Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents

Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents
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Harassment by User:Flyer22 Reborn

The user User:Flyer22 Reborn has been harassing me for quite a while, accusing me of sockpuppetry with zero evidence for it, harassment for removal of outdated primary sourced material here, and most recently the accusation that I followed flyer onto the Human brain article(which is actually beyond crazy to me....really? I see an article with a high importance rating that obviously seems very bad, and I got to edit it...and all of a sudden I did something wrong) here. This is getting to be problematic, and seems to me like WP:WIKIHOUNDING. Furthermore Flyer22's harassment would not be an issue if it were not for his/her/it's attitude and demeanor, which is quite disturbing. Petergstrom (talk) 22:07, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Please not that I notified Flyer here, and he/she/it removed it. The proper procedure has been followed.Petergstrom (talk) 22:14, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Update. This edit demonstrates an edit based solely of vindictive anger...why remove well sourced material that was missing from this article. The content is necessary and relevant function of the brain, and for no reason it was removed. No doubt some silly claim will be thrown of POV pushing

You are a reckless, POV-pushing editor.

Petergstrom (talk) 22:21, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

You should both use the article's talk page, for a start. El_C 22:23, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Two editors agreed that the function section was terrible, and she just flat out ignored that. That is actually pretty good evidence of vindictive harassment behaviorPetergstrom (talk) 22:25, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Happened to spot the ongoing edit war at human brain during change patrol, and a request for the page to be protected is pending. Home Lander (talk) 22:26, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

From my standpoint, it looks like a content dispute that became heated. One article talk page at a time: present your positions on the material. Myself, I'm willing to offer my opinion. El_C 22:29, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes the content dispute is relevant, but what I am tying to solve here is the history of harassment.Petergstrom (talk) 22:32, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm not seeing it rising to that level. You carry the burden of proof to display a history of harassment. El_C 22:46, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

And, more or less as per WP:BURDEN, it is your obligation and no one else's to provide the evidence to support your contentions. John Carter (talk) 23:10, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Petergstrom's accusations of harassment are unfounded. After indicating that Petergstrom is a sock because his edits are very similar to a previous editor, I left the matter alone because I do not yet have enough evidence to prove my case. As many editors on this site know, I do not make a sock accusation unless I am certain that the editor is a sock. And I'm usually correct about sock matters. After that, Petergstrom started popping up at articles that I significantly edit. The first one was the Psychopathy article, where Petergstrom engaged in reckless removals and falsely asserted that the topic is WP:Fringe. See here and keep scrolling down for what I mean. His fighting with Penbat was ridiculous, and Literaturegeek had to come in to point out how Petergstrom was wrong. After that, Petergstrom popped up at the Vegetarianism article, another article that I significantly edit, and he started making problematic edits to that article as well. He had also made a very poor edit to the Veganism article, which is yet another article that I edit. See here. It took Alexbrn weighing in on the matter. After that, Petergstrom showed up at the Insomnia article. While I do not heavily edit the Insomnia article, it is on my watchlist and I saw that Petergstrom has made reckless edits there, removing important material. I noted the WP:Preserve policy to him. See here. He indicated that he would continue to violate that policy. Jytdog helped with what Petergstrom recklessly removed. In that same discussion, I noted that I am working on the Human brain article, despite thinking to myself that Petergstrom might follow me to that article and edit recklessly there as well. And sure enough, he did. So I left a note on his talk page about WP:Hounding, stating that I would bring the matter here to WP:ANI if he continued to follow me. That's when he started making silly claims about how no one here cares about me, that I'm going crazy, and that he would bring the matter to WP:ANI too. See here. And so here we are.

Petergstrom has repeatedly made asinine edits to our medical articles, as currently seen on his talk page, and I do not believe he understands our sourcing policies well enough to be editing at all. Like Alexbrn stated, there are WP:Competence issues regarding this editor.

On a side note: I have dealt with many stalkers before, and some have been dealt with here at WP:ANI. So I know what I am talking about when it comes to stalking. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 22:36, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Flyer22 reborn overestimates her importance. Firstly, the psychopathy edits were justified, and many stand even now. The removal of primary material, duplicated content and the things still stands. Secondly, the veganism and vegetarian article edits were not poor, in fact we came to a conclusion that inconsistent policies were being applied, probably driven by WP:ADVOCACY. Third, the insomnia edits were justified, and Jytdog did not add any of the poor material back-material removed from the pathophysiology section, such as science daily, and multi decade old partially relevant primary studies. He added menstrual cycle risk factors as a cause. Lastly, Flyer22 overestimates his/her/it's importance. Just because some people edit similar articles, it does not indicate stalking or harassment. His/Her/Its behavior indicates stalking and harassment. Quite frankly the whole thing seems really ridiculous to me. The pure mental gymnastic being don't on Flyer22's part. It is like Flyer is the center of the whole dang universe. To the point where a multi week old remark made by Flyer, a remark which I barely skimmed over, is believed by flyer to be influencing heavily my editing now. It is just plain not true. A top importance article, on a wikiproject that I frequently edit, that is low quality is something I want to edit, regardless of who edits it. Petergstrom (talk) 22:41, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Overestimates my importance? Nah, I don't think so. But if anyone thoroughly examines what I've pointed to regarding you, they should see that you continuously engage reckless behavior, especially by disregarding the WP:Preserve policy. It's easy to see that you take removal of primary sources to the extreme. You also edit in ways that are clearly POV-motivated. Your WP:Edit warring and trying to WP:OWN articles is also tiresome. There is no advocacy going on at the Vegetarianism and Veganism articles, unless it's your advocacy. The Veganism article was mostly written by SlimVirgin, and she knows what she's doing. As for following me, do not insult my or others' intelligence by stating that you are randomly appearing at articles that I significantly edit. We both know that it's not true. The Human brain matter was certainly no coincidence. You were bitter that I highlighted your poor editing. You clearly stalked me to the Human brain article.

So I am stating it right now: If I see you pop up at yet another article that I significantly edit (like the Vagina article, for example), I will be starting a thread here specifically about your WP:Hounding. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:01, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

And given how we feel about each other, there is no logical reason for you to show up and start editing an article that I told you that am I working on. Unless, of course, that reason is to cause me distress (which WP:Hounding forbids). Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:06, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Show me some talk page discussion where changes are explained, or when they are not. El_C 22:46, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Nothing? That's the thing about posting here (if you're lucky enough to get someone to listen), you have to do the legwork, or it doesn't work for neither of you. El_C 23:14, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

El_C, I pointed to talk page discussions above. In the Psychopathy discussions, for example, there are invalid claims of WP:Fringe. In the Vegetarianism discussion, there is indication that Petergstrom does not have a good grasp on sourcing issues. In that discussion, I also pointed to where he had misrepresented a source at the Veganism article. At the Insomnia talk page, I pointed out that he had recklessly removed relevant material. Jytdog restored some of it with better sources. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:44, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I've already commented at Talk:Psychopathy, Talk:Vegetarianism and Talk:Human brain. El_C 00:00, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Petergstom, stop calling Flyer22 "he/she/it". I shouldn't have to explain why calling a person "it" is demeaning. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 23:24, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

