Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents

Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents
This page is for urgent incidents or chronic, intractable behavioral problems. Before posting: Take a look at these tips for dealing with incivility If the issue concerns a specific user, try discussing it with them on their talk page Try dispute resolution Just want an admin? Contact a recently active admin directly. Be brief and include diffs demonstrating the problem Do not report breaches of personal information on this highly visible page – instead go to Requests for oversight. When starting a discussion about an editor, you must leave a notice on their talk page; pinging is not enough. You may use {{subst:ANI-notice}} ~~~~ to do so. Closed discussions are usually not archived for at least 24 hours. Routine matters might be archived more quickly; complex or controversial matters should remain longer. Sections inactive for 72 hours are archived automatically by Lowercase sigmabot III. Editors unable to edit here are sent to the /Non-autoconfirmed posts subpage. (archives, search)
Start a new discussion

Possible Scottfisher socks

160.91.231.73 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) is a potential sockpuppet of Scottfisher (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). I have blocked for 1 week accordingly. Ëvilphoenix ^Burn! 23:35, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Verified. I'm also blocking his other IP sock. Kelly Martin (talk) 02:08, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Editing again as 160.91.231.73. Andy Mabbett 22:31, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

24.183.224.210 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) (part of a block registered to Charter Communications, 24.176.0.0 - 24.183.255.255) has mostly edited pages previsouly edited by Scottfisher; note removal of cleanup tag (despite no cleaning up); addition of image, another image addition and abusive comment. Andy Mabbett 17:49, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#160.91.231.73, below. Andy Mabbett 09:58, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

This IP contacted me on my user talk page asking about being unblocked. Since i've been kinda mentoring him by email for a while, I have to assume it's him. --Phroziac _. o º ^{O (mmm chicken)} 23:50, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Who unblocked him? Andy Mabbett 17:23, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Assuming you were talking about 24.183.224.210 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log), block log shows that his one week block simply expired. --Phroziac _. o º ^{O (mmmmm chocolate!)} 17:32, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

No, I was asking about User:Scottfisher, forgetting that he can still edit his talk page while blocked. Sorry about that. Andy Mabbett 18:35, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Editing again as User:160.91.231.73 (an article previously edited frequently by User:Scottfisher. Andy Mabbett 19:43, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

And as User:160.91.90.103. Andy Mabbett 10:34, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Inexhaustible vandalism from the UK Internet for Learning: range block warranted?

These IPs (and surely others that I haven't come across, and indeed the whole range) are registered to the UK Internet for Learning, according to notes on several of the talkpages:

• 62.171.194.4 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 62.171.194.6 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 62.171.194.12 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 62.171.194.40 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 62.171.194.41 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 62.171.194.42 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 62.171.194.43 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 62.171.194.44 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 62.171.194.45 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)

From them flows a steady, deep, inexhaustible river of childish vandalism into the encyclopedia. After quite some time spent sampling, I haven't found one single good edit from any of them, though I can't swear that one isn't hiding out somewhere, obviously. All the warnings posted on all the talkpages by all the ambitious Wikipedians have an air of pathos, if you read them all together. Don't we have enough to do? If the range is indeed static, and the sole purview of enthusiastically scrawling children, can it be blocked wholesale, by someone who understands the art of range blocking? Or can somebody who's better than me at navigating the intarweb find their way to someone in a position of responsibility at the UK Internet for Learning? Or, does anybody have any other suggestions? Please? --Bishonen | talk 17:03, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

My thought is to block all of these and then wait for some feedback from any legitimate users. It seems to be a network which would go to all primary schools in the UK when it is built out. Fred Bauder 17:14, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

From whois "All abuse reports should be sent to abuse at ifl.net Fred Bauder 17:17, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

There may be a handful of good edits in there - see the recent [1] by User:62.171.194.12. Which is not to say that I object to massive blockage. FreplySpang (talk) 17:21, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Further to Fred Bauder, the whois indicates that Research Machines have sub-allocated 62.171.194.0/23 to ifl.net. --GraemeL ^(talk) 17:32, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Ahh... I ... see. (Not.) Could somebody get on it, please? Bishonen | talk 18:01, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

See Classless Inter-Domain Routing. 62.171.194.0/23 is a range of 512 IP addresses from 62.171.194.0 to 62.171.195.255. It's also the format that you use for range blocking on the block page. Personally, I would like to see a greater consensus here before we take action to indef block such a large range. --GraemeL ^(talk) 18:09, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Do it. Just make sure the blocking admin has an email set and send a complaint at the same time.Geni 18:27, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

OK, I blocked 62.171.194.0/23 indefinitely. I sent an email to their abuse desk advising them of the block and the reasons that it was implemented. I also asked them if they subnet in any way that would enable us to reduce the size of the block and if they had any additional comments. --GraemeL ^(talk) 19:43, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

:-) Outstanding. Thanks! Bishonen | talk 00:32, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Make sure that indefinitely means indefinitely and not infinitely! Redwolf24 (talk) Attention Washingtonians! 05:15, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Collateral damage

I received an email indicating that this block is also affecting some libraries in the UK. I still haven't heard back from the ISP and I asked the user that mailed me to try and get the IPs of the library computers to see if I can work round that range with the block. Is this worth maintaining if we're going to cause collateral damage? --GraemeL ^(talk) 19:02, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Sounds promising. They must divide that block of addresses up. Fred Bauder 20:15, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

If we can get the library range (i.e. if the vandal fonts are, indeed, static), we can except them, but we need to be aware of the fact that libraries may be one of the sites of vandalism, and the only thing denied them now is the ability to edit. We're still good for researching on. The amount of spew the range was producing was truly staggering. Geogre 14:02, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm taking a wikibreak, so I removed the block on this range. Feel free to re-block it. --GraemeL ^(talk) 23:10, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Recent activity

In order to try to get a handle on what these folks have been up to, I've documented the contributions from all the IP addresses in this range (addresses with no contributions are not shown):

Activity since 1 Dec

Address	Vandalisms	Other
62.171.194.6	[2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14]
62.171.194.7	[15] [16] [17] [18]
62.171.194.8	[19] [20] [21]	[22]
62.171.194.9	[23]	[24] [25]
62.171.194.4	[26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38]	[39] (revert) [40] [41] (revert) [42] (revert) [43] (revert) [44] (revert) [45] (revert)
62.171.194.10	[46] [47] [48]	[49]
62.171.194.11	[50]
62.171.194.12	[51] [52] [53] [54] [55]	[56] (questionable)
62.171.194.13	[57]
62.171.194.37	[58] [59] [60] [61] [62] [63] [64] [65]	[66] (revert)
62.171.194.38	[67] [68] [69] [70] [71] [72] [73] [74] [75] [76] [77] [78] [79]	[80] (new) [81] [82] [83] [84] [85] [86] [87] [88] [89] (revert)
62.171.194.40	[90] [91] [92] [93] [94] [95] [96] [97]	[98]
62.171.194.42	[99]	[100] (revert) [101] (revert)
62.171.194.43	[102] [103] [104] [105] [106] [107] [108] [109] [110]
62.171.194.44	[111] [112]

The "other" edits are good-faith attempts to create content, or at least, aren't clear vandalism (some of them have been reverted, some have not). Many of them are reversions of other edits from this range. The overall pattern seems to me that of schoolkids teasing each other using Wikipedia, and some other people (older students?) reverting them and sometimes adding content. The vandalism seems to come in short spates, and I'm guessing the IPs might correspond to workstations in a computer lab or school library. My gut feeling is not to re-block the IP range, but since the vandalism doesn't come very fast, to block the individual IPs as needed for short periods (but without separate warning). Demi ^T/_C 08:50, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Why not hold an election?

Can someone official, e.g. ArbCom or Jimbo or related, please indicate the reasoning behind not having an election for the next arbitration committee? I find it worrying that neither has so far been willing to comment on this. At present, the impression is that without having the proper connections, one cannot become an arb. There has been considerable opposition to appointing an ArbCom rather than electing one, and ignoring this without bothering to comment on it will likely decrease community support for the ArbCom as a whole. Radiant_>|< 19:51, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

For those unfamiliar with ArbCom, answers to the following questions would also be helpful:

1. Has ArbCom been elected or appointed in the past?
2. Has ArbCom been doing a good or a bad job in the past, and how this is related to the change of election/appointment procedure?
3. How long are ArbCom cadencies?
4. Is it possible to remove somebody from ArbCom? If so, how?

A possible solution might be to have ArbCom appointed one year and elected another. After several years we should be able to judge which method is better.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 20:53, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

1.a mixture of apointements and elections at various times.

2.Imposible to objectively judge. Only one descission has been rejected by the community

3. in thoery 1 to 3 years. In practice untill they quit which tends to be a lot shorter

4.It could probably be done through getting the other arbcom memebers to vote them off or a descission by the board. It would not be easy. It hasn't come up yet though.Geni 21:35, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

• • I should point out in relation to (2), that criticism of Arbs and the ArbCom has increased significantly since Jimbo's recent appointements. But the situation is more complex than that, it's certainly not a straight "post hoc ergo propter hoc". The answer to (4) is almost certainly "no", given that it's already next-to-impossible to get deadminned. Radiant_>|< 23:27, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

I think 4 would just about be posible. Apointments would make it harder bit still doable. It would be likely to involve a fair bit of damage to wikipedia in the process though.Geni 23:54, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

The AC cannot comment on this with any authority because we don't know what the procedure will be. All I can say without wild speculation is that if you'd like to be considered, you should probably put a statement on the candidate statements page. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 22:23, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

• Once again, that is more information than was previously known, so thanks. So who does know? Only Jimbo? The board? Some hidden discussion someplace? Since this affects the entire community, I think it's patently unreasonable to keep the entire community in the dark on this. I've seen several candidates withdrawing because of the uncertainty; it gives the appearance that most people putting up candidate statements will not actually be considered at all, with no reasons given. Radiant_>|< 23:27, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

A very slight clarification of geni's comment, which I think bears explaining - the Committee has never been directly elected. There have been two times (out of five total) when Jimbo was appointing people to it where he asked the community to use the "voting" software to suggest who he should appoint; both times, he happened to appoint along the same lines as the "vote" suggested, but it wasn't an election per se.

James F. (talk) 23:02, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

• And has this system produced any undesirable results, apart from the infamous "disendorsements" page that everybody agrees should not be started this year? Radiant_>|< 23:27, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Well, out of all the arbitrators elected last time, only three served out the full first year of their terms. That's a bit of a botch there. Phil Sandifer 23:29, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
    • I am aware of that. Do you believe that arbiters appointed by Jimbo would be less subject to burnout? If so, why? Radiant_>|< 23:51, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Radiant - Please check out User talk:Simon Chartres (... not everyone agrees to your common sense point) Raul654 23:31, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Okay, but I think we can ignore that sock, and anyway that wasn't my point. I ask again, "has this system produced any undesirable results"? Radiant_>|< 23:51, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Hello to you all. I think we can assume good faith for Jimbo :) Besides that I 'd like to point out, a part of his statement "with the appointments made in consultation with the existing and former ArbCom members and the community at large, followed by confirmation votes from the community requiring some supermajority". +MATIA ☎ 23:41, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
      • assumeing good faith is one thing. Assumeing correct judgement is another.Geni 23:50, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
      • Current suggestion is 50%, which is not really a supermajority. To my best knowledge, no consultation of the community at large has occured. Radiant_>|< 23:51, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
        • If this wasn't clear - the steps I described above (where I mentioned the 50% number) is only my best guess. Jimbo has described the process informally several times, and if memory serves, he used supermajority in one description and majority in another. Raul654 23:59, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
          • So even Jimbo hasn't decided what's being done, then? A little keeping-the-community-in-the-loop would be really, genuinely helpful. I wonder where he is planning to conduct the consultation with the community before announcing his choices, for example? Can the ArbCom tell us what discussions they have so far had (the message from MATIA implies some), and who they are recommending? -Splash^talk 02:52, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
• I second Splash's request. I should also point out that most of the questions in this section and the previous have not in fact been answered by the Powers That Be. Radiant_>|< 16:29, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I agree with Splash too (and I must note that the message I've cited was given in the previous section by Raul654). Reading that message (and unless or until something else is announced) I think that Jimbo will select some candidates (from the volunteers that would go for an election), and then a second selection will be done by JW, ArbCom and the community in general (that's what I understand, perhaps I'm wrong). I also think that within the next days some announcement will be made that will clarify the things better (WP is not a crystal ball, am I? ) +MATIA ☎ 18:20, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

the statement was made on the 20th of october. we've been waiting for some form of clarification for some time.Geni 18:26, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, at least here, we 've shown that there are good reasons for the clarifications to be given and there's a consensus (or something like it) among many editors asking for them. +MATIA ☎ 18:37, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I we had managed to establish that about two weeks ago.Geni 19:06, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Now if only a consensus on the part of the community that Jimbo should say something had particular meaning. Phil Sandifer 19:26, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I think we should probably avoid elections for arbitrators altogether. They're just a bunch of people who make commonsense decisions when the normal dispute resolution process has failed. There aren't that many people both capable of and willing to do the job. Jimbo should just name some names of people that he would be happy with acting on his behalf, and we can forget about it for the next few months. The elections have been unnecessary and, in my opinion, probably only made things worse within the community. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 09:12, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

They're just a bunch of people who make what they may claim and even believe are commonsense decisions. But their idea of common sense may not be the same as mine or yours. Why should you or I or anyone submit to arbitrarily selected arbiters of what's "common sense"? I know that WP is not a democracy, but I hope decisions aren't made by a self-perpetuating oligarchy. -- Hoary 09:42, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Have you read Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2005/Straw poll? There's a large (and growing) consensus for direct elections; it'd be a disaster to carry forward with Jimbo only giving us his choices (and what happens if his choices don't get the majority vote needed; will he renominate them again or reconsider those he passed over, or will he leave that seat unfilled?). The worst part is that the details of how this election will proceed are virtually unknown to anyone except Jimbo. And the election is next month! —Locke Cole ^{(talk) (e-mail)} 09:59, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

I think some people are forgetting that we are all here because Jimbo lets us be here. Electing arbitrators is not a right conferred to us by our citizenry in Wikipedia land. It's times like this that we should be thanking him for creating and maintaining Wikipedia, not making bold demands about how he should exercise his rightful authority over it. That said, I would like to echo Tony Sidaway's point. Given the trainwreck that was the last elections, I don't see the need for a repeat. Let Jimbo appoint some trustworthy folks so we can all move past the Wiki-politics and write an encyclopedia. :-) --Ryan Delaney ^talk 10:39, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

we are here because Jimbo lets us and because readers and community members donate money for the servers. I would definitely prefer some transparency here. If I began to feel WP was becoming a "self-perpetuating oligarchy" I would be less enthusiastic about investing time and content. If enough people felt like that, the project would be damaged (WP is, after all, about content). dab (ᛏ) 10:55, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm another who feels just like that. As noted above elsewhere, I've withdrawn from the process because I refuse to be part of something that has not been explained, never mind justified. Filiocht | The kettle's on 11:02, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

I thought we were here as volunteers (and I don't overlook neither Jimbo's contributions - including that he is the founder, nor donations - most of them are perhaps by volunteers). +MATIA ☎ 11:23, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Put another way, I think Wikipedia editors should not feel that their contributions to Wikipedia (monetary or otherwise) entitle them to a "Republican form of government" or anything else. Like MATIA said, we are volunteers, and donations are donations; they aren't payment for services. When someone donates to the foundation, she does not think she is purchasing a vote in a bureaucracy. If public elections for arbitrators are manifestly harmful, because they waste time and are highly contentious for no beneficial reason but that people tend to feel strongly about the Wikipolitics, then I would greatly appreciate it if Jimbo would "cut through the bullshit" as it were and just make appointments. I think these are the real questions in this disagreement:

• Are we "owed" anything by the WikiMedia foundation, in particular a vote in elections of officers? Why?
• Given the high cost, what would be gained by public elections of arbitrators, anyway?

--Ryan Delaney ^talk 17:11, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Well said. We're not owed particapation in selecting Arbcom membership and I still maintain that the projectable level of debate (where ever it occurs) will do more harm than good. Rx StrangeLove 06:54, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Indeed. First and foremost I'm here to help write an encyclopedia. Regardless of what I've contributed, this isn't my website and I'm not owed anything. If Jimbo wants to make appointments, so be it. --Kbdank71 18:28, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I think this thread is getting off topic a bit, the only real point of the election IMO is to select people who will make the arbcom into something into something users feel will be authoritative enough to trust regarding enforcing/interpreting policy in disputes, much like a court(if people didn't respect the authority of courts, they'd be ignored, as some users do regarding the arbcom). If this happens via election or appointment, i'm happy, but I think the outcry here is it'll only happen through election and Jimbo stays on the sidelines as an advisor rather than any kind of participant. karmafist 22:56, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Permanent protection of George W. Bush

At present, there are a set of admins who are effectively seeking to permanently protect George W. Bush. Should it be permanently protected? Yes, or no? No daydreaming about semiprotection or other non-existent MediaWiki features. The article has been protected for most of the last 24 hours and is reprotected every few edits. If you can't edit pages in a Wiki, it's not a Wiki is my personal feeling. Should I just be leaving this page protected until 2009? It's a yes or a no. -Splash^talk 21:20, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Are you suggesting we unprotect Template:In the News? If you can't edit pages in a wiki...? Even if someone slaps a penis on there a few times a day? I say we leave it protected til the Devs give us a better option. It's not a daydream, it's a requirement. --Golbez 21:24, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

That's the main page of a high-profile website. There is no analogy. But I read your answer as a yes to 2009. Semiprotection is a requirement that is firmly in daydream territory, and I'm trying to deal with right now. The Devs have never implemented a major new software feature overnight just because some people wanted them to. -Splash^talk 21:28, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

The proper analogy would be to one of the articles on the main page, linked from the FA, ITN, or DYK. They are never protected, precisely because they are so high traffic. And with good reason. (There is no reason anyone viditing the main page would ever really end up at the ITN template page, btw.) Dmcdevit·t 21:42, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

A particularly good example of that analogy would be a few weeks back when Cheese was our main-page article. That gets silly amounts of vandalism as it is, and it was more than a little ridiculous that day. But we lived to tell the tale, without protection I think. -Splash^talk 21:45, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Splash, almost everyone agreed that George W. Bush should not be fully protected until 2009. However, that isn't what is being proposed on that talk page. Titoxd^{(?!? - did you read this?)} 22:01, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

The import of the talk page is that it will be protected whenever vandals hit it. Which will be until sometime in 2009. The good-edit-per-24-hours idea was discarded very quickly by Jtdirl in reprotecting it, and there's no other offer. -Splash^talk 22:16, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

No other offer? We're trying to draft something to show the devs there. It will never be implemented if nothing is agreed on to implement. Titoxd^{(?!? - did you read this?)} 22:29, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

That emphatically doesn't deal with what to do with the article today. Or until the devs implement something they aren't to our knowledge working on. Can you point out to me the last time that a comletely new mediawiki feature was added and how long it took between request and provision? This is why I deliberately asked for "no daydreaming". -Splash^talk 22:50, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

What admins are advocating a permanant protection? Phil Sandifer 21:33, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

A group acting together, but the protection log show frequent protection by Hall Monitor in particular, Golbez more recently and at least several editors on Wikipedia talk:Semi-protection policy. All this suggests I should see the numbers in favour and let it slide, but I dont think they are right. I deliberately said effectively, since whenever I point out 2009, someone says "well then until the devs invent something", which is basically indefinitely far in the future, and certainly not within any sensible timescale. -Splash^talk 21:37, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Although semi-protection seems to me useful (Though misplaced - don't we have a place for feature requests?), permanant protection seems to me an express violation of policy. Phil Sandifer 21:51, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Until this becomes "the encyclopedia that only admins can edit", then no, it shouldn't be permanently protected. --Kbdank71 21:51, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Seconded. --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 21:56, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

I believe it should remain unprotected (except for page moves). For one thing, it's an article that needs regular updates since the topic itself is dynamic, and we can't reasonably restrict editing ability only to admins. Yes, the vandalism there is a nuisance, but one we can live with. Antandrus (talk) 21:57, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't think permanent protection is necessary, I agree with Antandrus here. But I'd encourage anybody who took a minute to think about this particular request to head to Wikipedia:Semi-protection policy with an open mind and take a look at the proposal. · Katefan0^(scribble)/my ridiculous poll 21:59, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Agree with those who oppose protection: vandalism is just bothersome, protecting the page would undermine a crucial goal. One represents temporary damage to the encyclopdia, the other represents useful contributions permanently lost. Christopher Parham (talk) 22:02, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

As before, I think we should leave this page unprotected and continue reverting vandalism. It's so high-profile that lots and lots of admins and editors have it on their watchlist, and no vandalism is going to stay there for long. —Cleared as filed. 22:13, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

In a sick sort of way, the vandalism is actually good for us. The very reason (most) people write crap in there is because they don't believe the "anyone can edit" thing. The vandalism is annoying, but it will lead to more good contributions in the long run.--Sean|Black 22:23, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

I am going to float an idea, which may just be crazy (and don't be afraid to say so), but how about some form of psuedo-protection. For example, protect the GWB page, but create a GWB/temp page that is an open copy of the page and have admins frequently incorporate the useful changes into the real GWB page. This wouldn't accomplish very much (since vandals might just as well attack the temp page), but it would ensure that the main GWB page consistently presents a good face to the world. Thoughts? Dragons flight 22:24, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

The problem with such an idea is that it already was tried, and it was quickly shot down. Also, there is a similar proposal, Requests for publication, that wants to do that. Titoxd^{(?!? - did you read this?)} 22:29, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Specifically, the idea was to have a protected "good version" that admins would routinely add the useful changes to. That created the eqivalent of a copy-and-paste move, thus violating the GFDL.--Sean|Black 22:32, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

No permanent protection. Just absolutely, HELL NO. --Phroziac _. o º ^{O (mmmmm chocolate!)} 22:34, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Offer an alternate solution then. Just saying no to the offered one isn't good enough anymore. --Golbez 22:37, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Why isn't it good enough anymore? I know it's bad to have vandalism on such a highly visible article, but permanent protection would be worse. If you are tired of reverting, drop the page from your watchlist and let us revert it. No one is forcing you to revert it. There are plenty of others waiting in the wings. --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 22:47, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

We don't have an alternative, adn we've to decide what to do or not with the tools that are available to us, as well as pestering for new ones. -Splash^talk 22:50, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

LV, all this talk about permanent protection, with all due respect to Splash, is a little diversionary. The real proposal is at Wikipedia:Semi-protection policy. I doubt anyone is seriously advocating permanently protecting the article, or if they are are they're a serious minority. Unfortunately, this is distracting from more discussions on a policy that has more support. · Katefan0^(scribble)/my ridiculous poll 22:52, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

No, it's no distraction. The article is spending an increasing proportion of the time protected, and I think the majority of the last 24. It has been protected numerously many times over the same period. Deciding how to handle the problem, here and now with what we've got is as important and more important than thinking of new MediaWiki features to do the job better. -Splash^talk 23:00, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

It is a distraction to frame this issue in the alarmist way it's being framed. Nobody, that I know of at least, has proposed permanently protecting this article. You're suggesting that it's being protected for longer periods, but that's not the same thing. · Katefan0^(scribble)/my ridiculous poll 23:03, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

As I understand the options, they are

1. Protect until the vandals go away
2. Protect until the devs invent semi-protection

That sounds pretty permanent indefinite to me. -Splash^talk 23:08, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

I realize you're suggesting that certain folks' actions on the page in effect mean they are pushing for permanent protection. (I'm not sure they'd agree with that, but that's for them to say.) My point is that the way this thread is being framed is so alarmist as to be distracting. Nobody has said the article should be permanently protected, at least not that I've seen (I'm willing to be proven wrong), yet this thread rattles on, while discussion on a real policy proposal gets lost in the hubbub. · Katefan0^(scribble)/my ridiculous poll 23:12, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Semi-protection as suggested above, is quite a good idea as it opens up editing to pages in more of a wiki-manner to pages that were fully closed before. There's a few things to iron out, though.

