his potential use to the project could be very great. I doubt that now. His 6 reversions of the structure he imposed, and his arrogant behaviour towards the admins who have managed this AN/I thread just backup and illustrate the problems all the other editors critical of him have already mentioned. I did wonder whether to be highly critical of Martinvl's behaviour, yet suggest that he should be required, if possible, to work with a mentor to help him understand the more collaborative way that working on wikipedia entails. I really do not think that would work unless we see immediate and hopeful signs of a change in behaviour now from Martinvl on his return from his 48 hour block. I would have thought that he would have stopped digging his self-destructive hole, climbed out, and made the necessary assurances and promises to behave better once the shock of a 48 hour block happened. Instead, we see even more desperate arguments being deployed to, once again, attempt to deflect any argument away from examining his problematic behaviour by raising technical issues to have any examination of his behaviour thrown out. This is how he tried to deal with his failure to stop consensus on Talk:United Kingdom over the use of imperial or metric units in the article. These technical issues are either bogus or of no practical effect on anything realistic here. In other words, they are extreme examples of game-playing and wiki-lawyering. This is now, I think, symptomatic of all his behaviour because he seems unable to stop doing it even in the face of action taken against him by uninvolved administrators on AN/I. Instead, he is pouring oil on his own fire. Therefore, I realistically think that some way needs to be found of dealing with Martinvl. If he cannot reform, then either he decides to stop editing or wikipedia, by some mechanism, protects itself from his future disruption, because I am sure that, unless radical change in his behaviour happens, the problems will happen again and may intensify to the detriment of all. I do not know whether this can be done via AN/I, and I wish my involvement in this waste-of-time drama to decrease. I am fed up of all this unnecessary drama over ultimately trivial issues that are already allowed by WP:UNITS and WP:MOSNUM.  DDStretch  (talk) 09:39, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

I should clarify that my involvement is confined totally and entirely to my actions on Talk:United Kingdom in trying to stop an edit-war Martinvl was involved in and the subsequent attempt to suggest what consensus was. This led to implied personal attacks against myself and my actions from Martinvl that I broadly construed as making me involved, and therefore, in my own opinion, precluded me from taking any administrative action against further behaviour. However, one of his replies (alluded to in other editor's message, above) suggested that if I had decided in Martinvl's opnion's favour, then all would have been well to him. This is just my own opinion about involvement.  DDStretch  (talk) 10:01, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

A note to the Wikipedia community

I archived the sections below this, #Defence by Martinvl, #Closing Admin's comments and #Response to Martinvl's defence, all created by Martinvl, with the comment:

NAC: I know of no policy or precedent on Wikipedia that allows an editor under examination on AN/I to create a new section in order to attempt to control its format and content. This is a community discussion, and not your talk page, so I suggest you allow the community to decide how it wants to go about organizing the discourse. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:50, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

When Martinvl removed my archive wrapper, I restored it with the additional note:

Restored after removal by Martinvl. And now I will impose my own conditions: any editor except Martinvl is free to unarchive this. That will help ensure that the removal is a community-based one. Beyond My Ken (talk) 06:22, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

As might be expected, Martinvl removed it again. I have no intention of restoring it yet again, but I did want the community to know of these actions on Martinvl's part, which appear to me to be antithetical to the process of free and open community discussion. Martinvl, whom I have never come across before, does not seem to exhibit the necessary collegiality and collaborative spirit that make Wikipedia possible. He seesm, instead, to want to control anything that concerns himself or the subjects he prefers to edit in. Such a personality is not a good match for this project. Beyond My Ken (talk) 06:38, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I suggest that future commenters ignore Martinvl's sections below and continue to use the section above this for discussion of his behavior, or create a new section below his for continuation of the discussion. Beyond My Ken (talk) 06:44, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I have blocked Martinvl for 48 hours for repeated disruption at the ANI thread. GiantSnowman 11:18, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Is that metric hours or imperial hours? EEng (talk) 13:57, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

I believe that the correct answer to that question is non-SI hours accepted for use with the SI.

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

---

Defence by Martinvl

This section is for the use of Martinvl. If anybody else posts here, I will delete their posts. You are welcome to post in the section #Response to Martinvl's defence. For my own part, I will ensure that everything that I write is well cross-referenced.

@Closing Admin

1. I request that this accusation be thrown out on grounds of vote stacking.

In particular the accusations cover three discussions. Shortly after User:Wee Curry Monster opened this section, he informed Ddstrech, Mabuska and RGloucester of this section. After I warned him about vote-stacking, he notified another four editors, all of whom had contributed to the debate at Talk:United Kingdom#Units of measure dispute. He did not contact anybody who contributed to either of the other discussions but did not contribute to Talk:United Kingdom#Units of measure dispute. I again warned him about vote-stacking. To date he does not appear to have taken any notice of my request.

I therefore request that the closing admin close this request without discussion on grounds of violation of WP:CANVASS, If the closing admin is not willing to do so, please let me know and I will then mount a defence to rebut the accusations against me. Martinvl (talk) 16:36, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

@Beyond My Ken

(Reponse to #A note to the Wikipedia community)

1. In my view, the structures that I introduced were necessary to prevent this community discussion turning into a Ochlocracy in which I could become the victim.

Martinvl (talk) 09:19, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Closing Admin's comments

Will the closing admin please post his/her comments here. This will ensure that they are separate from other comments. Martinvl (talk) 17:48, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Response to Martinvl's defence

Will editors who wish to respond to my defence, please do so here. I will ensure that everything that I write can be cross-referenced using the notation "@A.N.Other (1)". Martinvl (talk) 16:36, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

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

More of User:Holdek

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

---

The user unfortunately was not blocked last time, which resulted in this edit. Could they be blocked please and told to stay away from Russia-related articles (though I would prefer them to be indeffed given the long-time disruptive behavior).--Ymblanter (talk) 19:20, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

They haven't in fact been blocked before, unless you count a 3RR block way back in 2006 [sic], so I don't like to go straight to indef, however much of a timewaster the user appears to be. Blocked for one month for long-time disruptive editing. Bishonen | talk 20:07, 16 October 2013 (UTC).

• P.S. I've alerted them about this thread, and undertaken to port anything they want to say here from their talkpage, if I'm online. Bishonen | talk 20:17, 16 October 2013 (UTC).

  Thank you. Actually, now they should get automatic notifications.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:34, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

The first ANI thread referenced was not acted upon presumably because it was frivolous. In the second, of which Bishonen is correct I was not notified about, I reverted an edit by an editor with whom I've had content disputes before on a couple of Russian topic articles (e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents&diff=565324845&oldid=565222270#User:Holdek, Talk:Alexander_Dovzhenko#Merger_Proposal, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents&diff=569620326&oldid=569540498#User:_Ymblanter). The reversion was to restore a citation needed tag to a caption, per WP: Verify: "All material in Wikipedia mainspace, including everything in articles, lists and captions, must be verifiable. Sometimes editors will disagree on whether material is verifiable. The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and is satisfied by providing a reliable source that directly supports the material," (emphasis mine), and then to remove an erroneous category listing from the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Moscow_mayoral_election,_2013&diff=prev&oldid=577421683. This is a content dispute that does not rise to the level of a one month ban simply because the other user doesn't like my editing Russian topic articles that he edits as well. Holdek (talk) 02:16, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

_{Per the big yellow/orange banner, you still need to notify users on their user talk page.--Jezebel'sPonyo^{bons mots} 20:41, 16 October 2013 (UTC)}

In this case, they explicitly stated about a month agon that I was not welcome at their talk page. Last time, I asked another user to alert Holdek, and Holdek reacted by saying that they are not willing to talk to "my proxy". My point was more that we may be ready to modify the yellow/orange banner.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:47, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I understand your hesitance under those circumstances, but ultimately such behaviour reflects poorly on the Holdek, not you. As long as the receipt of notifications/mentions remains an option in preferences, the talk page notification remains necessary in order to ensure the editor being discussed is aware of the ANI report.--Jezebel'sPonyo^{bons mots} 20:54, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I don't think we need to modify the ANI rules because people sometimes react childishly to being alerted. What does it matter how they react? I don't care if they hold their breath and turn blue. Bishonen | talk 21:04, 16 October 2013 (UTC).

Here is the background on that: User_talk:Ymblanter#Administrators.27_noticeboard.2FIncidents_Notice. I do not believe I was acting childishly. Holdek (talk) 18:06, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Ok, when they get unblocked after a month and continue disruptive editing, I will notify them despite their clear unwillingness.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:05, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I should note that Holdek's tactic last time was to say as little as possible and so get the ANI thread archived. Someone not using his real name (talk) 17:12, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I noticed that, and indeed they avoid addressing their own behavior blaming everything on me and calling it "a content dispute". But this time, if the thread gets arxived, they will likely have their month-long block reinstated.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:22, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Provide evidence of your accusation. Holdek (talk) 17:51, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

• Note: I've unblocked Holdek, temporarily only, and only for the purpose of contributing to this thread. Bishonen | talk 12:15, 17 October 2013 (UTC).

  This is ok. I am not really looking forward, but they should be able to defend their cause and explain why their long-time disruption is not blockable.--Ymblanter (talk) 13:35, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

• Ymblanter, I should block you for using the cliche "going forward" in an official forum, one in which I insist on proper decorum. Drmies (talk) 21:09, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

• At least they didn't use "reach out to..." That one makes me grind my teeth when my wife uses it. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:31, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Closing this discussion, since it's obviously not going anywhere; we're never going to have consensus for a continued block or consensus for unblocking that comes out of this discussion. Meanwhile, I've declined Holdek's unblock request for reasons that I explained here. Further discussion at a new thread here or at WP:AN is welcome. Nyttend (talk) 16:05, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

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

BLP violation by Thegreatheroicavenger

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

---

User:Thegreatheroicavenger is an account that appears to exist only to insert blog-sourced derogatory accusations into Kimora Lee Simmons, bordering on schoolchild vandalism. The conduct has been repeated over several days (initially as an IP editor). Block requested. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 11:03, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Blocked indef. Their response when you reverted did not inspire confidence that they would settle down and discuss the matter. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 12:14, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

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

Uncommunicative IP user removing content

Hello all,

For quite some time now, 68.212.91.236 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · info · WHOIS · RDNS · trace · RBLs · http · block user · block log) has been repeatedly removing a particular sentence from the article SWAT 3: Close Quarters Battle (edit | talk | history | protect | links | watch | logs | page views (90d)). There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with that sentence and the user has never left an edit summary or talkpage post explaining their reasoning, despite being asked several times. What can be done? I'd treat this as simple content removal vandalism were it not for the considerable amount of time this has being going on for.

Cheers, CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 17:48, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Slow-mo edit war on a simple content dispute. Templates all around. Next step would be protection and/or block(s). Toddst1 (talk) 18:01, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I'll step away as requested, but 68.212.91.236 has never communicated on this issue or even acknowledged attempts at contact. They've just removed the sentence again each time. I have no idea what he/she finds objectionable about the sentence in question - if they'd only say something I'd be quite willing to accomodate them. CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 18:12, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

How am I supposed to go through dispute resolution with someone who refuses to communicate? I'm not even that bothered about the article staying in one particular state, I'm only asking that content removals should have a proper explanation. Oh, and please don't template me, thanks. CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 01:05, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Update

Okay, so 68.212.91.236 has just deleted that sentence again, as usual with no edit summary or explanation what the problem is and ignoring all their talk page messages asking them to stop and explain. As promised, I'm not going to revert again. Can somebody please help/advise with this? In a way, I've already tried resolving this 'dispute' informally through talk page messages but gotten nowhere because 68.212.91.236 won't answer them. I can't see how formal WP:DR is going do any better. Thank you, CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 20:10, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

As of 19 October, this issue is still not resolved. (However, the signature time on my previous post is now.) CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 18:20, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

• I've blocked the IP for 31 hours for continued edit warring after Toddst1's warning. Bishonen | talk 18:41, 19 October 2013 (UTC).

Thanks! What should be done about the article? I'll try asking 68.212.91.236 again what they think is wrong with it. Would it be acceptable if I rewrote/rephrased the paragraph, in case the user just doesn't like the wording or something? I'm still not going to revert again. CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 19:19, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Right, I noticed your post on their page. Kudos for not giving up on them. I'm not sure what's best to do... try rewriting the paragraph by all means, if they still don't respond, and maybe use the word "compromise" in the edit summary. If you think the matter deserves that amount of trouble. Bishonen | talk 19:59, 19 October 2013 (UTC).