So far as I can see, he only did that in the first post, and has since then been correctly referring to her as "she". John Carter (talk) 23:29, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Still quite inappropriate and ideally would be struck. EvergreenFir (talk) 23:50, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

It was done in this edit, this edit, this edit, and this edit. Some of these were additions to existing edits, but I don't care that much. Changing your post so that it adds "it" as a pronoun to refer to someone is pretty obnoxious. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 00:07, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Agree that that is needlessly inflammatory. If there's doubt, use s/he. El_C 00:13, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

I personally prefer they. It's more formal when in doubt. Callmemirela 🍁 {Talk} ♑ 00:16, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia allows users to report their gender in their preferences. A editor's gender is available by using (or simply checking in preview) the {{gender}} template and is shown on hover with Navigastion Popups. The fact that Flyer22 has declared her gendrer this way and mentions it in her user space ("I am female and was born in Florida.") makes Petergstrom's "he/she/it" jab that much more grating. Rebbing 01:55, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Ok, they. You ask for evidence of harassment, and I gave it in the first post, if that is not sufficient "legwork" I am compiling more. The psychopathy discussion of fringe, was not supported by recent secondary sources, so yes it was an incorrect claim. The edits, however, were good. The removal of outdated crappy sources, and duplicates, were justified and still stand today. The veganism article, nothing was misrepresented. That would imply malicious and intentionally manipulating something to support a point-which was not done. I used "vegan population" instead of "vegan population in hong kong and india"(or some region like that). The rest of the dozens of edits were totally justified and still stand. The insomnia article is a different matter. Jytdog added NOTHING back with better sourcing, he wrote something COMPLETELY NEW. Not in the pathophysiology section, where I removed piles of garbage-in the CAUSE section, where he added a sentence that menopause may be associated with insomnia. Now onto the WP:OWN. If Flyers statement above on the vagina wikipedia page is anything, it is evidence of s/he attempting to WP:OWN a page. Flyer22 still has this mentality that everything I do is dictated by her actions-that is plain wrong. S/he needs to understand, that his/her impact on my life in nearly zero. Until today, I barely gave him/her a thought(except for the sock puppet accusation, which was quite rude). The bottomline is, that the following

1. sock puppetry accusations-WP:NPA Accusations about personal behavior that lack evidence. Serious accusations require serious evidence.
2. unnecessary removal-Unnecessary to remove a multi decade old, primary source? WP:MEDRS
3. incredibly self centered behavior-Borderline fanaticism, WP:CIVIL, WP:OWN
4. removal of relevant well sourced material-Vindictive behavior, WP:CIVIL

Are behaviors that don't seem to follow wiki policy on behavior. Together the accusations constitute some form of harassment, Petergstrom (talk) 00:32, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

The only NPA mention is 1st link, which doesn't work for me. El_C 01:30, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

The problem with you removing material is that you never keep the WP:Preserve policy in mind. Often, what you remove can be easily supported by tertiary and/or secondary sources. When you remove content like that, valuable content is lost. It is not the usual case that editors go searching through an article's edit history to see what was removed. Therefore, valuable content is commonly lost with removals like yours. I explained this to you at the Insomnia talk page.

You did misrepresent data at the Veganism article. Whether or not the misrepresentation was intentional, I explained how you did so at the Vegetarianism talk page.

I am not trying to WP:OWN any articles. I am trying to keep you from editing them recklessly. And I do not like to be followed to articles by editors who currently have a tempestuous relationship with me. See the distress part of WP:Hounding. I wanted to edit the Human brain article in peace. It is clearly a main article that I am focusing on. And yet you somehow thought it would be good to focus on it too? It makes no sense for you to pop up at the Vagina article either, especially since that article is put together quite well and will be nominated for WP:GA status soon enough. The only reason you would have for popping up at that article is because I pointed it out above and made it clear to you that I would not tolerate you following me to articles I am significantly working on.

I wish that I didn't have to continuously deal with people stalking me, especially after they've felt disgruntled because of some argument. But it is something I often have to deal with because of my stance on following rules like WP:NPOV accurately, and because the articles I edit tend to be contentious, and because I have busted so many socks. Yes, quite a few socks stalk me, whether as IPs or as new accounts. This is not paranoia on my part, as such stalkers or socks tend to claim. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:25, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

• The Editor Interaction Analyser is very useful here. Here you can see that the two editors have mutually edited 29 articles, and in practically all - 26 - cases Flyer22 Reborn has edited the article first. These include some very obscure articles. I can only assume from this data that Petergstrom (who let's not forget has only 1,495 articlespace edits in total) is indeed stalking Flyer22 Reborn to articles she has edited, and this needs to stop - NOW. Therefore (a) I suggest a one-way interaction ban (i.e. that Petergstrom cannot edit articles that Flyer22 Reborn has edited, including talk pages), and (b) Petergstrom may be subject to immediate blocking by any administrator if he should again follow her to an unrelated article. Black Kite (talk) 00:45, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Sweet, sweet legwork. I'm referring to Black Kite, with whom I tend to agree. 26 of 29 is, indeed, quite a disconcerting ratio(!). El_C 00:52, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Wow that is just ridiculous. I have edited hundreds of articles in neuroscience, psychology, and popular media. I like the walking dead. I like game of thrones. I'm interested in psychology, and neuroscience-particularly in the influence that prenatal hormones has on gendered behavior. I have edited many many articles in neuroscience and psychiatry area, particularly mood disorders, monoamines, and there is bound to be overlap, given the extent to which she edits. The fact that we have edited the same 29 articles(many of which he/she made only one or two edits a long time ago, that I would not have known about, and don't care about) does not indicate stalking. The fact that he/she has been on WP for years before me is also an explanation. An editor, who hangs out around a lot of the science/social science articles, and over a couple of years has made over a hundred thousand edits, is bound to have overlap with an editor with 1400 edits highly focused on the science/social science section. Petergstrom (talk) 00:53, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

• That is indeed a possibility (if it had not been, an administrator may have blocked you already). I am simply pointing out that following Flyer22 Reborn to any further pages that you have not previously edited may be looked upon very dimly indeed. Black Kite (talk) 00:58, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

(multiple e-c) I kind of have to agree with Petergstrom about the nature of the "interactions" here. It looks to me at least 13 of the articles listed are ones where the time difference between the two editors is over a year. If he were really stalking Flyer22Reborn, it would be really easy to spend a lot less work checking her edit history and making staling edits to articles she had edited more recently. Having said that, Petergstrom, you've already been advised about using "he/she" and told that Flyer is, in fact, a female. Try not to fall into the same problem so frequently, OK? I imagine Lassie got really fed up with that blasted Timmy brat for falling in the well as often as he apparently did, too, and repeating that mistake doesn't help your cause at all. John Carter (talk) 01:01, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