1. A certain type of protection could give someone an advantage in an edit war. One person can be locked out with the other continuing their editing. You can punish an admin for editing a protected article during an edit war they are involved in, but it's harder to block someone for editing an article someone else protected while you were unaware.
2. The tabs still doesn't show whether an article is fully protected or just protected from moves. If we were to make more levels of protection, one need to be easily able to see how an article was protected without slugging through logs and stuff.

Mgm|^(talk) 23:35, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

I think that it's obvious that permanent protection is fundamentally un-wiki. That is all that needs be said against the idea. James F. (talk) 00:26, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't believe anyone here is lobbying for permanent protection. What has been said is that the current protection model is broken, and that some sort of "semi-protection" is needed. Hall Monitor 00:33, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

More specifically, what has been said is that this article should remain protected until that happens. — this is a call for permanent (indefinite, if you like) protection of the article. -Splash^talk 00:37, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, then let's end the confusion. No. George W. Bush should not be protected indefinitely, we should keep doing what we're doing (which is leaving it move-protected with temporary full protection during vandal attack waves), until we decide on the semi-protection policy. Titoxd^{(?!? - did you read this?)} 01:40, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

That said, semi-protection is a completely separate issue that should be discussed post-haste, since the current situation isn't pretty. Titoxd^{(?!? - did you read this?)} 01:42, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm adding another "Hell no" vote to permanent protection. Permanent protection is worse than vandalism. The current situation isn't great, but permanent protection cures the disease by killing the patient. --Ryan Delaney ^talk 22:58, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

At this point, the article is protected without as much as a "protected" template. This is not acceptable. If you protect it, say it is "temporarily proctected due to vandalism". If the vandals persist, "temorarily" may mean "for a longish time", but that's still temporary. It's just Wikipedia as usual. I agree with permanent protection of the Main Page, since that's a special case, but there is no reason to extend this to individual articles. so, "hell, no", from me too. Semi-protection may be useful, but articles will also be semi-protected temporarily, at least in principle. dab (ᛏ) 11:09, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

At that particualr moment in time, it was only protected against moves, for which we have no template. -Splash^talk 13:55, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Oh dear, I shouldn't have interferred if I didn't know what I was doing, then. my apologies :( I don't suppose there will be a need to move the article anytime soon. dab (ᛏ) 14:08, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Just to chip in my two cents here, I am adamently against any type of protection at all. Flcelloguy (A note?) 22:40, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

What about implementing a fairly simple technical solution in mediawiki: protection from anon edits? Just as we had eventually introduced protection from moves, this would be another useful solution. Technical note: make sure the page can be protected in several different ways at the same time.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 15:30, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

I think almost everyone agrees that having such tools would be useful. The main disagreement is over what to do until the developers give us this option, which is likely some time away. - SimonP 15:56, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

I strongly oppose permanent protection. --Ixfd64 03:26, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

That page absolutely does not need permanent protection, indeed it should almost never be protected and then only for a short period. This is a wiki, and that is a popular article. That's why it gets vandalised more. It's on nearly everybody's watchlist, so just revert vandalism and carry on editing. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 12:16, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Email regaring hoax article.

Hello all I just received this email:

Hi Kevin,

I'm writing to you from the Political Science department at the University of Rochester.

I'm hoping you can help me locate an original article that has been deleted from Wikipedia.

I'm presently in receipt of the deletion review but would really like to obtain the original entry and :author's name.

If there's a way for me to obtain this from Wikipedia can you let me know? I'm new to the site.

Brent Henry Waddington is the subject of the article and he's a student of ours--We'd like the article :for his records.

Thank you for any help you can give me regarding this matter.

UofR's webpage confirms the identity of the sender. Regarding the article, it was a hoax article created by an otherwise legitimate user. The hoax was extensive and even involved amazon.com. Here is the missing article and its AfD. My guess is that someone complained to them and they are trying to deal with it. But, I have no idea what the appropriate policy is. Am I allowed to email them deleted article? Should I? My inclination is to send it to them, but I thought I should ask. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 22:10, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

I have no idea what he means "in receipt of the Deletion Review", but if the sender is from the University, as you assert, and they want it for internal procedures, there is no reason to deny the request. In fact, it should probably be temporarily undeleted in its entirety and protected, so they can see the edit history for themselves. Titoxd^{(?!? - did you read this?)} 22:15, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

She actually. I assume this means the AfD. If I do undelete it, I'll certainly move it somewhere where outside of the main namespace. But that's not a bad idea.--best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 22:20, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Is the emailer a professor at the university? Thanks. Flcelloguy (A note?) 22:25, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

She's an administrative assistant to the head of the department. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 22:30, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

There was more than one article involved in the hoax that wound up being deleted, Paradox Foundation (Kevin, I forget, did the Trout book have it's own page as well? I thought so but can find no evidence now). Should the request be viewed as implicitly including this article as well? Pete.Hurd 04:52, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

• For reference, please review Wikipedia:Undeletion policy. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 15:03, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
  • From Wikipedia:Undeletion policy#Restoring the page (for admins):

    If you wish to only view a deleted article, list it in the content review section and say why. A sysop will provide the deleted article to you in some form — either by quoting it in full, or by emailing it to you, or by temporarily undeleting it.

  • Therefore, you can go ahead and respond to her request and email her the content of the articles. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 15:09, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

I am very wary of granting this request - I see little benefit in Wikipedia creating a precedent of "turning in" contributors where the bulk of their contributions are good. That he made a stupid hoax is stupid, but does not in and of itself constitute reason to help him be punished outside of Wikipedia. I also note that his name is not on the article, nor is it his username, nor does he give more than his first page on his userpage, so the information being asked for isn't really available. Phil Sandifer 19:14, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, I actually don't know why they want the information. I didn't send any complaints to anyone, nor did User:Pete.Hurd (for exactly the reason you stated). But either way, if he's been "turned in" its already happened. Do you think it would be now appropriate to refuse their request? Here's my worry: we are increasingly sending complaints to ISP regarding persistant vandals. If they have some disciplinary process that they want our help in carrying out, is it a good policy for wikipedia to be uncooperative? Can we then legitimately ask their help in enforcing our bans in future? --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 19:54, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

I doubt a Dept'l chairs' Admin Assistant would chase down information based on some complaint from the internet about a hoax. I would assume that there is some process afoot at UofR dealing withan issue of importance to them. If they bother to initiate an active investigation, I would expect it to be for academic misconduct, or something else they feel is serious. I very much doubt that whatever it is, it has this sillness at it's focus (or that they are at liberty to discuss the details with us). Pete.Hurd 23:09, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Since the balance of the opinions seem to be in favor of granting the request, I have undeleted the article and moved it to User:Kzollman/Brent Henry Waddington and protected it. I have deleted the remaining redirect. After they have looked at the article I will move it back and delete it again so that the record is preserved. Thank you everyone who chimed in! --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 01:26, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

User:Chooserr and date eras

Chooserr (talk · contribs) has started an anti-BCE/CE drive, and has started removing this era on a number of pages. In some places, the user's statement that the article started out with BC/AD is true. However, I found this user trying the same argument on articles for which it isn't true — Al-Hirah (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). Keep an eye on this account's edits so that we don't have another jguk to deal with. --Gareth Hughes 18:45, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RR#User:Chooserr. --Gareth Hughes 21:34, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

And there are just as many (if not more) article which originally used BCE/CE, yet now use BC/AD. It is far better to leave article as they currently stand, and if a change is desired, obtain consensus on the talk page. Sortan 21:38, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Keep an eye also on 212.134.22.141, who just went on a short anti-BCE/CE drive. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 22:03, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

For the record, I paroled Chooserr from his 24-hour 3RR block on the condition that he not make any changes to date system for those 24 hours. If, before that period expires, he breaks his promise, the 24-hour 3RR block should be immediately reinstated. -- SCZenz 22:33, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

I also think it might be an oversight that policy does not explicitly state articles should be left as they currently are. If it did say this, we could treat all such problems as simple vandalism after a warning. -- SCZenz 22:33, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

It does already (well, the style guide does say they should be left as started) and actually, you still can't per blocking policy - David Gerard 19:01, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

The style guide doesn't seem to say that about dates, that I've found—if it does, can you tell me where? Anyway, the problem with Chooserr is that he's changing pages that originally used AD and BC, which he feels is justified by the "left as started" clause. I think "status quo" would be a more sensible thing. Finally, you're absolutely right about blocking policy—saying that was a newbie admin error, and I should have realized that was a mistake. -- SCZenz 19:13, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Then, until the policy is changed (and given it's a hot issue it's unlikely just changing the page will pass unnoticed) he's actually acting according to policy, rather than doing anything wrong at all? - David Gerard 19:36, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, he violated 3RR, but aside from that... The policy, as I said, doesn't seem to say either way how a disputed decision should be made. Thus I would expect consensus to be sought to change from the current version. But of course, there are many ways to seek consensus. He's not acting explicitly according to policy, but he's only doing something wrong (aside from 3RR) if edit warring is "something wrong". Which is is, in the sense that it is not the best way to make decisions, but not in the sense that it requires administrator intervention. -- SCZenz 19:41, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

No, User:Jguk was banned from changing date styles for the exact same type of behavior, so you can't say he's acting according to policy. Sortan 19:46, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

jguk was banned from changing date styles for persistent and destructive edit-warring, a level that has most certainly not yet been reached. By the way, an Arbitration Committee decision does not policy make. On the other hand, he certainly has broken policy, the 3RR. [[Sam Korn]] 20:44, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

You're not suggesting we let it reach Jguk levels with a 1,000+ reverts before doing anything about it, are you? Sortan 20:48, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

No, not at all. I'm just saying the level of the behaviour is nothing like that of jguk's yet, and should be treated as such. That said, this does taste like a role account. [[Sam Korn]] 21:14, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I think this is similar to AE and BE spelling, both are equally correct, so changing them is useless. Besides, they still refer to the same year 0 so using one over the other isn't more NPOV and removing them alltogether fails the policy we should use the most common name for anything we write about. - Mgm|^(talk) 11:01, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Is this a sockpuppet of User:Jguk by any chance? --Victim of signature fascism 12:58, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Not as far as I can tell. Oddly enough, not everyone who thinks BCE is American academics' wankery is jguk - David Gerard 19:01, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, because an encyclopedia should by no means have any bearing on academics. Sortan 19:29, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Problem is that even the academic databases I cheacked favoured BC/AD.Geni 20:19, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

No, it's not a sockpuppet of mine. However, MacGyverMagic is wrong, it's not a case of AE v BE - ArbCom OK'd wholesale unilateral changes to BCE and CE notation (à la Sortan et al.) and condemned reverting these changes. With AE and BE, each have equal status and changes from one form to another may be reverted without penalty, jguk 20:02, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

"changes from one form to another may be reverted without penalty" (!) No. It is not a free-for-all and edit warring is always bad. You don't get any "free" reverts. Dmcdevit·t 20:11, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Which is one of the reasons you were sanctioned.... you don't have an inalienable "right" to 3 reverts per day. Sortan 20:19, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Hardly - you were reverting far more than me and against many editors, making aggressive edits, changing notation to your preferred form in articles that had previously been stable in another form and hide behind a sockpuppet role account. If the objection was to pure volume of reverts, you'd have been sanctioned too. It's more a case of ArbCom preferring the BCE/CE notation style (or maybe mostly Fred) and tuning its decision to meet that objective. They even refused to let me defend the accusations laid against me (which to this day, I haven't even read, let alone responded to), though, to be fair to Fred, he did make it clear that he would ignore anything I said on the matter anyway. It happens in real-life judging all over the Western world - it's just unfortunate that it's happened here, jguk 20:31, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

You have a rather curious interpretation of the facts.... but then again I suppose most trolls who are sanctioned by the arbcom do. Sortan 20:36, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't think it's necessary to call jguk a troll. His behaviour, while occasionally, perhaps often, regrettable, has certainly not been of the level of the worst trolls, such as CheeseDreams, Lir, and Wik. [[Sam Korn]] 20:49, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

In which case, please tell us what other Wikipedia accounts you have to disprove the allegation that you are hiding behind a sockpuppet role account, jguk 20:44, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Hang on, Jon, has Sortan ever admitted to using other WP accounts? If not, please don't make provocative and (as far as I can see) unprovoked demands. [[Sam Korn]] 20:49, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

All this business about sockpuppets is a red-herring intended to distract from the fact that it is you who is proficient in their use and experienced in hiding behind anon ips. ([113] ring a bell? how about User:SmokeDog? User:Jongarrettuk? who knows how many others...) Sortan 21:05, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't think either of you needs to be making provocative and inflammatory remarks, especially when it is quite clear that they will lead nowhere. Incidentally, Sortan, Jongarretuk is not a sockpuppet but a previous account of jguk's, just like Smoddy is a previous account of mine. [[Sam Korn]] 21:14, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

The User:Jongarrettuk account has been used after the User:Jguk account was created, however you are correct that it is not a classic sockpuppet account. However he has still used various anon ips (as well as another account) to try to mask (and evade responsibility for) his edits. Sortan 21:39, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

So what? I don't consider that disruptive. The username redirects to the correct one. That ain't disruptive. May I advise you to leave off this unprofitable conversation? [[Sam Korn]] 21:46, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Well you must be the only one who doesn't consider hiding behind anon ips to edit and evade the notice of the arbcom disruptive. Sortan 21:56, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Mea culpa. I didn't mean use of anon ips to evade ArbCom sanction. I meant the use of the other usernames. As to the IPs, I don't know enough to comment. [[Sam Korn]] 22:24, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Sam, it is crystal clear from his edits that Sortan is a sockpuppet account of a very prolific WP editor (possibly an admin). A number of other editors commented on this before me, and it prompted David Gerard to do a sockpuppet check, although, as often is the case, it came up without results. Sortan regularly reverts me very quickly when I make an edit other than of a cricket or featured list nature, and has done so now over a number of months. He has also very quickly commented on WP:AN/I after I first referred to Sortan on there (without logging in so he couldn't see it in my user contributions). In the role account's early days, Sortan also has displayed knowledge of WP practice far exceeding his WP experience. There is no reasonable doubt that Sortan is a sockpuppet role account. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then in all probability, it's a duck!

I am probably most aware of this is that Sortan wikistalks me - the majority of Sortan's edits merely revert me, usually coupled with some personal attack. The only way I could be called a troll is in the technical sense that by making a non-cricket edit to the main namespace, regardless of what it is, Sortan will invariably revert it. Thankfully very few WPians have ever been wikistalked - it's not nice, and I don't recommend it. By the way, the only reason he knows under what other accounts I have edited because I have freely stated the fact - interestingly, he has repeatedly refused to come clean himself :) jguk 21:21, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

It is rather hard to make paranoid conspiracy theorists listen to reason. I suppose it's my mistake for even trying. Sortan 21:30, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Jon, I used to agree with you. You can see that from the workshop page of your second arbitration case. There is no conclusive evidence, so I am assuming Sortan's good faith. I also agree that the amount Sortan reverts you is troubling. However, I don't think this conversation is going to get anyone anywhere, other than upset. [[Sam Korn]] 21:40, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I would suggest that your time might be better spent trying to mentor Jguk, rather than trying to defend him. He is also (again) violating the MOS to favor his preferences (see Talk:ROC local elections, 2005), and his unilateral page moves, leaving a lot of work for other editors to clean up after. Sortan 22:07, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Something tells me Jon might not be too keen on the idea of mentorship... Look, Sortan, jguk's actions are by no means perfect. Nonetheless, he is, in my view, acting in good faith, and that deserves to be remembered. He can be foolish, but so can you, and so can I. [[Sam Korn]] 22:24, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I truly find Jguk most perplexing. Good faith can be extended once, twice, and perhaps a third time, but it is foolish to continue to assume it despite all evidence to the contrary. I admit that I've made mistakes, but I've done my best to learn from them and move on, whereas Jguk was warned more than a year ago that using "consistency" as an excuse to change articles to his preferred date style was disruptive, yet it took more than a thousand reverts, hundreds of revert wars, dozens of editors, two arbcom case, and a direct banning by the arbcom before he stopped. Is that really reasonable behavior? He still fails to acknowledge any personal culpability, choosing instead to blame his banning on a conspiracy involving the arbcom. Reasonable? Sane? He has written volumes about how I've unilaterally changed date styles, but has failed to provide even one single diff showing where. He has accused me of wikistalking him, yet it is he who has constantly harassed me (for example, see my edit at Smyrna [114] changing one inconsistent AD to CE and jguk's subsequent edit [115] changing all fourteen instances of BCE/CE to BC/AD, with a dishonest edit summary of "rv"). Incidentally, I do regret making the first edit, which while it was supported by the Manual of Style, I found was still disruptive (mostly due to jguk). I've learned from my mistake and have never done anything similar. It took me all of one day to realize this and to stop. Jguk, on the other hand, still hasn't realized this after more than a year. Incidentally you will note that it was jguk who initially started making personal attacks at me in his edit summaries. Another instance of him harassing me is here, where he states that all my edits should be "revert[ed] on sight".

It is most troubling that he continues in the same pattern of behavior regarding other issues, including the ROC/Taiwan issue, US vs U.S. (which is again more than a year old, and which the MOS unambiguously states should be U.S.), American English vs British English, styles for royalty, etc. In the past, it seems, others let him have his way because of his tenaciousness and constant revert warring, but I don't believe things are the same now, and this type of behavior is sure to land him before the arbcom again. In addition, he is testing the limits of his ban by continuing to remove references to Common Era from articles, as well as continuing to indulge in conspiracy fantasies despite all evidence to the contrary. Some form of mentoring seems to be a perfect way to help him resolve conflicts amicably in the future without resorting to revert warring and name calling. Sortan 00:22, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Sam, thank you for your comment. Incidentally, I have never had time to read through the arb case, so am unaware of the comments - ArbCom closed it before I'd even read what I was accused of, let alone made a defence, but there goes.

There is a difference between "conclusive" and "beyond reasonable doubt". "Conclusive" implies 100% certainty, and absent Sortan admitting what his other accounts are, we're never going to get it. However, it is clear beyond reasonable doubt that Sortan is a sockpuppet role account used mostly for fighting this cause (interestingly he has never brought himself to deny that, although admittedly I wouldn't believe him if he did). Mind you having just looked at his user contributions again, it appears that he has become more concerned with hounding Chooserr than me for now. But let me assure you of one thing, Sam, Sortan is a bad faith account, jguk 21:47, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Likewise you are "beyond a reasonable doubt" trolling. Edits such as [116] designed just to remove references to Common Era, and to change American English to British English fit the definition perfectly. Do you really consider yourself acting in "good faith"? Sortan 21:56, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Sortan, an analysis of my edits will show that I have no fewer than six featured articles and am responsible for more featured lists than any other editor - indeed, I think there are only half a dozen or so editors with more featured material. It was me that helped spark the introduction of the portal namespace, and who has co-created the cricket portal, which has attracted many favourable comments. I am one of the two WPians responsible for promoting and failing featured list candidates; it was me who changed AfD from being shown by week to being shown by day (to the great relief of our servers). I have also copyedited a number of articles and been a strong advocate that articles, regardless of their subject, should use clear language, as free as possible of jargon, and as open to an international audience as possible. Notably, I greated improved the article on the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, which was far, far too long, into a comprehensible, smaller version, supported by sub-articles. Remarkably for such a major edit to such a controversial page, it was accepted, and indeed welcomed (though, of course, later improved by others). The edit you cite is yet another example of my changing an article to make it simpler - ie more intellgible to more people. Yes, one part of this was to remove the reference to "Common Era", which is a little understood term, certainly by the worldwide general public, and therefore should be avoided, where possible, on those grounds. However, there were other failings - for instance, the rather irrelevant comment about millennia and the lack of explanation as to why some people think the 21st century began in 2000 and others in 2001. I also added a clarification that the century began on 1 January, and will end on 31 December (which avoids the possible misunderstanding that by saying it begins in 2000, it is meant to say it begins at the end of 2000). It's a good copyedit, which I expect to stand (subject to further future improvements).

By contrast, looking at the edits of your Sortan account, it is difficult to find anything there of any real benefit to the encyclopaedia. It's mostly full of reverts, not only of me, but of many other editors, of which Chooserr seems, somewhat unfortunately, to be your latest favourite revert victim. Your edit summaries have also frequently included the use of personal attacks, which coupled with your unwillingness to reveal what your main WP account is, have merely served to embitter the atmosphere (as if WP is not a bitter enough place as it is). Anyone reviewing your contributions will soon see that there are no significant contributions there: none that we can really say have made WP a better place. You live on reverts and talk pages, yet have never contributed a decent article since the account was created, jguk 19:44, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Isn't it funny that with your overinflated ego of yourself, that you're still not an admin.... whereas people half your age, with a third of your time here, and with 1/20th of your edits are admins? Have you ever considered why that is? You have an inability to work with others, and due to your overinflated ego coupled with an arrogant attitude, cannot admit when you are wrong. Perhaps you should try working on that a bit more. Sortan 21:27, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Not funny at all. I've never stood, jguk 21:32, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I guess you're still waiting for all of the U.S. to be asleep [117]? Or perhaps you should try running for arbcom again? With your extraordinary list of accomplishments, perhaps you could even replace Jimbo Wales... Quite frankly, outside of indulging an obsession with cricket, you've been far, far more destructive than constructive. Sortan 21:54, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

On the contrary. Besides, what do you list as your achievements to improving WP? As far as I can see you've been nothing but trouble, with no substantive improvements at all, and by refusing to say what your main WP account is, have merely poisoned the situation and denied any responsibility at all for your edits. All your edits, almost without exception, have been in bad faith, jguk 22:01, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

How about containing POV pushing trolls? Sortan 22:08, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Is that what you yourself consider to be your only achievement? jguk 22:10, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

A note to Sortan and Jguk: Stop this petty squabbling, or at the very least take it elsewhere: It's nothelping anything. If you continue much longer, I'll consider it disruption.--Sean|Black 22:13, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

My apologies... I should have know better, and not been provoked. Sortan 22:19, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Romanians

There is a continuing edit war going on on the Romanians page considering the numbers of Romanians in each country in the world. I have no idea which numbers are correct, but I'm about to start banning people if they don't start discussing it on the Talk page instead of repeatedly reverting and calling names. User:Zoe|^(talk) 05:17, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

User:Antidote uses several other accounts there. Someone block him or page.-- Bonaparte talk 22:00, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Ward Churchill

I'm curious as to whether Ward Churchill should be unprotected now, since what I saw from the talk page and Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Ward Churchill made it pretty clear that Keetoowah was the disruptive influence there. After asking him to cooperate in trying to resolve the dispute in some way or another (even inventing a more structured form of article rfc based on user rfcs), he denounced the attempt to cooperate towards a consensus version, thus retroactively activating the arbcom's PAP ruling on him in my opinion, which was at 3 days for an attack and I counted 20 on the talk page of Ward Churchill since that case closed. Thus, I blocked him for 60 days. This might seem harsh, but from what i've seen of him so far, he has done nothing constructive on Wikipedia, and 60 days is "short" in my definition since his behavior to this point from what i've seen and heard indicates that he should be blocked for several years, if not forever. karmafist 09:04, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

If the sole/primary disruptive influence has been banned then I think the page should definately be unprotected. Thryduulf 11:32, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Great, thanks for the outside view point Thryduulf. I'll unprotect it and remove it from the protection list now. karmafist 19:10, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Haham hanuka once again filling his page with spam to inflate ranking

This is a very long, tedious story. Short version: This user used to be on the Hebrew Wikipedia, but was permanently banned for filling his user page with tons of Hebrew words and characters, so that if you searched Google for anything in Hebrew, his user page would be ranked highly. From talking with the admins on Hebrew Wikipedia, I found that they also blocked him for pornography-related content as well.