Alright then. I'll see if they'll be encouraged to respond, but in the meantime I'll look at making that section a bit more succint, something possibly more to their liking. CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 00:21, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Ludwig von Mises Institute

The Ludwig von Mises Institute has been the subject of significant edit warring over the past several weeks. It has been fully protected twice within the past month (by myself and Orlady (talk · contribs)), but immediately after the expiry of each protection, edit warring has immediately resumed. After today's edit war, I considered issuing blocks, but only one party broke 3RR (MilesMoney (talk · contribs) by my math) and several stopped just before the line, so I hesitate to block one editor for crossing the line while others were arguably edit warring as well. Iselilja (talk · contribs), Srich32977 (talk · contribs), SPECIFICO (talk · contribs), and Binksternet (talk · contribs) have made multiple reverts today but stopped short of violating 3RR. Would it be possible to enact a community 1RR restriction on this article, as was recently placed on Ayn Rand? I think that type of measure may be needed. Mark Arsten (talk) 20:12, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I would recommend page protection and a rollback of the article to the expiry of the prior PP. It's clear in hindsight that the PP was removed prematurely so rollback and renewal of PP seems as if it would accomplish what was originally intended/hoped to work. 1RR seems to require a lot of work for Admins and no bright line for editors -- and has the possibility of degenerating into a game of musical chairs. SPECIFICO talk 20:20, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

BTW, Srich is at 4RR and counting. [43] [44] [45] [46] and seems to have been the one who inflamed the situation with a scattershot campaign of reverts during a short recent period. Although PP should solve the problem for now, Srich's disregard of warnings from various editors and admins over the past 4-6 weeks have made for an increasingly disruptive environment on these Mises-related articles. SPECIFICO talk 20:25, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Eh? The page protection is applied without implying any judgement on the content at that point. - Sitush (talk) 20:28, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Hello Sitush. I have no idea what the article looked like at the expiry, but it's clear that the PP should not have been allowed to expire clear in hindsight that is -- so I'm suggesting we just get back to what was originally intended by the PP. I don't see Mark or anyone else commenting on the article as of any date. SPECIFICO talk 20:32, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

"Rolling back" the article to an earlier state will not help. After each of my Bold edits was Reverted I opened a talk page Discussion thread. I also readded SPS tags needed to facilitate discussion. Templates for OR and Off-Topic sections were added, along with discussion threads. Some of my edits resolved clear editing problems with duplicate info, citations, unsupported info. Thanks. – S. Rich (talk) 20:42, 17 October 2013 (UTC) Also, I see that 2 of the 4 complaints that Specifico posts are the additions of the SPS tags and OR/Off-topic template. Jeez! – S. Rich (talk) 20:46, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Spoken like a true edit-warrior, Srich. There's always some special reason or exception for you, right? If only we understood you better. We feel your pain. SPECIFICO talk 21:05, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm open to extending protection another week or month or whatever, but I have a strong suspicion that we'll be back in this exact situation when it expires. Perhaps I'm being too pessimistic though. Mark Arsten (talk) 20:43, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I have no objection to a 1RR rule or full page protection, but that does not address the underlying problem whose name is MilesMoney, a clear-cut troll that solely exists on Wikipedia to disrupt and has wasted tons of the community's time already. This is why I reverted him twice without much discussions. MM has already generated far, far too much needless debate with his often frivolous edits and talk page suggestions. I saw you (Arsten) refused to call him a Duck in the SPI case, but he has all the charactestics of that user and regardless of who he is he needs to be given the curb and he can be given that on his own merits now. I am going to propose a site ban of MilesMoney (which I was already considering before this happened, but I dread wasting more time on him). If the site ban suggestion fails, I will bring this for the ArbCom for consideration. We can not live with a situation where a user gets to troll and waste the community's time for months, while a serious editor like me get approached like an edit warrior because I did my duty as a conscientious Wikipedian to revert a troll twice. Regards, Iselilja (talk) 20:49, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I didn't mean to characterize you as an edit warrior in my post, I was just noting that many editors were making >1 revert to support my belief that 1RR should be enforced. As far as sanctions for MM are concerned, I think it would be better to consider a topic ban before jumping straight to a site ban discussion. Mark Arsten (talk) 21:05, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

For clarification of the latter part of my comment here, see User talk:Mark Arsten#Mises ANI. Mark Arsten (talk) 21:37, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for lasthing out a bit. I have great respect for what you are doing at Wikipedia. But something I am very concerned about is if we end up in a situation where those who fight a very disruptive user ends up being treated as just as bad as the disruptive user himself. MilesMoney has created disruption in virtually every article he has involved himself in. . Most of us don’t create disruption wherever we go but manage to edit constructively and collaborate with other users. When I have engaged myself a bit in the issues at hand here it’s because I seriously think that MilesMoney is not editing responsibly and other users need to counter him. Topic banning MilesMoney from Economics/American politics should probably help the situation more than anything else (save a full site ban, which I think is merited, but I can agree to not propose that at the moment). I am not too impressed with some of those who side with Money either, but MM seems to be the major initiator of much of the recent disputes. Regards, Iselilja (talk) 21:48, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Hear, hear. It has always been a problem here, that those who grapple with disruptive editors are likewise branded as disruptive. I hope objective viewers can accurately sort out the characters at play in this range of topics, to find those with a motive and a strong point of view. Binksternet (talk) 23:18, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you Binksternet. I fully support your comment downthread. You know the situation and the other two named users better than me and you do a very important job in protecting the seriousness of Wikipedia which you should be commended for. Regards, Iselilja (talk) 00:12, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support some sort of community sanctions on this article as well as the related article(s) like Murray Rothbard which seem to be getting the same kind of aggressive editing by the same core group of editors (including Steeletrap (talk · contribs), who wasn't mentioned in the initial post). I've been watching these articles for a couple of weeks, as well as the talkpages of the involved editors, and something does need to be done, whether that be 1RR restrictions or long term protection (obviously an unattractive option) or topic bans. Like Mark Arsten, I'm not terribly optimistic about the situation, particularly since the battleground seems to move from article to article. ~Adjwilley (talk) 20:54, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

No community sanction is warranted. Please read Talk:Ayn Rand if you'd like to see who the sole cause of all this disruption across the project is. Search for the personal attacks on Frank O'Connor on that talk page to see it clear as day. The entire issue can be solved by sanctioning MilesMoney, the one editor who is indeed guilty of edit warring at the Von Mises Institute article. μηδείς (talk) 21:08, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Heh, I initially misunderstood your suggestion...I went to the talk page and did a search for the words "personal attack". There did seem to be a common thread. ~Adjwilley (talk) 21:23, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I support at least a topic ban for MilesMoney, covering all economics, anarchism and libertarian topics, broadly construed. The reason is that MilesMoney is disruptive—he jumps in to play Eris, to increase the level of conflict and discord. He has no positive contribution to make relative to content.

However, I do not want MilesMoney's antics to distract from the obviously emotion-driven POV activism of Steeletrap, and the stealthy evisceration performed by Specifico who slowly but surely takes away content showing certain parties in a positive light, and just as slowly but surely highlights the negative.

Me, I have no love for Austrian School economists (I am in favor of government-instituted economic policies) and I am not at all an economist by training or practice, so I am as neutral on the general topic as can be achieved here on Wikipedia. When I was alerted to problems related to Austrian School topics I found Steeletrap and Specifico working their POV changes to put one faction in a bad light. It became clear that they were fans of a competing faction, and that their purpose on Wikipedia was to reduce the respectability of their ideological opponents. Whatever I do at those articles is intended to establish as neutral a tone as possible. Binksternet (talk) 21:50, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

It would be convenient if the focus of the problem were also the cause. Sadly, life doesn't always work that way. MilesMoney (talk) 22:49, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Bink, you fundamentally misunderstand WP:NPOV. Your (by your own admission) knowing nothing about economics means you're unable to distinguish from WP:Fringe and WP:RS economists and schools of economics. (LvMI is *by their own admission* the former; independent RS associated with academic institutions are almost uniformly critical of its scholars, owing to their dogmatic rejection of the scientific method as applied to economics.) Your WP:Undue perspective is akin to someone who knows nothing about biology insisting on adding "equal space" for evolutionism and creationism. Steeletrap (talk) 23:46, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I fully support and trust the judgement of Binksternet here. Regards, Iselilja (talk) 00:12, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Comment Though I wasn't mentioned by OP, I am heavily involved in these articles. I can only speak for myself, but I think stepping back and taking a deep breath would be a good idea, and I certainly intend on doing that. (In any case, while bias is still a problem on the LvMI articles, it is much less so than when I arrived on WP, at which time they were almost entirely sourced to fellow Mises Institute friends/colleagues, which gave a grotesquely biased presentation of the reception of impact of these thinkers.) However, I am highly concerned by the combination of sensational allegations with no corroborating diffs characterizing the above discussion. Administrator User:Adjwilley in particular should recuse himself any discussion concerning Milesmoney, owing to the credibility hit he took in publicly accusing Miles of being a sock, bereft of any evidence, in charges that were dismissed as groundless. Steeletrap (talk) 23:38, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

To be precise, the SPI was closed with no action because the checkuser evidence was stale and there was insufficient evidence to block per WP:DUCK. Mark Arsten (talk) 00:49, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

@Sitush - Sitush, isn't there by definition a behavioral problem whenever Page Protection is required? Let's keep this simple and take one step at a time. SPECIFICO talk 23:59, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
@Sitush - Shitush, the point of rollback is not to get to any particular version. The point is to make it as if the old protection never ended so we restore the protection and the article to T-1 one second before the protection ended. To me that's a neat and objective solution. 00:44, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

• I agree with Mark Arsten that the problem with this article (and others related to it) isn't going to be resolved by short-term full-protection, because the warriors simply bide their time until the protection expires, when they can get back to warring. The vitriol spilled on this page (among others) is an indication of one reason why a 1RR restriction also won't work. That is, this dispute is no longer just about strong opinions on the article topic -- it's become highly personalized.

Below I suggest that we full-protect the article for an indefinite duration to keep the warring away from the article page. If similar disputes occur on related articles, let's full-protect them, too -- until somebody comes up with a decent draft article that won't inflame new wars. --Orlady (talk) 01:47, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

My understanding of ANI is that admins don't comment on content. But Orlady wants a better article before a freeze she suggests is removed. Meanwhile she has no problem with MilesMoney violating 4RR? This seems off to me. μηδείς (talk) 04:00, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

My apologies for not clarifying that my comment did not address every aspect of the edit war. (Anyway, since MilesMoney has already accused me of meatpuppetry after I intervened on this article, it's probably best if I don't comment on him.) My point is that (1) there are multiple edit-warriors here and (2) short-term protection has not been effective in getting them to discuss their content disputes because they simply wait for the protection to expire, then resume warring; therefore, I propose indefinite protection until somebody somehow manages to work out the content issues. --Orlady (talk) 19:07, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support 1RR as minimal solution for this article, per below. User:Carolmooredc 12:50, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

@Binksternet - I don't think it's very important which version is the one protected. I stated my reason for rolling back to the old protected version above, namely that it undoes what in hindsight was the premature ending of the PP in effect earlier this month. The advantage of that approach is that it doesn't depend on content but rather would take the article back to before it became unstable. I believe that is an established WP principle. At any rate, whatever version is protected will presumably end up being revised as a result of consensus during the protection. I think that the important point is that 1RR is somewhat ambiguous and is going to be more work for Admins and more confusing for editors. Which version is protected or whether it's indefinite, as Orlady has proposed, I think are secondary questions which could be determined by whoever closes this thread. It appears that there's a consensus for some kind of PP in preference to 1RR. SPECIFICO talk 19:24, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Why don't we go farther back than that? We could return to its condition early on November 23, 2012, just prior to your first edit which included your removal of the word "academic" and any form of the word scholar from the lead section; a clear downgrade of the status of LvMI. Starting from there, with each proposed change requiring talk page consensus, might prove quite interesting. Binksternet (talk) 01:42, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

PROPOSAL

The article be rolled back to the version as of whenever the last PP expired, and then Full Protected until November 1. Please do not put threaded discussion here. Use space above. SPECIFICO talk 23:51, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

• STATUS QUO I've changed my opinion. Constructive editing has resumed, with the warriors now using the talk page and I endorse leaving the article unprotected. The cycle of EW may have been broken by this discussion. Support as per my initial comment above. Let's drop the off topic rehash of resentments and accusations here. SPECIFICO talk 23:53, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose: as I implied above, there is no need to roll it back. As others have said, a further period of protection is unlikely to achieve anything given how long this has been rumbling on for and the number of related articles. There is a behavioural issue here, not a mere content dispute. - Sitush (talk) 23:56, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support we could all use a deep breath. The above speculations about "topic bans" for user miles are highly inappropriate, not the least because they come from an administrator who falsely and publicly accused him of being a "sock." Several weeks of a WP imposed "vacation" from the LvMI article would do everyone some good. Steeletrap (talk) 23:58, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

• The purpose of full protection is not to provide a "vacation" from an article but to provide time for consensus regarding content to emerge. If you want a vacation from it then just use some self-control and stay away. - Sitush (talk) 00:01, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

"Please do not put threaded discussion here. Use space above."

I won't touch what you wrote, but it would be good if you moved your comment above, as requested. Please do so (and I'll then remove this request, of course). MilesMoney (talk) 00:24, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm quite happy with it being situated as it is, thanks. It is perfectly normal on ANI and Specifico has already been informed of this (as I am sure you know). - Sitush (talk) 00:30, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

@Steeletrap, I assume you are referring to me as the administrator who initiated the sockpuppet investigation, but you might be confusing/conflating me with someone else, since I didn't propose a topic ban for Miles. That was suggested first (I think) by Iselija and seconded by others, but I certainly didn't initiate it, nor did I make any move to support it. ~Adjwilley (talk) 01:26, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose – A "rollback" reverts the SPS tags pertaining to topics under discussion, the off-topic template (also under discussion), the OR template (under discussion), and the clearly appropriate edits that have been undertaken (of which I have a few). – S. Rich (talk) 00:02, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support - We need full protection. Rolling back to the last stable version is reasonable, particularly given the rash of questionable recent changes. But the key is full protection, else Srich32977 will repeat their performance and spark a flurry of reverts. MilesMoney (talk) 00:21, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

• The changes are "questionable" to you, obviously. That does not mean that they are to other people and is precisely why we do not protect a preferred version. - Sitush (talk) 00:32, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

• Comment Can we really roll back to a preferred "version" by consensus? I have always been told the revert goes to the last stable version and is then locked. I will watch the discussion here with interest to see how this is concluded. Any explanation to anything I am missing is welcome.--Mark Miller (talk) 00:46, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

• When there has been as much edit warring as here and over so long a period of time, there is no "stable" version. - Sitush (talk) 00:49, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

On the face of that, I can understand why you would think that...but even if we have to go back years...there has to be a stable version. If there really isn't, it may be AFD time.--Mark Miller (talk) 03:01, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

We could always stub it - just use the lead section and then rebuild after people agree on content. The lead looks to be pretty innocuous at present. - Sitush (talk) 03:05, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Well...look at me all painted embarrassed!~ I did not see this suggestion from you when I responded below. Yes, Sitush, I agree and support the stubbing of the article!--Mark Miller (talk) 03:35, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

• IMO, it's time to full-protect this article for an indefinite duration. Short-term protection has not achieved the desired goal of quelling the edit warring. I have been disappointed to see that, instead of discussing the article during the protection periods and developing decent draft language that everyone can acquiesce to (which is what would happen in an ideal situation), the combatants have quietly waited for the protection to expire so they could get back to their wars.