That's a fair point. If the edits were months or years ago and then you show up recently, that can make sense. The question, then, is how closely to the actual edits overlap. El_C 01:02, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Am I stalking Jytdog (talk · contribs) here? Perhaps I am notoriously stalking Doc James (talk · contribs) too? If this tool is at all EVEN AN INDICATOR of harassment behavior, then I have literally stalked every prominent WP editor in the sciences area of WP, to an even more severe extent than my terribly atrocious stalking of flyer22 reborn. Ridiculous. I am really disappointed in WP right now. If this is what passes as "legwork".....this is sad. If you take note of this, and don't even comment on the actual evidence I presented, I have no idea what this board is forPetergstrom (talk) 01:05, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

We are still investigating. Best keep it relaxed as you can and avoid characterizations like "poor poor flyer22 reborn." El_C 01:13, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Keep in mind that Petergstrom is showing up to articles that I significantly edit as well. Does the combination of editing the Psychopathy, Vegetarianism, Veganism and Human brain articles really seem like a coincidence? The focus on these articles came after my objections to Petergstrom's editing. And this is especially the case for the Human brain article. And now Petergstrom is citing me not wanting him to follow me to articles, including the Vagina article, as some indication of WP:OWN. I've noted above the issues with following an editor you have a tempestuous relationship with to articles. And, yes, Petergstrom has been following Jytdog and Doc James too. But I think he's been following them more so to learn and to get their approval. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:25, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

I've also made it clear that I've been through this many times.

If Petergstrom shows up at more articles I significantly edit (like the Vagina article), including articles that I have brought to WP:GA status, will that be a coincidence too? I think not. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:31, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

How soon after the dispute started picking up momentum did he show up at those articles? El_C 01:37, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

He waits a bit, like a week or two or so. I think he waits in order to divert attention from having followed me. But the following is clear to me either way. After I addressed him on his talk page about editing with a previous account, I knew that it would not be long before he started showing up to articles I have a significant interest in. After I pointed out that I was working on the Human brain article, I knew it would not be long before he started editing it. The predictability was easy because I've been through this type of thing countless times before. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:54, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Let's be careful about basing conclusions about this editor's conduct upon what you have experienced with entirely different persons. Unless the person you suspect Petergstrom of being a sock of is one of those stalkers, your previous experiences really have no useful predictive power for this individual, and it's unfair to saddle him with a presumption of bad faith on that basis alone.

That said, there's some pretty compelling evidence here, considering his showing up at articles you have edited consistently after you have. But it's still all a little circumstantial; all of the articles I've seen mentioned here are pretty major articles and the fact that you edited them first could simply be a product of you having been on the project much longer. I come from a biopsychology background myself, for example and have edited most of those articles myself, if memory serves. So we need to parse this a little more cleanly. You say that Petergstrom has shown up on more than one occasion at certain articles about a week or two after engaging with you elsewhere. How many of these instances involve him undoing your work or otherwise putting himself in a position to engage with you directly, and has there even been a time where he was doing so on multiple articles concurrently? I'm highly suspicious here and I'm looking for the smoking gun that will let me support a 1-way IBAN, but I just need a little more. Snow ^{let's rap} 03:20, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

@Snow Rise: Are you actually taking Flyer22's allegations(with no actual evidence) seriously, while blatantly ignoring the harassment she has posed, with her sock puppet allegation, and now this allegation? A user, with 240,000 edits, in the english wiki of 2 million articles, is going to have edited some major pages before a newer editor with 1400 edits, concentrated in the biopsychology, neuroscience, health area etc etc. I don't know how many times I have to say this:'I do not care about what flyer22 edits, or what she thinks, but I do care about being harassed. The only time where I have given her a second of thought, is due to her ridiculous allegations, which quite frankly, are annoying as hell. I want her behavior to be reigned in, so I can go back to making helpful contributions.Petergstrom (talk) 03:37, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

FWIW, I don't think anyone questions necessarily the problematic nature of some of the more recent edits, Flyer22Reborn, just indicating that some of the "interactions" with over a year lag time between them might not necessarily count for much. And I think that if there were broadened interactions hereafter, that would definitely be very credible evidence. John Carter (talk) 01:56, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, John Carter. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:00, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

I sincerely hope that this statement "And, yes, Petergstrom has been following Jytdog and Doc James too. But I think he's been following them more so to learn and to get their approval." is an attempt at being obnoxious, and not a reflection of your own thought process-something that would be very, very, very disturbing. The edits to the human brain article occurred after I went to the article in hopes of finding a quality, complete section, discussing the functions of the brain. I hoped to find the immediate functions, as well as from an evolutionary perspective. Instead I found the current sad section. The edits to the vegan and vegetarian articles were both after googling them to fact check a meme I was(no kidding) curious about. This is really getting to a ridiculous point. Flyer22 needs to reign in her behavior, which I clearly demonstrated above violates multiple wiki policies. Petergstrom (talk) 01:42, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Actually, speaking strictly for myself, I don't find much obnoxious in the comment at all. It would certainly be not unreasonable for a comparatively new editor (you've been here since October?) to try to edit in such a way as to generate negative reaction if such was required from senior editors. Kind of an informal "mentoring," maybe. There might be better ways to do it, admittedly, but I think I have seen a few other editors here do the same sort of thing. John Carter (talk) 01:56, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

I began editing the vegan article on the 16th of january, long after the (regrettable) first encounter I had with Flyer22 on the psychopathy article at the beginning of december, after joining in late october, after spending most of november hanging around the PED/Adaptogen/MDD/CFS area. Petergstrom (talk) 01:46, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Your explanations are the similar to others claiming that they weren't stalking. In a short of amount of time, you showed up at the Psychopathy, Vegetarianism, Veganism and Human brain articles. No matter what you state, that is not a coincidence. And if you show up at more, I will have even more evidence of your stalking. As for my supposed violations, you do not understand the rules well; so I don't put much stock into your assertions of having violated the rules. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:54, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

You're only three days apart with the first one though; as for the second, that was quite a bit of (seemingly-pertinent) content you removed with your first edit... El_C 02:00, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

El_C, your reply is meant for Petergstrom, right? Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:09, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes. El_C 03:17, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

If you cant accept the fact that psychopathy, edits, along with ASPD edits were due to the fact that I am interested in psychiatry(as evidenced by my hundreds of edits in that area), and that the veganism/vegetarian edits(to the cardiovascular effects of the diets nonetheless...hmmmmm what does that sound like? Stalking or perhaps the editing of an editor interested in that area of science....hmmmmm) were due to the finding of very biased statements of benefits, then I would have doubts about your WP:COMPETENCE, in particular the way you place such an importance of yourself in other peoples decision making----you have to understand that you aren't that important. I literally never gave you a second thought, after skimming over whatever you said to me. Petergstrom (talk) 01:59, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

The title of this thread is "Harassment by User:Flyer22 Reborn", and yet, so far, what this thread shows is stalking by you. It has yet to show that I have been stalking or harassing you. So your understanding of the WP:Competence essay is also flawed. Follow me to more articles I am working on, and there will be a thread here on you in the future. Mostly likely, the near future. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:09, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Don't make me refer both of you to WP:DR, because I would do it. I am that bleeping crazy! El_C 02:05, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

El_C, conflict resolution relies on the flexibility of the persons involved in the conflict-if Flyer22's self importance refuses to be flexible, no amount of conflict resolution would help. Petergstrom (talk) 02:09, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

But it's fast becoming your only hope. El_C 03:17, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

No it has not shown any "stalking by me", it has shown nothing. I have, however, demonstrated the violating of multiple wiki policies by you. Petergstrom (talk) 02:10, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Let me give a more in depth example. Sepi333 and I edit the same obscure pages-due to overlapping interests, such as Dopaminergic pathways, motivation, Reward system etc etc. However, given that he has a healthy ego, he understands that this is not "stalking", but is rather an overlap of interests. However, he does throw out accusations of sock puppetry ("because he is frequently right" hurr durr durr), or stalking, because he has a healthy sense of ego. Petergstrom (talk) 02:17, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

What does any of this has to do with it fast becoming your only hope. You've been repeatedly asked to indent correctly here. El_C 23:45, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Since it's clear that you intend to keep following me to articles I am working on, we will see just what editors state in that future WP:ANI thread. Your WP:ANI thread is a bust.