Anyways, he moved over to the English Wikipedia, and did the same thing here. He was found out, the hebrew spam was removed from his user page, and an RFC was brought against him, though I'm not sure whatever happened in this case (back in May).

Several months later, and I check his user page to find that he has once again filled it with the same Hebrew spam, only he's made the text ultra-small, and colored it white so that it will be as unnoticeable as possible. I've removed the content and indefinitely blocked him. If anyone else would like to handle this, feel free to do what you consider best. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-12-4 18:53

I think you did the right thing. He's been questioned in the past about his behavior (I remember participating in his RFC, which he appeared to ignore). Granted, I will admit that I don't seem to be as tolerant of those who abuse their privledges as editors as others... Alex Schenck (that's Linuxbeak to you) 21:52, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

He has apologized repeatedly, and has enough good edits that I'll unblock him, but he's already made the same mistake 3 times. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-12-7 15:53

"Mistake"? When a puppy pees on the rug,that's a mistake. When a human pees on the rug, it's either a sign of sickness or a malicious act; in either case, it's something that needs to be stopped. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 16:54, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Alleged sockpuppetry

It is now being claimed on the 3RR page that Chooserr is using a sockpuppet to evade his 3RR block. Can someone look into this, and while they're at it explain to me what the appropriate procedure is for handling such a claim? Thanks. -- SCZenz 00:11, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to know what the appropriate procedure is for making such a claim. I was unable to find an appropriate page on which to list such infractions (which is why I added my observations to the existing 3RR entry). —Lifeisunfair 01:23, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, this falls into the category of "blocked users evading blocks," so I suppose that this is the correct venue. I'm surprised that there isn't a dedicated page for reporting such infractions. —Lifeisunfair 01:27, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

• According to WP:SOCK you could add {{Sockpuppet|1=SOCKPUPPETEER|evidence=[[EVIDENCE]]}} to the userpage of the suspected sock puppet account. Sock puppetry per se is not against wikipedia rules. However, if you can convince an admin that a sock is being used to evade a block, then the sock account can be blocked and the original users block reset. JeremyA 02:50, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

As you mentioned, sock puppetry is not the actual offense. Therefore, I doubt that the tag's insertion would attract administrative intervention. Evidently, this page is the proper venue for reporting block evasion, so hopefully something will come of this discussion. —Lifeisunfair 03:03, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Thawa added links to the Scots language Wikipedia at The Light that Failed and Nestlé Smarties. Chooserr resides in Scotland. Please see the 3RR discussion for the remainder of the overwhelming sock puppetry evidence. —Lifeisunfair 02:25/09:38, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

The similarities are unacanny, particularly in the very new Thawa's awareness of the 3RR (as implied in edit summaries). I'd like another admin's opinion on this... -- SCZenz 05:15, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Looking through the edits of both users I would say that if Thawa is almost certainly a sock puppet of Chooserr. JeremyA 05:30, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Thawa showed up at Timeline of Eastern philosophers and reverted the dates from BCE/CE to Chooserr's BC/AD version. Thawa also changed BCE to BC at Zhuangzi. Can something please be done? —Lifeisunfair 09:38, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

In a fit of utter optimism, I left a friendly note on User talk:Thawa#Multiple accounts? advising against the use of multiple accounts, and explaning that many people think (with good evidence) that they're the same editor. Don't know if this will help or hurt- he may cut it out, or he may insist he's not a sock and continue what he's doing. But, at least, even if he gets blocked for block evasion, he can't say he wasn't warned. Friday (talk) 15:50, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Thawa (talk · contribs) has created a large number of accounts in the past few days:

• Wellin1 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) December 4, 19:05
• Thawa (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) December 4, 19:07
• Cwrn (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) December 5, 01:28
• V.Chr (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) December 5, 04:49
• A.Chr (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) December 5, 04:50
• Ic kann nix (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) December 5, 04:51

One of IP addresses used to edit by Thawa was used 32 minutes later by Chooserr (talk · contribs) to edit User talk:Chooserr. This is suggestive that they are the same editor. Kelly Martin (talk) 22:18, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

It's quite obvious that Thawa and Chooserr are also the same editor, once you look at their edit histories. Jayjg ^(talk) 22:46, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I believe that it now is appropriate to reset Chooserr's block, and block all of the sock puppets listed above. —Lifeisunfair 23:37, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I concur, but would like a more experienced admin to double-check and take care of it. (I'm afraid I might make an error.) I apologize for the delay. -- SCZenz 23:44, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

It appears that this editor is now making anonymous edits, from a dynamic dialup (resolving to dsl.irvnca.pacbell.net). Unfortunately, this is a large dialup network and blocking all of it would block a substantial population of editors. Kelly Martin (talk) 03:13, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Is anything going to be done in response to Chooserr's successful block evasion? —Lifeisunfair 14:34, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

North Carolina Vandal

His latest incarnation was McBeer (talk · contribs). Have a look at the contribution history of this account, and you can see all his usual obsessions. In addition, he began a page to brag about himself: Wikipedia:Most persistent vandals, which I have left as is for now. I shut down 63.19.128.0/17 for 48 hours again, which stops him, at least until he can get himself a new IP range. Occasionally he makes valid edits (about one out of every ten or twenty), and it is characteristic of him to squeal like a stuck pig when one of those is either deleted or reverted. By the way, have a look at the deleted Six words you are never supposed to say for another example of the type of stuff he adds. Antandrus (talk) 04:11, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

User:CltFn and Image:Nazislam.jpg

This user continues to remove the IfD tag from this image, replacing it with increasingly bizarre claims about Iranian copyright law. First he tried to claim that it was "fallen into the commons domain". I pointed out that it was in fact a wire service photo (from AFP) and hence probably a copyright violation. He tried to claim that Iran has no copyright laws regarding photographs, which is nonsense; Iran does in fact have copyright laws which cover photographs, and in any case the photograph is copyrighted elsewhere. I said, and still say, that this claim is BS. He then tried to claim that "All pictures taken in the Islamic Republic of Iran belong to its sovereign power", again unsupported by any authority—only the assertion that "Anyone who knows anything about Islam could tell you that they [the copyright laws which I cited] are unislamic", and hence the laws I linked to did not apply. I'm having a great deal of trouble assuming good faith on this one; I believe his behavior to be either egregious foolishness or outright mendacity. Can someone else take a look? —Charles P. (Mirv) 04:17, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Also edit-warring at Islamonazism, currently at WP:DRV. Seems problematic.--Sean|Black 04:36, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Iran is one of a small number of countries that is not signatory to the Berne Convention on copyright. As a result, many works published in Iran are not protected by US copyright laws, and Iran does not recognize protections for most works published outside Iran. The copyright laws that do exists in Iran also have a number of significant differences from US laws. However, it is official policy of the Wikimedia foundation to honor the copyright laws of Iran as best as we are able even though we may be under no legal obligation to do so. All of which is irrelevant if it is an AFP photo since the US certainly does recognize the IP rights of France. Dragons flight 04:40, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Users who dont get Fair Use AGAIN

See {{Template:User ps}}. The copyrighted logo of Adobe's Photoshop product is on the box... I tried reverting it and the user who created the template reverted back. I do not want to start a revert war over this, but this is CLEARLY against our policies.

1. (cur) (last) 01:31, 5 December 2005 Ewok Slayer (Its Fair Use. There is a link right next to the image to Adobe Photoshop. The logo is illustrating a product. Thats okay. Next time put a note on my talk page before you mess up my user boxes.)
2. (cur) (last) 01:27, 5 December 2005 Alkivar (you cannot use a COPYRIGHTED LOGO in a userpage template!)

Someone else sort this out... If I have to deal with this rockheaded user I will probably start screaming.  ALKIVAR™ 06:40, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Looks like theres more too.... [118] User:Ewok Slayer needs to be educated as to what Fair Use means.  ALKIVAR™ 06:55, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Is there a WP policy or guidelines page that specifically states that copyrighted logos cannot be placed on userpage templates? I think it would be helpful if we could put a link to it in the edit summaries when we do remove them. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 19:59, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Not AFAIK, but all fair use images cannot be placed in any templates - it should be somewhere in wikipedia:fair use. Johnleemk | Talk 20:01, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

It's near the end of Wikipedia:Fair_use#Policy and begins with the admonition that fair use material is only to be used in the article namespace. -- DS1953 20:11, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Cool Cat seven day ban from Kurdistan and Kurdistan Workers Party

Cool Cat is banned from editing the abovementioned two articles from 1000 UTC December 5, 2005 to 1000 UTC December 12, 2005. The ban is enforceable by blocking by any administrator, subject to review and possible adjustment or annulment by the mentors, under the terms of the Mentorship set up by the Arbitration Committee:

• Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Coolcat,_Davenbelle_and_Stereotek/mentorship

This is not a punishment, but is a preventive measure taken to prevent possible further disruption on those articles due to his actions or those of third parties. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 10:23, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

This ban does not affect Cool Cat's ability to edit on the talk pages of those articles. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 10:25, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Blocks under this banning should be reasonable in length. A maximum period of three days is specified under the arbitration decision, but as a rule of thumb I would suggest that a block with a one-day maximum is less likely to be adjusted by review. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 10:53, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

two spammers blocked indefinitely

I've blocked Erectile99 (talk · contribs) and Breast99 (talk · contribs) indefinitely for spamming and using inappropriate usernames. From what I had seen, the spam links appeared to be added by a bot. Other administrators might want to watch the user creation log for possible sock puppets. Notice how their names both end with the same characters. --Ixfd64 10:55, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

OldhamNeil blocked for 24 hours

I blocked this account for 24 hours for a disruptive AFD nomination of George W. Bush. I suspect that this is a sockpuppet. Sjakkalle (Check!) 10:57, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

another spammer sock blocked

I've just blocked Asthma99 (talk · contribs) indefinitely for spamming. If I find any more socks, I'll list them here. --Ixfd64 11:02, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Add Bulimia99 (talk · contribs) to the list. --Ixfd64 11:07, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

User:Mr.Treason on the Run

I've blocked him indef. for bad faith nominations for Afd: Rowan Atkinson and George W.Bush --Lectonar 12:15, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Actually, after consulting the block-log, it wasn't me, but he's been blocked by 3 admins now :))) Lectonar 12:20, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

That and the fact that his username is parodying two banned users... Phil Sandifer 15:38, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

better one: User:Mr.Treason on the Run on wheels! --Cool Cat^Talk|@ 15:07, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Marsden

Marsden (talk · contribs) continues to make personal attacks on Jayjg. This has been going on for weeks, most recently at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2005/Candidate statements/Jayjg and on the talk page, which Marsden has posted several attacks to, and for which he's been blocked by Raul654. Marsden has now posted this personal attack [119] to his talk page. I've left him a note asking him to rewrite it. [120] If he doesn't, I intend to delete it, and if he restores it, I'm going to block him for disruption. I intend to do that from now with every clear example of a personal attack from him, because he has been editing disruptively for some time. Unfortunately the edit counter is down, but when I last checked, he had made very few edits to the encyclopedia; most of his edits appear to be conflict-related, and he has been blocked four times for disruption and personal attacks. If anyone can help me keep an eye on the situation, that would be much appreciated. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 16:36, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I've blocked Marsden for 24 hours for suggesting in the guise of a question on Jay's nomination page that he is paid to edit Wikipedia [121], an allegation Marsden has made before. He was warned that he might be blocked for further attacks, though he's deleted the warnings from his talk page. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 20:09, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I saw the comment, and agree that this is a blockable violation of WP:NPA. This user has been harrassing Jayjg, most recently on this ArbCom candidacy page, and has refused to tone down inflammatory "questions" (which are statements). JFW | T@lk 20:30, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

While, having reviewed some of Marsden's edits, I can understand why there was a block, I think it's a shame that SlimVirgin was the one to block him as she has been involved in disputes with Marsden in the recent past (at least on the page in question). I'd also question whether SV has been entirely fair on Marsden, for example, with this edit [122]. Many of Marsden's edits may have been objectionable - but going overboard on the guy is also objectionable, and no doubt contributes to him going on the offence as a kind of defence mechanism, jguk 20:58, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Posting counter-questions certainly did attract attention to the fact that this editor had a score to settle with Jayjg. Any admin could have blocked Marsden, and probably would have in the view of his harassment. JFW | T@lk 21:28, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi Jguk, far from going overboard with Marsden, this is the first admin action I've taken against him and it's long overdue. I'm not involved in any content dispute with him except in trying to keep that page free of NPA violations and disruption. Marsden has been involved in attacks against a range of editors since he arrived at Wikipedia. Several people have tried to reason with him but it made no difference, so people started warning, which also made no difference, then applying blocks. He has so far been blocked five times by five different admins, each time for the same type of behavior. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 21:40, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Marsden contacted me during the block and we exchanged e-mails in which I tried to persuade him not to post any similar attacks in future. He then posted our correspondence without my consent on his talk page, [123] which had the effect of repeating the attacks he was blocked for in the first place. I've deleted the posts and protected his talk page for the duration of the block, which I now intend to extend by 24 hours. If anyone has any thoughts about this, I'd appreciate hearing them. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 16:36, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

As there are no objections, I'm going to go ahead and do that. His first block is due to expire around now. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 20:07, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Following the exchange directly above, it seems within the realm of possibility that objections will follow after the fact. ;) El_C 01:15, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

User:Ewok Slayer

This user is blocked for a week by Jtkiefer (talk/contribs) for a week for personal attacks (correctly in my view), which was prompted by the removal of certain images that he declared to be fair use on his user page. Now he is "revoking" the licences of the images he has uploaded (see User:Ewok Slayer/Images). This has now resulted in two legal threats [124] and [125]. Should he be blocked indefinitely until these threats are withdrawn? [[Sam Korn]] 21:34, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

User has a history of being disruptive. I wouldn't object.--Sean|Black 21:42, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

If he thinks he can remove his licence, the answer is 'no'. Once licenced the images aren't his any more. As such he cannot claim ownership again. FearÉIREANN\^(caint) 21:47, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Actually, they are still his. Just anyone can use them under GFDL restrictions. [[Sam Korn]] 21:50, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

As I recall, the Upload screen did not state that the user is releasing their own work under the GFDL for a period of time recently. Did this user release them under the GFDL by tagging them in that way? Jkelly 21:58, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

They contained the GFDL-self tag, so yes. [[Sam Korn]] 21:59, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Speaking of legal threats *sigh* this was posted on my talk page by someone called User:FakeName. The user was attempting to put a propagandistic article in place of the current article at Alan Dershowitz. In his rewrite Dershowitz was credited with everything except inventing a cure for cancer, a cure for AIDS and ending global warming in a single afternoon. He didn't like my reversion (twice) and posted the following:

You are now on notice that your biography of Alan Dershowitz is false in several regard and defamatory.

I deleted it from my page. FearÉIREANN\^(caint) 21:47, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

• I am in the process of reverting all those images back to the former version with his original GFDL licensing statements Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 21:54, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

• I have blocked for 1 month for legal threats since he clearly continues to threaten us with legal actions despite being warned and being told how pointless it would be. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 22:12, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Update: Jimbo Wales has caved in to the legal threat on Alan Dershowitz. A sad day for Wikipedia. - Xed 12:41, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Temporary ban on Copperchair editing

1) As Copperchair (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has continued to edit war on a number of articles pending resolution of this matter, he is banned from editing any pages other then these Arbitration pages and his own user and talk page. He may be briefly blocked should he edit any other page, see Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Copperchair/Proposed_decision#Temporary_ban_on_Copperchair_editing. Fred Bauder 21:45, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

As this is very new and he has just received notice on his talk page, take it a bit easy. Like block him for a few minutes first time. Fred Bauder 21:45, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Pigsonthewing harassing other editors

Pigsonthewing (talk · contribs) has been following Karmafist and reverting all of his posts with the edit summary of "Revert abuse". [126] [127], even modifying his statements in one talk page [128]. Since this is in my opinion harassment of Karmafist, I've blocked him for a week. This is also very close to gaming his preliminary injunction. Titoxd^{(?!? - did you read this?)} 22:12, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Very close, indeed. I fully support the block.--Sean|Black 22:20, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

First - it is untrue that Pigsonthewing was reverting "all" of Karmafist's edits. He was reverting edits about himself that he considered to be personal attacks. Some of them look to me like they qualify... which is a no-no given that Karmafist is under 'personal attack parole' at the moment.

Second - if we are talking about reverting people's edits you might want to reverse the names in question here -> [129] [130] [131] [132].

Pigsonthewing keeps getting blocked for harassment... whenever he complains about and reverts ongoing harassment against himself. Can I really be the only person who finds this odd? --CBD ✉ 22:29, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I guess I don't see how article reversions are at all alike to talk page reversions.. —Locke Cole 22:34, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

They aren't. Reversions of personal attacks on talk pages are allowed... only the definition of 'personal attack' is open to interpretation. Following someone around and reverting their article submissions without discussion and regardless of merit on the other hand... that's called stalking and WP:HA. --CBD ✉ 22:37, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Sure. Except those weren't personal attacks. —Locke Cole 22:42, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

You are misreading what I wrote. The edits he reverted, he reverted all with the edit summary "rm abuse". As for reverting edits, the edits that led me to give him the block were the edits in the User talk namespace. No user has any business amending other users' comments, and the diff that did it for me was the one at Aaron Brenneman's talk page. By the way, that is exactly what made me block, seeing that another user complained about Pigsonthewing harassing him [133]. Titoxd^{(?!? - did you read this?)} 22:43, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Actually, WP:RPA specifically says that you SHOULD 'amend other users' comments' to just remove the portion which is an attack. Again, what this comes down to is that you blocked Pigsonthewing because you did not agree with his assesment that Karmafist calling him 'troll', 'bully', et cetera were 'personal attacks'. If those were personal attacks he is allowed to remove them. If they weren't... well then he's blocked for a week. --CBD ✉ 23:11, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Have you read the top of WP:RPA? Over-extending the applicability of WP:RPA is one of the big complaints about Pigsonthewing. -- SCZenz 23:18, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't dispute that he uses it alot and takes a wide definition of 'personal attack' in doing so. However, I do not see how it is possible for Pigsonthewing's reversions of Karmafist calling him 'troll', 'bully', et cetera to be so pervasive as to rise to the level of "harassment" worthy of a week long ban... while simultaneously those original comments by Karmafist do not rise to the level of harassment against Pigsonthewing. If the one is harassment then so is the other... especially when you toss in Karmafist going about reverting Pigsonthewing's perfectly valid article edits. This all started between them when Karmafist put a 24 hour block on Pigsonthewing after falsely accusing him of violating 3RR... but not blocking G-man (an admin) who had reverted out the same text four times in a day. In my opinion admins should be held to a higher standard than regular editors. The guidelines don't read that way... so be it. However, the guidelines certainly don't say that admins should be held to a lower standard, but that has seemed to be the practice in this case. I don't disagree that alot of the things Pigsonthewing does are borderline abusive. I'm saying that he probably wouldn't be doing them if blatant ongoing abuse against him weren't ignored (and thereby encouraged) as a matter of course. --CBD ✉ 00:14, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree with much of what you say, especially about admins being held to a high standard. However, the overall problem started because Pigsonthewing is unfailingly curt and impolite to anyone who edits in a way he dislikes or tries to offer him suggestions on how to work with other editors. I think a week-long block is excessive, and I would strongly support removing it if he showed any humility whatsoever or aknowledged the legitimate issues against him. Until he does that, I don't know what can be done about any of these problems. That being said, Karmafist should stay as far away from him as possible. -- SCZenz 00:30, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

In my own experience this ("unfailingly") isn't accurate. I contested his edits and we worked out a compromise. I called him a "pain in the ass" (amongst other, nicer, things) and he said thank you. That's humility enough for me. He gets 'difficult' when people are rude to him. That's not a good thing, but it's understandable. Nobody should have to put up with someone reverting their edits as a "better safe than sorry" "gut reaction"... nor be blocked for getting upset and objecting to that and similar treatment. --CBD ✉ 02:46, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Having read all of the above, I still find a seven-day block completely unjustifiable and, in the circumstances of an ongoing arbitration case in which Pigsonthewing should be encouraged to participate, counter-productive. I am replacing this with a two-day block, reduced in duration to run from the time of the original seven day block. This is justifiable under the personal attack injunction, since in my opinion the interference with Karmafist's edits constitutes a personal attack.

After the expiry of the two-day block, all administrators are encouraged to monitor Pigsonthewing's conduct and ensure that he does not resume this problematic conduct.

I will address Karmafist's conduct separately (I haven't yet examined it). --Tony Sidaway|Talk 05:00, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't object to the reduction of the block. I was going to block for 72 hours originally, but after seeing he was a repeat offender, I decided to increase the length of the block. That said, Pigsonthewing has been asked repeatedly to answer his RFC (and then his RFAr), which he continues to refuse to do. Titoxd^{(?!? - did you read this?)} 05:05, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

To illustrate my concerns, Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing) had already been blocked for thirty-six hours recently. Adding another week-long block to that would leave him very little opportunity to change his mind and contribute evidence in the case and participate in the workshop. This isn't to say that we should let him run loose, but I think shorter blocks (*much* shorter blocks, if timed correctly) are likely to be just as effective.