In its current and recent forms, the article has serious deficiencies in structure, sourcing, tone, etc. I believe that most of the issues in the wars could be made to go away if somebody produced a good quality encyclopedic article that is built around objective information (rather than points of view), is structured so as to make sense to someone who does not already have a strong POV about the article topic, and is sourced to the kinds of reliable sources we usually look for. I think it's time to full-protect the article until somebody can create a decent draft outside of article space. In the meantime, administrators can respond to requests to fix errors, update bad urls, etc. --Orlady (talk) 01:29, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

• Full protect in the present version. [Adding to comment made earlier.] Looking at the diff from 13 Oct to the present [47], there is only one "controversial" edit outstanding – the inclusion or exclusion of "historical revisionism" in the infobox. The material on Ferrera was changed by me and did not seem to meet with objection. There are templates added and some minor edits regarding the number of scholars, a duplicate mention of the library, and the removal of unsourced material about the institute being housed in a shed for a short time. All of the other "major"changes made by me were restored and discussion threads were set up. The templates now in the article point to the discussions. Stubbing the article runs the risk of repeating the RSN debates about using blog material from Callahan and Murphy, and other debates. – S. Rich (talk) 04:06, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. I don't think Specifico's preferred version is the best possible one. I like the more recent Srich edits which have augmented the article. Binksternet (talk) 05:50, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
• Full protect the present version, but indefinitely because recent history indicates that temporary protection (whether to November 1 or any other date) isn't going to be effective in getting the parties to deal with the issues constructively. --Orlady (talk) 19:12, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Broader concerns

I saw this and immediately thought of this case from a few weeks back. At that time there was a feud over the BLP of the Austrian economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe and it saw similar issues of edit-warring along with tendentious editing from several parties, basically the same people involved in this latest dispute. This appears to be a problem that touches on articles about Austrian Economics in general. I am not sure if any one party is the sole source of the problem.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 00:09, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Austrian Economics has become a real battleground lately, true. In addition to HHH and LvMI, Murray Rothbard has had a lot of problems lately. I could see this conceivably going to Arbcom, much like the Tea Party dispute. Mark Arsten (talk) 00:47, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Arbcom can hand out sanctions, I'm sure, but isn't the real problem one of content? If so, maybe we should try to solve it from that direction. MilesMoney (talk) 01:47, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

DR/N has a backlog so I suggest going directly to Med Com with this one. But only if you want to deal with content only. Arb Com has shown the balls to hand out wide sanctions over behavior lately (Tea party sanctions, Manning sanctions etc.)and would be the best route for that. AN/I may be able to deal with this, I don't know for sure, but I still say...revert to the last stable version even if we have to stub the article.--Mark Miller (talk) 03:07, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

While I won't defend the behavior of the editors of this article (including, for the sake of argument, my own), I don't think the problem is centered on behavior. Even if Arbcon topic-banned everyone who's edited the article in the last year, we'd just be replaced by another round of mutually hostile editors who'll get into the same messes over the same topics all over again.

The problem is that it's hard to edit this article without a deep knowledge of the subject, but such a knowledge is gained only at the expense of forming opinions and taking sides. The LmVI is not just controversial inside Wikipedia, it's controversial in the world at large. The relationship between it and the Austrian school is complex and full of reliable sources that disagree. The figures, many of them no longer alive, are colorful and outspoken. There are credible allegations of many unacceptable views (racism, etc.) that we must report on fairly and accurately.

I could go on, but it's an innately hard problem that can't be solved by banging everyone's heads together. MilesMoney (talk) 03:49, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Extreme editor bias is the issue: In truth, Austrian Economics (especially as promulgated by the more hard core libertarians), as well as related BLPs of a dozen plus economists, has been a battle ground since September 2012 when User:SPECIFICO started editing and even more so since April 2013 when User:Steeletrap started editing. Steeletrap has labeled Austrians who associated with the Mises Institute as "disreputable" and compared them to Scientologists; User:SPECIFICO has compared the "Mises gang" to "Multi-level marketing/vitamin supplement schemes". (See this diff of full quotes and even more details at this May 2013 WP:NPOVN discussion.) Steeletrap has referred to SPECIFICO as a "colleague" and "collaborator". (Both state they have (SPECIFICO) or are working on (STEELETRAP) relevant academic degrees.) User:MilesMoney, who started editing July 2013, immediately jumped into many of the same articles and became an intense colleague/collaborator of SPECIFICO and Steeletrap.

These editors use the fact that many articles have been sourced with too many primary sources as an excuse to search out and add overwhelmingly negative and inflammatory secondary source material. However, they challenge neutral and positive information from other secondary sources with nonsense rationales which one must discuss and often bring to noticeboards, over and over again - a huge disincentive to constructive editing. (See related April to August discussions on the Jesus Huerta de Soto and Murray Rothbard talk pages). Also they misuse the article on links called WP:Walled garden, as well as off-Wikipedia interpretations of the concept, as a means of sabotaging perfectly good WP:RS information from academics who have even the loosest of affiliations with the Mises Institute. See this WP:RSN discussion.)

These editors' biased and disruptive edit warring has angered a number of editors who have either dropped out of Wikipedia or, like myself, stopped editing articles where those editors are active. Users:Srich and Binksternet, who like me have their own idiosyncratic libertarian-oriented viewpoints, have kept working to make the articles comply with Wikipedia policy and especially to end the biased trashing of BLPs. Until the last month or so the Wikipedia community has failed to deal with repeated complaints, even though it frequently has banned less biased editors for relatively minor infringements.

Users: Steeletrap and SPECIFICO have repeatedly inferred editors supporting NPOV articles are merely cultish apologists for these Austrians and libertarians. They take criticism of their editing bias as personal attacks, despite repeatedly being reminded of NPOV/FAQ - Dealing with biased contributors. Lately they, and MilesMoney, have repeated ad nauseam the charge of incompetence against me and other editors. They have engaged in harassing behaviors (see below). When brought to ANI they have responded overwhelmingly with unsupported allegations of others' bad behavior, while fiercely supporting each others' ad hominem attacks.

Below is a list of WP:ANI (including 3rr) reports just since April 2013 which illustrate the problems. (Those by Specifico or Steeletrap against other editors are illustrative of points made above.) Many relevant WP:BLPN, WP:RSN, WP:NPOVN, WP:ORN and other noticeboard entries can be found as well.

• User:Olathe vs. SPECIFICO on alleged disruptive editing habits, April 30, 2013.
• User:Sageo vs. Steeletrap and Specifico on alleged disruptive editing habits, May 24, 2013.
• Carolmooredc vs. Steeletrap on BLP violations, May 27, 2013.
• Carolmooredc vs. Steeletrap on personal talk page harassment, leading to a warning, May 29, 2013.
• Carolmooredc v. SPECIFICO on 3rr violation, leading to protection of the page, June 2, 2012.
• Carolmooredc vs SPECIFICO on disruptive personal talk page messages (which was getting a sympathetic response til unsupported counter charges started flying), June 29, 2013.
• Steeletrap vs. Carolmooredc on insults, leads admin to warn Steeletrap against allegations unsupported by evidence, and to warn Carolmooredc on losing her temper, which she admitted she had, July 27, 2013.
• WP:BLPN, Carolmooredc and others on laundry list of BLP problems with Steeletrap/SPECIFICO editing, August 1, 2013.
• SRich vs MilesMoney for 3rr, resulting in warning for MilesMoney, September 20, 2013.
• MilesMoney vs. Srich for 3rr, no violation found, September 20, 2013.
• Srich vs. SPECIFICO on a WP:RS closure, Sept 23, 2013.
• SRich vs. SPECIFICO on another WP:RS RfC closure, September 24, 2013.
• Specifico vs. Binksternet on alleged harassment of Steeletrap, citing no diffs, closed for lack of evidence and general chaos, September 29, 2013.
• User:SRich vs. SPECIFICO/Steeletrap/Miles Money on repeated tag-team removal of NPOV template, October 16, 2013.

At what point does Wikipedia start dealing with such disruptive POV editing? When does it start looking at evidence of tag-team editing in possible WP:Meatpuppet relationships? I believe Steeletrap, SPECIFICO and MilesMoney should be topic banned from all Austrian economics (and libertarianism-related) articles, especially Biographies of living or dead individuals. In the interim, 1rr should be applied to as many of these affected articles as possible. User:Carolmooredc 05:09, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Carol, I agree with your general characterizations except that I am not the holder of "idiosyncratic libertarian-oriented viewpoints" unless classic American liberal viewpoints (such as strong government involvement in social programs) are now considered libertarian (which is not the case.) The only reason I'm involved at these articles is that I was told there was POV-warring in action, and when I went to decide for myself I saw that the report was correct. I don't like POV warriors on Wikipedia; I think the NPOV policy is what makes the whole encyclopedia so valuable. Binksternet (talk) 05:55, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

[Insert]: Binksternet, Thanks for clarification. User:Carolmooredc 12:52, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

[Insert] Carol, I am only "biased" against the Mises Institute in the same sense a biologist is biased against creationism. They reject the scientific method in their models yet purport to be social scientists. The Mises scholars openly and honestly concede their fringe status. Hans Hoppe concedes that LvMI is regarded as dogmatic and pseudo-scientific by mainstream economists. Writes Hoppe, "It is this assessment of economics as an a priori science ... which distinguishes Misesians, from all other current economic schools. All the others conceive of economics as an empirical science, as a science like physics, which develops hypotheses that require continual empirical testing. And they all regard as dogmatic and unscientific Mises's view." (1)

We have to accurately represent the views of mainstream sources on Wikipedia, even if those paint a negative picture of Mises Institute thinkers. If you can find mainstream economics RS praising LvMI fellows, please add it to the article. However, I will continue to object to using primary sources and connected fringe secondary sources (i.e. other Mises fellows) to source the contributions of Mises scholars to economics. Steeletrap (talk) 14:03, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

[Insert response to Steeletrap]: One example makes it clear how false and dishonest this response is. See Rothbard archive section on No agreement to remove Seven refs on economist of the Austrian school about Steeletrap's removal of neutral sourced info because SPECIFICO and STEELETRAP were trying to downgrade Rothbard from even being notable as an economist of the Austrian School and to remove the economist info box.

When there is a massive fight over something that absurdly biased, it can be quite discouraging to try to add the other WP:RS info one has on Rothbard and that was about the time I gave up. I still have a mass of NPOV/WP:RS info on my harddrive, but why bother if getting into the article a couple sentences that don't trash Rothbard (or the other subjects of other articles) lead to a massive talk page discussion and often visit to noticeboard(s) that takes 3 to 5 hours of fruitless discussion?? (Something I'd already gone through in Jesus Huerta de Soto.) That's called disruptive POV editing and that's what Steeletrap especially, but SPECIFICO and MilesMoney as well, engage in. Others can read just how slimy the Murray Rothbard article is, much of the "dirt" inserted by Steeletrap, but supported by SPECIFICO/MilesMoney to see the editor doesn't care much about creating an NPOV encyclopedia. User:Carolmooredc 18:03, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

[reply] Carol, those "seven references" were deleted accidentally when I was trying to remove the word "economist" from the lede. I restored them immediately when the error is pointed out to me, and they have for months remained in the current article without objection. However, all the sources do is call Rothbard an "economist"; they do not describe his substantive work as an economist. Again, instead of making erroneous accusations which you will later have to correct (as you have ended up doing several times in the last month), you should try to improve the article by adding mainstream refs describing rothbard's substantive contributions to econ. Steeletrap (talk) 18:33, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

[Insert reply to Steeletrap:] This is not true. In reply to my complaint about deletion of the seven refs you wrote at this diff: I disagree. Newt Gingrich is not characterized as a "historian", despite teaching history and having a Ph.D, because he is not notable for work as a historian. Rothbard is not notable as an "economist" and should not be described as such in the lede. he is notable as a (fringe) political theorist and activist. Like Newt (for some time) with respect to history, economics is how Murray made a living, and (again like newt) the Ph.D a credential Murray cited to boost his credibility. The compromise text indicates that Murray had a Ph.D in econ and taught in Brooklyn and Vegas. Mentioning him as an "economist" of the "Austrian school" seems superfluous and subjective. Sounds like you wanted those seven refs out, doesn't it? User:Carolmooredc 00:32, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

We have long had problems around Austrian economics. This is just a recent intensification. I wouldn't be surprised if it went to Arbcom. bobrayner (talk) 11:42, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Indeed - see WP:Long-term_abuse/Karmaisking for some of the history around these articles. There have been strident POV pushers advocating the Austrian view and the Mises institute for a really long time. Ravensfire (talk) 13:52, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

The list of Karmaisking socks is very revealing, especially when one scrutinizes the various usernames involved. - MrX 14:47, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