And as for self-importance, nowhere do I assert my importance here. Others have stated that I am important to this site, and I could point to diff-links showing that. I do not let such compliments go to my head. Yes, I have contributed to many important areas on this site. Yes, many Wikipedians feel that I'm important to this site, as indicated by past comments on my talk page and emails. I accept that. You should too. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:23, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't even know how to feel...if anyone wants to know what its like to be laughing, disgusted and annoyed at the same time...hmu. Let's break this down

• Since it's clear that you intend to keep following me to articles I am working on, we will see just what editors state in that future WP:ANI thread.

• Clear from what? Clear from the mental gymnastics done by you, and your grandiose ego that just needs a stalker to feel good?

• Your WP:ANI thread is a bust.

• I wasn't aware it was over, but if it is, it seems that you might stop harassing me now

• And as for self-importance, nowhere do I assert my importance here.

• You are not wrong, you don't explicitly say it. However your behavior, does as I have pointed out many times.

• Others have stated that I am important to this site, and I could point to diff-links showing that. I do not let such compliments go to my head. Yes, I have contributed to many important areas on this site. Yes, many Wikipedians feel that I'm important to this site, as indicated by past comments on my talk page and emails. I accept that. You should too.

• This is not the self importance I am talking about. You are overestimating your impact on others. Way. Too. Much.

• I think he waits in order to divert attention from having followed me

• This screams to me the words "delusional", "obsessive", "paranoid", "grandiose". If you think anyone actually cares THAT much about you, your edits, and what you think of them, that is disturbing. No after I first interacted with you, I did not spend 6 hours straight thinking about you, reading your edit history, compiling a profile, in my room in my basement with tin foil over the windows, and a triple padlocked steel door. No, I did not spend the next week sitting in that room, with a whiteboard, and yarn linking edits and wikipages, thinking about the most effective strategy for subverting, and obfuscating. I did not set up thousands of dollars of computers, calculating my sinister plot, waiting to strike-waiting for the moment when....wait for it....I COULD DISRUPT SOME RANDOM EDITORS WIKIEDITING *maniacal laughter ensues*. Hell, I didn't even give you a second thought after skimming over whatever it was you wrote.Petergstrom (talk) 02:36, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

And yet more nonsense and personal attacks from you. Stating that you should accept that others find me important to this site is because of your constant need to state how unimportant you find me to be. Your talk page response about the hounding matter and your above commentary shows just how obsessed you are with stating how unimportant I supposedly am. And such comments could be categorized as coming from a place of insecurity or inferiority regarding your own edits. Some might even state that they come from a place of jealousy. And if they understand psychology like I do, they just might be right. Your comments also indicate that you are indeed the past editor I believe you to be. No matter. I've stated what I need to state. You have been warned. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:43, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Trolling and harassment (both of which Flyer22 has been a victim of) of editors doesn't take hours to plan, it takes minutes. Less if you've done it before. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 02:47, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

It cannot be that easy to do what you do. All I want, is for your behavior to stop. For your reckless accusations to stop. For you to understand that, no, I don't care about you, BUT I DO CARE ABOUT BEING HARASSED.' Petergstrom (talk) 02:48, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

@NeilN: That is not what she indicated when she said "he waits in order to diver attention from having followed me". The belief that someone, a troll nonetheless, would take a week to avoid detection in their trolling, is crazy.Petergstrom (talk) 02:51, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

No, I can quite emphatically state that that notion is not "crazy". --NeilN ^{talk to me} 02:54, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

So you are telling me, NeilN, that you have met people...real human beings...that seriously have nothing better in their lives to do, than to single out a random editor of wikipedia pages, and to make disruptive edits to the pages, but doing so very slowly, and very secretively in an attempt to troll/stalk/harass them. That is sad. I enjoy editing wikipedia. I enjoy editing pages I have interest in. My edit history is evidence that I am here to edit, and until today, none of my editing was AT ALL influenced by Flyer22. However, her accusations of me being a sockpupper(unsubstantiated, which I have brought up many times, but has been ignored) as well as the unsubstantiated claims that I follow Flyer to articles, are annoying, and need to stop. If the admins agree that accusations of sock puppetry and harassment by flyer are ok, then until the annoyance outweighs the good of WP, I can just ignore it.Petergstrom (talk) 03:01, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

I have witnessed the behavior you're describing more than once. I've even seen someone put significant effort into making a credible back-story so he could say wide-eyed: "But I'm obviously not a troll! Just look at my {comments,posts,edits}! I can't believe anyone would actually have nothing better to do with his life than to scheme against someone on the Internet!" Rebbing 03:11, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

@Rebbing:, Really?? this was just a "backstory", so that I could get to my real intent of trolling? I read hundreds of papers so that I could "troll"? Really??? Really???? I cant even believe wikipedia right now. This is actually one of the saddest things...a website I had so much respect for....Really???? Really? There is not a a single SHRED, of evidence that suggests I give two damns about what Flyer edits or thinks. But I give real, tangible, credible evidence of harassment and it gets blown off? Really? I can't even express who ridiculous the whole thing is getting.Petergstrom (talk) 03:17, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

You misread my comment: I did not say you were a troll or that your contribution history was a sham. I merely voiced my observation—in rebuttal to your skepticism—that many have gone to extraordinary lengths to exact petty revenge. Please stifle your outrage; it is not adding any light to this situation. Rebbing 03:27, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