There are also extenuating circumstances, too. This in my opinion violates the personal attack injunction on Karmafist, as does this. I don't think a block is yet merited in Karmafist's case, but I shall be warning him not to engage in this kind of accusation again. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 05:46, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

And here's another example: [134]. This ought to be posted back as evidence for Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pigsonthewing/Workshop#Karmafist restricted with respect to Pigsonthewing. I have to agree with CBD that the current situation is being exacerbated by Karmafist continuing to post snipes against POTW, then citing POTW's reaction as harassment. The afd on Tim Tolkien doesn't look in terribly good faith either. Tearlach 07:20, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I disagree, the state that Tim Tolkien was in when he nominated it for AfD would have lead me to nominate it as well. It was only after it was nominated that he began adding content that indicated the notability of the subject. In so far as Karmafist exacerbating things; I don't believe what he posted constitutes a personal attack. If we can't even define what someones behavior seems to be, how on Earth are we supposed to suggest they be brought up for RFAr or RfC? Next thing you know we'll have people deleting comments such as "So and so is misbehaving, you should do something".. oh right, that's precisely what he did. —Locke Cole 07:29, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

If we can't even define what someones behavior seems to be is not the point. Karmafist has been enjoined to back off and not interact with POTW, but is still picking at it. Posting ad hominem comments encouraging other editors to discount POTW's edits and treat them as troublemaking looks to me well into the territory of personal atack, especially when unjustified. For instance, the Phoenix Park edit history shows POTW and Demiurge supporting a long-standing consensus against an anonymous reverter. There was no trouble until Karmafist waded in and automatically reverted to the nonconsensus version simply because POTW supported it (so I decided to go see what he was up to and went with a "better safe than sorry" approach when I saw reverts by him). Tearlach 08:36, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Karmafist has been enjoined? Since when? I look here and I only see temporary injunctions enacted against Pigsonthewing. One of his "ad hominen" comments (which I also dispute) were directed at a user who left a note on his talk page. There's nothing unjustified about suggesting POTW is a troll, he may very well be. But let me guess: if a police officer pulls you over and says you were speeding, you take that as a personal attack too, right? So now making accusations is a personal attack? I bet the whole RFAr is a personal attack: maybe he can blank that too, because it seems to me that's where you're headed. *sigh* I mean honestly, look at the examples given at WP:NPA. Nothing karmafist has done (with any frequency anyways, if at all) rises to that level. I'm trying to assume good faith here and assume you really believe what you're saying, but these assertions are really pushing it. —Locke Cole 08:57, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, this has got so convoluted that I'm mistaken on that point. On rereading, I see the injunction is against Karmafist making personal attacks; the no-interaction-whatsoever is at the proposal stage. It's not bad advice, though. Do you really think the Phoenix Park edits help the situation? Or these edits to Sutton Park, which look equally bad faith?

Your analogy is inaccurate anyway. This is equivalent to that same police officer, after having caught you speeding, turning up and saying "this guy was caught speeding, you know" to suggest you're untrustworthy in all sorts of situations where that's irrelevant.

I'm not the only one to view Karmafist's edits as personal attacks (see [135]). Tearlach 09:43, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

To clarify, a statement can be a personal attack even if it's true. Describing someone's interactions on Wikipedia as "bullying" and "trolling" is a personal attack, even if the person involved is a bully and a troll. We do things differently on Wikipedia. If we have a difference with someone, we seek ways of resolving it, not ways of marginalizing that person. Karmafist is under an injunction because he had earlier described Pigsonthewing as "the scum of Wikipedia" and made repeated pig-related swipes at him. Now he's stopped calling Pigsonthewing a pig, but he hasn't stopped attacking him. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 12:43, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I was just telling Pigsonthewing the same thing about using terms like 'lies' and 'liar'. Whether something is true or not is irrelevant to whether it is an attack or not. Further, estimations of 'truth' are often subjective. I don't think 'troll' or 'bully' are accurate descriptions of Pigsonthewing because both terms imply intent (to provoke hostility / harass for amusement) which I have seen no evidence of. In any case, they are clearly 'attacks'... that is, statements made to portray the person negatively. Though again, estimations of 'severity' of personal attacks are highly subjective. Which, in my opinion, is a significant problem... subjective definitions of what is and is not a 'personal attack' and 'harassment' inherently leads to unequal application of blocks for such. Which inevitably breeds resentment. --CBD ✉ 13:12, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Since none of the examples at WP:NPA seemed to apply to what karmafist (or even POTW) have been doing, I've expanded WP:NPA. [136] Obviously if it needs rewording, go for it. —Locke Cole 18:52, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

WP:NPA is very enlightening as it stands. Whatever the precise definition of "attack", WP:NPA is explicit that ad hominem arguments are against policy: Comment on content, not on the contributor ... Discuss the facts and how to express them, not the attributes of the other party ... Never suggest a view is invalid simply because of who its proponent is. And that is what is going on. For instance: SaltyWater says he doesn't like some Pigsonthewing edits [137]; Karmafist replies telling him Pigsonthewing has bullied people in the past [138]. Tearlach 19:31, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Clearly, we had better rework the Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism page, since in its very first sentence it describes editors of pages as being "vandals," and since this might be considered an ad hominem attack, violates WP:NPA.

Look, Wikipedia has bad editors. It is not always a personal attack to say "Jane is a bad editor." It can be a personal attack. But it is not necessarily an attack.

"WillyOnWheels is a troll and a vandal." Did I just violate WP:NPA? If so, then the policy is wrong, and needs to be fixed. Nandesuka 21:55, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I rewrote that clause as follows, in an attempt to more closely circumscribe it: "Accusatory comments such as "Bob is a troll", or "Jane is a bad editor" can be considered personal attacks if said repeatedly, in bad faith, or with sufficient venom." Nandesuka 21:58, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

WP:RPA is disputed, after all

I'd like to take a moment to point out to all that RPA is not policy, and it is disputed, and there is not consensus for the removal of personal attack comments. Some people seem to feel that it's policy and their duty to remove personal attacks from others, this is not so. Personally, I think editing other user's comments is generally a bad thing...if an attack is made, refute the attack, but keep in mind that anyone who chooses to engage in such behavior risks a loss of reputation and risks incurring consequences (I for one won't hesistate to place a block on a user engaging in repeated personal attacks). As far as this case goes, if there is a personal attack on either Pigsonthewings or Karmafist's part, an immediate block is warranted. Ëvilphoenix ^Burn! 02:50, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Agreed ... mostly. Personal attacks are unacceptable. But it's also no good to alter other people's signed comments; that's forgery ... and frequently, it's also a form of bullying or personal attack in itself. It's particularly egregious when it's done in response to allegations of wrongdoing. "You accused me of doing something wrong. I take that as a personal attack, and so I shall now strike out your words. Your accusation is now besmirched, without my bothering to respond to its substance." That sort of malicious application of RPA cropped up on WP:RFC/Duncharris in the beginning of the recent administrative malfeasance unpleasantness.

Nonetheless, it should be perfectly acceptable to remove or revert whole posts (not just individual words) that are composed of pure abuse. This is simply a corollary of the vandalism policy. Removing a whole post avoids the alteration or besmirching of another person's words, and is less likely to be done in any case where the words have any value at all. There is no value to retaining a talk comment that is solely composed of the words "fuck you" repeated a hundred times, or racial slurs, or other patent nonsense. --FOo 08:29, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Block on Karmafist

I have blocked Karmafist (talk · contribs) for 24 hours for violating his personal attack parole, for this edit. Best regards, Ëvilphoenix ^Burn! 03:34, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I'd just like to note that, unless I'm missing something, there is no PAP against Karmafist currently enacted. Whoever marked it as "Enacted" miscounted as there's only four arbcom support votes and a majority of five is required for a proposal to pass. Further, no announcement that such a PAP had been enacted appears to have been given to Karmafist, and finally, no temporary injunction appears here. (this was also posted on Karmafist's talk page) —Locke Cole 05:09, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

It only takes four Arbitrators to enact an injunction. Kelly Martin (talk) 05:33, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

On the Proposed Decision page, it reads On this case, no Arbitrators are recused and 2 are inactive, so 5 votes are a majority.. Is there a Complete Idiots Guide to Wikipedia Arbitration someplace to bring me up to speed, or is the 5 votes are a majority wrong? =) —Locke Cole 05:45, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Injunctions follow different rules than final decisions. See the Arbitration policy. Kelly Martin (talk) 06:54, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Okay, edit conflict, (because I'm, slow) but the policy says: "An Injunction is considered to have passed when four or more Arbitrators have voted in favour of it, where a vote in opposition negates a vote in support." Dmcdevit·t 07:03, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for clearing that up; you guys might want to add a little note about the votes needed on temporary injunctions in your templates for arbitrations (like in the proposed temporary injunction section in the Proposed decision subpage). —Locke Cole 10:55, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

It's already there. --CBD ✉ 12:51, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I was just coming back to correct myself. :P —Locke Cole 01:11, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I posted a response on Karmafist's Talk page, prior to seeing this response from Kelly Martin. Ëvilphoenix ^Burn! 05:43, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

It looks like Karmafist is taking the liberty of shortening his own block and unblocking himself [139] --Ryan Delaney ^talk 14:19, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't know any of the history of this situation, but as an outsider, there's nothing in the diff provided that looks to me like an obvious personal attack. IMO, if you're going to call it a blockable offence, the personal attack should be pretty clear. Friday (talk) 14:37, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree that this seems harsh. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 15:22, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

It was a poor taste joke. Last night when it first happened, and Karmafist was complaining on IRC about it, I consulted an arbcom member on IRC, and they said it violated the spirit of the injunction. Anyway, Karmafist 1) probably needs to take a break for a few hours, 2) shouldn't unblock himself, no matter how wrong the block is, as mentioned on http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Ipblocklist&action=unblock --Phroziac _. o º ^{O (mmmmm chocolate!)} 15:23, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

It would be a shame to lose a good editor because of the POTW situation, which is what will happen if this dynamic continues. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 15:30, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I understand why the "don't unblock yourself" convention exists. But, I have a hard time bringing myself to disagree with someone unblocking themselves when no plausible reason for the block has been given. Situations like this frequently escalate unneccessarily, because then someone else can come along and say "unblocking yourself?!? that's not right, I'm going to re-block". To me this situation should have been handled with a note on the talk page, not a block. Also, maybe it's just me, but I don't like to see on-wiki consequences for off-wiki actions. If a solid reason for a block cannot be found on the wiki, the block should not happen. Friday (talk) 15:32, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

The other half of this dispute (Pigsonthewing) was recently blocked for a week for 'offenses' seemingly no more serious than this one. I suspect Evilphoenix imposed this block because of an ongoing pattern of harassment of which the linked edit was only the most recent example. Several others can be found in the paragraphs preceding this one. At that, we are presently a few hours away from an arbitration going into effect (24 hours after motion to close) which will bar Karmafist from interacting with Pigsonthewing in any way. So it's not like this is 'out of the blue' with no justification. I don't want to see Karmafist quit over this either, but frankly I feel that the fact that he HASN'T been blocked before this demonstrates a ludicrous imbalance in the standards imposed on admins vs those on regular editors. --CBD ✉ 15:41, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

POTW was blocked because he was editing other peoples comments, specifically Karmafists. In one case he deleted the comment outright. Karmafist took some Tim Tolkien content from POTW's talk page, and since POTW was blocked, added it to the article for him, and then left him a note about it. Care to explain how the situations are at all similar? Want to explain how that's a blockable offense, helping another editor out? It looked like an olive branch to me.. —Locke Cole 08:56, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Karmafist was blocked for a post [140] on Wikipedia , Friday, not something offsite, but the question remains whether it counts as a personal attack. I would say not, though I'd also say Karmafist would do well to avoid POTW entirely. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 15:38, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I understand, but it sounded like the explanation above was saying that this is a personal attack when viewed through the lens of a conversation that happened on IRC. If it's a personal attack when viewed through the lens of an ongoing pattern of wiki activity, that's another story. And I'll admit I'm not familiar with the history, I just wanted to point out that the diff provided doesn't look like a blockable personal attack to outsider eyes. Friday (talk) 15:49, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

IRC is just a convenient means for the cabal^W^W^W me to communicate with. --Phroziac _. o º ^{O (mmmmm chocolate!)} 13:00, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

From Wikipedia:Blocking_policy: Sysops are technically able to unblock themselves by following this procedure but should absolutely not do so, except if they were autoblocked as a result of a block on some other user (or bot) that they share an IP with. Otherwise, if an admin feels they were not blocked for a valid reason, the safest course is to contact the blocking admin, another admin, or the mailing list and ask to be unblocked. --Ryan Delaney ^talk 15:52, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Karmafist's action was not acceptable and he knows that. I know it's tempting as administrators to all pat one another on the back, but when we do that it in a case like this it looks bad. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 15:58, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

As an outsider to this incident, I am a little confused as to how the diff in question was a personal attack. However, I agree that he shouldn't unblock himself. --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 16:04, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

It doesn't look like any sort of personal attack to me; that said, he should have asked someone else to unblock him, rather than unblocking himself. Jayjg ^(talk) 19:15, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I have to say I think Tony Sidaway is absolutely right about this. Filiocht | The kettle's on 09:04, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Comment from Evilphoenix

I'd just like to step in here and make a comment to try and clarify, as several editors have questioned why I imposed a block for a seemingly trivial offense. I agree that the diff in question was a borderline case, but as I explained to Karmafist on his Talk page (where there has also been some discussion), at this point, he does not need to have even the slightest appearance of goading Pigsonthewing, with whom he has been involved in a running conflict going back several months, and an active case before the Arbitration Committee. Both users have personal attack injunctions opposed against them currently, and the situation between the two of them is extremely tense. In an isolated incident, such a comment from another User would only require a Talk page warning, however given the background of the situation between these two editors, I found Karmafist's action to be provocative and unneccessary. Pigsonthewing is under very heavy scrutiny right now, I had recently blocked him for disruption, and he was (and still is, I believe) serving another block from another Admin for personal attacks. It's important for Andy to understant that poor behavior on his part will not be tolerated, but its also important for him (and the rest of us as well) to understand that poor behaviour should not be tolerated from other editors either, particularly other Administrators. I think Andy feels that he's being punished for offenses he has commited, but that other users who have commited offenses are not. Whether this is true or not, we do need to attempt to be fair, and we do need to work to hold ourselves and our fellow Administrators to a higher standard. Nobody is above civility, not I or anyone else, from our plethora of anonymous contributors all the way up to the Arbitrators and Jimbo himself . This is not to say that I am defending my action as Absolutely Correct, I am simply trying to help other editors understand why I made that decision. I posted about the block here specifically to encourage public review and discussion, to allow other Administrators to review the block and choose to allow it to stand or to adjust the time, if any felt that was needed, and to be available for discussion. In general, my feeling is that any block is subject to review and adjustment by any other Administrator, and that if another Administrator adjusts a block that I place, it would be discourteous of me to further adjust the block myself. I am dissapointed that Karmafist has repeatedly chosen to unblock himself...he had to my previous knowledge followed a polite approach, had attempted to engage me in discussion of the block, which we did discuss, and I was unwilling to adjust the block, and I know he discussed it on IRC, but my feeling is that he should have approached another Administrator to review the block, rather than unblock himself. It it my hope however that he will move forward from this, and choose to remain civil and polite in his future actions. Please let me know if there is any more clarification I can provide, and I thank you all for your input in this discussion. Best regards, Ëvilphoenix ^Burn! 20:12, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Bonaparte

Bonaparte (talk · contribs) is being disruptive and uncivil. He is constantly in a state of edit warring with a number of editors over any article related to things Romanian. See, in particular, Talk:Moldovan language. Please could some other admins keep an eye on him, and try to encourage him to be constructive. --Gareth Hughes 23:58, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I am not disruptive and uncivil. In fact I didn't even edit the Moldovan language page since 23 days. And all that I edit after so many days was to revert the edits of a user that was already blocked by Gareth Hughes for edit war like here (16:21, 5 December 19:28, 5 December 21:50, 5 December 23:36, 5 December). In fact I proposed many arguments like the one of Gr. Ureche, M. Costin, D. Cantemir and other arguments as well. -- Bonaparte talk 11:44, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

No, he said on the talkpage. --Node 12:12, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

This user: Node is the one who made so many days the revert war and he was already blocked by Gareth Hughes for edit war like here (16:21, 5 December 19:28, 5 December 21:50, 5 December 23:36, 5 December). I posted first on the talk page so that any person can agree with the version. So is fairplay. -- Bonaparte talk 13:58, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Bonaparte has called people "loosers", said they were "dump", has made fun of me for being gay, for being Jewish, and seems to think it's of some great importance that I'm 16 years old. He has constantly disrupted the talkpage so that nobody could get in a word edgewise, because he kept adding long passages of text in Romanian that nobody was going to read anyhow but which basically just rehashed his previously stated opinions, which he says over and over again. Additionally, he has pretended to be an admin on the talk pages of several anons. --Node 21:39, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

And Node has called people for sperm and is a known liar. --Anittas 21:47, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

1) I have not lied; 2) Please show evidence of me calling people sperm. --Node 23:21, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

It's when you used your Russian slang on me, saying "tu esti Kochenii", or something like that. I could find the edit, but you know what I'm talking about. You could say that you meant something else, but in slang language, that's what it means. Mikka explained it to us. --Anittas 23:25, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Be aware Node. I said that this approach of yours is a looser approach. (16:21, 5 December 19:28, 5 December 21:50, 5 December 23:36, 5 December), because you tend to do only edit war. Also labelling others as "sperm" I consider also a looser approach. You have to behave yourself better. And I did not tell you those words. Everybody can check the history. I am clean. But you did labelled others "sperm". -- Bonaparte talk 09:15, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps you lot have trouble reading. Let me spell it out for you: at the head of this page, it reads...

Please be aware that these pages aren't the place to bring disputes over content, or reports of abusive behaviour - we aren't referees, and have limited authority to deal with abusive editors.

In other words, continuing this dispute of yours here is pointless; none of you are going to get what you want and you are taking up too much space on this page. Izehar (talk) 23:30, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

User:All in

All_in (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is committing serious page move vandalism. See Harvard Yard. All kinds of crap in his contributions. Chick Bowen 02:27, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

The user hasn't been sufficiently warned to justify administrative action. Also, block requests should go to WP:AIV in the future. --Ryan Delaney ^talk 02:48, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I wasn't requesting a block. I was on the phone and was hoping someone could look through his contribs. Chick Bowen 03:25, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

The Article "BORED"

Dear fellow wikipedians, i myself have been a law abiding wikipedian.. but currently i have created a new article on "BORED", an organization that i founded with my fellow peers. It is an organization of 100 members worldwide, in cities such as LA, new York, Vancouver, Paris, London, Liverpool, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Sydney. But the user Shreshth91 keeps on deleting. Please give me permission to post it and protect it from deltion. Thankyou - --Larryau 10:22, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

The place you need to bring this up is Wikipedia:Deletion review. Thryduulf 10:34, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Having just looked at the deleted versions, however, I do not think that you have much chance of it being undeleted. There is a high-bar of notability required for student organisations and one that has been in existence less than one month does not meet that standard. There is a small chance that some people might consider it worth a full hearing at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion, but I personally cannot see it surviving this. Thryduulf 10:39, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Alkivar

The admin Alkivar has gone over the top in the abuse of his power. If you look at his edit history, you will see that he blocked a guy named CapnCrack without warning despite Crack's vandalism being relatively minor. I think a warning explaining to Crack the proper way to use edit summaries would have been plenty.

Next, Alkivar reverted the Oklahoma Christian University page and then page-protected it. If page protection is not an edorsement of the current state of a page, why did he revert a page that was not vandalized and then protect it? I don't know how to reach any other conclusion other than that he did not personally appreciate the the most recent edits.

Thirdly, Alkivar simply labels everyone a vandal who tries to talk with him about this matter, and he claims any argument regarding the matter to be vandalism. Look at his talk page. Any time someone brings up the Oklahoma Christian University article on his talk page, he just reverts it or claims it is a personal attack. At one point, Alkivar was simply reminded of the official policy at Wikipedia and how he was presently violating it. Alkivar's response was to remove that comment as "vandalism". (Are the Wikipedia policies really vandalism? Alkivar also removed one comment claiming that the conversation is over. However, the page-protection sign clearly states that the page is protected until a resolution can be reached. How can a resolution be reached if the conversation is over?

I don't want to have to go through whatever the process is here to resolve a dispute. I just don't have the time. I like to edit Wikipedia, and I like to read at Wikipedia. But I won't have time for a couple of weeks to be able to spend a ton of time trying to reason with someone through some bureaucratic process. Is there anyway he can be convinced to cool it and to restore the pages and parties he has offended? I can't see how anyone who is behaving like he is can be considered within the scope of appropriate behavior.

68.97.36.194 11:14, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Oklahoma_Christian_University for essentially the same complaint. Note the "me too!" agreement with the complaint by Beisnj (talk · contribs) -- a contributor with total of 5 edits. I'm finding this whole complaint and its circumstances very suspicious. --Calton | Talk 11:53, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I find it very suspicious, too. A guy with 5 edits is evidence that weighs heavily against a guy reverting acceptable edits, protecting pages to "win" fights, deleting user comments, blocking minor vandals indefinitely without warning, and referring to the official policy as vandalism. Thanks for bringing this error in my reasoning to my attention. 68.97.36.194 12:58, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Dude, there was nothing in that last paragraph that resembled what most people call "reasoning"; rather, it resembled the output of a Sarcast-o-Bot: "Yes, <repeat what other person said>, <add own, unrelated complaint>." Two words for you: Matthew 7:3. --Calton | Talk 13:18, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Okay, let me slow this down for you then. Here's the reasoning I used. I like to call it a "balancing test". The evidence you presented - one possibly controversial fact. Here is the evidence I presented - five facts that went uncontested that show poor judgment on the part of an administrator.

Now, in the backwards world that I come from, that's reasoning. I've tried to tell the people I know so many times that this whole idea of making solid arguments backed with facts and logic, refuting opposing arguments, and then defending the original constructive arguments is getting outdated, but they won't listen to me. Now, here I am, being shamed into defeat because I took the advice of all those wack-jobs who thought that was the way to win an argument.

Thanks for this really enlightening experience. I needed the nuances of argumentation cleared up for me. 68.97.36.194 02:13, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Miaoww -- CatWoman 13:36, 6 December 2005 (UTC) ( comment actually by 84.69.21.169 (talk · contribs))

Find-a-grave links

Some closer review is needed of the links being added by newcomer RustySpear (talk · contribs) from biographical articles to the findagrave.com web site. We do have an effort underway to use findagrave's list to identify missing articles, and that, er, undertaking does involve a courtesy link to findagrave.com for newly created articles created as a result of the find-a-grave list, a usage that I would still question since findagrave.com is at best a secondary source. But I have more serious opposition to the addition of links from hundreds of existing biographical articles to find-a-grave. In an attempt to centralize discussion, I encourage interested editors to comment at Wikipedia talk:Find-A-Grave famous people. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 16:28, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

While I have commented more fully on the project talk page, I disagree with Uninvited Company and believe that at the very least an External link to Find A Grave is equally useful to those of IMBD, which has now been accepted as a 'standard' External link here. Doc 15:38, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

The Find A Grave site is considerably less encyclopedic than IMDB. It's generally quite poor quality, both in the kiknd of information provided and its reliabiliy. DreamGuy 07:39, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Sockcheck User:Cbaus

John Lott was doing just fine ignoring the John Lott Sock and Meat puppets, but now it's just over the top. Please Sockcheck User:Cbaus and the other new users who show up just to revert John Lott and take appropriate action. Thanks. Hipocrite - «Talk» 17:07, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

User talk:198.209.24.254

Is someone going to enact the block that was warned about a few hours ago? --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 19:17, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Unless I'm mistaken, the user hasn't made any edits since the warning was given. --Kbdank71 19:35, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I count 9 edits (all vandalism). 7 to Republican Party (United States), and one a piece to List of socialists and Zikan. Unless this is a completely different user at this IP address. If so, I guess I'll go add a new warning. --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 19:44, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Dynamic IP vandalizing multiple articles

I had originally received this request from Bonaparte. He wanted me to protect 4 pages that a pro Nazi anon has been hitting hard. The trouble is that this anon is using a dynamic IP based out of Hungary, so protection isn't the best option. The IPs that have been used are 81.182.194.197 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log), 81.182.104.136 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log), 81.182.195.63 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log), 81.182.20.159 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) and 81.182.194.197 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log). He's been spewing really awful hate literature type stuff. I'm not an expert at dynamic IPs. Hopefully someone else on here is (I'm going to cross post this on ViP as well). Any help would be appreciated.