{Insert] Pro-Austrian Karmaisking was very active 4 or 5 years ago, as was anarcho-capitalist User:Sarsaparilla (who I always thought was the same person, but certainly had same interests and modus operandi). Until an influx of socks recently in the Rothbard article, I haven't seen much evidence of him the last couple years. But that was one or two persons operating as obvious Socks. I'm sure these are three different editors working closely together because of their differing styles. User:Carolmooredc 17:40, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

While ARBCOM is the court of last resort, I agree with you, bobrayner. I've seen this particular feud spill over to a variety of noticeboards and when disputes are ideological in nature, compromise and consensus are not even goals for many participants. They seem to be all-of-nothing debates. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 17:10, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Complaints have been lodged by several editors at multiple noticeboards and WP:ANI multiple times. Admins do nothing. And now people are talking about taking the whole subject area to arbitration! Why do we even have an NPOV policy if admins can't even comment on obvious POV editing and only on behavior issues, which the offending editors always wiggle out of by making false and exaggerated claims against the complainants? I have a feeling ArbCom would not take this case and the problems would go on and on. I would be delighted if the whole area was put under 1RR, but Admins actually dealing with disruptive editors would save a lot of time and energy. User:Carolmooredc 18:17, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Well, if by some convolution you can get an Editor labeled as holding a "fringe" point of view, they are then treated as if they are a troll and are likely to receive an indefinite block. It takes a bit of legwork and it isn't ethical but it sure seems to be an effective and quick way to get rid of the opposition. You only need one Admin to agree with you and it's faster than waiting for ARBCOM to render a verdict. But I don't think it's fair or justifiable and it misuses WP policy statements to achieve a certain result. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 16:19, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

I apologize for my pointy remark. I'm very frustrated with the variable way that different Editors are treated on WP. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 16:40, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

FYI, assuming you were replying directly to my comment above, my complaint is editors who have such a strong negative POV against a topic and/or individuals related to it that they constantly search out and insert only the most negative information, put the most negative spin on it, and fight attempts to put in NPOV material from equal or better sources with absurd rationales for deletion. A few of us have come here and to various noticeboards over and over again and this issue has not been dealt with. The question from an uninvolved editor of how to deal with the ensuing edit warring started this thread. Those trying to remove or otherwise deal with this type of POV disruption are constantly reverted by the disruptors. I added a lot of diffs to illustrate the problem. By the way, WP:Mediation would be interesting as mentioned by Mark Miller, but I'm too burnt out on these editors to initiate it myself. Certainly better than going to arbitration right off the bat. User:Carolmooredc 16:45, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, Arbcom will almost always sanction the real disruptive users, but there's often a decent amount of "collateral damage" done to other parties, as well. Mark Arsten (talk) 18:28, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

The main problem with DR and mediation, as I understand it, is that they are non-binding. You can go through the whole process and if you disagree with the results, there is no penalty from disregarding the whole proceedings. I think these methods can definitely help if all parties are more interested in resolving a dispute than in being right. But on many contentious topics, there is usually a "my way or no way" attitude. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:02, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Let's tell the truth here, Carolmooredc. The only problem you illustrated with your diffs was that you chewed up a huge amount of WP resources with your long list of hostile ad hominem noticeboard complaints, none of which WP found to have any merit. A secondary problem is that you continue to cite these failed attacks as if they were vindication of your current round of ad hominem noisemaking. I greatly respected your voluntary withdrawal from the articles that have frustrated you recently, and I hope that you will resume your vacation if the environment here is too upsetting for you. While you've been hanging out on this ANI, good progress has been made with constructive edits at the vMI article. SPECIFICO talk 19:44, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

It's mind-boggling that you seem to think that an Editor who is burned out from constant arguing and so just quits the discussion is a good result. The goal is not to drive away those who believe differently from yourself or "wear them down". When Wikipedia content is determined by the "last Editor standing" mentality, it's really a sign that there is something wrong with the project. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:07, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Dear Liz. I didn't say it was good that she got so upset that she behaved destructively and therefore improved things by leaving. In fact I made it clear that IF she felt so frustrated it was good for her to take a breather. I consider your message to me uncivil, maybe a PA, and I ask you to do the right thing and retract it, so all the Admins watching this page can see you're a good egg. Thanks. SPECIFICO talk 20:11, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Worn down is an apt descriptor for a long list of issues that easily can be reviewed at talk pages of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Jesus Huerta de Soto, Murray Rothbard, among others. Any experienced editors easily can see what was going on. Liz has nothing to apologize for - and WP:ANI is the kind of place such issues, generally and specifically, are allowed to be freely discussed. (Including noting that "fringe" can be just another way people who have different viewpoints held by one set of academics can try to dismiss those subjects of articles who challenge them and editors who try to keep articles NPOV.) User:Carolmooredc 23:39, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Carol, Mises scholars acknowledge they are fringe; they proudly reject mainstream theory and the scientific method. So this isn't a mater of "some academics" going after others out of vindictiveness. Treating fringe sources differently than mainstream sources in non-negotiable. Fringe views can be "right" once in a blue moon, but we have to abide by policy whether or not you think Rothbard's views are sound. Steeletrap (talk) 00:57, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Proposal, general sanctions

Given the above discussion, the observation arbcom cases often end up imposing WP:AC/DS sanctions on affected area, and the ability of the community to do functionally the same thing (with a lot less bureaucratic pixelwork). I propose:

• Any uninvolved administrator may, on his or her own discretion, impose sanctions on any editor working on a page within the topic of Austrian Economics, if, despite being warned, that editor repeatedly or seriously fails to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behavior, or any normal editorial process. Sanctions may be appealed to the administrator who placed them, the administrators' noticeboard, or the Arbitration Committee.

(Wording is lifted from the MMA sanctions at General sanctions). NE Ent 20:30, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support I think this is definitely merited. Mark Arsten (talk) 20:49, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
• Support Iselilja (talk) 20:53, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose The above complaints have been heavy on rhetoric but remarkably thin on evidence. Administrators are our peers; they, like us, are subject to contextual biases and incompetencies. This is a very dangerous power to invest them with, and much better evidence than the vague unspecific charges made by previous users is needed to support it. The fact that the admins above -- including one, User:adjwilley, who previously falsely declared User:MilesMoney a "sockpuppet" on the basis of no hard evidence (Adj's claim that was dismissed, but exacted a heavy tole on Miles' reputation) -- just "take his [OP's] word for it" above is indicative of the risks of arbitrary and capricious admin conduct. Steeletrap (talk) 22:10, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose I have little familiarity with this rubric, or why it appears to have been implemented in a short list of articles. Wouldn't it be better to open a separate thread about this and to notify at least the talk page of every article which would be affected. This seems like a big decision for us to make just on the occasion of having assembled here to discuss a much narrower issue of 1RR/Protection on a single article. I recommend opening a separate thread if you feel strongly about pursuing this idea. SPECIFICO talk 21:03, 19 October 2013 (UTC) Oppose added SPECIFICO talk 22:21, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
• Comment At first look, MMA Sanctions sounds like Martial Law. Frankly, I don't see more than one or two Admins who have shown any familiarity with these articles or the behavioral issues which might be identified. Let's see some more Admin involvement in a constructive mode (I am pleased to say that we've seen some very recently -- thanks.) If there's a problem here, the solution is not to grant more power to the Admins, it's to benefit from more attention and involvement from/by them. By the time 1RR or MMA are enforced, there's going to be a much larger use of scarce Admin time and effort than there would be from occasional oversight and guidance, in my opinion. SPECIFICO talk 22:26, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

• Strongly Oppose I encountered this policy on Ayn Rand, where it did absolutely no good at all. It won't work here, either, and the harmful effects will only make things worse. Absolutely terrible idea. MilesMoney (talk) 22:23, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support Assuming it’s been done elsewhere before and worked. Otherwise maybe fast track to ArbCom. In either case, the issues and policy violations are often clear enough that once brought to the appropriate noticeboard any truly neutral admin who bothers to take ten minutes to review them will know what proper action to take. User:Carolmooredc 00:05, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
• Observation In the context of these articles about libertarianism it is interesting to see which editors prefer to impose increased hierarchical authority and which editors prefer to bolster endogenous collaberation. SPECIFICO talk 00:40, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

The pattern is easily explained: those who have failed to be convincing are the ones who want to bring in authorities to override their opponents. MilesMoney (talk) 01:14, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Support. Seems to be an entirely sensible proposal. Let's leave ArbCom as the last resort, which is where it is always supposed to be. - Sitush (talk) 01:18, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

@Sitush - To oppose this proposal is not to favor arbcom. Opposing this is to reject the statist authoritarian solution of general sanctions. SPECIFICO talk 01:39, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support. NE Ent, that is a great suggestion. I don't think anyone working neutrally on the encyclopedia will object to what is presented as a very fair but fairly quick form of behavior management. Who would object to an administrator warning an editor then blocking that editor if the disruptive behavior continues? It's a good proposal. Binksternet (talk) 02:13, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Was that intended to be a rhetorical question? I ask, because a few of us already object and for good reason. MilesMoney (talk) 02:15, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support The level of discourse recently in regard to myriad disagreements about the Ludwig von Mises Institute include responses like:

• "You'd have to shut your eyes, stick your fingers in your ears and hum to ignore all this."
• "When someone literally doesn't know what they're talking about, we have no motivation to listen."
• "The best I can make out of it is that you intend to edit-war. That would be unfortunate, particularly for you."
• "I think it is petty politics you are playing—that you hate LvMI with a passion and that you do not want to be associated with them...Rather than arguing about who is more Austrian, you should start your own School to complete the intra-Austrian schism. "

Edit summaries refer to other edits as "idiotic", "nonsense" and promote a battleground mentality (e.g. "your opinion vs. reliable sources; guess who wins"). Edit-warring has been going on daily by many of the editors involved in this discussion. To their credit, the some recent discussions like this one and this one seem fairly productive. But given the quality of editing behavior, I have very little faith that the involved editors can work things out on most issues on this or other articles via consensus-building or even through RfCs, over which they still have disagreements. I, JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 02:45, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

As a libertarian, @I JethroBT:, I distrust increasing the power and privilege of central authority at the expense of local autonomy. I have rarely seen WP Admins step into these flare-ups -- for example when Carolmooredc was doing her round-the-world-tour of Noticeboards she proudly cites above -- and administer discipline or even offer effective guidance. Otherwise we would not see her and Binksternet continue their personal attacks and equivocations here in the current thread. It's a sad commentary on due process here when they feel free to display such behavior with impunity right here in the most conspicuous place where Admins are watching. Why should we now believe that the same Admins who could have nipped this behavior in the bud are the ones to whom we should give this extraordinary governmental power, akin to Martial Law? Moreover, I'll repeat the following until I hear some responses on the point: If such sanctions were to be imposed on an entire category of related articles, the discussion of that decision must be announced to all the affected articles in the category. Otherwise we have the central authority taking this extraordinary prerogative without consulting the affected parties. That should concern not only us libertarians but all editors who care about open process and representative decision-making. SPECIFICO talk 03:29, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

@SPECIFICO: Contacting editors on the relevant articles doesn't sound unreasonable to me, given the broad nature of the sanctions, though putting a notice on all 49 articles is probably a bit much. Are there any objections if I or others post something like the following on the talk pages of some of the more highly-watched articles?:

You are invited to comment on discussion occurring on ANI over the implementation of discretionary sanctions across articles related to Austrian Economics.

I think your point about whether to defer to local autonomy in matters of consensus-building/article maintenance as opposed to granting it to an authority is a fair concern, and I think letting others look into this situation should be encouraged. However, I am personally less inclined to support that idea when it's clear the same pattern of interaction, accusations, and general pettiness has repeatedly emerged amongst the local autonomy across similar topics. I, JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 04:24, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Even in arbitration cases like WP:ARBPIA, templates about the arbitration decision are placed on articles only by editors as they choose to do so, and some have gone for a couple years without them until a problem arises and someone thinks to put one on. I think that could be applied here as well in this more informal case, with people putting a to-be-created standard template on articles having or likely to have a problem, as they so choose. If it is not a 1rr situation, the standard template for the top of the talk page should be sufficient. There is no need to run around and tell editors, though if they come to the page and start creating problems they should be reminded to read the templates on the top of the page. User:Carolmooredc 05:37, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support - I reviewed how the Standard Discretionary Sanctions at Ayn Rand went and concluded that they were effective and beneficial. Several of the same players that were there are now in this area too and so there's good reason to expect the same benefit. (I did wonder, "Can we do this??", and of course the answer is, "Yes per WP:IAR/WP:NOTBUREAU we can do whatever we determine there is consensus to do.") My only quibble is whether "Sanctions may be appealed to ... the Arbitration Committee" should be in the wording—if ArbCom didn't actually enact the SDS at this article, how would an appeal to them be in their jurisdiction? I think we'd either need to make sure they'll agree to take these sorts of appeals, or remove them from the list of appeal routes. Otherwise I think this will be helpful. Zad68 03:16, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

@Zad68 - Unlike at Ayn Rand, the sanctions proposed here would affect roughly 50 articles. How do you justify proposing such a step without even notifying the talk pages or active editors on 49 of those articles. It's like taxation without representation. It is tyranny. SPECIFICO talk 03:40, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

You say "effective", I say "heavy-handed", "chilling" and "generally counterproductive". The article is effectively frozen. It took days, and admin intervention, just to remove some nonsense that was inserted. That's what happens when you point guns at everyone: nobody moves. Now magnify that by 50 and you have a complete disaster. MilesMoney (talk) 03:58, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

SPECIFICO and MilesMoney really are over-dramatizing of the "tyranny" of the proposal here, and by two editors highly involved in the various Austrian disputes. While obviously some of these articles will be looked at immediately because of current issues still on noticeboards, in general admins tend to wander over only if an issue is brought to a noticeboard or WP:ANI/3rr, or an editor asks one individually to take a look. We don't have bands of roving admins trolling for bad behavior to correct. User:Carolmooredc 05:44, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

With all due respect, these sanctions only get in the way of editors who are actively working to improve articles. This does not describe you, at least not in regard to the articles I edit, so I'm not surprised that you don't feel in any way encumbered.