As can I. It doesn't even take any effort: one could flip through an editor's week-old contributions, watchlist an article with the intent of editing it the next time it pops up, or bookmark the page in a date folder. Trolls are anything but lazy. Rebbing 03:11, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Not an admin, although I've played with one on tv. One of the most main points between Wikipedia editors is to help make everyone's experience enjoyable, and not to try to make it less enjoyable. The recent edit, screaming the words, is pretty offensive, and probably should be walked back. Flyer22 Reborn is important to the site, and in some areas, very important. This is fact, not her boasting. So please, Petergrstrom, maybe rethink the pressure of defending your case if it goes into name calling to that extent. Wikipedia is a polite place, although I have been impolite to a couple of grandiose self-important complete azzwipe editors fine gentlemen of the realm. Let's make everyone's experience here a little better and wind-down some of this stuff before it flips into the really nasty get-up-and-go. Peace, love, and singing stuff about cats or sunrise's or something. Randy Kryn 02:57, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Well in one of my first encounters with a fine gentle(wo)man of the realm, I had to bold the point because nobody seemed to get it.Petergstrom (talk) 03:12, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Best we tone down the accusatory language and just see what can be worked out one article talk page at a time. El_C 03:17, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that the behaviour of either editor here has been stellar in any sense of the word. The "policy violations" are numerous on both sides; the multiple accusations of sockpuppetry but no diffs (not here at least) to link Petergstrom to any other editor by Flyer22reborn (ASPERSIONS) and the near-constant accusations of quite serious behavioural (not bad behaviour, but, the issues of self-aggrandizement, delusions, etc) problems from Petergstrom (NPA, CIVIL). This is cause enough for civility blocks to be handed out, though if I'm being direct, I am far more concerned with the near abusive nature of some of Peter's comments than I am with Flyer's sockpuppetry accusations. No more "you're mental" style comments, Peter, you've made quite enough of them. I am mildly surprised you haven't received at least a warning for them. The stalking claims, Flyer, are both difficult to prove and evidence is circumstantial at best; Peter makes a good point regarding the editor interaction anaylzer, it alone is evidence of jack diddly squat. You need to look at the pages concerned, the times of editing, a log of the page history, and individual edits themselves. The individual edit themselves are the best indicator for stalking because they alone form the basis of a pattern. The return claims of harassment by Peter are relatively unsubstantiated beyond referring to the concurrent stalking claim by Flyer. Other than that, I see zero harassment going in the direction of Peter. I want her behavior to be reigned in, so I can go back to making helpful contributions, there is a simple solution for this, just go do something productive and forget Flyer22 until or unless further issues arise. This thread is rapidly generating more heat than light. There is, however, no simple resolution for any competency issues that may exist and I profer no opinion on that point because ·I have limited competency myself on the topic areas of medicine, the human body and its functions, and psychology. Mr rnddude (talk) 03:58, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

(ec) I just want to point out that Flyer22 Reborn has indeed been very accurate in their detection of sockpuppetry. No one is perfect, of course, but Flyer22 has an extremely good batting average. I think that they perhaps might have waited to make an accusation until they had more evidence, but, given their record, their suspicions should afforded some weight, given the behavior of Petergstrom as described in this thread, especially the Editor Interaction Analyser data pointed out by Black Kite. [1] Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:16, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

So I've read above Beyond My Ken. My personal stance on an issue such as this is; if you don't have evidence, don't make accusations. I personally don't afford 'suspicions' any weight without a reason to do so. That reason doesn't have to be proof of sockpuppetry per se, but, it does have to be something more than a flat accusation. I agree, however, on the topic of Peter's behaviour being uncollaborative and uncivil. As for the EIA, as I said above, it alone is evidence of jack diddly squat. If a new editor and an old editor hold similar interests and edit within the same topic area they will overlap. Yes, there is a significant amount of overlap and yes, Flyer has been first to edit 26/29 pages. Of those however only 10 have less than one months time separating her and his edit, and of those all three of the pages he was first to edit are included; Gender inequality, gender inequality in the U.S. and Antisocial personality disorder. Now, basically that means that he's followed her to 7 out of 10 pages, and she's followed him to the other 3 - note; I do not mean followed as in stalked, but, as in came there after. So either he's seeking out pages she hasn't edited in months by going through her contributions history, or, alternatively, he's just happened across them at a later date. I'm going to AGF and say he's not sitting around wading through Flyer's contributions for hours just to make her miserable. If this is actually what's happening, then that's simply pitiful ... I have other adjectives for it as well, but, NPA/CIVIL. Mr rnddude (talk) 10:34, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Addendum; I should add, that the EIA is useful in stalking/hounding cases for raising red flags and directing a person where to look and perhaps identify obvious patterns. In this instance, however, I've found nothing unusual even outside of the medicine/human anatomy/human pyschology topic areas. I should also add that this has also come to my mind as well. Mr rnddude (talk) 10:54, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Mr rnddude, without addressing everything that you have stated since I feel that I have stated enough in this thread (both above and below), I am taking the time to note that it is usually the case that I do have evidence, but it may be that the evidence is not strong enough. WP:CheckUser wouldn't work in this case since the previous account is stale. It is not unusual for me to wait until I have more evidence. Like many editors have done, including administrators, I gave Petergstrom a chance to acknowledge that he has edited Wikipedia under a different account. When he denied it and started focusing on my block log (mischaracterizing it), I moved on, knowing full well that he would likely start to appear at articles that I significantly edit because of that sockpuppet inquiry on his talk page. I know that you likely feel that I should not have addressed the sock matter at all, but there have been cases where addressing a sock about his or her previous account resulted in the sock acknowledging that they are a sock. This includes cases I've been involved in. And I reiterate that I have been stalked a number of times before, and the stalking patterns are generally the same. They are the same so often that I currently make it clear on my user page that I won't even list my WP:GAs and WP:FAs there on my user page. When it comes to the Gender inequality and Antisocial personality disorder articles, I edited those first, as seen here and here. I did not significantly edit them, but they remained on my watchlist. I know that you state that you do not see a stalking pattern, and I accept that. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 11:46, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

To shorten that - you had no evidence, you accused someone of being a sock without evidence, you accused them of stalking despite the fact they have a fairly small defined area of editing which overlaps yours (which could be seen *at the time* you accused them of being a sock) and think that because they eventually show up at an article (within their area of editing) you edited sometime in the past its evidence they are a sock/stalking you? This is not a case of 'not having enough evidence' this is a case of you being so far from being in possession of anything resembling evidence that its laughable. Only in death does duty end (talk) 11:58, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

And that is an inaccurate characterization, for reasons I and others in this thread have made clear. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 12:04, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Hmmm... EIA must have gotten those two wrong in this case. I wonder why it lists Petergstrom as the first editor when it obviously has you editing it years ago... probably the timeline of the latest edits but it's still wrong. My apologies there Flyer22 Reborn, it would have done me well to dig that bit deeper. I looked at the thread on Peter's page where you; gave Petergstrom a chance to acknowledge that he has edited Wikipedia under a different account. I'm not going to harp on this because I've never had wikistalkers that harrassed me or been in any particularly difficult disputes, but, your approach is ... not one I'd recommend to anyone. Mr rnddude (talk) 13:31, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Just to follow up on my comment above: many people who edit Wikipedia for a long time develop a nose for sockpuppetry. Some have OK noses, some have good noses, and some have very good noses. Flyer22's nose for sockpuppetry happens to be very, very good. That doesn't mean that she is correct in this case - everyone is human, everyone makes mistakes - but it does mean that admins should (and some do) pay some attention when she voices a suspicion. I'd very much like to see the CU policy loosened up somewhat, so that editors with a good track record regarding sniffing out socks are given enough credence to allow a CU scan to be done (even without a named puppetmaster) without the "no fishing expeditions" rule being trotted out. If the editor starts being wrong a lot, that credence can be lost, but in the meantime we'll have retired some socks. Further, I think an exception should be made for CUing editors who exhibit general sock-like behavior, something that many users can detect. All of that can be done totally within WMF policies - it's the en.wiki community which has chosen to fetter CUs, not the Foundation, which is ironic since, as the biggest and most read of all the WMF encyclopedias, we're the one which needs the tools to crack down on socking, while other wikis are the ones with the more liberal rules. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:09, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Maybe summarizing this will help. I come to the board, asking for help, due to harassment from Flyer22 Reborn. I notified her on her talk page, and provided evidence. I used he/she/it, and was reprimanded. She responded with allegations that I have been maliciously planning, and subverting attention in order to troll her. I state that that is ridiculously self centered, paranoid, and ridiculous. She accuses me of following her to the following articles