The articles in question are:

• Second Vienna Award (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Greater Hungary (political concept) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Vienna Awards (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Treaty of Trianon (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

--Woohookitty^{(cat scratches)} 19:53, 6 December 2005 (UTC) Unless you want to block every IP of this person for a long time, I think protecting is the best thing you can do. - Mgm|^(talk) 09:50, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Edit war Shiloh Shepherd Dog

There is an edit/revert war going on at Shiloh Shepherd Dog. I'm seeing that the user Shiloh lover has tried discussion with one or more anonymous editors to no avail on the talk page. Turning on protection on the page may be a good idea to encourage actual discussion. - Trysha ^(talk) 20:00, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Instantnood probation

User:Instantnood is on WP:Probation from inappropriate editing on Chinese topics [141]. He has been engaging in slow revert wars. Slow revert wars are "inappropriate editing".

• on Hong Kong-style western cuisine. 6 reverts betwen 28 Nov and 2 Dec, when it was quiet, then out of the blue he reverted again today [142] with the same edit summary he's used twice before and no talk page discussion.

• On Transportation in Beijing, 17 edits since 15 Nov, half of which are reverts. No talk page discussion.

• Another half dozen pages where he is reverting on a daily basis over pronunciation guide differences: Grass jelly, Chinese herb tea, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Yucca de Lac, Hong Kong Stadium, Discovery Bay, Radio Television Hong Kong, Cha chaan teng.

Regardless of whether these edits are "right"; since he is under probation, the onus is on Instantnood to not engage in these behaviors. SchmuckyTheCat 21:31, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

In case anyone is wondering

This is a request to ban Instantnood from these articles per the terms of Wikipedia Probation put on us by the ArbCom. SchmuckyTheCat 19:18, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Is the meaning of "any article which relates to China which they disrupt by inappropriate editing" in the ArbCom decision extended beyond to what is not even marginally relevant to the disputed issues that led to the ArbCom case? In that case thousands of articles can be "relates to China". — Instantnood 19:57, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

• Yes, exactly. SchmuckyTheCat 20:05, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

  I guess neither you nor I can truly interpret the intention of the decision by members of the Arbitration Committee. — Instantnood 20:12, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

The remedy does not come into effect at all if you do not edit disruptively. If in doubt, play nicely. -Splash^talk 20:16, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

• Since the case was finalized, I've refrained from playing his revert games. He has not, and has continued to do one revert a day on a dozen or so articles against a handful of editors (mostly NOT me). That's why I came here. I'm reporting that he IS editing disruptively and asking for the remedy ArbCom spelled out: probation and banning from the disrupted articles. SchmuckyTheCat 20:20, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

  If I were editing disruptively then there can be action against me (and/or the other party/ies) no matter the topics are related or not to those that led to the ArbCom case. Therefore the key issue here is whether the proposed banning of the ArbCom decision is extended to any China-related topics that are not even marginally related to the case itself. As for " Since the case was finalized ", the matter around those articles SchmuckyTheCat mentioned above has surfaced before the case was closed. — Instantnood 20:30, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

  Yes, exactly. "any article which relates to China". SchmuckyTheCat 20:45, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

  This should better be clarified by an ArbCom member who was responsible for our case, not by you nor I. — Instantnood 21:05, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Clarified

So clarified: [143]. So again, I ask, for an administrator to review the items referred to above. At least a wet noodle? SchmuckyTheCat 06:08, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Haha...so are edits in Template:Asia, Hong Kong-Macau Ferry Pier, List of railways in China and List of seaports, considered disruptive enough? And these are only the few uncovered in the space of a few hours. I wonder what happens when I go back to review all his edits for the past weeks and months?--Huaiwei 14:17, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

" And these are only the few uncovered in the space of a few hours. " My last edit to the list of seaports was on December 5 [144]. It was not me who started the contentious edits to Hong Kong-Macau Ferry Pier [145], list of railways in China [146] and template:Asia [147] in the past few days. — Instantnood 14:33, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

I am pretty sure you cant deny the fact that I kept away from China-related articles for quite some time now, until the conclusion of the arbcom. All these while, anyone can see how you continued your little compaigns all over wikipedia, betraying the trust of those who kept their promises. "Undercovered in a few hours", of coz, dosent mean they originated in a matter of hours:

• List of seaports became an issue when you somehow single-handedly think some innocent commas play a part in "acknowledging both sovereignty and political status" in a December 1 edit [148], which sparked 5 days worth of edit warring. Interesting why you seem to deny that anything "disruptive" has happened just by saying no editing occured post December 5? Taking us as idiots once again?
• Hong Kong-Macau Ferry Pier became an issue when you removed Alanmak's edit with no apparant reason [149] other than under the guise of "expanded".
• List of railways in China was the subject of long standing disputes until it halted with my last edit dated 7 October 2005 [150]. A series of mysterious anon edits in October somehow switched the page to the version you prefer for no dime of a reason. I diligently switched it back a few hours ago, and quite naturally, an edit war breaks out, with or without an arbcom Probation going on. The show of contempt towards the arbcom is astounding.
• template:Asia was a random discovery, when I found out it was, well, the same old suspect who added HK and Macau to a template which once comprised only of independent territories back in 28 July 2005 [151]. I reverted the move on 8 December [152], and the rest is history.

Not you who started the contentious edits, you say? I dont care if its a second ago or ten million years ago. A misdeed is a misdeed, and face the music like a man.--Huaiwei 15:02, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

For the list of seaports, I made those edits [153] because I noticed the disparity among how non-sovereign territories are presented, and some subnational entities are not presented with the corresponding sovereign states. For Hong Kong-Macau Ferry Terminal, I removed the words special administrative region because their political status is not immediately related, and is mentioned in the articles on them. For template:Asia, it's because non-sovereign territories are included in all other templates for continents and regions, and the Gaza Strip and the West Bank were already included [154]. For the list of railways in China, I did not noticed the previous edits. I only noticed it when I was watching the new round of contentious edits by you. — Instantnood 16:22, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Personal Info in Edit Summery

On this page, in the edit summery of the second deelted edit, the personal identity and employment info of a wikipedia user is revealed. This revision was delted specifically to get this information out of the history at the poster's request. Is there any way to remove this edit summery from what is visible to non-admins who click on the history tab? DES ^(talk) 23:07, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Ability to change edit summeries on this issue. DES ^(talk) 21:23, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

User:Zora

Islam writer Zora http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Zora belittlingly edited and destroyed portions of a Christian article unfavorably in favor of historic Muslim figure with the same name Aisha. Left sarcastic, libellous, inappropriate edit note.

Proceeded to go to the web site link provided in the article she improperly edited and left inappropriate, insulting email message.

Um, this user is defending a vanity page and is delusional. She's accusing me of things I never did. I'm not a Muslim and I've never even visited her web site. Perhaps I should -- it might be amusing. Zora 04:52, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Wolf Blitzer wheel war

Wolf Blitzer has now been protected 4 times and unprotected 3 times in the course of an hour, log. The issue seems to be that the article was mentioned on CNN, and has gotten a lot of attention. Danny decided to protect because of the potential for vandalism, because of its new visibility. Pharos unprotected it, and they each repeated three times. This is disgraceful behavior. More importantly (currently) the article remains protected "because the article has achieved wide public notice." This is explicitly not in our protection policy, and for good reason. It goes against the spirit of Wikipedia. In fact, high visibility articles like those on the main page should remain unprotected to display what Wikipedia is to new visitors. In fact, there was minimal vandalism before the protection, and I suspect most were simply tests. This should be unprotected as soon as possible (though I'm not going to indulge and join the wheel war). Dmcdevit·t 00:13, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree, and would also observe the addition of two new parts of the protection policy: "Corrections" and "notability". -Splash^talk 00:33, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I think someone is misinterpreting what Jimbo said on CNN. We do protect articles when they're on TV, while they're on TV. But we do not protect articles merely because they are "widely noticed". Kelly Martin (talk) 00:47, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Jon Garrett removing references to Common Era

This editor, who is banned from removing referrences to Common Era and replacing them with AD or BCE has done that in this [155] and other edits recently, this time as User:Jguk. CDThieme 00:58, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

69.141.246.127 (talk · contribs)'s only contributions are doing the above, but only twice. Very recent, but I have no way of knowing if it is related. Jkelly 03:31, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

No, I don't believe that ip is Jguk... Jguk edits from the UK, usually with the range 195.40.200.0/10 (belonging to www.easynet.co.uk). Sortan 16:25, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

This might not be technically against his arbcom prohibition, but I do believe it very clearly violates the spirit, and is gaming the system (much like him making four reverts in 25 hours). The arbcom prohibition against jguk (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) states:

Jguk banned from changing BCE to BC or CE to AD

1) Jguk is indefinitely prohibited from changing BCE to BC or CE to AD in any article, for any reason.

Furthermore, there is a finding of fact which states:

Jguk's campaign

1) Jguk has changed the era notation on hundreds of articles which he does not usually edit to reflect his preferred usage BC AD, see for example his edits to Khazars: [156], [157], [158].

This is the exact type of editing he has continued to do recent edits (most specifically here [159], as well as the aforementioned Olmec article). Is this allowed editing? Some sort of clarification would be most appreciated.

In my opinion, not only do his edits violate the arbcom prohibition, but in his quest to remove BCE/CE notation he introduces inaccuracies into articles. For example changing 3500 BCE to 5500 years ago (which is awkward phrasing, and might be correct today, but not so in 20 years), as wells as changing start of the Common Era to 1 BC and 1 AD (which changes general and vague phrasing to a specific date, which implies a precision that is not there).

Finally the arbcom case states:

Enforcement by ban

1) Jguk may be briefly banned, up to a week in the case of repeated offenses, should he attempt to change the era notation in any article.

Sortan 16:25, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

• My opinion is that these edits (Changing "beginning of the Common Era" to "1 AD" [160] and changing "500 CE" to "500" [161]) are clear attempts to game the ruling and follow the letter of the law while violating the spirit. However, I am both a very new administrator as well as someone with a personal preference for BCE/CE notation in his own editing, so I'd ask someone else to have a look and perform a block in accordance with the arbcom ruling. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 16:38, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Changing "AD 500" or "500 CE" to plain "500" may actually be wise. I recommend that in cases where the discussion does not include BC[E] dates. dab (ᛏ) 16:45, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
    • Wise or not, jguk of all people should not be doing this. Personally I think that "AD 500" or "500 CE" look and read better than a plain "500" (and linking dates like "500" to make them stand out / look like dates is not an improvement as dates are far too over linked- there was a discussion on this at the MOS). Sortan 16:57, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

• 68.20.16.164 (talk · contribs) has been doing the opposite. Is the ceasefire breaking down? dab (ᛏ) 16:42, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Let's hope not. As it is, I am blocking jguk for three hours as the edit certainly does contravene the arbcom ruling. I am also leaving a note on his talk page telling him not to be stupid and get himself banned over this. [[Sam Korn]] 16:49, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
    • Most people who were around for the ceasefire have stopped (with the exception of jguk). New users (like User:Chooserr and his socks) haven't, as well as some anons like 209.115.69.107 (talk · contribs) Sortan 16:57, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
      • I have the dim suspicion that said anons are well-established users who are logged out because they know very well that their reputation would not gain from such campaigning. dab (ᛏ) 19:24, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
        • Jguk's certainly tried that in the past (see [162]), but I don't think it worked out too well for him. Sortan 20:38, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

User:2004-12-29T22:45Z

2004-12-29T22:45Z (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) I have blocked this user for two weeks for willfully violating established consensus and again attempting to publish unverifiable personal details about a porn star (in this case, Tawnee Stone). I have also deleted those items from the article.

For background see Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive44#Jordon_Capri and related items.

Brief Summary: This user, who does in fact make useful contributions to the encyclopedia, seems to enjoy stalking porn stars. By doing "research" on obscure web forums, college directories, blogs and other sites, he claims to have discerned the real identity of several porn stars whose professional work appears exclusively under a psuedonym. (For example, in the case of Tawnee Stone his primary line of evidence is a forum post where someone claims to have known her when she was a waitress at IHOP and offers a real name.) Nor does he stop at identifying a porn star's name, but proceeds to include details on their family, hometown, current place of residence, current place of employment, etc. All very stalkerish.

Sometime ago (see above AN/I link), it was decided this was a Bad Thing and the unverifiable information was deleted from several articles. 2004-12-29T22:45Z was well aware of this and apparently decided to see whether he could come back months later and sneak some of it in again.

The message I left on his talk page said I would unblock him if he promises to stop doing this. Dragons flight 03:25, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Good job. --Golbez 18:18, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Possible Sockpuppet: User:Ayn Rand

This user has 3 edits as of this writing: 2 to his/her user page and 1 to User talk:Fred Bauder saying: "Why in your profile does it say retired lawyer? Your a censured lawyer you know that?" [163] This seems odd behavior for a new user. Can someone run a sockcheck? Firebug 03:32, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

It looks like they got blocked in line with the username policy (a move I was about to do myself). Ral315 (talk) 07:39, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Gregory Lauder-Frost (part 2) and "Legal Action"

I tried to keep an eye on this page as per the last notice here, but I was (I gather now, quite mistakingly) on the lookout for simple vandalism portraying Mr. Lauder-Frost as exhibiting Nazi sympathies. I haven't followed the actual content dispute closely. The legal action notice is here. El_C 10:38, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I decided to protect the page for now. El_C 15:12, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to say, without prejudice, that this threat of legal action may be based in part on the reporting of a court case which took place so long ago that it is could be libellous even to refer to it. I might be wrong, I'm no lawyer, but if that is the case then it would be a good thing for those possibly libellous references to be entirely removed from the history of this page. Jon Ward 22:03, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

First, though, they need to be indentified. If discetion is saught on that front, any of the parties are free to email me or any other administrator with the details for these, and we can take it from there. I also urge a close reading of WP:NLT, especially the section which reads: [I]f you really feel the need to take legal action, we cannot prevent you from doing so. However, we ask that if you do so then you do not edit Wikipedia until the matter of law is settled, one way or the other, to ensure that all legal processes happen via proper legal channels. If you do decide to proceed with legal action, you should deal with it privately with the user by e-mail. Do not thrash out the issue in a Wikipedia forum or talk page; you may find that other users take the side of the other party. (Would you really want to sue a group of users if that happened?) If your issue involves Wikipedia itself, you should contact Wikipedia's parent organisation, the Wikimedia Foundation. Thanks for your patience. El_C 23:52, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

User:Cognition

This user has seen fit to alter my comments here [164] in the 3rd green paragraph. Such behaviour is clear altering of the comments of another user. Can an admin please intervene? SqueakBox 18:19, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to mention that User:Squeakbox was the one who altered my comments in the first place. [165] [166] In a list designed for drug-free users, this user continues to add pro-drug comments. The most egregious of these was replacing "drugs" with "sacred marijuana." I support Squeakbox's freedom of religion, but he should not be using a list for drug-free users to push his pro-drug Rastafarian beliefs. Cognition 19:10, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I swore there was an encyclopedia around here somewhere... --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 19:17, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

(edit conflict) You cannot produce any diffs that show me tampering with the signed comment you made, and I already have because I have not done so. You cannot source your false claims that I a Rastafarian. Please stop inventing things about me that are not true. We are talking specifically about signed comments and the sentence Cogniotion points out I edited was not a signed comment whereas he completely altered my signed comment, see the diff above. His attempt to invoke vandalism policy to defend his pot POV is really quite funny but his tampering with my comments is not, SqueakBox 19:22, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't think Cognition altered your comment, Squeakbox; s/he just reverted you, to an earlier comment of yours. [167] SlimVirgin ^(talk) 19:20, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Which basically means he removed my new signed comment entirelly. How is that acceptable? SqueakBox 19:22, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

He reverted your edit. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but it's not a blockable offense. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 19:24, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I would say he tampered with my comment. Obviously his reverting the other parts of my edit were completely acceptable, but I believe if I make and sign a comment thatthat is not a personal attack or in the main space that nobody else has the right to tammper with it, and I hope that if he does so again he will be blocked. Its no different from reverting someone's comment on a talk page from what I can see, SqueakBox 19:37, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Both of you please go away and write some useful articles; nobody's getting blocked for this unless the bickering persists. Squeakbox, stop tweaking Cognition. A reasonable person should be able to figure out that this edit to Wikipedia:List of drug-free Wikipedians would be seen as provocative. (Not only that, but it is POV and factually incorrect—shame on you.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:58, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

It may be POV (and I am trying to include it to counter the opposite POV, hence creating an NPOV page, real POV would have been removing the abuse of which has been linked by blatant assertion to memory loss and schizophrenia which Cognition had more provocatively put in as an unqualified statement about marijuana and then replaced it with my statement instead of adding mine as a comntradictory countwer statement) but I strongly disagree that it is factually incorrect, and I have no shame in expressing such an opinion as factually based (see some of the cannabis pages which I do edit regularly and whre a discussion of this nature reallky belongs). My contribs speak for themselves regarding my focus on this encyclopedia which is on editing main space articles. I just don't like to see my comments removed, having updated them the other day. My putting a POV comment elsewhere in the drug free page was no justification for that. I have no wish to see Cognition blocked but I did want him to stop removuing my signed comment and writing about the case here did indeed do that so I for one am satisfied with the outcome, and there is a heralthy discussion on the talk page. SqueakBox 23:33, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Seems to me that if a silly "community" page is causing this much acrimony it ought to be done away with. Wikipedia:List of drug-free Wikipedians ain't a part of the encyclopedia, guys. Try to remember that's what we're here to write. android79 02:43, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

History merge needed to cleanup cut&paste move by User:Jmboothe/User:Boothy443 and mistitling of Salad Bowl (American College Football)

On 9 December 2004 User:Jmboothe (apparently no User:Boothy443) did a cut&paste move of the content from Salad Bowl to his newly created Salad Bowl (American College Football). Almost all the history left at "Salad Bowl" related to the football bowl game(most of the 'melting pot' content was added in a single edit), so it should be merged into the "American College Football" version. Note that somewhere in the process the latter article should be renamed with proper caps: Salad Bowl (American college football). 24.17.48.241 19:28, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Looks like a perfectly good split of an article to me. The history of Salad Bowl (American College Football) makes an appropriate reference to Salad Bowl as the source of the first version of the article. --Carnildo 00:05, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

As for my second opinion, I also feel it is a legitimate split because the page previously listed both definitions of the word. [168] Zzyzx11 (Talk) 00:11, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Re: the Wiki Scientology Article

The introduction in the Scientology article is not accurate. I have edited it more than once to put the dates and locations accurate and referenced / linked where the source of information is to be found. But some people are keeping an eye on the introduction in that article and continually change it back to the inaccurate and undocumented 1951 and 1953. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Terryeo (talk • contribs)

That's an editorial conflict, not something for this page. However, I did start WP:SCN, so I'll keep a closer eye - David Gerard 22:00, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Chooserr

Chooserr (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is continuing his campaign of date format edit warring. He is using a wide range of dynamic ips so blocking is likely to be futile. Based on the precedent set with Jguk I suggest brief blocking of any account who edits using this pattern combined with deletion of any edit that such an account makes. Fred Bauder 22:05, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Note that Chooserr definitely isn't Jguk from IP evidence, despite Sortan's assertions otherwise - David Gerard 22:36, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

That's why I blocked Chooser, not Jguk Fred Bauder 22:46, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

And when did I make any assertions that Chooserr was jguk? Sortan 22:48, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

This feels like accusing jguk. Maybe it wasn't, but your whole set of accusations in the section above feel like you are accusing him of running sockpuppets. [[Sam Korn]] 22:59, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I accused him of using sockpuppets and pointed to a specific ip that was used by him to mask his edits. Both of which are absolutely true. Where do I assert that he is Chooserr? Sortan 23:05, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I am saying that, in the context, it appeared that you were asserting such. I didn't say you did; I should have made myself clearer. [[Sam Korn]] 23:06, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I did no such thing. User:Dbachmann said some editors logged out and were using ips to mask their edits. I replied that, yes, jguk has done so in the past. How do infer from that context that I in any way shape or form implied that Chooserr is jguk? Misconstruing and twisting my comment in such a way is a pretty far stretch. Sortan 23:15, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Clearly you did not mean it. However, undoubtedly it is possible to infer that meaning. In fact, it seems to me that you have often gone to the edge of accusing jguk as being Chooserr but never quite doing so. [[Sam Korn]] 23:18, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

No, its not. There is no possible way to even remotely infer that I believe Chooserr is jguk from anything I've written. To do so is to twist the English language beyond recognition. Sortan 23:23, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Oh good. That's the highest compliment you can give to someone comtemplating the law. I have said all along that I don't see you having accused jguk and Chooserr of being one and the same. The discussion was about Chooserr and people using sockpuppets, whereupon you brought up jguk. I can see why you did, but you can also see how that could raise thoughts, I hope? [[Sam Korn]] 23:29, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I think you'd make a terrific lawyer. You certainly spend enough time trying to defend jguk and attacking those he disagrees with :) The discussion was most certainly not about Chooserr (if you'd read the heading and the first post you'd see that they referenced only about jguk). User:Jkelly was the first to bring up another ip address, and I actually stated the in my opinion it was not jguk. I repeat, that, from what I wrote, you cannot fairly claim that I meant to imply (or even raise thoughts) that jguk was Chooserr. Sortan 23:45, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

(whoa, loads of colons) I am very sorry; you are quite right. My sincere apologies. [[Sam Korn]] 23:48, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

While Jguk has been testing the boundaries of the remedies in other ways (e.g. removing C.E. or the phrase "Common Era" from articles), there is no indication that Chooserr (or his many sockpuppets) are Jguk, nor do I believe they are Jguk. In any event, I completely agree with Fred's advice and support his actions. Jayjg ^(talk) 22:51, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

RSPW Coaster vs Chadbryant

RSPW Coaster has been going wild with sockpuppets to taunt Chadbryant. I 3RR blocked both this morning for the history of KTVX, but RSPW has also been appearing as RSPW Poster, John DeJong and Doctor Strangelove. He's on a DSL with fast-changing DHCP, so expect him to come back and come back and come back - David Gerard 22:00, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Add Pickles The Cat and Emperor Gluteus maximus. I've also blocked the subnet for six hours to give the poor fellow a break. And unblocked Chadbryant on the 3RR, but not RSPW owing to the latter's spectacular display of bad faith - David Gerard 23:10, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

This user has caused enough trouble over the past several months that he has his own category. Chadbryant 00:02, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Chadbryant has caused enough trouble over the past several months that he has been blocked for 24 hours on two seperate occassions. Captain Weirdbeard 02:00, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

And you've had a zillion socks blocked and will get them blocked as soon as they appear. Well done - David Gerard 09:08, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