I would appreciate it, though, if you recognized these differences in our circumstances and therefore didn't overgeneralize from your personal experiences or trivialize mine. Lots of things look better from the outside than the inside. MilesMoney (talk) 14:35, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

It's my understanding of arbitration policy that any sanctions on English Wikipedia is appealable to them, so the proposed general sanction statement is simply acknowledging that policy rathering than creating it. In other words, any sanctions would be appealable to the committee, regardless of whether the sanctions statement said that or not. NE Ent 11:11, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Hello @NE Ent:. I've just looked up the articles which are in the categories included in your proposal -- Paleo-libertarianism, Austrian Economics, Libertarian Organizations, Libertarian publications, etc. There are hundreds. That means there are at least 1000 involved editors, even allowing for duplication across articles. I'd like to hear why you think the decision to impose G.S. on so many articles should be made by this group on this board. Frankly I'd be surprised if this group actually has the authority to do so. Have you researched that? Thanks.

More abuse more threats; Widefox before, now Drmies

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

---

I have recently reported Widefox here at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive814#User:Widefox_Abusive_editor_with_banning_power.. but the report has "vanished" presumably archived ; Widefox is still doing as he pleases and now also supported by Drmies who has decided to "partially-lock" the page because of "vandalism" and now threatens me with the complete lock right here [[48]].

The PXE page is not vandalized, they call vandalize to add a project that competes against the one they "religiously" support; these guys just think they are WP owners.

Is anyone able to help me here? Do you guys think if I really want to "vandalize" the page I'm going to put the energy I'm putting on this fight against these ABUSERS? c'mon 213.37.84.214 (talk) 22:09, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Still have yet to read WP:CONSENSUS and WP:RS yet? Yes ... when you hit your own head against the wall again and again, it might feel like abuse ... but you're really only abusing yourself ES&L 22:21, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

If you're upset about a page being semi-protected, why don't you register an account so you can edit it instead of shouting about admin abuse? Mark Arsten (talk) 22:23, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Actually what I read was Drmies telling you that if you kept it up you would be blocked. I think your behavior is far from correct, accurate or within our policies. Anger doesn't help....it just makes me support Drmies should he decide to block you.--Mark Miller (talk) 22:32, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

@ES&L you are a troll I do not answer trolls.

@Mark Miller, what Drmies did was not listen to any reason and just cast a new threat. MY QUESTION IS STILL ON why the block on that page? where is the vandalism? why just editing and trying to add some KNOWLEDGE on that page is vandalism? NO SIR, enough with this game. 213.37.84.214 (talk) 22:40, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

• Enough for now. 31 hours for disruptive editing and namecalling. Poor ES&L--an endangered species already, and now called a troll. Seriously, this has gone on long enough, and if you need more context see User_talk:Drmies#Vandalism.3F_where.3F. FWIW, I have no idea what that article is about or what Widefox is trying to accomplish there according to the IP, and what I am supposed to be supporting. This is a combination of "help! admin abuse!" and "it's a conspiracy", on top of the other disruptions. Drmies (talk) 23:09, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

You're right, Wikipedia is not a game. Due to excessive violations of Wikipedia's core policies, it was necessary to protect the article from continued violations. This is usually done instead of blocking. However, if the same person who was disruptive there continues to be disruptive elsewhere (you know, like ANI for example) and shows absolutely NO understanding nor desire to actually READ, then they're likely to be blocked to protect the project as a whole. Calling an admin or other valuable editor a troll usually isn't a wise move either ... ES&L 23:08, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, even calling you a troll is unacceptable! :) Drmies (talk) 23:18, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I wasn't going to presume to be valuable, other than for the gold in my teeth ES&L 00:08, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

IP editor is not honoring my wish to not be contacted by them... [49], after I said [50] and then [51]. Widefox; talk 23:26, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

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

From an outsider's perspective, it doesn't appear fair when the subject of a complaint to AN/I is the same person who blocks the Editor posting the complaint. Clearly, there are many other Admins who frequent this board who could have blocked this user. It lends more weight to 213.37.84.214's argument that he was being threatened by Drmies (I'm not arguing on the merits of his/her complaint, just the response to it).

Editors should feel like they can bring concerns to AN/I without being targeted by the users they have a conflict with. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 15:52, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

• Good-faith editors, yes. In other words, I was responding to the merits of the complaint, which are null and void. But I wouldn't have blocked if they had refrained from calling someone a troll, and that's even setting aside the "ABUSER" charge. You may also read the previous thread, the article talk page, and the user talk page. Block decisions aren't (or shouldn't) be made in a vacuum, and the context here is one single user editing against consensus and not paying attention to what, I'm guessing here, a half a dozen editors have told them. Drmies (talk) 16:20, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I know this might not seem obvious, Drmies, but this wasn't a judgment about you, I was just posting a notice of how these moves appear to some regular Editors. For many, perception=reality. I don't think Admins should take action in cases that involve them, even if they made the right call. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 17:14, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

But I think the notion of "involved" is easily overextended. Drmies (talk) 17:47, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Not only is it easily overextended, it's easily gamed. All a disruptive editor would need to do is target an admin investigating or warning said editor and the admin would be automatically excluded from taking admin action. This is specifically addressed as a caveat in WP:INVOLVED.--Jezebel'sPonyo^{bons mots} 17:53, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Exactly. MastCell ^Talk 18:07, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

While I agree with the general outline of what Liz is suggesting, I don't think it's applicable here; the block for an attack on a third party, not Drmies. Has the Dr been perfect here? No, they told 213 to "Have a nice day"" on their talk page[52] -- eewww, might as well say "With all due respect" -- cited "vandalism" for protecting the page instead of the proper "disruption editing," and threatened extending the block for serial unblocking requests when everyone (and Yunshui) knows the correct response to that is to remove talk page access. But these are nits in the big picture. While I don't doubt 213's intentions they have not taken aboard how Wikipedia works, and 31 hours is not a very long time. NE Ent 23:51, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Ent is correct; I did say "have a nice day", and Ent also correctly assessed the spirit in which it was uttered. Let me add, though, that a lot of words preceded that phrase which, I hoped (vainly), would not fall on deaf ears; in other words, it was not intended as a simple and curt dismissal. Drmies (talk) 05:31, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Obvious IP sock is obvious. And also blocked. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 19:42, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

• Aww, Writ Keeper, I was literally just about to remove their post for being an obvious sock... :( Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 19:43, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
  • "The quick and the (metaphorically) hungry" is the law here in the wild jungle that is ANI. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 19:46, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

What makes this IP an obvious sock? I genuinely want to know. Which account is he/she is a sock of? Can you connect this IP to a blocked account? I am really curious about this spidey sense that seems to come when an Editor becomes an Admin. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 16:27, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Not all admins have such a "sense", in general I do not. I admist i tend to be suspicious of "behaviorial evidence" where no evidence is actually presented. Someone says "it is Obvious that X is a sock of Y, just look at the contributions". It often is not obvious to me, and i've seen action taken on what seems very little evidence -- jsut a few edits. DES ^(talk) 19:25, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

At times it seems completely random to me. I've seen accounts blocked who have only made two edits, hell, I've seen accounts indefinitely blocked who have made 0 edits! Short of CU, the basis of "behavioral evidence" often seems to be quite ephemeral and insubstantial, like an Admin's "gut feeling".

The message I've picked up from my time reading over AN/I is that one is less likely to be blocked (particularly if one is an IP) if one never questions, reverts or contradicts anyone, if one flies under the radar, stay away from noticeboards, basically if one goes out of their way not to interact with anyone else or do anything to draw attention to oneself. For regular Editors, that approach seems to improve ones longevity. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:16, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

P.S. This seems to apply here: WP:TEARHEADOFF L.

Could you point me to the accounts with zero edits that you've seen blocked on behavioral grounds? That seems pretty surprising and I'd be interested to look into it. MastCell ^Talk 21:31, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Per MastCell, I would also be intrigued to see your list of such zero-edit accounts. Likely explanations, depending on circumstances, may include 1) edits were made, but to a page that was subsequently deleted; 2) edits were made, but the revisions were individually deleted (either as grossly offensive material, or because they contained private personal information); 3) the blocks were made by a checkuser who carried out an investigation without going through SPI; 4) the new account name was sufficient to tie it to a banned user (if users named BobTheSock1, BobTheSock2, and BobTheSock3 are blocked, I am probably not going to sit on my hands when I see BobTheSock4).

When you've made polite inquiries about such blocks in the past, what sort of response have you received? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:54, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

It's probable that most accounts you see "blocked on behaviorable evidence with 0 edits" have in fact made quite a few edits that were deleted - non-admins can't see the "deleted contributions" page. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 02:31, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Please block vandal IP

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[53] --Surturz (talk) 03:36, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Blocked for 48 hours. Thank you for the alert. You may find WP:AIV a better (faster) venue for those kinds of complaints. Bishonen | talk 09:21, 18 October 2013 (UTC).

Good tip! Timeshift (talk) 09:34, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

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user name issues User talk:NATO-Legal

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The user name NATO-Legal (talk · contribs) appears to be in violation of both user name role accounts and carrying an implicit violation of WP:NLT -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 11:40, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

and they appear to be evading the user block of 81.240.180.58 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 11:42, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I just saw this username on my watchlist and thought exactly the same so have indeffed it. SmartSE (talk) 12:02, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

they are also dynamic IP via 81.240.147.136 (talk · contribs) -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 12:18, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

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User:RoslynSKP disruptive move requests

User:RoslynSKP has put forward 4 move requests for the article ANZAC Mounted Division. The first was in Jan 2012 and was declined. The second on Sept was also declined, RoslynSKP challenged this conclusion at Wikipedia:Move review and the conclusion was that the move request has been concluded fairly. The day after this conclusion, RoslynSKP put forward an additional move request, which I closed procedurally on the basis of the move review having been completed and concluded that the requested move closure was fair. RoslynSKP failed to heed and promptly inputted a 4th requested move.--Labattblueboy (talk) 11:45, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I've closed the newest RM and left a message for the nominator. Hopefully this will be the end of it.--Cúchullain ^t/c 14:13, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

As I understand it a "no consensus" result normally don't preclude new move requests, though it's best to wait before opening a new one. The 4th move request was not by RoslynSKP, but by a different editor, User:Jim_Sweeney.. ( Got confused by early the archiving and indenting. Sorry. ) PaleAqua (talk) 15:29, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I have agreed with Cuchullain's advice to wait a couple of months. I thought it was important to make the points raised by me during these several move request, and in particular the issues raised in this last request. These still need to be fully discussed, and I hope this can take place in the future in a calm, considered, and polite fashion. It was not my intention to be disruptive, so I am sorry for that. --Rskp (talk) 00:29, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

4 move requests, all failed within 3 years is clearly disruptive. Quit while you're ahead ES&L 00:38, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

I just did. With an apology. In the post immediately before your's. --Rskp (talk) 00:47, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

So are we to understand that you plan to raise another move request between two and twenty months from now? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 00:54, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

User:Tom Reedy and abuse of non-free media

Tom Reedy (talk · contribs) has re-inserted 5 non-free files in violation of WP:NFCC Specifically #1,3 the files are being used in a manor which is replaceable and does not meet the requirements set forth by policy. I placed a warning on the talk page, requested that if they disagreed that WP:NFCR is the correct venue to review the removals, but until the review is closed the files needed to say out. I have been reverted several times and only gotten a WP:ILIKEIT and a WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT response. Can an admin please step in and block the users who have been repeatedly violating WP:NFCC? Werieth (talk) 14:03, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't think so. Tom Reedy has been blamelessly and usefully improving Wikipedia's Shakespeare articles since 2007, and the only block in his log so far is self-requested. I wouldn't block him as lightly as that. Checking out the history of Titus Andronicus and its talkpage, it looks like Tom is not alone in disagreeing with you about the image. The disagreement is discussed in some detail here on WP:AN3, including by an admin (TParis), who decided against blocking any of the people involved. (You were in my opinion fairly lucky to escape a 3RR block yourself.) I don't understand why you have taken the matter to ANI as well. Also, you seem to have forgotten to notify Tom Reedy of doing so. Please see the in-your-face-banner at the top of this page and at the top of the edit window. Bishonen | talk 19:43, 18 October 2013 (UTC).

Werieth, you understand that #1 and #3 are judgement calls, right? There can be no such thing as a simple violation of a rule that is a judgement call, and therefore there can be no peremptory demand for blocks because of them. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 19:51, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Werieth, please give diffs for all of that stuff; show us the discussion and warnings please; specifically, "placed a warning on the talk page, "I have been reverted several times".