• Veganism
• Vegetarianism
• Psychopathy
• Insomnia

These articles receive thousands of views a day, and are relevant in the health and neuroscience area, that I have been editing significantly in since I started. We first encountered each other in the psychopathy article talk page-I removed poorly sourced material, and then asked about changing the article to reflect its fringe status, however I realized I did not have a quality secondary source, and that it would be OR, so I backed off. I continued to edit in areas related to neuroscience, psychology, etc etc. For some reason, Flyer22 accuses me of sock puppetry, a serious, rude and unsubstantiated claim. I move on. In my editing of fibromyalgia, the creation of functional somatic syndrome page, and edits to he biology of depression, I came across a link to insomnia. I had quite a bit of research, so I checked the insomnia page, and saw that the pathophysiology section was poorly outdated. I updated it. I saw something claiming major benefits from vegetarian diets, so I went to check if it was true, on the WP article I saw some pretty crazy claims too. So I did some research, found secondary sources, published recently in quality journals, and updated the article to reflect current consensus. While browsing in neuroscience, I find the human brain page to be terribly deficient in the "functions" section. I edit it. And then I get accused of following Flyer22 to articles. Her behavioral pattern of seeing malicious intent in everyday goings on is ridiculous, and even more so is the audacity she has to threaten someone with it. What is even worse, is that instead of finding an objective admin board, objective like I experienced with the fantastic editors(mostly) in the medicine section, I find Dark Kite showing "fantastic legwork", showing how Flyer22, with 240,000 edits, and I with 1500 overlap on some articles in my region of interest. Woah. Crazy? Not really. It is not even INDICATIVE of me giving two damns about what she edits(which I demonstrated by showing my overlap with other prolific editors in that area). However, nobody takes seriously the harassment posed by her, but they do take seriously her crazy claims, not based in reality. Summarized.Petergstrom (talk) 04:09, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps it's time the OP familiarize himself with the First Rule of Holes? John from Idegon (talk) 04:25, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Newcomer User:Soli58 has arrived on the scene (Contribs). El_C 04:55, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

{@El C: So is that it? Is this report done? So the harassment by Flyer22 I should just ignore? That can be done. And is there a consensus about Flyer22's allegations(with zero evidence)?Petergstrom (talk) 05:05, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

You failed to respond when I asked you about your non-working claimed-NPA link — and that question remains unanswered. No, you've failed to establish a clear pattern of harassment to my satisfaction. El_C 05:24, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Oh my god. I thought that it didn't work as in it was insufficient evidence! All this time??? Oh my god. I will fix it. Wow.Petergstrom (talk) 05:45, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

here it should work now. Now what about the counter allegations?Petergstrom (talk) 05:47, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

What is the personal attack? Asking if you're a sock? It's not the most goodfaith-assuming question, but I don't know if that rises to that level. El_C 05:56, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

• i've been pinged a few times and have been thinking. Thoughts:
  • if you look at Petergstrom's first edits from Oct 2016, they are not really a newbie's. (see here). and they were warned about edit warning almost right of the gate.
  • I encountered Petergstrom first at articles about health (their articles in that arena have been about neuro and psych topics) and their edits on each article have been extensive (big flurries of rewriting) and generally poor in sourcing and summarizing. Clearly has a strong interest in neuro/psych so I (and others) put a bunch of time into trying to teach them how to edit correctly on health topics... and at the rate they were editing this was essential. (you can see the dialogue in this old version of their talk page) Their initial responses were dismissive like this:: The content was sourced!! What are you talking about? and this: I did read it. I am not ignoring it, the sources are totally valid, stop reverting the edits.. And kept insisting that their extensive use of old/primary sources was fine. (diff, diff) They finally kinda sorta got it. Kinda. I have remained cautiously hopeful they would turn out to be solid members of the community.
  • Around that time they did some aggressive and badly reasoned editing at Performance-enhancing substance as you can see from its history -- aggressive reverts. There was an equally aggressive advocate on the other side who self-destructed finally. I happened to agree (mostly) with the direction Petergstrom wanted the article to go, but the behavior and reasoning were bad and aggressive (you can see that on the article talk page too) and got them their first block for edit warring.
  • their editing at MDMA and its talk page was so aggressive and unreasonable that I brought them to EWN, leading to a block: case is here. If you review their comments in that case, you can see that they misrepresented their own edits (and behavior) at that board, which was doubly troubling.
  • as is evident in the history of the Chronic pain article here, as recently as a couple of days ago they added a slew of COPYVIO content that had to be revdelled.

And their aggressive effort to prosecute this ANI and ignoring of feedback they are getting, is par for their WP history to date, and not promising. I am not too hopeful about their long term prospects to be productive. Which is what led me to post here.

All that said, I can't support Flyer's claim of stalking. Petergstrom has been editing religion and neuro/psych pretty consistently from the beginning and edits to the Brain article do not seem stalkerish to me.

Flyer tends to be accurate about socking but i have no real comments on that issue other than my initial one above, and that based on their behavior i wouldn't be surprised if it were true.

Petergstrom fwiw I recommend you walk away from this ANI case - you are not going to get the satisfaction you want - and instead concentrate on building high quality content (great MEDRS sources, summarized and not copied, accurately) and working better with others. Your hands are way too dirty for this case to get any traction. Jytdog (talk) 06:00, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Yea sounds fine to me. I will ignore Flyer22 for now.Petergstrom (talk) 06:17, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Great. please keep in mind the " and working better with others" part of what i wrote :) Jytdog (talk) 06:28, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

I am currently focusing on patrolling and editing article content, and am no longer interested in this thread, but I wanted to go ahead and note that I did not state that Petergstrom followed me to the Insomnia article, which is an article I had only edited a few times. I mentioned the Insomnia article to explain why I view Petergstrom's style of editing to be problematic and my belief that he followed me to the Human brain article. I specifically mentioned the Human brain article on the Insomnia talk page when criticizing Petergstrom's deletion style. I did not mention it as an example of a good or great article. I mentioned that it is an article I am working on, and an example of an article that no one should hastily take a hacksaw to. It needs to be edited with care. I mentioned this despite knowing the likelihood that Petergstrom would follow me there. There are few Wikipedia articles of significant interest to me that I can edit without worrying about a lot of conflict. Editing that article was something that gave me peace because there were no big disputes going on there and I knew that I could focus on bringing the article to WP:GA level, like I had been meaning to do. The article is currently full-protected, and I hope to edit it with little conflict in the future. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 06:23, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