As you can see, this abusive user has returned under a new account. Chadbryant 02:53, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I find your comments to be shallow and pedantic. Electric Frankfurter 04:34, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Mr. Bryant is not exactly innocent in this matter either. He consistently ignores Wikipedia rules regarding reverts, neutrality, and use of stage/proper names for entries. He has also in the past changed people's comments in his own discussion page to make it appear they are saying something else. He edits his discussion page so that any warnings posted by Admins are deleted (which is his right to do, but it just serves as an example). He also categorises any reverts he does as "repairing vandalism" even in situations where it is obviously NOT vandalism. He and rspw-poster have waged their personal feud on many entries. Both of them need to settle down. One only needs to look at his posting history and read his talk page history to see what exactly is going on. TruthCrusader

One is sockpuppeting like crazy, the other is trying to do things more properly - David Gerard 09:08, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Please define to me how misusing the Wikipedia definition of "vandalism" and repeatedly abusing User pages with unwarranted and unauthoritated accusations of sockpuppetry is "trying to do things more properly." Zippity Doo Dah 21:27, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

As you can see, this abusive user has returned under yet another new account. Chadbryant 00:27, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Which has–oh so tragically–been blocked indefinitely. (The subseqeuently-created sock ElevenOfAllTrades (talk · contribs) has also been blocked.) I hereby post notice of my actions for review, if anyone thinks I've overstepped. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 01:14, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Fuck yes you overstepped. Chadbryant is vandalising user pages with his baseless sockpuppet accusations. Call me crazy but last time I checked I thought only Wikipedia administrators had the final call on that authority. How would you like it if next you logged on some crazy son of a bitch had torn up YOUR user page with something like that? This, and the fact that he's constantly abusing the Wikipedia definition of vandalism means that there is more going on here than some idiot with sockpuppets removing the sockpuppet accusations from User pages. You, as someone with the ability to block users, should have at least investigated. Sure, it's Wikipedia, with thousands of users making thousands of entries and changes on an hourly basis, but you should have at least checked around -- as it seems you have done on here. You overreacted, you didn't even bother to mark my talk page, and you are a jerk for doing so. TwelveOfAllTrades 01:20, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Said user is now out-of-control as User:Ling Ling. Chadbryant 01:42, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

It seems like we need someone with checkuser to control this, he keeps creating new sockpuppet accounts. Rhobite 01:47, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

The only reason this is occuring is because Wikipedia admins do not allow opportunity for explanation. Stop blocking accounts and new ones will not be created. That's how I see it, at least. Zing Zing 15:20, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

As you can see, this abusive user has returned under yet another new account. - Chadbryant 15:42, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

This afternoon I am going to officially request arbitration regarding Chadbryant. This is getting fucking ridiculous -- you allow him to run about placing sockpuppet templates as he pleases, yet all he's been banned for has been two seperate violations of the 3RR rule. He needs to be stopped, and soon, or at the very least censured. Deathen Taxes 18:03, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Arbitration has officially been requested against Chadbryant. For more information please see WP:RFAR or discuss the issue with me on my talk page. Deathen Taxes 19:30, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

You will be free to explain your case when you stop making personal attacks and removing comments from talk pages. Nobody should have to put up with your complaints if you can't resist namecalling. Rhobite 21:30, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

This latest DinkSock has toned down his behaviour slightly, but is still deleting items from my talk page, and reverting articles to previous versions which contain multiple errors. - Chadbryant 21:28, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Chad, as I asked on your talk page, could you please stop using {{DinkSock}}? It serves no purpose other than to provoke your opponent. I also think your use of the term "dink" is namecalling, and it would fall under the no personal attacks policy. Please think about whether your actions are resolving the dispute, or whether they are escalating it. Rhobite 21:41, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Template:DinkSock was created by User:Kelly_Martin for the purpose of documenting Alex Cain's numerous sockpuppets. - Chadbryant 21:48, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Does it matter who created it? You are one of the parties to this dispute and you should not be the one applying it to any userpages. Rhobite 22:07, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Ten bucks says he won't listen to you. Oh Good Grief 23:41, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

This user is once again attacking my talk page with his new sock (User:Oh Good Grief). - Chadbryant 00:17, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Nobody is "attacking" anything. I'm simply reverting your talk page to remind you that the arbitration entry exists, as well as removing the link you have that leads to an external page outside of Wikipedia which could be considered a hate page. Oh Good Grief 00:57, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

This user continues to attack and deface my talk page, even after being asked to cease. Obviously, he is not serious about resolving the problems he has caused. - Chadbryant 04:01, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Then please do not delete the remarks on your page which relate to the arbitration or to those actions on your part which have required Wikipedia administrators to remind you of the policies here on Wikipedia. Perhaps you should show your own seriousness by leaving such items in? Otherwise you look like a hypocrite. You and I both know that it wouldn't be the first time. Oh Good Grief 04:13, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Vandalism by 71.109.147.86/64.78.85.130/71.109.146.107

I have been trying to deal with the vandalism by an anonymous user. I first noticed the user for this edit to the bong article. After investigation I found that I'm not the only who feels this way. The user has been warned by myself numerous times and continues to make the same edits to the bong article. This is done even after blocking by changing IP addresses. Given the fact that this is my first experience with trying to block a user and it is getting so complicated I'd like someone else to get a second set of eyes on this one.

The user has edited as 71.109.147.86, 64.78.85.130, and 71.109.146.107. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Triddle 00:11, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Vandalism by 69.20.153.119

This IP's contributions appear to be entirely vandalism. Low level (inserts of "penis", "hello", "boobies", etc), but still should probably be blocked. see Special:Contributions/69.20.153.119. Ta. Deborah-jl 01:46, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Paranoid Pete

What should be done about User:Paranoid Pete? Other than creating a nonsense article earlier today which has been deleted, and an edit to his talk page, he has only edited the Sandbox, but his contributions there are very strange. He seems to be using the Sandbox as a place to write whatever he wants. I have asked him to stop adding nonsense on his talk page and someone else has as well, but he has not responded. Should he be left alone as long as he is on the Sandbox, or should something else be done? Academic Challenger 01:50, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Leave him alone if he keeps his (actually funny) behaviour to the sandbox. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 05:39, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

More Instantnood

Inappropriate editing

Equating Hong Kong and Macau as independent/equal to the PRC, rather than as subdivisions:

1. [169]
2. [170] Also, this is continuation of a slow revert war.
3. [171] Also, this is continuation of a slow revert war. Also, this is blatantly against the consensus of multiple editors on the talk page who've said that it is appropriate for HK to be listed as a sub-division of China for this article.
4. [172] Just slow revert warring.

Request administrator action according to Instantnoods probation. SchmuckyTheCat 06:20, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

For the first list, Hong Kong and Macau had their own sections for months before Huaiwei's edit, and had been the only territories listed with subsections after that [173] [174] (earlier edits: [175] [176] [177] [178], subsequent edits: [179] [180] [181] [182] [183], [184] [185] [186] [187] [188]), while all other non-sovereign territories, including French DOMs/TOMs have their own sections (see also the talk page).

For the second and the third lists, Hong Kong (and Macau) originally appear(s) on the lists with its/their own section(s), until Huaiwei and SchmuckyTheCat insisted to modify them according to their preference ([189] [190] [191] [192] [193] [194] [195] [196]; [197] [198] [199] [200] [201] [202] [203]), despite the case was ongoing, and contrary to what was agreed at a mediation.

As for the last list, Huaiwei was the only person who disputed with the entries, without providing any solid proof (see edit history [204] and talk page). — Instantnood 08:14, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

There was no mediation. For all the talk on that mediation page you insisted on entrance criteria of reverting pages back to your version before you'd get into mediation. Any appeal to agreement we had under mediation is moot by your own action.

Second, all your diffs from other users under probation are BEFORE we were under probation. That's the line in the sand, 'Nood, and you're the one crossing it. The line in the sand is to STOP the inappropriate editing. You can't justify continue to revert war because "I'm only continuing an edit war that started before the probation." SchmuckyTheCat 17:39, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

It's not my version. It's what things were like before you, Huaiwei and I started to edit it. If you're not seeing everything from your own angle, we could have said the efforts were moot as a result of your insistence not to have a step back, after I've a step back myself. No one wants any edit war, and you should not take the advantage to turn everything into your preference by shifting all the responsibilities. Disagreements began before or during the probation make no difference. — Instantnood 20:25, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

IT IS YOUR VERSION. It's not just me you revert war with. It's Wangi [205]. It's AlanMak [206]. It's Joestynes [207]. And of course Huaiwei. And that is just in the last day.

It's not about my taking advantage, I have mostly stopped reverting you. The consensus is that YOUR placement of Hong Kong in lists is pushing a POV and over the last year I have seen DOZENS of wikipedia editors ask you to stop. And you don't. You JUST. [208] KEEP. [209] REVERTING. [210] SchmuckyTheCat 21:48, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

This was what you said: " There was no mediation. For all the talk on that mediation page you insisted on entrance criteria of reverting pages back to your version before you'd get into mediation. " [211], and now you're talking about something else not related to the mediation, effectively trying to create an illusion that I was saying something untrue. If one has a quick glance of the edit historys, e.g. list of companies in the PRC, list of IMAX venues and list of airports in the PRC, she/he can tell who's actually paused reverting.

The trouble with user:Alanmak is something quite different and irrelevant here. I've suggested at his talk page on how we can let readers to choose themselves which pronunciation guide to be displayed, but he's not responding and keeps getting around removing things he doesn't like. Meanwhile, in what way is this link [212] (Joestynes) relevant? — Instantnood 06:17, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

I find it interesting when you specifically said "she/he can tell who's actually paused reverting". In other words, you consciously and intentionally "paused the reverts" to score points later on, such as right now when your behavior is being reported?--Huaiwei 14:21, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

No. Just that I am conscious of my behaviour and I know disruption must be avoided. I won't insist to display a version that is in line with my preference, as some people may do. — Instantnood 14:59, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Which then once again confirms the long-held suspicion that you consciously game the system particularly with regards to the 3RR rule. Why do you need to do three reverts before realising it is being distruptive? Even one revert made to counter a content dispute is already undesirable and disruptive. How do you explain your consistant habits in reverting reverts with or without the arbcom ruling?--Huaiwei 15:16, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

The reverts were results of your persistance in making contentious edits to turn articles into what you prefer. You don't stop until the articles fulfil your preference, but I do. I stop and I request for comment from the community, or try to sort them out through discussions on talk pages, including user talk pages. — Instantnood 16:30, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

"Hong Kong and Macau had their own sections for months before Huaiwei's edit". It has been said before, that time is of no consequence here. Just because you sneaked in a contentious edit, and no one noticed it till 100 years later does not render it any less contentious. "Huaiwei was the only person who disputed with the entries". If I was indeed the only one disapproving of any edit, why whould they appear in this page then? I would think admin action is needed here as well, and applicable to all parties involved.--Huaiwei 12:11, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Most vandalism to Wikipedia is reverted within 5 minutes ([213] [214] [215]). I'd doubt if any contentious or POV-pushing edit could be noticed by nobody and remain for a long time. My comment "Huaiwei was the only person who disputed with the entries" was made specifically to the national dish article. — Instantnood 14:59, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

That vandalism s are reverted in 5 minutes does not give you any justification in saying others must similarly respond in 5 minutes to all of your contentious disputes. Vandalisms are relatively easy to detect, and anyone with any POV can notice and remove them. Can you say the same for content disputes? And I am astonished that you cannot seem to decipher the difference between vandalism and content disputes. Do you consider all those who edit against your agenda as inherently vandals, come to think of it? Meanwhile if I was the only person who "disputes entries" in national dish, why is it being brought up in this page? You have not explained this interesting phenomena.--Huaiwei 15:16, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

POV pushing and contentious edits may not be easily noticed within five minutes as vandalism does, but definitely they won't stay long before being found, not to mention 100 years. I have no comment on why SchmuckyTheCat brought national dish up on this page. — Instantnood 16:30, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Another spammer gaming the system

Apparently not a bot, but still extremely consistent. Jpstackmoney (talk · contribs)goes to a lot of celebrity pages, does really minor changes, often ungrammatical ones, and then tacks a link to http://people.noteroom.com/ onto the top of the external links...said site appears to be some mass produced pages on celebrities grabbing news story summaries off the web with ads... this seems to me to be a clear linkfarming attempt on an entirely nonencyclopedic site. I'd appreciate if others took a look and reverted changes if they agree. DreamGuy 07:16, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Agreed that this is just spam. I'll go revert some (hey, I'm bored).--Sean|Black 07:35, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Upon further investigation, there are some productive edits in there. Hopefully DreamGuy's message about the external link policy will steer him away from the dark side.--Sean|Black 07:42, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Really minor productive edits here and there amidst clear examples of poor grammar, removing of links to competing sites, and so forth... and has he ever touched an article and not left a link to his own site (occasionally he'll do two edits to same page, one of them clearly adding the link, I count that as one "touch" as it happens at the same time)? Not that I've seen yet. At the very least I'd think we'd want to kill off all the links so as not to encourage him from trying some more under a different name and hoping that any we miss would be enough reason for him to continue on. DreamGuy 08:06, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

That's true enough, and the username makes me feel that he intended to come here to promote the site, but he might just find something productive to do. If not, well, he was warned. I agree that it would best for him to register a new username to start with a clean slate were he to become a good editor.--Sean|Black 08:26, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Good catch, DreamGuy. (How do you find all the spammers?) I'll support wholesale reversion of this guy's edits as long as he continues to add in the linkspam. If you have the time, restore any legitimate corrections he's made, if any exist. Looks like he's stopped for now; the non-uniformity of the edits leads me to believe this was not a bot. If he starts up again, he should be blocked indefinitely. android79 13:28, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I've got a number of low-edit articles I have no interest in on my Watchlist that I also know are high target spam space (like Mortgage), as well as a few that are natural targets for spam this season (Halloween and Christmas). Mainly it's just whenever I see anyone adding links that look suspicious to me I pull up their contribution history.... And I guess this guy pissed me off enough that I went through and manuaully removed the link everywhere this particular user name added it... unfortunately, as reported below, I think most of these spammers are smart enough to do it under multiple accounts and anons, and by warning a user (like I am supposed to) it just means they change identity... It'd be helpful to have spam-fighting tools and block lists for sites, though that'd just be extra overhead on the already-taxed system. DreamGuy 07:27, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

This link is all over the place and not placed by that particular username, User:137.71.23.54 has also placed it e.g. [216] [217] So to eliminate this is going to take searching and manual removal. --pgk^(talk) 19:34, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

My goal was to try to promote our website. Believe it or not, we're trying to do something good. Celebrities are the most searched subjects on the internet; however, there's no real good site for celebrity news. Wiki... IMDB... TV.com are all good sites for finding biographies, filmographies, etc about people. But where do people get news from? If you take a minute to look over our site, you'll find that the pages that we add links to on wiki are very relevant. Sure, Wiki has a policy of not using the external links section for commercial purposes, but just about every link that you see in these "external links" sections directs one to a commerical site - imdb.com, tv.com, nfl.com, espn.com, etc. It shouldn't matter who actually posts the links; rather, the link taken down solely based on the content of the linked to site. I really did think a lot of our pages were relevant to Wiki users. For instance, if a Wiki user is looking up Paris Hilton, I'm sure that they're very interested in finding current events about her. We facilitate this. I would love to hear what you guys think. Best- jpstackmoney

Please read and follow the Wikipedia:Spam and Wikipedia:External links policies. If you are trying to promote your website, then you are certainly nor working in the best interest of Wikipedia. IMDB, ESPN and etc. are commercial sites, but they are also proven valuable resources in their fields as agreed upon by thousands of people. If you ever get that level with your website, then other people will automatically list it and you won't have to. But you can't go ahead and try to use us to promote your site, as every webmaster out there can decide to do just the same thing with the same argument. I've seen many a page on your site now, and it doesn't strike me as a professional looking resource for valuable information so much as a blog spam bot attack trying to earn money off of Google ads that peoplpe click because they see links there to what they thought your site would have had based upon the links you had here. There's really nothing at all about your site that would make us want to link to you, and the fact that you go around linking it everywhere is more than enough for us to not want to see it anywhere. DreamGuy 12:18, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

User:Jayjayboom

I don believe they have been spamming porn articles into Wikipedia. Therefore, I am summarily deleting:

• Aspen Brock
• Barbie Belle
• Candy andes
• Blake Mitchell
• Cassandra Curves
• Dee dee reeves

If any of these are notable porn stars, let me know (give me evidence - goodness, what am I saying!) and I'll get them undeleted. - Ta bu shi da yu 08:43, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

user:Node ue

Node ue (talk · contribs) is being disruptive and uncivil. He is constantly in a state of edit warring with a number of editors over any article related to things Romanian. See, in particular, Talk:Moldovan language. Please could some other admins keep an eye on him, and try to encourage him to be constructive. He also labelled others users (at least 3-4) as "koncenii" russian word for "sperm". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Moldovan_language/archive01#moldovan_a_dialect) -- Bonaparte talk 09:19, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Template:GeorgeWBush

I created this template as an anti-vandal warning for the much-vandalised George W. Bush page. Template:GeorgeWBush What do we do about the vandal who posts the libellous allegations about the president and Jimbo Wales?? --Everton Toffees Fan 11:57, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

We block them. The Land 12:09, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Before you slap this template on any article, might I suggest you first take a look at WP:BEANS? → Ξxtreme Unction {^yakł_blah} 12:13, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I think that template will attract even more vandals (and more of WoW's socks). IMO the best way to deal with vandalism is to quickly revert it, block the offender and then pretend it never happened. That template will make readers think that Wikipedia has a serious problem with vandals and that this compromises the accuracy of its content. While this may be true, we shouldn't admit it. Izehar (talk) 12:15, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

User:Everton Toffees Fan is himself a vandal, trying to be clever. I suggest you take a peek at his contributions. I've reinstated the indefinite block that was temporarily lifted against this user. --Woggly 12:23, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

He has a sockpuppet at User:GWR FM Bristol - The Better Music Mix. Please block that one as well. The Land 12:27, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I indefinitely blocked User:GWR FM Bristol - The Better Music Mix because he is making a lot of weird edits and I don't know what is going on with him. I would very much appreciate it if an admin more familiar with this situation would review his edits and consider shortening or removing the block. --Ryan Delaney ^talk 12:33, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

He also made The Mix (Digital radio) which I have listed at AfD. --Chainlinking2005 12:39, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=GWR_FM_Bristol_-_The_Better_Music_Mix - uploaded images which were copyrighted. --Chainlinking2005 12:43, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I have deleted the images he uploaded, but there are still the two articles: The Mix (Digital radio) and Dave Hill. Apparently they actually exist, see this site. Mushroom 13:02, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

You mean Dave Hills. The Land 13:19, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes of course. I also think that the vandal could be a sockpuppet of Ruddyburdon. Mushroom 13:32, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I concur, and would add User:Danielle Whitman to the list. The Land 09:52, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

User:Zen-master (again)

Look at this diff. He is basically blasting the ArbCom for their decision on race and intelligence (and again bringing up the same arguments he did in his arbcom case. He hasn't learned a thing) and also accusing them of censorship. I'm pretty sure that violates his probation as described here. I think he needs to be banned from racism and intelligence for good and also possibly blocked from all articles for a certain period of time. His arbcom doesn't have that as a remedy, so if an admin doesn't want to do the banishment, I understand. Here is where you would go to record the ban. Thanks. --Woohookitty^{(cat scratches)} 12:03, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

• Apologies for not logging in, I'm in a hurry. But I don't find it surprising he's disagreeing with the arbcom, his probation didn't say anything about that. Do you have an edit that shows he edited an article which he wasn't supposed to? -- MacGyverMagic (feel free to post to my talk if you need confirmation). - 131.211.210.16 14:12, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Well the frustrating thing is that by tomorrow, his probation will be extended to all articles, in which case I'd be able to use this edit on the Price-Anderson Act. Honestly, at this point, I just would like to see a short block as maybe a wake up call so he can change his ways. Because right now, it's the same old stuff with him. He doesn't take any responsibility for his actions. And for Price-Anderson, he entered right in the middle of an edit war and joined it despite the fact that he was warned about it. And now he's doing his usual thing of claiming that the other side is doing massive NPOV violations and that people are not being genuine...and he's also suggested a conspiracy of some sort. Same old stuff. So that's why I'd like to see a short ban here. --Woohookitty^{(cat scratches)} 14:24, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

The edit to Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration is not a violation of his probation. He has the right to complain about our decision, about his ban from race and intelligence and about the request that his probation be extended to other articles. Fred Bauder 14:29, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

OK. And like I said, the problem is that the P-A edit might be a violation but probation hasn't been extended yet. Oh well. --Woohookitty^{(cat scratches)} 14:33, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Matthew_wyeth (talk • contribs • page moves • block • block log)

Blocked indefinitely - can you help me sort out the mess? --RobertG ♬ talk 14:52, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

OK, I think I've done it. --RobertG ♬ talk 15:07, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

User:Chaosfeary

Doing RC patrol this morning I encountered this user making these edits: [218] [219] [220]

He was only blocked by me for three minutes, since I looked at his contribs, saw he was a regular editor, and immediately unblocked him ([221]). I hear he is whining that I violated policy in blocking him, but I would like to politely ask him not to waste our time vandalising. Maybe he could help us by reverting vandalism during the period 1600-2000 UTC on weekdays when we are being overrun, rather than adding to the problem.

I also received an e-mail from him and replied similarly. Chaosfeary, please don't do this again. Antandrus (talk) 17:50, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Block him for a month. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:03, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Blocked for 24 hours by Carbonite. I was about to do similarly :) Ral315 (talk) 18:27, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Ah, I see now. Appropriate. Antandrus (talk) 18:28, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Off with his head. --84.64.132.44 08:09, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Possible sockpuppet of Lightbringer in action?

Is User:Anna2005 a Lightbringer sock evading his block on Freemasonry articles, or just another anti-Mason who happens to be making the same exact edits that Lightbringer used to? Thanks.--SarekOfVulcan 19:11, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Crossposted to WP:VIP, as "Anna" made an edit summary that too-closely matched previous ones used by User:Lightbringer.

...and to AN/3RR, as well. This is getting less amusing as time goes by.... --SarekOfVulcan 20:07, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Blocked, but I'm sure he'll be back.--SarekOfVulcan 23:16, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

IP legal threat

Howdy - I just received a legal threat from 24.24.130.247 (talk • contribs • page moves • block • block log) over my removing links that she inserted to a range of southern california university webpages. The IPs only contributions are adding this website to a variety of pages. As I am in a content dispute (i guess) with this editor, could another admin please take the appropriate action. Thank you! --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 22:04, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

It is the most bizarrely useless legal threat I have ever seen. I'd just ignore the legal threat, point the user to WP:NOT and laugh it off. Bring it back here if it get's nastier. [[Sam Korn]] 22:09, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

It is pretty strange, I agree. He is threatening to sue me for infringing other users rights to see his link. Anyway, I just received this email message which rearticulates the threat.

Kevin,

I got your "warning" message. I am not spamming. I happen to be good resource for students looking for off-campus housing. We are a completely free, community resource for posting and finding housing. I also put UCI's on-campus housing link which you deleted. Wikipedia's external links areas are places for RELATED high-quality information. The fact that you keep deleting my relative contributions is unwelcome and violates the purpose of Wikipedia's external links section. Please stop deleting my link or I WILL pursue legal action against you and report your actions to the rest of the Wikipedia community.