Throw me a frickin' bone here. Help:Diff. Thanks. 88.104.25.210 (talk) 03:51, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Here ya go! [54]. You know me: always trying to help others! Tom Reedy (talk) 05:06, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

When the violations are as blatantly clear as this one, Tom, it doesn't need anything much more polite or verbose than that. While Werieth may suffer from a certain lack of gentleness, his message was both clear and accurate.—Kww(talk) 05:22, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Whether it was a "violation" is, I believe, the issue that was being contested; it is not so "blatantly clear" that it is indisputable. I have had images deleted for which I had e-mails from the subjects making it "blatantly clear" they were OK with them becoming free images, which were not deemed sufficient by a commons admin, whereas other images have been kept for no good reason other than that they were free. Tom Reedy (talk) 14:39, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Commons has its own set of problems, Tom. One of our major ones here is people using non-free content to decorate articles, and arguing for retention based on reasoning that essentially comes down to "let's not follow NFCC because I like having these images in the article". There's no way that a reader could fail to understand some important aspect of Titus Andronicus as a result of not having viewed those images.—Kww(talk) 16:25, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

@Werieth: We are here to build an encyclopedia, and blocking excellent content builders is not a good first step. If you are not able to handle the matter, I suggest posting at WP:HELPDESK or WP:NFCR to ask for someone to explain copyright issues to the other editors. Johnuniq (talk) 05:16, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't support the edit warring Werieth did (they are subjective cases of NFCC, and not exempt from 3RR in terms of removal), but I will point out we are here to build a free content encyclopedia, which is not the same as just an encyclopedia. Non-free use must be minimized and some of those files are not appropriate for inclusion, but that issue should have been discussed more at WP:NFCR, not edit-warred over. --MASEM (t) 05:19, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

COMPETENCE issues?

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• Kiwanis2015 (talk · contribs)

is the second account of

• Jdzarlino (talk · contribs)

As far as I can tell, both accounts have been blocked for spamming (maybe socking too). They were told they needed to request unblock from the first account, however the editor has lost access to the first account. They are requesting that the two accounts be merged.

However, they do not seem to be competent enough even to post messages or responses on their talk page without completely mangling everything. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 14:47, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Really weird stuff, too. Why, for example, did he cut and paste my entire talk page -- including archive links -- to his talk page? Is it proper for me to remove that? --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 15:10, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I've tried reading that lot - and I'm still not sure what's going on. In fact, I'm worse off now because before I was happily ignorant of any of it. Now I'm still ignorant but confused as well... Peridon (talk) 15:35, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

(ec) @jpg: I'd think it quite all right to remove anything from your page that isn't relevant. I assume you know which bits those are... Peridon (talk) 15:40, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

That just seems to be something that he does, for no obvious reason: cutting and pasting random blocks of text to his own userspace (or to article space, or to other editors' talk pages). This was one of his last edits to article space prior to his most recent block. It's incomprehensible.

Bizarrely, in his badly-formed unblock requests he is still trying to promote the use of his made-up word ('brend' or 'brending') that got him blocked for spamming on his first account ([55], [56])—even going so far as to edit it into his earlier messages: [57]. This individual just isn't capable, for whatever reason, of editing competently on Wikipedia. It doesn't really matter which talk page hosts his unblock request, because it certainly should not be granted. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:38, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

What TenOfAllTrades says. Drmies (talk) 17:17, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm wishing I hadn't followed that link in TenOf's post... Starts OK, but it's in totally the wrong place. What the ending means is beyond me. Peridon (talk) 18:15, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

FYI

 – Just a note that brend is a real word, coined in 1968 by Henry Flynt [58], meaning something one likes.

--Auric talk 18:54, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, as far as I can tell, that's completely different from what this user's definition is - in one of the links above, they clarify "(brend = post)", in noun form. Ansh666 19:55, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

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Matthew Bryden

A little concerned about the activity on this article and whether it is fair to the article-subject. User:Keithbob and I seem to be on the same page - the article is over-editorialized and relies heavily on a single author, Robert Young, as a source. That author writes in an op-ed style and his depiction of events conflicts substantially with other sources. WP:BLP is relevant. User:Middayexpress feels the article should be negative and has argued in favor of using primary sources as proper material for contentious material about a BLP.

Keithbob and I have been accused of secretly being paid editors for Bell Pottinger and despite two BLP posts, 1 COIN post, and miles of Talk page discussion, there hasn't really been much progress. Not sure what better way to resolve the issue than post here in hopes that there will be more engagement. CorporateM (Talk) 16:04, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

• Aaaaaargh. This is a complicated matter that could do with a set of fresh eyes. Drmies (talk) 17:14, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Quite misleading. The matter actually began when a self-admitted Bell Pottinger public relations employee and representative for Matthew Bryden, one HOgilvy, sought to clean up Bryden's wikipedia page on his client's behalf (c.f. [59]). Bryden is a controversial figure who was dismissed last year from the UN for poor performance as the UN's Coordinator for the Somalia and Eritrea Monitoring Group, a regional watchdog panel (c.f [60]). With this mandate, Bryden's Wikipedia PR representative contacted the CorporateM account above, who then proceeded to ping his wiki friends and basically tried to remove anything critical of Bryden. That includes everything from the fact that Bryden was fired to his previous place of residence according to his own alma mater. It later came to light almost by accident that CorporateM is himself a PR representative, a fact which he never bothered revealing on the article's talk page. However, on his own user page, CorporateM did express his position on conflict of interest as follows: [61]: "if a PR person served Wikipedia's interests and their client's simultaneously, this would be a conflict of interest and would be unethical[..] we serve our client's interests exclusively." This is in direct opposition to WP:COI's instruction that "Wikipedians must place the interests of the encyclopedia first." This past week, CorporateM deleted this surprising Position on COI revelation from his user page [62], though it is of course still stored in the page history. So basically, we have a situation where at least one PR representative was "helping" another PR representative clean up his client's wikipedia bio page, all the while believing that "we serve our client's interests exclusively". What's best for Wikipedia is instead apparently "unethical". Middayexpress (talk) 17:20, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

User: CorporateM has publicly divulged their status as a PR rep in several forums and on several articles going back several months. He/she does not edit in areas where he/she is representing a client. He/she does edit other articles on WP where he/she is not representing a client and makes good faith additions to the further develop the project as a whole including commenting at RfC's and policy discussion and improving content on WP articles like Matthew Bryden. I encourage any editor or Admin to scan the talk pages and decide for themselves which editor is pushing a point of view here. In particular this discussion where several uninvolved editors commented and criticized the use of editorials, self published and primary sources being used to malign the subject. Despite that consensus, it took a month and a thousand words of talk page discussion to remove them because of Middayexpress' continued--I didn't hear that--objections. Now, Middayexpress' last ditch effort is to make a personal attack on CorporateM (unfounded accusations with no diffs are personal attacks) and using COI allegations to gain the upper hand in a content dispute which is a violation of the WP:COI guideline.-- — Keithbob • Talk • 18:00, 18 October 2013 (UTC)-- — Keithbob • Talk • 18:04, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I should point out that Keithbob is one of CorporateM's aforementioned wiki friends that he pinged for support ("I thought it would be better to just start a fresh string I can link to and ping a few editors so we can get additional input" [63]). They've basically been attempting to remove all critical material on Bryden, typically on the weakest of pretexts. Middayexpress (talk) 18:37, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

So, you're arguing against Editors who know each other from their time on Wikipedia collaborating together? Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:31, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Just to clarify, the Bell Pottinger editor posted at COIN and User:Jreferee asked me to chip in on a volunteer basis. These kinds of personal attacks and conspiracy theories are standard fair for this article unfortunately... CorporateM (Talk) 17:40, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

The quotes and difs above speak for themselves; no personal attacks necessary. As for the Bell Pottinger public relations representative, he indeed posted at COIN, and I linked to the very post where he said that he would do that. He also posted on CorporateM's talk page and repeatedly, typically requesting (and more often than not receiving) direct assistance. This was also not the first time that the account contacted CorporateM. They were apparently already acquainted before this affair [64]. Missed that. Middayexpress (talk) 18:09, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

(Non-administrator comment) Unless I'm way off-track, CorporateM's admitted behavior is a blatant violation of WP:CANVAS and WP:MEAT, not to mention WP:COI; his/her statement that he/she serves only the client's interests and not Wikipedia's interests is clear evidence of WP:NOTHERE, and the decision to remove his/her COI disclosure is inexcusable. It's a pattern of terrible abuse of editing privileges, and harsh sanctions are appropriate IMO. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 23:44, 18 October 2013 (UTC) (Non-administrator comment) I'll also note that both CorporateM and KeithBob have exhibited extremely precocious editing skills for having only created their accounts in the last few weeks. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 00:08, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

• Fleischman, what? CorporateM and Keithbob have been here for forever. And CorporateM's statement, cited above, is interpreted in a completely incorrect manner. Midday, I just reread your comments. You're stooping pretty low there. Drmies (talk) 01:18, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

That's not exactly my fault since much of what I posted are CorporateM's own comments. I couldn't make that up if I tried. Middayexpress (talk) 14:33, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

• What on earth are you talking about, Dr. Fleischman? Both those editors have been around for years. If you're going to snipe at people, at least try to keep it plausible even if not true. The same goes for the MEAT / COI / CANVAS / NOTHERE alphabet soup. bobrayner (talk) 01:42, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

I think I've been here about 3-5 years now and have 16,000 edits and 13 GAs to my name. Also, it has been confirmed many-a-times when POV pushers attempt to use my COI disclosure as leverage that I may edit articles where I have no COI just like any volunteer. Midday's links and post show the type of extreme personal attacks and POV pushing we have come to expect. For example, I completely re-wrote my user-page, cut it in half, and he has selected a specific edit to make it seem like something nefarious is going on. It's just trolling and resorting to personal attacks and conspiracy theories in order to do whatever it takes to make sure the article reflects his point-of-view, rather than a neutral point-of-view. CorporateM (Talk) 01:51, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately, all of the most telling difs and quotes in my post above are to CorporateM's own remarks. That includes his own longstanding Position on COI. It's unreasonable to expect people to turn a blind eye to this surprising revelation just because he deleted it a few days before posting here. That's actually all the more reason to notice it. Middayexpress (talk) 14:33, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

• Beginning at the middle of the Matthew Bryden article,[65] it loses its focus of being a written account of Bryden and instead serves as a coatrack for the opinions of a variety of people, none of whom are Bryden. The article reads "According to author Michelle Shephard," "According to journalist Robert Young Pelton," "Puntland President Abdirahman Farole suggested that Bryden was," "Ahmed spent 30 minutes of a July speech criticizing Bryden,". None of these people qualify as experts on Matthew Bryden or qualify as experts on written accounts of another person's life. Their views belong in their own Wikipedia article or in an article on United Nations Monitoring Group on Somalia, but not in the Matthew Bryden article. Some of source material does convey chronological life event information about Matthew Bryden, and that's fine for the biography article. However the rest needs to be removed from the article. Author Michelle Shephard ebook has a quote from Bryden,[66] and an independent third party source republishing a Bryden quote could make that Bryden quote fair game for the Bryden biography article. Instead, Shephard's view of what that means is added to the Bryden article. That is not how source material should be used to develop a biography. As for COI, CorporateM sates he does not have a COI with the Matthew Bryden topic and no one has posted and diffs that establish otherwise. -- Jreferee (talk) 02:34, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

BLP indicates that "criticism and praise should be included if they can be sourced to reliable secondary sources, so long as the material is presented responsibly, conservatively, and in a disinterested tone." That said, Farole and Ahmed are quoted because Bryden and his Monitoring Group accused them of wrongdoing, so their replies are appended for balance. Shephard is also a secondary source relaying Bryden's views on a political issue related to his previous position at the Monitoring Group. If you look at the Wikipedia bios of other controversial figures, they follow a similar model but are often way more critical (e.g. Avigdor Lieberman). This bio is actually pretty tame in comparison. Middayexpress (talk) 14:33, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

I would support removing all of it as an interim solution, and re-introducing content there is consensus for. But some of that really does belong. CorporateM (Talk) 03:44, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Most of it belongs, including a lot of material that was removed for no legitimate reason. Middayexpress (talk) 14:33, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

In earlier discussions I supported including some of the material that Midday sought to keep, though not all of it. I can't remember if any of those items are mentioned above; it's on the record though. But in general I note three tendencies: that other editor (forget their name--it's on record too) was a bit too positive on the subject, Midday was much too negative and included material that IMO was unacceptable, and Corporate sailed mostly down the middle, though I did not agree with every one of their exclusions. But to my mind Corporate Minion was the most neutral of them all. Then again, this has been hammered out on the talk page and, I believe, on the BLPN board and possibly on a few user talk pages; for my money, I'd give Bobrayner free rein and let them have at it (Dr. Fleischman, we await your apology: sooner is always better than later). Drmies (talk) 04:23, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Everything I posted on Bryden is factual. But as I've learned, it's those facts themselves that are more often than not inconvenient. By contrast, the majority of CorporateM's edits were in agreement with his fellow public relations representative HOgilvy. There was very little divergence in opinion between the two. In hindsight, it's difficult to see how there could be since CorporateM apparently believes a PR rep's duty is to exclusively serve the interests of his/her client rather than Wikipedia's interests (his words). At any rate, I would like to find a middle ground with the PR reps/friends, but this will take some doing. Middayexpress (talk) 14:33, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for your astute comments and observations. If you've visited the article talk page you will also notice that CorporateM has demonstrated an immense amount of patience on the talk page for months (and myself to a lesser degree). The article was highlighted at BLPN twice and outside eyes have come in but Midday seems to have an aversion to consensus and when CM and I walk away he skews the article again. So while I do support an uninvolved editor like User:Bobrayner making deletions as needed to create NPOV for the article I would also appreciate if some other folks could keep it on their watchlist as I think Corporate and I are pretty worn out from months of copious talk page activity with Midday. User Midday is a prolific editor who I'm sure has made many valuable contributions to the project. I hope that he/she is able to step back and reconsider their approach to the Matthew Bryden BLP and move on to other more productive activities. Thanks to all who have given input here. Cheers!-- — Keithbob • Talk • 14:45, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Patience obviously works both ways. On the other hand, pinging one's friends for support does not at all constitute outside involvement. Quite the opposite. The solution here is genuine outside involvement by an editor(s) who has had no prior contact with any of the involved parties, as that might serve to prejudice or otherwise influence his/her actions. For this same reason, the editor(s) also cannot himself/herself be a public relations/media representative. Middayexpress (talk) 15:14, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Why would you think that just because someone is pinged by Corporate (or anyone else) they're automatically their "friend" and thus, as you suggest, incapable if independent judgment? The instances where I agree with you and disagreed with them is sufficient evidence of the falsehood of this premise. I like to think that Corporate pinged me for my extensive knowledge and impeccable judgment. As for "genuine outside involvement"--you have been editing articles in that (geographic) area for years, and by your own argument you could be discredited for having a COI; from the discussions it's clear that you also don't come to the negotiation table without prejudice. As far as I'm concerned that does not discredit you anymore than it does me and, I might add, before you know it (extending your argument not by much) any kind of involvement is suspicious and WP should only be edited by 12-year olds who know nothing about nothing, who couldn't point out Mogadishu on a map if it bit them in the ass, in the name of impartiality.