I hear you. Jytdog (talk) 06:28, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

One more thing: When it comes to considering whether or not I am being stalked, I do carefully examine the matter; I don't solely base it on past experiences. The past experiences do, however, significantly aid my deductions. I have an overlap with Doc James and Jytdog too, but Doc James rarely gets involved with articles like Vegetarianism or Veganism, or sexual and gender topics, and Jytdog is editing some of the articles that I edit because either I asked him to or he saw past stalking matters related to me and decided to get involved. In addition to the aforementioned articles I noted that I significantly edit, I just noticed that Petergstrom has also recently focused on the Gender article. I have significant history with that article, and with other gender topics. Having some overlap with me is understandable, but when it's articles that I significantly edit, and across a number of different fields, I think I have a valid reason to be concerned. History shows that I do. I take being hounded very seriously and will not hesitate to bring the matter to WP:ANI if I feel that I have compelling evidence of being hounded. All that stated, I am looking to resolve the Human brain article dispute and will try not to inflame matters involving Petergstrom in the future. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 07:49, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

I too do not want to escalate things anymore. I dont think there is anything more that I can say, other than I truly do not care about what you edit, and have no intent to hound or harass. Buuuuuuut.....all the stuff is in one field-gender is relavent in neuroscience and psychology. But that is beside the point. Bottom line is, I truly have never had, and never will have the desire to hound anyone. Petergstrom (talk) 08:15, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Experience shows that mature people who are interested in collaboration and the development of the encyclopedia are able to make complaints without the level of indignation seen in this case. If you are really interested in building content it might be an idea to focus on that, while engaging in any discussions on article talk pages in a constructive manner. And stop posting here unless it is to post new evidence. Johnuniq (talk) 09:20, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

I would like to concur with others that User:Petergstrom's edits in the areas of medicine and religion have been extremely problematic. One can see that User:Petergstrom edits with an agenda, promoting a non-neutral point of view; for exaxmple, he attempted to add information to our articles about Jesus and Moses, saying that they both had paranoid schizophrenia (see Example 1, Example 2). On our article about Religiosity and intelligence, User:Petergstrom has inappropriately censored content that he just didn't like, possibly because it called into question his own POV--what's more troublesome is that he tried to conceal the nature of his edit by using a benign edit summary. This is part of a deeper problem concerning User:Petergstrom and their editing behaviour. At this time, a topic ban on articles relating to medicine and religion, broadly construed, is warranted.--Jobas (talk) 23:27, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

I have no involvement in this particular situation but I should probably mention that the last time that I saw Flyer22 get accused of "Wikihounding with false sock puppetry accusations", her sock accusations were very much correct. DarkKnight2149 23:36, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Darkknight2149 by this you mean that Flyer's accusations were correct, no that the accusations against Flyer were. I'm asking because it's not 100% clear to me which one you mean. I'm guessing the former since you've linked an LTA case in which Flyer was significantly involved. Mr rnddude (talk) 01:15, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Mr rnddude I meant that the accusations that Flyer made were true, not the accusations against her. Sorry about the unintentional ambiguity in my statement. DarkKnight2149 02:35, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Still no response from User:Soli58. El_C 23:40, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Topic Ban for User:Petergstrom on articles pertaining to medicine and religion, broadly construed

• Support As mentioned by multiple editors above, User:Petergstrom has failed to adhere to WP:NPOV in the areas of medicine and religion, which is demonstrated by edits such as attempting to add false information to articles about historical religious figures, e.g. stating that Jesus and Moses had paranoid schizophrenia (see Example 1, Example 2). He has also censored information that might not support his personal POV, e.g. recent diff), he also ignored the Pew research source and decide to put a POV on atheism (see here recent diff). These issues, coupled with User:Petergstrom's hounding of User:Flyer22 Reborn warrant a topic ban on all articles pertaining to medicine and religion, broadly construed.--Jobas (talk) 23:39, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Jobas, the religion additions were when I first started--one source was not enough for what I wrote. They additions weren't "false". Secondly, the recent edits on the religion and intelligence articles are actually being pushed in the direction I was attempting to push it in before your edit war( relavent info, quality sourcing).Petergstrom (talk) 00:30, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

• Support This user's edit history is very troublesome. Mistercontributer (talk) 00:57, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
• I'm not sure that religion needs to be included here, but I've been watching the medicine issues from afar for a while, and I'm leaning towards supporting a topic ban there. I'd like to hear from a few more editors before making up my mind. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:46, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
  • Seeing that Petergstrom does seem to be seeking to do better, perhaps through mentoring, and that the SPI appears to have come up negative (alleged master and sock on different continents), I am now leaning oppose to a topic ban, with a strict understanding that WP:ROPE now applies. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:31, 9 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support topic ban for medicine only. I don't think we have a demonstration of contentious editing in on religion. I'm troubled by what I have read in this thread. The indignation and battle ground mentality exhibited by the OP is not encouraging.--Adam in MO Talk 04:31, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Adam in MO this user's editing in on religion is very troublesome as well, (see /w/index.php?title=Jesus&diff=prev&oldid=747047573 Example 1, Example 2), (Example 3). Have a nice day.--Jobas (talk) 16:10, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

I have viewed those links and I don't think that Peter is at the level of a topic ban yet. Bad edits don't warrant a topic ban. Bad edits and battle ground behavior certainly do. Do you have any evidence of the latter?--Adam in MO Talk 16:34, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Adam in MO I think it's bad edits and battle ground behavior, for example see here in Jesus article: (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), and the user demonstrates here that they are aware of the consequences of edit warring. anther example is Ignatius of Loyola article, see here (1), (2), (3). also here in Moses article (1), (2), (3). It's just some examples.--Jobas (talk) 16:59, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

JobasThose are misguided edits from a new users. No one has presented any indication that the contentious editing is ongoing. Thanks for your input. I respectfully disagree.--Adam in MO Talk 22:30, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Adam in MO, no problems, Thanks and Have a nice day.--Jobas (talk) 23:52, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

I would like to point out that, although early on I pretty much interpreted the policies in a way the community did not generally interpret them, I have actually made some pretty decent contributions in the neuro/psych area. I understand the my lack of desire to engage with other editors has been troublesome, but I am curious as to whether my past behavior is really indicative of a future where the pros are outweighed by the cons. Petergstrom (talk) 05:12, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