Sincerely,

Tim

Again, the same sort of threat. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 02:35, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

The person doesn't seem to get the point of Wikipedia. First, anyone can edit Wikipedia, this also means that anyone can remove anyone else's edits. Writing something on Wikipedia does not automatically guarantee a right to have that preserved. Second, Wikipedia is not a nondiscriminate dumping ground for any information whatsoever. It is an encyclopedia and has standards to maintain. — JIP | Talk 07:33, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

It's just a spammer who doesn't want to get the point of Wikipedia and is making ridiculous threats that they know they can't back up to try to preserve his free advertising. DreamGuy 07:49, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree. Ignore his threats or politely rebuff them, and keep removing his links and block as necessary. --Ryan Delaney ^talk 09:33, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

User talk:Marsden

I protected this for the duration of a block because he was posting personal attacks, and now for some reason I can't get it unprotected. The "confirm unprotection" page appears and I unprotect, but when I reload, it's still protected. Could someone else take a look, please? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 22:20, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Check now. Jkelly 22:22, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Jkelly. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 22:30, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Request for speedy delete

Could some please speedy delete Freemasonry Criticism? It is an article copied and pasted from an old version of Freemasonry that links to unverifiable sources, and is more importantly created by a sockpuppet of User:Lightbringer who was banned by ArbCom from editing any articles dealing with Freemasonry. Thank you. MSJapan 23:41, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm going to presume the blocking admin knows their beans, and I have speedied this article as the creation of a banned user. Next, we debate whether we speedy banned users' articles. I'll start: Yes, we do. -Splash^talk 23:46, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Uh, this isn't going to be much of a debate. Someone who is banned isn't allowed to edit Wikipedia. --Ryan Delaney ^talk 09:31, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Rolling back numerous applications of flawed template

Striver has created a Template:Muslim conflicts, without any input from any other editors working on the Islam-related articles, and has applied it some fourteen articles so far. I reverted some five or so of them and then gave up in despair. Is there any way to do this as a mass reversion? The template, in my opinion, is completely useless, and the title is hopelessly vague. This is much better handled by a category tag, particularily as there are hundreds if not thousands of battles in the early Islamic expansion, not to mention the many thousands of battles that occurred in later centuries. Zora 00:02, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Take the template to Wikipedia:Templates for deletion and get consensus to kill it for good. Phil Sandifer 00:07, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

(after ec)You'll want to talk about that somewhere, or, if you prefer, nominate it for deletion at TfD. I don't think the use of this qualifies as simple vandalism, so I'm not going to do bulk rollback (which yes, admins can do).-Splash^talk 00:08, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. D'oh. I've never put a template up for deletion and didn't realize that I could. Now done. Zora 04:54, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

North Carolina Vandal back again

If anyone really wants to know what this kid is about, have a look at his latest (as yet unmolested) spree: [222] -- he's even back editing on North Carolina-related topics. It's all there--King of the Hill, imaginary TV shows, nonsense entries, etc. This time, it looks like some of his edits in the article space are valid, which makes it harder to pick through them for the nonsense. Is anyone else on to this guy? Antandrus (talk) 03:27, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

• He's blocked for 24 hours. DS 03:43, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

He's back as Ahshi (talk · contribs). Nothing overtly vandalous so far, but please keep an eye on this one; he rarely goes on for long without starting a vandalism spree. By the way, look at the history for liquor [223] -- every sockpuppet that has been reverted is him. Antandrus (talk) 04:10, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

External links in signatures

We fight off link spammers all the time. What about users who link to their site in their signatures? See: Stirling Newberry (talk · contribs). — BRIAN0918 • 2005-12-9 04:26

It would be a really, really bad idea to allow links to external sites in sig files. They're just abusing the system... it's nothing but spam through and through. Link on their user page, meh, link on every talk page they add to = free advertising. Our existing rules should be enough to forbid this outright. DreamGuy 07:45, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

See his hostile comment on User talk:Zocky after Zocky explained what the problem was and asked him to remove the link

"On the day that there is policy against it, I will change it. You can read up on my talk page about the kind of people who have complained about it in the past, and why I have zero respect for the suggestion, however offered."

It is generally understood that even though something may not be written in policy, it doesn't mean that it is acceptable. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-12-9 14:08

Too right. I don't see anything on his talk page about the matter; has it been archived? android79 14:30, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

This one needs to die, quickly. Stirling is an excellent contributor, but using Wikipedia to linkspam Google is just not on. He's been asked politely, and he's been really quite rude about it. I think an RfC wouldn't go astray right now. Ambi 14:43, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Despite the several complaints on his talk page, he is still using it in his signature. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-12-9 17:51

I agree with your concerns; has anyone but Sterling ever defended the practice? Let me know if there's any way I can contribute to resolving the issue. Postdlf 18:54, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

I have blocked users for spamming before and on first glance I see no difference here. If I were an interested administrator, I would probably warn him that continuing to post sigs with his link would result in a block, work my way through the equivalent of the {{spam1}} through {{spam4}} templates, and then finally block 24 hours (and have blocks of increasing duration after that). I would imagine the community of admins would ratify this approach if it's really as serious as stated.

Anyway, count me as a vote for "warn, threaten to block, and then block" if he's spamming. It's been done before, and I don't think it has to go all the way to the Arbcom to get permission. Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 19:37, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

If there is no written policy against such links in signatures, there should be. No one wants instruction creep but this seems to me to be an easy rule to state in black and white (or whatever other color we want it in): No links to outside URLs in signatures. -- DS1953 19:57, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Agreed, though I think internal external links should be allowed - I've had one for ages and no-one's complained yet... -- Francs2000 20:01, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. I've seen a number of editors use external links to Wikipedia for reasons similar to yours, which is why I specified links to outside URLs rather than all external links. -- DS1953 20:24, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

I echo Jdavidb: Warn, threaten to block, and then block. No need for spam. --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 20:32, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

He seems to be ignoring the efforts of Zocky and others, so I fully endorse Jdavidb and LV's solution. Ambi 06:20, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

I went ahead and was bold. Please see Wikipedia:Spam#How not to be a spammer (#7). If I erred, take it to the talk page. --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 20:40, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

No external links is now a part of the Sign your posts on talk pages guideline. Please do not use this as an excuse to escalate the conflict or even block the valuable contributor: he will obviously give up once he realises that all links in his signatures are going to be removed.

As an important aside, we need to stop the recent practice of bringing site-wide policy issues to the Administrators' noticeboard and its subpages to discuss. Use the Village pump instead. That's what it's there for. Zocky 02:10, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

He's still using the link in his signature. I've temporarily blocked for 12 hours. If he replies on his talk page, stating that he has removed the link from his signature, please unblock immediately. --BRIAN0918 15:28, 11 December 2005 (UTC) 15:23, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

CDThieme sockpuppetry

As well as running the impostor Jguk. (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (note dot on the end), CDThieme has been multiply voting in AFDs and RFAs using: No Account, Tree&Leaf, Longboat, Uncarved Block, Quintusdecimus and Via Egnatia - and none of those were created recently, so CD probably has a pile of other accounts in the wings. I've also blocked CDThieme for 48 hours' reflection - David Gerard 08:31, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm starting to notice a lot of otherwise good editors sockpuppeting, and sockpuppeting evilly too. But I guess there's nothing we can really do cept catch the ones who are too obvious. Redwolf24 (talk) Attention Washingtonians! 08:37, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

It ain't good. Multiple accounts are allowable (I know a few good editors who run multiple accounts for editing different areas), but pretending they're different people is horribly bad faith - David Gerard 11:20, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

And pretending being someone they're not in order to hurt someone's reputation is even worse. - Mgm|^(talk) 14:09, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

I also notice him vote-stuffing at rename discussions: see Talk:Níðhöggr. Really not cool at all. —Matthew Brown (T:C) 14:25, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

I support blocks for disruption in such cases. Lenience towards these things is really the wrong approach, known as Wikipedia's "wanton enabling of trolls and fools". dab (ᛏ) 20:03, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

David Gerard has him blocked for 48 hours right now. The even worse thing about users like this is that they make the whole atmosphere more poisonous - this means anyone else who voted along with CDThieme will now also be suspect as a sockpuppet in the eyes of some, and who knows - some of them might be. Some of these socks were obvious vote-stuffing accounts only, but some of the others have significant edit history ... —Matthew Brown (T:C) 20:41, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Ohhh man... he's been directly involved in votes on renaming that have been extremely contentious, and if the only reason there was no clear consensus was because he wsa using sockpuppets to prop his side up, that means there are a whole long list of articles right now not where they should be because he felt his opinion was more important than anyone else's. Ugh... and I was specifically complaining about how the one side was gaming the system on the Talk:Níðhöggr article before knowing this... this just sucks completely... Is it possible to have recounts now that we know vote tampering was going on? DreamGuy 12:26, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

It's hard to retroactively fix things like that. This behaviour goes back at least to the debate over Talk:Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden where CDThieme voted five times for the option that won out. You may not want to stir up that nest of hornets again. He also had his way on Talk:Balder where he modestly only voted two times. But I'm not going to insist that page be moved back - we can just debate/vote again on it later on if we feel like it.

Oh, and he voted twice against me on my RFA so I should be an admin! :) No, not really - it wouldn't have made a difference.

One thing which someone probably should do something about is Talk:Laozi where CDThieme pulled out all the stops - voting something like 7 times in all. Without his votes there is no consensus to switch from the pinyin spelling so that stalemate can hopefully be broken. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 13:17, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

what. a. jerk. (That may have been a PA just now, but I am at a lack for other terms) dab (ᛏ) 13:54, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Not stir up the hornets nest? because of this user, the move to Franz Josef Strauß got ruined even though it could have won Talk:Franz Josef Strauss. In my opinion his votes need to be crossed out and articles retroactively moved (or moved back) in case a majority was reached for one version. i don't understand why these fraudulent votes should be accepted, no democratic voting system works that way. Gryffindor 18:25, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

They shouldn't be accepted. And considering he voted six times against that request of yours I doubt anyone will contest the move you just made. The King Gustav thing is a much more difficult case with multiple options. I don't understand it myself and I have no idea if the socks made the difference there. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 19:10, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately, people may have voted differently. 87.80.18.15 17:41, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Jay Leno

The article Jay Leno is constantly getting vandalised by IPs generally from the same range. I have done another range block, but this time for 3 hours rather than 24, and for a smaller range (/20 instead of /18, meaning four times fewer IPs). Perhaps the page should be protected. — JIP | Talk 08:59, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

University of Prishtina/Priština

Some admin should probably do something about the move, edit and revert war that has been ongoing on University of Priština and University of Prishtina for several months by now. Tupsharru 11:13, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

There is hardly any real edit history there; most of the history of both pages is filled with redirecting one article to the other and back. So I don't think a merge of the histories is needed/possible/desirable. I have just "protected" the location of the article at the location with the most useful history; see the talk page. (Actually, I protected the redirect at the other location, so the article cannot be "moved" back there. It can still be edited.) Let's just see if that can force the two parties to talk. Eugene van der Pijll 20:05, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it turns out that I've protected the page at the Wrong Version... Eugene van der Pijll 12:52, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

User:Nasty Dick

Just had a look through the new users log, and noticed a new user called User:Nasty Dick has joined. Is his username grounds for a UsernameBlock, or could he be seen as a sockpuppet/impersonator of User:Dick Witham or User:DickyRobert??

It is all rather ambiguous to me. --Sunfazer 12:03, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

For goodness sake, you people are all paranoid and drunk with the powers invested in you with your pathetic little block buttons. What on earth happened to WP:AGF? Has this user caused any problems? Why is a possible block being discussed even before s/he has barely started to contribute? How on earth is this an "incident"? 84.64.40.45 12:39, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

• Not a smart name to choose by any means, but unless they make any questionable edits, I don't see any valid reason to block them. Just keep an eye on the account, just in case it's sleeper. - Mgm|^(talk) 14:07, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Dude, check the user contributions. It's the same boring old vandalism. --FOo 11:27, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

User:Silver Marmot is not User:MARMOT

Curps blocked Silver Marmot for the similarity of username and the brusqueness of the edit summaries. But they turn out not to be the same person, and I've unblocked Silver Marmot, with a note on his talk page about gritting his teeth in the face of stupid people ;-) - David Gerard 12:35, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Same comment as above. Well done David Gerard. --84.64.40.45 12:40, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Edit war at MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning

Two users are trying to change the spelling of the verb form of "license" to "licence", and claiming that anyone who reverts them is unnecessarily provoking conflict, stating that the c form is the preferred spelling in Britain. And yet, the British-based Oxford, the primary source for all things English, makes it pretty clear:

"Do not confuse licence with license. Licence is a noun which means 'a permit to do something' (a driving licence), whereas license is a verb meaning 'give a permit to someone: allow something' (the loggers are licensed to cut mahogany trees). In American English, both the noun and the verb are spelled license."

I am now being accused of "bad faith edits" and "provoking conflict" for putting in the correct, universally-accepted, spelling of the verb form. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-12-9 13:41

I say we protect the page so that only administrators can edit it. They won't edit war. [[Sam Korn]] 13:57, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

For all who don't pick up on this, it is sarcasm. Admins are edit warring. The page is locked. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-12-9 14:09

Just have someone lock it if they continue without providing sources. You did everything by the book as far as I've seen. - Mgm|^(talk) 14:05, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

That's the problem, this page is protected. Carbonite | Talk 14:07, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

I support the blocking of admins indulging in revert wars on protected pages. dab (ᛏ) 18:18, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Isn't everything protected on the MediaWiki namespace by default? Titoxd^{(?!? - did you read this?)} 18:24, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Admins shouldn't edit war. They should know better. Why are Admins sometimes held to lower standards? --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 18:35, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

The issue has now been resolved. (Not by me, I'm just passing on the info.) FreplySpang (talk) 18:42, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Talk:Odin

At the top of Talk:Odin, Wighson (talk · contribs) is sporting a "warning message" now, after he "refactored" the talk page in an attempt to make me look like a bully. Could somebody have a word with him, to the effect that this is neither very mature, nor very wiki like, and maybe even remove the note? I don't care too much to have my character assassinated, even on wiki talkpages. Let him open an RfC if he thinks I am such a nuisance, as he appears to know his way around here. dab (ᛏ) 17:10, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

See also this nice edit, and here. dab (ᛏ) 17:39, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

User:Pigsonthewing 48 hour block

I have blocked User:Pigsonthewing for 48 hours for violating his personal attack parole both on his talk page and in edit summaries. Specifically, in the edit summary to his addition to User talk:84.45.217.185, and for his implication that User:Evilphoenix was not acting in good faith on his talk page. This is a higher standard than I would apply to a user that is not on probation. But then, that's exactly the point of probation. In the interests of full disclosure, I will observe that I am in a (minor, low-intensity) edit war with POTW on Jeremy Clarkson over the presence of an NPOV tag. I don't believe that that influences my judgment in this matter (and I would not object to restoring that tag for the duration of the block to avoid even the appearance of impropriety; if anyone thinks that is prudent feel free to restore the tag or ask me to do so). Nandesuka 17:25, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

West Azerbaijan

I need attention to the article West Azerbaijan and Wikipedia:Requests for mediation. User:Diyako has been editing arbitrarily and without showing sources or proofs. My numerous challenges to provide sources has been unanswered. My edits which I made, showing sources are being consistently reverted without explanation. Lately when I have requested mediation, he changed my signature and his user name with mine, and left the rest of the edit intact as if it was his post. Changing signature is vandalism. I request immediate attention. Thank you. --TimBits 17:49, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

I would suggest you both stop reverting, as you both have exceeded WP:3RR. It's not going to hurt anybody to let the "wrong version" stand for a while. Sortan 18:52, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

OK. I will stop, for the sake of order. And I expect the admins to differentiate between arguments well supported by various sources and those that are based on personal observation. Thanx.--TimBits 18:57, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

You can file a WP:RFC on the article and see what others think. Sortan 19:00, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Chaosfeary page moves

Chaosfeary (talk · contribs) has been moving large numbers of pages, including switches from one regional spelling to another. See [224]. I at least consider this pretty darn inappropriate, and told him so. -- SCZenz 22:24, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Since this behavior started almost immediately after his previous disruption block expired, I have blocked him again, this time for a week. I admit that the previous block of 24 hours was probably far too short. In addition to the large number of inappropriate page moves (including at least one cut-and-paste), he also changed other users' signed comments [225]. Carbonite | Talk 22:35, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

(after edit conflict) He's taken is spelling-change war other pages, mass-changing other user's comments (movies -> films) in this edit. I've blocked him for a week, as he made no attempt to discuss the changes SCZenz mentioned, despite being asked by several users. There's plenty of evidence he's bent on disruption (in addition to yesterday's serious vandalism). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:39, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

This is just more in a long line of disruption from this user. Might be time for an RfC, if one so wishes.--Sean|Black 22:43, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

If there's any more trouble, I think we should just block the account indefinitely. I see no point in wasting our time with dispute resolution because there seems to be no good faith on his part. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 22:45, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

I can't say for sure, because my interaction has been limited (I just got an email, though. Those who commented on his talk page should check), but if you feel that's necessary I wouldn't object. I probably would have done so myself after the Nazi/Christianity thing had it been a newer account.--Sean|Black 22:54, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

I finished off the reversion of his fiber optic → fibre optic moves. I'm not sure whether or not to revert the moves of 'movie' to 'film' categories, since I'm not sure whether this was discussed anywhere beforehand (haven't gone back that far in the user's history). Probably not, but ... —Matthew Brown (T:C) 23:21, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Ah, the charming little fella finished up with this lovely edit. If this isn't a reincarnation of user:Irate, they must have gone to the same finishing school in the Swiss alps. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:47, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Someone earlier on my talk page accused him of being USer:Enviroknot, who has been banned already. At the time I didn't think so, as my only interaction with him was on Poison ivy, where he had a weird idea but was trying to follow move policy and didn;t launch into a profanity-fueled falmefest when I disagreed with him, so I figured it couldn;t be. But I do see that he did make a lot of edits to Islamofascist, which is prime Enviroknot territory. If he is Enviroknot then that'd end any debate on whether to red tape was needed to block him, as he is already supposed to be blocked. DreamGuy 12:40, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, CheckUser showed that he was not Enviroknot.--Sean|Black 20:50, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

• I believe it established that he was working from an open proxy. Please check with an admin on this, though, as I don't have the cite. I have been subjected to abuse by both names, and am not exactly an unbiased party. 21:04, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

• PS: If it were up to me, I would move to have him blocked indefinitely post haste. Please check the extremely suspicious edit history at User:FluffyPinkKittensOfDoom, which instantly followed his being barred for 3RR.BYT 21:08, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Probable WOW accounts

These new accounts are either sockpuppets of WoW or impersonations of him:

• User:Prince William County, Virginia on wheels!
• User:Croboys elite vs. rednecks carlow crab stokes county on tires!
• User:King of the Hill vandal on tires!
• User:WikiAdm on wheels!
• User:The Fish from Florida on wheels!
• User:King William County, Virginia on wheels!

It looks like Willy is getting slightly more creative in naming. Can someone block these, please? Jonathunder 22:58, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Looks like Curps has already got all these — check his block log. Hermione1980 23:02, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

The accounts listed above have been marked and blocked indefinitely by Splash and me. Hall Monitor 23:04, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Thank you to all who helped with blocking and marking these. Jonathunder 23:08, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

That's almost certainly the North Carolina Vandal; about twenty of those fake WoW accounts have names which echo the NCV's interests. It's either him or someone who has been following his activities for the last five months really closely. Currently he has one active account (User:Ahshi) making semi-legitimate edits, but remember you always can shut him down by blocking 63.19.128.0/17 (unless he is editing from a school computer, which he probably does for edits around 1500-2000 UTC). Antandrus (talk) 00:11, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Wow! I wonder how the original WoW feels about all this - is he angry at his identity being usurped, or is he proud that he has started something grand? Izehar (talk) 00:14, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

He (or it, or whatever) started doing it again, creating these accounts, at 02:15 UTC ; I blocked 63.19.128.0/17 at 02:21 UTC. Let's see if that shuts him down. If it does -- draw your own conclusion.  :-) Antandrus (talk) 02:23, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

AND HERE HE IS -- [226] -- two minutes later, online, claiming not to be vandalising. That's the one creating those accounts. "I'm not even vandalizing!" LOL. Antandrus (talk) 02:31, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Removal of libel from edit history

I believe that a past edit of Donny & Marie may need to be deleted from the history due to potentially libelous content. The particular edit I am referring to is [227]. The same accusation was apparently not noticed by other editors and was retained in succeeding edits [228], [229], [230], [231], [232], [233], [234]. Note that only the first cited edit made the offensive claim; the other edits left that claim in, but did not amplify or change it. This was previously mentioned on WP:AN but received no response there. --Metropolitan90 01:37, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any policy which allows for the deletion of edits based on their being potentially libelous. A precident seems to have been set for the deletion of edits which contain nonpublic personal information, such as addresses and phone numbers, but I don't think that's been extended to libel. I do note that John Seigenthaler Sr. was entirely deleted and restarted on the grounds of libel, at the express fiat of Jimbo; I don't think that sets a precident by itself, as there remain thousands of articles (not least George W. Bush) whose histories contain all kinds of silly scandalous whatnot. I expect that, in order for the deletions to suggest to be actioned, someone would need to cite such an exisitng policy or precident (that I'm not aware of), undertake the process of establishing such a policy, or appeal to Jimbo. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:56, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

I watched John Seigenthaler Sr.'s appearance on C-Span's Washington Journal this morning. He places a great deal of emphasis on defamatory information which remains in page history, even emphasizing a complaint that deleted pages are still available to a large number of anonymous administrators. He feels this a fundamental flaw in our system which needs to be fixed. Deleting the article puts the page history beyond public view, but not beyond the view of our administrators. Of course to save the content of the current article it is used to populate the new article after deletion. I guess the question is whether any person who is the subject of defamation in a Wikipedia article is entitled to at least as much deletion of page history as was done in the case of John Seigenthaler Sr.? Is John Seigenthaler Sr. entitled to yet another purging of page history? Would anyone in similar circumstances be? John Seigenthaler Sr. rightly points out that not everyone maligned on Wikipedia has access to the editorial page of USA Today. It is hard to argue that we should ignore the complaints of others on the basis that they don't have the power to make an effective complaint in the media. Fred Bauder 02:20, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Of course not every article subject has access to the editorial page of USA Today - but that's irrelevent. Siegenthaler's editorial wasn't what got the error fixed - his pointing it out was. Phil Sandifer 05:29, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

If some living person comes to Wikipedia with the request that any libel contained in an articles history should be removed, where is the harm? Even without such a request, could we not just scroll through an articles history and pick out the blatent edits for deletion? As we are normally removing nonsense and vandalism as a matter of course, it is only sensible that valid, topical and useful articles also be afforded some "housekeeping" on a periodic basis. Particularly the articles that have caught the brunt of "bad editing". Perhaps only certain editors designated by the community could finalize the decision and process on which articles are to be afforded this "restarting". I would submit that if such articles were submitted to a two or three part "peer review", the offending edits would be relatively easy to identify and eliminate from the page history. On the other hand (and I don't know this for a fact), the possibility of a total absence of legal liability concerning Wikipedia (you and me), the Foundation, or Jimbo Hisself may negate any concern I have concerning libelous content. Then article/page history deletion becomes a matter of performing singular acts of kindness toward particular individuals (read:Siegenthaler).Hamster Sandwich 02:24, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Respectfully, have you thought about how much of a literally Wiki-stopping pain the rear it would be if GWB asked us to do this for his biography? -Splash^talk 02:34, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Not til just now, and I concede that it would be huge PIA. Now as per Findley, I agree with a change of venue. Just point. Hamster Sandwich 11:41, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Respectfully, discussions about whether there should or should not be a policy for selective deletions of libelous revisions (and the logical, legal, and practical ramifications thereof) shouldn't take place on this page, where its audience is limited, but rather on Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals), where the whole community can participate. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 02:57, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

I admit to bafflement about the importance of this, particularly in terms of Siegenthaler's argument. He says that the marketplace of ideas will take care of Wikipedia, but seems oddly concerned that it will not take care of a discarded edit in the history of his article saying that "He has long been considered a suspect in the thievery of various forms of pottery in Iraq. He is an outspoken opponent of everything good and a proponent of evil." Because, what, children can go and meticulously read his article history to find libelous statements? Surely anyone committed enough to finding absurd things said about public figuers can invent far better libel than that anyway.