Of course a PR rep's edit should be scrutinized carefully, as was done in this case by all parties, including Corporate--and I challenge you to find a PR person more transparent than Corporate (never mind the fact that he is not on anyone's payroll in this particular case, as far as I know) in their dealings with companies/articles/organizations where they might have a genuine COI. Besides, it's unlikely that four editors (counting myself) would all have the same damning POV in a case like this, which I think is another of your suggestions. I stand completely neutral towards the subject of this article, and my POV is NPOV. That doesn't make me right in individual editorial decisions, but whether they're made correctly or incorrectly, they're editorial decisions, unguided by any kind of partiality toward the involved governments, journalists, publications, freedom fighters, weapons dealers, non-governmental organizations, and Wikipedia editors. Drmies (talk) 19:12, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

It's bizarre to me to keep reading that you somehow think that "pinging one's friends for support" is a bad thing. It's called collaboration and as long as one isn't canvassing Editors to come participate in a deletion decision, RfA or contentious discussion, it is a good practice that happens all over Wikipedia every day, often organized through WikiProjects or more informally. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:31, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Per WP:CANVASS, there's an appropriate notification protocol to follow when seeking additional input. Pinging random friends -- which CorporateM certainly did; every editor he pinged was a prior amicable acquiantance of his, with no connection to the topic other than that (one actually gave him an award of some kind [67]) -- is an example of inappropriate notification ("Posting an excessive number of messages to individual users, or to users with no significant connection to the topic at hand"). WP:COI is also quite clear that "when advancing outside interests is more important to an editor than advancing the aims of Wikipedia, that editor stands in a conflict of interest". It's in the first paragraph and bolded for emphasis. This is in direct conflict with CorporateM's apparent general position on COI [68]: "if a PR person served Wikipedia's interests and their client's simultaneously, this would be a conflict of interest and would be unethical[..] we serve our client's interests exclusively." At any rate, given the foregoing, the only conceivable solution is genuine outside involvement i.e. by an editor(s) who has had no prior contact or dealings with any of the involved parties, as that might serve to influence his/her actions. This should be an acceptable compromise for all parties interested in a neutral page. Middayexpress (talk) 21:00, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

It sounds to me like you're wikilawyering, clutching at every straw because consensus might be against what it is that you want the article to present. One could read your commentary and opinions there as evidence of extreme bias against the subject of the article; your insistence on unreliable sources to make the article state that the subject was fired from that UN group could, hypothetically, serve as evidence. Mind you, that's based on actual things you said. HOgilvy clearly had a certain interest in the article, and so, I surmise, do you: HOgilvy in favor, you against. Corporate, Keithbob, me, Bobrayner, we are not (AFAIK) interested in the subject as such. And might I reiterate, for the now-bored onlooker, that Corporate got involved with this to prevent COI editing? This article, Middayexpress, is better off without you.

If anyone still cares, the general pattern displayed in this thread is evident on the talk page as well. Midday was at pains to get an editorial from an online organization accepted as a reliable source; Corporate points out (in Talk:Matthew_Bryden#Hiiran_Online_.26_other_op-eds) that Hiriian Online is not a reliable source. Look at the paragraph starting "Here we go", where Corporate makes a pretty convincing case that the website is run by a lobbying group. Midday's response? "Policies and guidelines come up in many Wikipedia discussions..." followed by a complete avoidance of the issue. This is why Midday's contributions here are ultimately useless and their behavior frustrating. They bring sources and context, which is helpful, and refuse to back off even after everyone else (that is, four editors, not counting HOgilvy of course--note Lexein's contributions) disagrees with them. And now this interminable thread, full of wishy-washy nonsense about suspected involvement when there is not a shred of evidence of foul play on Corporate's side, again halting progress on the article: I propose a topic ban for this article for MiddayExpress. Drmies (talk) 00:37, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support: Of the topic-ban per user:Drmies. A couple clarifications are in order though. The problem with the sources were that they were op-eds written by opposing political interests, not that they were published by Hiiran online, which may be a reliable source in other cases. And the UN DID fire Bryden, or at the very least they claim to have. If a new editor not previously involved (User:bobrayner was mentioned a couple times) wants to take a crack at it, I wouldn't mind abstaining as well for the sake of keeping the peace. CorporateM (Talk) 03:00, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
  • The only source for the firing is a report by the Inner City Press--and I assume that this document, a primary source which does nothing more than list the next members of the UN Monitoring Group and says nothing about Bryden, is still in the article at Midday's insistence. Thanks for the other clarification as well. Drmies (talk) 04:00, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
    • A reasonable point of discussion between civil and thoughtful editors. IMO, Inner City Press does seem like it may be a bit of an advocacy-type source. You know, one of those, "we uncover the truth not covered by mainstream media" types. And employers will often claim they did the firing while employees have a different POV. In this case in particular there is a political backdrop that makes it more complicated as well. I think Inner City Press may be acceptable to use, as long as it's done with caution. But that is a discussion best left for another time, after an environment is created where a thoughtful and civil discussion can occur. CorporateM (Talk) 04:36, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

• The reasoning given here by DrFleischman and others to suggest CorporateM is meating brins up an interesting hypothetical. Suppose I edit a certain article and think a section needs to be rewritten. Another user who also edits the article thinks the same. By the explanation given by some, I am violating WP:MEAT. KonveyorBelt 04:51, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Library Newsletter Messaging

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Hi folks. I like to check here before I do a major messaging. The Wikipedia Library is running its first edition of Books and Bytes, a monthly newsletter. The newsletter will announce opportunities for free research account signups like WP:QUESTIA, WP:HIGHBEAM, and WP:JSTOR, as well as new partnerships such as library Wikipedian-In-Residence positions like Wikipedia Visiting Scholars. We have a newsletter signup list where a good number of people have added their names.

What I'd like to do now, once, is send the newsletter to the talk pages all editors who have signed up for and recieved one of the free account donations, valued at several hundred dollars. There are hundreds of these folks, all of whom have benefitted directly from Wikipedia Library partnerships and outreach efforts who I think would be interested in news of future donations that they could sign up for and access. This first edition would include an opt-in link for all future newsletters and not go out again en masse unless editors opted-in to add their names to the newsletter list. What do you think of this? Reasonable and fair? Ocaasi ^{t | c} 16:49, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like a reasonable chance of getting the newsletter added to a few spam filters. In other words: in theory it sounds like a jolly good idea, but in practice it has a good chance of getting disastrous results. Think of over-sensitive people complaining of spamming, automatic filters detecting it as spam, people classifying it as spam because they can't bothered to an email they didn't request, heuristic filters detecting that th exact same message is sent to more than X people, etc.

I suggest you leave messages in the talk pages of the users who signed up for free accounts, and other interested users. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:15, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Just to clarify, Enric Naval, I think Ocaasi plans to post to user talk pages with a blurb and link to the newsletter with EdwardsBot, not WP email accounts. The Interior (Talk) 17:50, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Clarifed, indeed this is just a talk page message. Thanks! Ocaasi ^{t | c} 19:32, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

As a user of two or three of the free accounts, and also as someone who is normally very anti talk page spam so to speak, my comment is that I'd very much like to receive such a talk page newsletter. I try to keep track using my watchlist to see what source-access facilities are made available over time (and how things change with the existing ones), but it doesn't seem to work well with a watchlist, so a newsletter would be great! --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:49, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

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

User:Fishface gurl

A new contributor, with what appears to be a severe attitude problem. I first noticed this contributor at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Miscellaneous, where she was misleadingly advising a person asking about writing an autobiographical article that "there are people and entities that will write an article for a fee ranging from $250 to $9,500. Wikipedia used to discourage paid editing but it is ok with it now" [69] A look at her brief editing history [70] indicates that she is throwing sockpuppetry accusations around wildly in connection with two AFDs, [71] [72] and seems to want to edit-war irrelevant trivia about the Jackass TV series into the MyWikiBiz article. [73][74][75]. I think that WP:NOTHERE sums this contributor up nicely. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:02, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Top of the page here says "Before posting a grievance about a user here, please discuss the issue with them on their user talk page. " (emphasis original). AtG should try that before opening an AN/I thread. NE Ent 02:09, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Given Fishface gurl's comments about me, [76] I very much doubt that 'discussing the issue' would achieve much. And for what its worth, I have severe doubts that she is a new user. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:23, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Even so, it's good to at least make the effort—if for no other reason than putting on the record how they reacted to your concerns. I'm not denying the very uncivil nature of her comments ... just offering some advice. --Jprg1966 ^(talk) 03:27, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

This definitely seems like a troll. Even if they aren't, they've most certainly violated WP:CIVIL.--MoonMetropolis (talk) 02:25, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Revert, block, ignore pls. 88.104.25.210 (talk) 03:36, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

I think Andy's analysis is accurate. This is either a (considerably large) competence issue or trolling. While I can't say which, I did leave Fishface gurl an NPA warning for this remark. m.o.p 04:04, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

User:Kingfrogger666 and disruption

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Regarding: Kingfrogger666 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

I have been attempting to revamp an article - Clare Devine. I acted boldy by blanking the article and started to add actual sourced information. A fan of the show decided to halt my efforts by reverting without an explanation. I just removed out a mass of poorly sourced information and around three paragraphs of inaccurately sourced content that also needed copy editing. The article had been tagged in the past and the issues were never addressed. Kingfrogger666 is no stranger to me on Wikipedia as they have often disrupted many articles in the same area. My concerns went unaddressed for some time with the user blanking their talk page - removing friendlies and warnings. I have observed them as recent as today - add in fake sources. Adding information and sneaking in a source dressed up to fool the casual reviewer. Check the source and the information is no where to be seen in the source. They keep adding original research to articles, usually trivial things - but all the same disrupt and mislead readers. Their user page has a list of fictional characters, but some characters in the list are made up by Kingfrogger666. The fantasy even extends to their own user page.

They have also attempted to engage in an edit war on Clare Devine. I said that I would seek a block and they logged out and continued reverting with their IP address. As you may notice, contribs remain in the same area of interest, article connected to soap operas. I really think they cannot be trusted to hold an account. I find it disheartening that I must take the time to explain another's bad behavior rather than spend the time doing what I like most - editing and improving an actual article.

An example of a dressed up source would be: [77] Another editor read the source, reverted when they noticed it did not support the claim

User does not leave edit summaries so there is no need to pull up instances - just see edit history.

See the edit history of Clare Devine for evidence of edit warring - they hit 4.

They remained inactive for a while - now they are back with the same old behavior and I just need to report it because it really is not fair anymore. Too much to tolerate. There is no telling this editor - you either get blanked or retaliation with your edits being reverted.Rain the 1 02:35, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Discuss it on Talk:Clare_Devine for a start. If that fails, then there's options. Not sure why you think you need an admin right now though? 88.104.25.210 (talk) 03:25, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

P.S. [78] 88.104.25.210 (talk) 03:33, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Clare Devine

82.8.226.194 (talk · contribs)

Continues to add unref'd info [79] [80] [81] despite warnings User talk:82.8.226.194 88.104.25.210 (talk) 04:04, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

It's very likely Kingfrogger666 (talk · contribs) 88.104.25.210 (talk) 04:22, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Anon here is the problem, not the registered editor. Anon has been blanking material rather than tagging it. Anon has been escalating rather than discussing. Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:54, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Really unhelpful. Kingfrogger666 is the problem. I was all set to completely source the article. But I was stopped in doing so by Kingfrogger666. I question why established members who follow rules are effectively enabling this disruptive individual. A full scale edit war has been caused by previously uninvolved editors. I was loathe to start an edit war, I came here for help - now no one can edit the article because a rather large edit war has resulted in the article being locked.

Walter Gorlitz you are voicing support for a unresponsive editor, who causes edit wars, does not use edit summaries, blatantly blocks progression, adds fake sources, adds original research. Where is the understanding. It would take fifteen minutes of an admin or editor's time. The second anon (yes, a new IP became involved) was restoring sourced material atleast. Kingfrogger666 kept resotring 22000 bytes of unsourced data. Disgusting.