I recognize that the Siegenthaler issue and the sudden public spotlight requires us to rethink some things. But surely we can think intelligently about them. Phil Sandifer 05:12, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

And maybe we should purge the minds of all who have seen the libelous versions? No, no, no, a hundred times no to newspeak. For what it's worth I am strongly opposed to any deletion of history, for the reasons I stated here.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 02:12, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. Enough of this crap. We've kissed Siegenthaler's ass far too much already. Firebug 02:26, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Jimbo's words should clear up any confusion on the matter:

"It has always been our policy to delete libellous revisions and there is nothing about this case which is any different. The idea that we have to keep every single version of everything, whether legal or not, is simply preposterous. I'm sorry if you weren't aware of it, but specific versions of articles are routinely removed by admins when they contain libel, personal information, etc."

So, it is easy to see that libellous edits should be deleted. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-12-11 02:31

Although I agree with Phil Sandifer's common-sense approach, unfortunately we have a legal question here, and that means that no matter how much we may disagree with it, we must conform to the law. That means storing libelous edits in the edit history have to be removed. When the legal interpretation is this clear, there is no room for discussion or philosophizing about what to do. --Ryan Delaney ^talk 15:19, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Zen-master again

Can a neutral admin take a look at Zen-master (talk · contribs)'s behavior at Talk:Conspiracy theory? I'm starting to lose my patience with him. Thanks.--Sean|Black 02:50, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

What is your concern exactly? When an article is disputed, the {npov} template is generally added to it. zen master T 02:56, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

It's not that. You're editing of the article has been mostly fine, but the way we're running in circles on the talk page is what I have a problem with.--Sean|Black 07:55, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Isn't this more of a Mediation/RfC request?--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 02:23, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

He's already been the subject of an RFAr for disruptive editing of Race and intelligence and as I understand it, the Arbcom is in the process of extending his disruptive editing probation to all articles. --Ryan Delaney ^talk 15:14, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Pepito123 (talk · contribs)

Has been inserting incorrect information. Surely wrong are thise: [235] [236] [237] (duplication), [238], [239], [240].

Suspicious, if you look in context is [241]. [242]

I reverted all other edits by this person just in case. Comments on what to do? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:30, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Just keep reverting... feel free to add the {{template:test}} warnings and such to his userpage.  ALKIVAR™ 04:20, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Might be related to 68.190.51.99 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) -- given that they have made the same edit to square root in short order. Antandrus (talk) 05:17, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

BtVS page moves

Pinchofhope (talk · contribs) has performed a couple of page moves, I am not sure they are being done correctly or appropriately.

• Faith (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
• Spike (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
• Drusilla (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
• Darla (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
• a bunch of Potential Slayers

oh man... looking at her contribs, the list goes on. Anyway I can't see any discussion of this at Wikipedia:WikiProject Buffy, she's not using edit summaries and is changing the names to things that are less specific and thus less informative. I've left a note on her Talk page, but I just want to post a heads-up now in case a ton of work needs to be undone. Thanks pfctdayelise 03:46, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

User has made no page moves [243]. Cut and paste moves? Jkelly 03:54, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes. Regardless of whether the new names are appropriate or not, these all have to be reverted. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 03:56, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Hopefully, I've caught them all but we now have duplicate information in the articles she cut and pasted all of the data into. User:Zoe|^(talk) 04:15, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Chooserr again

Chooserr (talk · contribs) is spamming the Recent Changes page. I have protected his Talk page to keep it from happening, but he'll probably start using anons to continue his spamming. User:Zoe|^(talk) 05:39, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

My instinct when I saw this was to extend his block. Nandesuka 05:45, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

And now see User talk:71.129.72.3 and the contributions. User:Zoe|^(talk) 06:04, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

I've unprotected both Talk pages, but I will not hesitate to reblock if he repeats. I would have appreciated some sort of discussion by Mysekurity as to why he unblocked him. User:Zoe|^(talk) 06:28, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry about that. Just looking over the contribs of that ip and the discussion page, it didn't seem like there was much reason to be blocked for 24 hours. I changed the block to 3 hours, but please feel free to revert it, now that I've seen the discussion. This is my first time I've done any real blocking, so I'm sorry if I'm not quite familiar with the intricacies of policy, but worry not; I've been reading up. Sorry and thanks again, Mysekurity^{(have you seen this?)} 06:40, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

See User talk:71.129.72.3 for an explanation of why the block was done. An anon IP was signing its edits as Chooserr (I didn't know it was actually him) and more significantly, it was doing something very similar to what got Polysciwantacracker (talk · contribs) and You got that right mister (talk · contribs) blocked only minutes earlier (the former in particular was using a flurry of welcome messages to conceal a few bad edits/vandalism). 71.129.72.3 also posted some bogus block messages, particularly for User:The Devil Made Me do IT who has now posted to User talk:71.129.72.3 demanding an explanation. See also the talk page for Polysciwantacracker... he kept on posting obsessively (to the point of being accused of using a bot) despite repeatedly being asked to stop. Note that this is reminiscent of Chooserr/71.129.72.3's post-block behavior. I've now unblocked 71.129.72.3, but I believe the block was reasonable under the circustances. -- Curps 06:57, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

And I see that there is another section about Chooserr's editing above, see #Chooserr. -- Curps 07:02, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

• Was I ever blocked? I got a message telling me that I would be blocked if I didn't change my name, now it looks like I can edit again? was I ever blocked?--The Devil Made Me do IT 07:11, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

• I tried to ask choser why he blocked me, but he just deletes my question--The Devil Made Me do IT 07:15, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

No, you were never blocked. I noticed the bogus block message on your talk page and removed it, about the same time that I blocked 71.129.72.3. It's certainly not a good sign that Chooserr is removing your comments from his talk page, and persists in posting to your talk page telling you that you have to choose another username. [244]. -- Curps 07:22, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Curps, you're wrong. Chooserr was not posting block messages. Chooserr was warning people that their names were inappropriate and liable for blocking. Whether Chooserr had the authority to block or had to ask an admin for help cleaning up inappropriate usernames is not relevant. Chooserr had every right to post those warnings. Your actions regarding Chooserr are documented and by now quite well annotated with the facts:

• User_talk:Mysekurity#71.129.72.3
• User_talk:Curps#User:71.129.72.3
• User_talk:Chooserr#Block (go to second section headed Block)
• User_talk:Zoe#71.129.72.3

Your persistence in failing to properly apologize for your errors is the most telling proof of your craven abuse of your privileges as an admin.

--24.221.8.253 07:44, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Chooserr was indeed posting inappropriate block messages, see [245]. The user in question has complained here, and at Chooserr's talk page. Chooserr responded by deleting the complaint more than once[246] [247] and telling him to stay off his talk page [248]. -- Curps 07:56, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

They weren't block messages, they were warnings. And if you read that last link you see where Chooserr says that he has no authority to block anyone. His asking Devil not to post on his talk page is not unreasonable either. Stop trying to evade your culpability. You blocked him wrongly. Admit it and apologize to him. --24.221.8.253 08:01, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Read the message again [249]. It clearly states "Please create a new account for your current one will be blocked". That's a bogus block message. Please stop trolling. -- Curps 08:12, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

You read it. It's a warning of future happenings. Stop trying to intimidate me. --24.221.8.253 08:29, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

It is a notification of an imminent block, not a warning. Even as a mere warning it's entirely inappropriate. In case anyone is unaware, "the devil made me do it" was a catchphrase popularized by comedian Flip Wilson in the 1970s, and substituting IT (information technology) for "it" is just a punning variant. This is not a blockable username. No one is trying to intimidate you, however you are making inflammatory statements without presenting counter-arguments (comparisons to plantation slavery [250] and the horrific historical practice of cutting off the feet of runaway slaves [251] are in particularly poor taste), and this is verging on trolling on your part. -- Curps 08:45, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

And I can't even start to think about what to believe about the it is the way things work here at Wikipedia crap that Mysekurity just left at my talk page... is that self-parody, or are you really that self-serving? --24.221.8.253 07:44, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

I have blocked Chooserr, again, for 12 hours, because he has managed to convince me that he thinks that spamming his talk page to get unblocked was a great idea.[252] He needs to be disabused of this notion. Nandesuka 07:33, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Cut off one of his feet. He'll never run away again. --24.221.8.253 07:44, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

If you seriously think a 12 hour block equates to cutting off one of his feet, then maybe you need to get out of the house a bit more. Nandesuka 07:49, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

(The "outrageous personal attack" that Zoe censored from your view is as follows):

<removed personal attack for a second time - User:Zoe|^(talk) 19:00, 10 December 2005 (UTC) --24.221.8.253 07:57, 10 December 2005 (UTC).

(It is up to the reader to determine whether graphic comparison of irrational logic to historical evil logic is better or worse than using admin powers to assault and intimidating users. --24.221.8.253 08:47, 10 December 2005 (UTC))

He also created a few articles: Wikipedia Blocked Users' Sandbox and Wikipedia:Blocked Sandbox which he claims are to lodge complaints against blocking. I deleted these articles because users do not need special sandboxes to protest against blocking. They can do so on their usaerpages.--May the Force be with you! Shreshth91($ |-| r 3 $ |-| t |-|) 07:39, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Who's watching their userpages? A central point of contact might get patrolled. --24.221.8.253 07:44, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

An admin who issues a block should watch that user's talk page to get any messages. A blocked user is, well, blocked, so they can't use a "central point of contact". In any case, it's clearly disruptive to welcome and/or warn tons of users at the top of Special:Log/newusers (that's what I'm assuming he did), especially when you don't have the ability to block users or those being welcomed have made no edits. I think this block is warranted, especially after he abused his ability to edit his talk page while blocked.--Sean|Black 08:31, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Unbelievably heavy handed behaviour. Will I be blocked for "disruption" too for expressing my opinion? --84.69.121.212 09:22, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

I thought using a sockpuppet to avoid an ip block is a blockable offense— Preceding unsigned comment added by [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}#top|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/{{{1}}}|contribs]])

Yes, but him using the IP's 24.221.8.253 and 84.69.121.212 to fight and insult anyone who supports this block only hurts his case. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 18:15, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Exactly. I probably would have unblocked or blocked for a shorter time had I noticed the initial block, but his behavior after the block was in place was totally unacceptable.--Sean|Black 02:13, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

User:Ionn-Korr

Ionn-Korr is editing several greek-myth article talk pages, espousing what are generously describable as "fringe theories", and appear to be original research. While this wouldn't be a concern in a popular subject area (e.g. modern politics, or George Bush, Tony Blair, etc.), so any odd fringe theories are easily qualified, rather than becoming presented as the truth, very few people edit the greek-myth articles, and they do so irregularly. My concern is that Ionn-Korr will, if there is insufficient response to each of his suggestions, attempt to add his extremely dubious opinions into the articles as if they were fact, which would result in this area of wikipedia becoming a laughing stock. Any suggestions of what should be done? --Victim of signature fascism 19:00, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Sounds related to this guy. One has to wonder how many others are out there who do similar things but aren't caught. Sortan 19:09, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, I've spotted him on a few article talk pages but basically just ignored them because it didn't seem like he was actually going to edit any articles. Talk pages are usually filled with weirdness anyway. If he does change article content in objectionable ways, undo it and warn him about WP:NOR and WP:V and whatever is appropriate. If you spot him editing a page you can then check his history again. If he ever does start making a bunch of changes and you need another person to help, flag me down, or someone else with a background in the field. For example, I've had my conflicts with User:Wetman and User:elvenscout742 (as well as yourself, ~Ril~), but despite our differences we can all work together if one of us spots something big that needs fixing, and those are just two who spring to mind. DreamGuy 10:38, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Sapiosexual deletion?

I tried to look up info on Sapiosexual, which was not found on Wikipedia, so I created an account and added it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapiosexual but it seems to have been deleted.

The reason is "vandalism; personal attack", but not sure how that is, since the guy who came up with the term has requested it be used whenever possible (as seen on the external link to his own page about it).

Of course I'm new here, and if I didn't do something correctly please let me know how it should have been done.

thanks, David

It would be best take it to Wikipedia:Deletion review, but it probably won't be undeleted. Having said that, it doesn't seem to meet the criteria for speedy deletion that it was deleted under, but it probably wouldn't survive if it were listed Wikipedia:Articles for deletion.--Sean|Black 21:29, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

So, I'm not sure what to do about it then. We have Metrosexual in Wikipedia, so why not Sapiosexual ? If listing it here is not what is meant by "deletion review" then I have no idea how to actually DO that even though I've read that page 3 times now :) There doesn't seem to be an intuitive textbox for "add stuff for review here". *shrug* Rock808 21:42, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Replied at User's talk page.--Sean|Black 21:53, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

User:Oh Good Grief blocked

Just wanted to note here that I have blocked User:Oh Good Grief for vandalism for repeatedly modifying other user's statements at Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration#Statement_by_Chadbryant, specifically removing content from ChadBryant's statement. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 22:20, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Just noting that it was a 24 hour block. Ral315 (talk) 00:32, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Oughta be permanent; this guy's a persistant and long-term sockpuppeteer. Read the link he keeps trying to eliminate and his own words; he'll just keep coming back with another account. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 00:40, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Yea, I will, but only because you jerks keep on banning my accounts, which makes it rather difficult to discuss both the arbitration process and the ongoing process itself. Ever sit down and think that maybe, just maybe, it would be easier NOT to ban me, quit bugging my accounts, and actually discuss things in a rational manner on my talk page(s)? Curps seems to think so, and I would wager he has the right idea. Whoopity Doo 04:05, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

It's the RSPW dude again. If you see him stalking Chadbryant, it's RSPW - David Gerard 02:17, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Nobody is "stalking" anyone, with the possible exception of Chadbryant vs. TruthCrusader. As recently as a few days ago Chad admitted stalking TruthCrusader through his account on ebay. Whoopity Doo 04:05, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Isn't this entire thing a fight from Usenet or something that has spilled over into Wikipedia? If so, I wish they would both take their bickering elsewhere.--Sean|Black 02:20, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

From Usenet? Naah. Chad's just a jerk. Well...a sociopath, actually. Whoopity Doo 04:05, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

There is no "bickering" - it's simply one individual who has way too much time on his hands, and chooses to spend it creating multiple sockpuppets to harass me and others on Wikipedia. - Chadbryant 02:25, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree. You do seem to have way too much time on your hands, Chad, especially when you repeatedly harrass me with multiple AOL Instant Messenger accounts. Whoopity Doo 04:05, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

You're certainly right there, and I apologize if my use of the word "bickering" offended, but could you tell me why he's harrasing you?--Sean|Black 02:29, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, his abuse of the editing capability by inserting his own definition of "vandalism" into his edits certainly didn't help things much. Then of course there was that bullshit with the sockpuppet template. But really, one thing that really bugs me is that URL he keeps linking to that is a web page which HE created. It's a bullshit FAQ, almost all of the information being false, a bullshit FAQ created out of his warped, sick, twisted sociopathic mind. Through Wikipedia definition, it is more than capable of being called a "hate site" (which it of course is) and thus it doesn't belong on Wikipedia. Never mind the fact that this sicko is trying to use it to justify his behavior towards me. Dude, don't believe Chadbryant and try to leave my side of the story out of it. This goes a lot further than you know, and part of it is that Chad Bryant is a manipulative, scheming, sociopath who will do whatever is necessary to further his point -- even if it means lying or manipulating the truth. Ask TruthCrusader about this, he'll tell you what I mean. Whoopity Doo 04:05, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

I can't really tell you why, but I can point [(personal attack website removed)] to give you a bit of background info. - Chadbryant 02:41, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

I see, I think. This is all very, very weird.--Sean|Black 02:56, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

I see too. Here's the thing, Chad: Whoopity Doo or whoever he is in real life might well be a kook, but the link that you are inserting into articles is just as clearly unencyclopedic in nature. Wikipedia is is not a link repository for you. Nandesuka 17:17, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Is this guy using open proxies or is there an identifiable IP/set of IPs he's using? android79 02:43, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

This guy uses BellSouth, on a dynamic dialup as far as we can tell. We could block all of BellSouth, but that would be a little draconian. Part of me wonders if he's also the guy behind the vandalism of Seigenthaler's article, but there's no way to know that. In any case, he's an unrepentant troll and should be treated as such. Kelly Martin (talk) 15:43, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

No, Kelly, I am not behind the vandalism of Seigenthaler's article. I've never even HEARD of that article. At any rate, I am also not an "unrepentant troll" -- I have made it more than clear that I am stopping the creation of sockpuppets (well, except for this one, at least) and that a large part of the problem is that arbitration -- or otherwise -- cannot continue so long as I am one of the other parties involved and you guys keep blocking accounts. I have spoken with Curps about this situation, and he has agreed to leave one account open for matters of discussion; however, that account has also been blocked and as far as I am aware, it remains so as of this posting. The other issue is Chadbyrant -- you attack my clones, yet you allow him to run unchecked. Take a peek at his Contributions list and tell me exactly how all of his reverts due to "vandalism" are warranted? He is abusing the Wikipedia definition of vandalism, replacing it with one of his own, to suit his own selfish and petty gains. Chattanooga Choo Choo 18:15, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

It doesn't matter. It's not abuse as it is an attempt to continue to discuss the problem on an ongoing basis, but the various admins on Wikipedia block the accounts making that impossible -- so another one is created to ensure a continued dialogue. If the blocking woudl simply STOP, so would the additional accounts. But gee, I guess some people never thought of that idea. Whoopity Doo 04:05, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Whoopity Doo -- or whatever he's calling himself today -- just altered Chadbryant's comments again. --Calton | Talk 04:12, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Yeah I blocked that account but he'll be back, I think people should keep an eye on Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration and any other page where Chad's link is posted, that's not to say that chad is right in his arguments... most likely far from it but even if he's wrong this guy doesn't have the right to edit his comments. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 06:11, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

I also extended Oh Good Grief's block to indefinite for this personal attack. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 18:22, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Scratch that, since there's doubt that it was actually Oh Good Grief I have undone that block and will reinstate the remainder of the 1 week block. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 19:32, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

DannyWilde is back

... and he remade the previously deleted Wikifiddler. -- Perfecto Canada 03:27, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Unblocking Gaddy1975

I have been corresponding with User:Gaddy1975 on the Wikimedia Help Desk. Lucky 6.9 placed an indefinite ban on him on 5 December for being a sock puppet posting a copyvio of information on the fish species Cichlasoma urophthalmus under that user name after previously being warned as an anonymous user. Gaddy1975 claims that the information is from his masters paper but has offered to rework the paper.

It strikes me as a case of a clueless newby doing the wrong thing at the wrong time rather than a person aiming to disrupt the system deliberately. I am therefore thinking of unblocking this user. I have placed a message on Lucky 6.9's talk page to seek his views but would be grateful for the views of other admins. I intend to reply to him saying that we would be grateful if he could rework the article providing verifiable references and would appreciate the views of other admins. Capitalistroadster 04:42, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

• I have heard from Lucky 6.9 that he has no problems with it. Capitalistroadster 06:59, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

• • I don't see a problem with this. Flcelloguy (A note?) 16:53, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Ditto. --HappyCamper 16:57, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Jack Sarfatti making legal threats again

See here. This appears to be a WP:NLT violation. *Dan T.* 18:24, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Ready! Set! Ban! Alex Schenck (that's Linuxbeak to you) 18:30, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Astroturfing attempt

Something fishy happening at John Fullerton and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John Fullerton. The guy may be mildly notable, but it feels like a bunch of students trying to rig an afd and hype their PE teacher as an influential sporting and political figure. Tearlach 20:07, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Mumps, 81.111.172.198 and harrasment

On mumps I've run into a particularly unpleasant editor (81.111.172.198 (talk · contribs)) who has decided it would be nice to try verify my professional registration with the General Medical Council and to publish the fact that this registration cannot be verified[253]. A previous attempt is documented at this RFC. I think this amounts to harrasment and I would like to see this user banned indefinitely. JFW | T@lk 21:16, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

I have blocked this user for 3 hours while I evaluate the situation. Other admins are, of course, welcome to investigate or take action. Nandesuka 21:23, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Nandesuka. The RFC incident was a few weeks ago. This user has reacted most violently to the mildest opposition, has been engaging in name-calling and aggressive personal attacks. I forgot to mention that he also queried the Dutch medical register. JFW | T@lk 21:43, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

I have blocked User:81.111.172.198 for 4 days for disruption and stalking, and left a detailed note on their talk page explaining the relevant standards. I personally am not comfortable imposing an indefinite block at this time, although if the level of hostility continues to escalate, I might change my mind. Other admins are free to examine my rationale on their talk page, and/or revise the length of the block, of course. Nandesuka 21:59, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Dutch register too? Well, they're enthusiastic at least. On the other hand, if we're going to have cranks stalking people through the GMC database, it's probably best that they're cranks who don't know how to actually find someone in it... ;-) Shimgray | talk | 22:03, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

User:Jguk

User:Jguk, who, per the second arbcom case against him is prohibited from changing BCE/CE to BC/AD has done so again at Pakistan [254] (edit is also marked as minor, with no edit summary). This is his third violation.

From Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/jguk_2:

Jguk banned from changing BCE to BC or CE to AD

1) Jguk is indefinitely prohibited from changing BCE to BC or CE to AD in any article, for any reason.

Enforcement by ban

1) Jguk may be briefly banned, up to a week in the case of repeated offenses, should he attempt to change the era notation in any article.

He has also activated one of his sockepuppets, User:SmokeDog, to make further edits to Pakistan. Sortan 21:37, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

We've got a blue-light special on 4 day blocks today. jguk just got one. What evidence do you have that User:SmokeDog is a sockpuppet? Nandesuka 22:02, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Jguk himself [255]. It might be useful to run a full sockpuppet check on him though, as he probably intended to make this change as SmokeDog, and thereby avoid notice. He may also have other sockpuppets used for the same purpose. Sortan 22:09, 11 December 2005 (UTC)