As for the suggestion we discuss it via the article talk page. The whole point is that Kingfrogger666 does not respond! No one is looking into it and I am banging my head against the brick wall.Rain the 1 11:27, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

• ...and for those counting at home, there are 2 WP:AN/3RR reports open on this very case ES&L 11:31, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

• I'm closing this report due to the full protection. But if the dispute resumes in two days it looks to me that blocks may be necessary. So please explain your positions on the talk page. EdJohnston (talk) 13:50, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

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

PEO vandal

This user, or, rather this IP, seems to be a single purpose vandal, who has only made disruptive posts on the P.E.O. Sisterhood article. I do not often request for users to be blocked, so I apologize if I am handling this inappropriately, but all the users edits have been blatant vandalism on this one article.--Bellerophon5685 (talk) 04:42, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the report, Bellerophon, but it's a little belated. All the IP's edits were made on 9 October, ten days ago, and admins don't like to block for disruption that is already in the past. Perhaps you could report again (preferably to WP:AIV) if they should resume ? Bishonen | talk 05:33, 19 October 2013 (UTC).

Editor harassment by User:Technotopia

Almost immediately, Technotopia (talk · contribs) has made a name for themselves at one of the most hotly-contested (or lamest, depending on your point of view) discussions on the project, Talk:Sega Genesis. An anon IP left a bad-faith comment on the talk page that I removed as disruptive. Technotopia restores the comment with a bad-faith edit summary. Despite other editors' similar concerns, Technotopia violated 3RR and was blocked for 31 hours.

After the block ended, the editor began responding more constructively, but then this was added on the talk page of LedRush (talk · contribs), a frequent contributor to the Genesis/Mega Drive article. LedRush removed the comment, but then Technotopia decided to add it back. As a friendly talk-page stalker, I undid Technotopia's edit and left a warning on their talk page telling them that this type of harassment would not be tolerated. Apparently the warning has gone unheeded based on this revert and this revert. At a minimum, 3RR has been crossed again, but then there's this apparent harassement of LedRush that needs to be taken into consideration.

--McDoobAU93 04:43, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree completely with this summary.LedRush (talk) 05:26, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Hello
1- The users are canvassing and I pointed this out to them on user "ledrush"'s talk page
2- The user "ledrush" tried to hide this fact by censoring my post which I reverted (1st revert)
3- The user "mcdoob" decides to interject himself, undoing my post and posting a threatening message on my talk page and accusing me of harassment which you can see by the post I made never happened....
4- I reverted "mcdoob"'s post (2nd revert)
5- User "ledrush" again tries to hide the issue of canvassing be censoring the post, Then leaves a message on my talk page accusing me of insulting another user, he never specifies which user and I never insulted anyone, at this point the only message I have ever posted was "Canvassing much". So far I have been accused of Harassment, insults and personal attacks in edit summaries, none of which have occurred and the accusations against my character can only be seen as harassment.
6- I create a new post on user "ledrush"'s talk page clearly pointing out the canvassing and collusion he and the other American editors currently involved in the naming dispute are engaged in, this is not a third revert as user "mcdoob" alleges, and yet again user "ledrush" censors this post in an attempt to hide his and others policy violations..
7- After this I get threats from user "ledrush" on my talk page and user "mcdoob" comes here to look for help with his bias viewpoint.
I never violated 3RR as the edits show, I pointed out users canvassing and have been attacked, threatened, had my post's removed and then they reported me here for issues which never occurred. If an admin could look at this issue closely you will see what has actually occurredTechnotopia (talk) 05:35, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Also the "bad faith comment" to which user "mcdoob" refers to on the Mega Drive talk page was not bad faith at all, it just went against the North American narrative so they chose to censor it, and I reverted it as it belongs on the talk pageTechnotopia (talk) 05:40, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Just to be clear, the insult I mentioned involved Sexycook, a fellow editor of the Genesis article, though often critical of my views. He knew I was involved in all previous discussions about the article's title, and despite our differences of opinion, told me of a new discussion. Furthermore, I took insult to be accused of being a biased "Yank". But all this is largely irrelevant to the issue here.LedRush (talk) 05:44, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Blocked. Technotopia, for another time, please note the instructions at the top of the page: "Please include diffs to help us find the problem you are reporting." Usertalk harassment is unacceptable, and I'm particularly unimpressed by your sudden interest in the niceties of talkpage behaviour rules when they work to your own advantage, known as wikilawyering. [82] I've blocked you for 48 hours for edit warring and userpage harassment. Bishonen | talk 05:51, 19 October 2013 (UTC).

I think it should be noted that this user is an alt of this IP editor and this IP editor and probably a few others.--SexyKick 06:02, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

The WP:DUCK is indeed strong in this one; I'm not sure I've seen using an account to evade an IP block before. Suggest the block be extended to match the block on 92.238.252.159 at a minimum as there is no doubt whatsoever it's the same person and they are blatantly WP:NOTHERE. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 02:28, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

User:Luispedros

I recently had some problems with this user, because he is reverting edits without giving a reason and without answering in his talk page and communicating, the only thing I received from him was a personal attack on my talk page which is not in English. This user is creating a lot of sourceless pages and making more problems. but these are not the reason I'm reporting him here, I found he is the same person as User:پارسا آملی who had a history of making multiple accounts and all of them are blocked. he also had other multiple accounts still active like User:Asianleag and User:Elisaeslami and User:Elham.Esmaili and probably much more. This user previously had at least 19 accounts in Persian wikipedia and all of them are blocked now. he is still breaking copyright rules by repeatedly adding copyrighted pictures in wikicommons. I don't know if this place is a good place or not but I thought I had to report him somewhere. Mohsen1248 (talk) 18:19, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

And apparently he thought he had to remove your report, see this edit, which gives an unpromising first impression. I don't understand his comment on your ANI notification,here, but I presume that's not a Wikilove message either. Thanks for reporting this, Mohsen, but you need to explain how you know he's User:پارسا آملی. Please either file a report at WP:SPI or provide some evidence here. My Persian is non-existent and my understanding of sports articles may be even less, so I won't try to deal with this, but whoever does will need to know the basis for your statement that Luispedros is a sock. If it's convincing he'll be indefinitely blocked pretty promptly, I'm sure. Bishonen | talk 00:17, 20 October 2013 (UTC).

oh yes it wasn't a wikilove message, he is telling me to be "man" and talk in Persian with him. lol at least better than his message in my talk page advising me to go to a mental hospital lol. apparently he can't write in English but based in his responses he does understand at least.

thanks, I filed a report at WP:SPI, I also provided my evidences here for them Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/پارسا آملی, I think it's a little long and I can write everything here but you can find it by comparing his usernames in wikifarsi and wikienglish and wikicommons. He had Ir92 in WikiFarsi and the same username exists in wikicommons doing the exact thing as this user Luispedros which also exists in wikicommons. and all of a sudden user became VERY active in English wikipedia when wikifarsi admins blocked all of his accounts in wikifarsi. Mohsen1248 (talk) 00:57, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Right. Thanks for reporting it on SPI, I hope it'll be dealt with quickly there. To be going on with, I've warned him about removing this report and about the personal attacks. Bishonen | talk 14:29, 20 October 2013 (UTC).

the article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bergstein should be removed immediately as it does not qualify any of the rules of wikipedia

this is just amazing how this article has managed to stay this long with such poor sources of references, infact there are no references in the public domain for what the article says about this person, only and very negative references exist, wiki article is the only publically available positive article about this highly negative and controversial figure please have multiple administrators decide on this subject. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bergstein — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.156.244.230 (talk) 19:48, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

This article was gutted today by a user. I've restored the text, but I'm going to (re-)remove any of the unsourced sections of the article. That said, this isn't a matter for administrator intervention; this can be handled at Talk:David Bergstein and/or with the deletion policy. —C.Fred (talk) 19:58, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

This sort of thing should be handled by placing tags on the page.--MoonMetropolis (talk) 21:05, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

NO, it should be handled by fixing it. You really need to stop making such uninformed comments that simply confuse people ES&L 22:08, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but the OP did not sound like they wanted to personally fix it. They were asking for others to fix it.--MoonMetropolis (talk) 22:13, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

You need to assume that's because they don't know how. It only takes 5 seconds of research to find what c.fred found ... and then fix it ES&L 22:20, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Let's remember that while Wikipedia maintains a neutral point of view, it doesn't make up positive ino if the only information on somebody or something in reliable sources is, itself, negative. (Not saying that's necessarily the case here, but it is something that seems oft forgotten, so I figured I'd mention it.) - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 02:24, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Anon IP adding uncited info to many pages on a massive scale, recently

The IP editor 107.215.236.170 has been adding tons of info to a wide variety of music-related pages. Some of this info may be good, some of it clearly isn't, but it's difficult to tell as the info is never, not even once, given a citation of any kind. I tried to revert a bunch of the edits but it's like plugging a finger into a dyke. I don't have the time to do all of them.

Another detail that seems to justify at least a short block of this IP is that they consistently add a large amount of info, then make a small, inconsequential edit, in order to make it slightly more difficult to undo their first, substantive edit.

The IP's talk page already had notes from at least two other editors asking them to stop adding uncited info anonymously (and I added one) but that seems to have had no effect.

Not sure what to do except to post a notice here and recommend a short block; if nothing else, that will at least get the editor's attention. Rockypedia (talk) 02:11, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Not being familiar with the procedure of reporting this form of disruptive editing I do support this action being taken with the above mentioned editor. Maybe it will have an effect on his future edits. Ferdinandhudson (talk) 12:41, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

AmourReflection is back for more.

They are currently edit-warring on Fractional reserve banking. This is not unusual, as they are a single-purpose account that does nothing but edit that one article contentiously. As a result, they've been blocked a couple of times for edit-warring, but have shown no signs of repentance, or even awareness. They really, really hate fractional reserve banking, and that makes them unable, or at least unwilling, to follow policy. They go away for a while, but always come back to do the same sort of damage to the exact same article. Is there something that can be done about them on a more permanent basis? MilesMoney (talk) 03:00, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

I suspect User:AmourReflection performed similar edits as IP 70.190.253.77. (That account is blocked for 24 hours.) An advisory regarding Socking has been posted on Armour's talk page. – S. Rich (talk) 03:16, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Whether the same account or not, he's definitely continuing the edit warring started by the IP, so I've blocked him. Although he only made three reverts today, I think a block was reasonable here. Mark Arsten (talk) 03:31, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't disagree, particularly given that they keep mentioning policy that they don't understand. MilesMoney (talk) 03:42, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Long-term edit warring at Jung Myung Seok

Could some uninvolved admin please go have a look at the article on Jung Myung Seok (a Korean religious leader). This article has been the subject of edit warring and both full and semi-protection for over a year (as can be seen from its revision history and talk page). Most recently — soon after the expiry of a three-month semi-protection — an IP editor deleted a large portion of the article critical of Jung, claiming (despite numerous apparently reliable sources) that the material in dispute violated WP:BLP and WP:NPOV. In order to steer clear of any possible suggestions that I may be too involved with this article, or with past discussions about its content, to perform administrative functions related thereto, I would like to ask someone else to study the situation and take whatever action (if any) they may feel is appropriate. Thanks. — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 07:36, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Clock 12:13

Apparent sock-puppetry with an account registered just earlier this month (1 week ago).

[83] - twice reverting my edits for no reason whatsoever (my newest edits, because I work on this article for years now).

Lots of reverts in a wide variety of articles: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/Clock_12:13&offset=&limit=500&target=Clock+12%3A13 - it's always reverting first, without any prior editing. That's a lot of content in many articles.

Possibly User:Daufer as he was also vandalizing the same article [84] and was also known for spamming "citation needed" tags (apparently the only other activity of Clock 12:13 other than reverting).

The very first, really weird edit (a revert, of course, but just incredibly odd - maybe it's just clicking "random article" and reverting the latest edits): [85] --Niemti (talk) 08:02, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

agree that from the editing pattern this is not a new editor and the behavior suggests that they are NOTHERE to create an encyclopedia, just stir up trouble. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 13:19, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Apparently [86] ([87]), unless it's really "random article" roulette. --Niemti (talk) 13:31, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

User:Tnspro

Tnspro (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

There's a detailed summary of this incident on this talk page. Here's the short version: the user Tnspro has made a career out of posting links to the website oldestlivingprofootball.com on the articles of hundreds of football players. Several editors have brought up concerns about these edits on his talk page. Tnspro's responses have consisted of ignoring people, blanking their comments, and, most recently, asking for a user's personal phone number. A discussion was started on the WikiProject NFL talk page (linked above) about the value of the website in question as an external link. Tnspro did participate in that discussion, but has refused to address the issue of whether or not his edits are acceptable under Wikipedia policy. He has accused others of not wanting Wikipedia to be accurate, claimed that his website is the only correct source on the internet and that we should all be using it, accused multiple other users of being vandals and liars, and at one point told another user (not me) that he would be "dealt with accordingly" for calling him a spammer (diff). When he was directly asked if he believed his edits were in line with Wikipedia policy, he quit editing for a month rather than responding and then came back to revert a bunch of my edits when I tried to enforce the growing consensus. I was hoping someone with authority could evaluate the status of consensus and either tell Tnspro to accept that consensus is against him or tell me how one user against everyone else isn't consensus.
Thatotherperson^talkcontribs 10:00, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

IP edit-warring to include fringe claims

74.192.152.146 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) has spent the last couple of weeks trying to edit-war some questionable content into Men in Black, a "conspiracy theory" article that gets its fair share of vandalism at the best of times. The content comes from a series of unreliable sources but the IP maintains that consensus at WP:FRINGE/N is "not convincing" (though he won't contribute) and that we should "IAR" to include his fringe-of-fringe claims. IP has removed every warning from his talk page and is now at WP:3RR just today. Can someone please block/protect or any combination they see fit. Stalwart111 12:54, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Problems at War of the Pacific

This is just to notify strange editing taking place in the article War of the Pacific. For instance, (see [88]) an editor claims material should be removed because it is allegedly only mentioned by authors of one nationality. Regards.--MarshalN20 | ^Talk 14:49, 20 October 2013 (UTC)