• Support for ban on religion and likely medicine. Unfortunately, I had to intervene as a mediator on a few recent edit wars on the Religiosity and Intelligence page and was a bit disturbed by some of the recent edits the editor used such as [2] when some compromise would have been the better choice during the edit war. I also found troubling that after being warned about violating the 3RR, the user deleted that information from their talk page [3]. Also, when discussing a source on atheism and religion if it was acceptable, the language seemed quite aggressive and dismissive to others when it could have been charitable including remarks telling other editors that they should not edit religious pages [4] because of them identifying with religion was POV pushing and conflict of interest on religious pages. On the 3RR noticeborad one of the edits even said "Thats 3RR, there is obviously a COI, given you user page. I don't want to have to talk this to admin board" [5], as reported by another editor User:Renzoy16. No editor should ever say to another editor those kinds of things. For medicine, it seems that the editor has been blocked twice for edit warring there too despite being on Wikipedia for only a few months. Perhaps this can be remedied if the behavior changes significantly, but it need not get this hot over religion topics.Huitzilopochtli1990 (talk) 08:24, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
• Comment - for all the troubling history, some of which I agree is extremely troubling, the editor in question hasn't even been here a full six months yet, at least under this name. If someone were willing to mentor him as per WP:MENTOR, it might be possible that his conduct might improve. Having said that, there does seem to be a very real issue of perhaps excessively high self-opinion regarding this editor, and if that were true it might well be that mentoring might be ineffective. John Carter (talk) 14:19, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

A CU was just performed and confirmed that I am unrelated to any of the accounts I was accused of operating. The behavioral "evidence" is weak at best.Petergstrom (talk) 16:50, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

"The behavioral evidence is weak at best" You don't talk like a newbie. Beyond My Ken (talk) 17:13, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

And it is also, I think, hard to imagine a relatively new user so frequently expressing outrage regarding the conduct of others, as Petergstrom has repeatedly done here. Most newer editors I've encountered are much less familiar with all the details of our policies and guidelines, and on that basis have been much less likely to indulge in such expressions of outrage. And I think most newbies would be a lot less likely to use the abbreviation "CU' as Peter does above as opposed the full term. Most wouldn't be as familiar with the abbreviations, although a person with a history of sockpuppetry would probably know it all too well. John Carter (talk) 17:18, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

I just came from viewing the CU page...that was how Jytdog abbreviated it, so that is how I abbreviate it....I can't believe I thought this would clear things up. Looks like no amount of evidence can change the preconceived opinions you guys have. I'm so done. Whatever.Petergstrom (talk) 17:55, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

@Petergstrom: you will notice that I have actually indicated that I thought mentoring you might be useful as an alternative to sanctions. And thereafter you, on no basis whatsoever so far as I can see, accuse me of having preconceived notions. Your comment, if anything, demonstrates your own biases and apparent unwillingness to deal with criticism. While I thank you for your clarification, I also believe it reasonable to note that what may well be one of your most substantial problems, an unfortunately high opinion of yourself and your regularly making at best unwarranted incivil comments to others, seems to be continuing unabated, and that cannot reflect well for you. John Carter (talk) 18:56, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

@John Carter: I am willing to be mentored. I am willing to work better with editors. But I currently don't see that happening right now, if, with very very limited evidence, the accusations of sock puppetry continue-with the constant threat of a ban looming, it is hard to work effectively. Petergstrom (talk) 18:59, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm not actually sure I see "accusations of sockpuppetry." I see a statement from her that she might be collecting evidence for a sockpuppet investigation, which is rather a different matter entirely. There isn't a great deal anyone can do about editors doing such off-wiki - trust me on this as someone who has repeatedly been advised of collection of information against him by others. ;) On that basis, the "constant threat of a ban looming" also seems to be at least a bit of an overstatement. The best way to minimize any such risks might be to try to focus at least in the short term on some non-controversial articles and/or make a point of proposing changes on talk pages and getting support there before making them. There are a lot of WP:GNOME-like tasks which one could easily do to help make him more familiar with a broader range of content and other pages, which also might give that person a better grasp of "standard procedures" of a sort. And there are, presumably, a massive number of articles on books or authors in almost all topics which meet notability requirements but don't exist yet. Any such actions might be useful and probably less likely to lead to controversy. John Carter (talk) 00:54, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

• Support - Bearing in mind that "CU is not magic pixie dust", I simply don't believe this is a new editor, which is the only argument that seemed acceptable to me for not imposing a topic ban. Given that, a topic ban is quite a reasonable sanction. Beyond My Ken (talk) 17:13, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

@Beyond My Ken: I actually see two proposed topic bans here, medicine and religion. Could you be a bit more specific about which proposal(s) you are supporting? John Carter (talk) 17:44, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

I disagree, I see one topic ban in the proposal, "a topic ban on all articles pertaining to medicine and religion, broadly construed." Now some people may object to one part of it or the other, and if I had wanted to do so, I would have, but my !vote was on the proposal as originally stated. Beyond My Ken (talk) 17:51, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

You're right, and my apologies. John Carter (talk) 18:52, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

No problem. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:04, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose ban - (conditional) *If* Petergstrom was sincere when he said "I am willing to be mentored. I am willing to work better with editors., and *if* both sockpuppet investigations are closed without showing abusive socking (it now appears that will be the result), and *if* a volunteer can be found to mentor him on behavioral and interaction issues raised above, then a ban should be postponed. Xenophrenic (talk) 21:13, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Tryptofish, Xenophrenic, and anyone else reading, the Petergstrom account being in a different continent does not mean that he is not Pass a Method. Keep in mind that Pass a Method was last identified in a sock investigation in 2014 and that it is now 2017. Because of statements by Pass a Method in the past, I considered that he had moved, which is why I noted that Petergstrom might be interested in having a CheckUser confirm that he is no longer in the United Kingdom. Sock investigations are not solely based on the CheckUser data; they are also based on the behavioral data. Sometimes solely on the behavioral data. See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Jdogno5/Archive for an example of a case where the CheckUser data was put ahead of the behavioral data and I then had to compile more behavioral data just to get the sock blocked. All that stated, if you believe that Petergstrom can be reformed, and it seems that you do, I hope that you are right. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 04:46, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, Flyer22 – I hear you. I don't feel like I have really made up my mind about this, but I tend to think that this is a matter of WP:ROPE. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:21, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

• Support limited-time topic bans while noting that I am WP:Involved with the blocked user whose sock Petergstorm is accused of being. I'm not convinced Flyer22 got the right master, but the user's claims to be a newbie haven't convinced me either. I support the medical topic ban based on Jytdog's report of interactions above, and the religion topic ban based on this edit war in which the user uses a tabloid source to add a new section immediately after the Lead retroactively diagnosing a Catholic saint with a psychotic disorder. (The material could have been appropriate with secondary sourcing further down in the article, but not in it's own "Mental health" section without lots of high quality sources.) Also per similar bizarre edit wars on Jesus [6] and Moses [7] ~Awilley (talk) 16:29, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
• Comment While User:Petergstrom is facing a topic ban on articles related to medicine and religion, broadly construed, he just continued edit warring on one of the same articles that brought him here! I think this demonstrates that he is unwilling to change and seek guidance. I therefore support a topic ban (and probably a block) because I think it's necessary for him to slow down.--Jobas (talk) 21:34, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

• Just wanted to show the complete list of recent aggressive edits that were made by User:Petergstrom on the Religiosity and intelligence page [8] (from February 2 2017 mainly and up to February 14 2017) . On February 2 2017, User:Petergstrom disregarded the warnings, by at least 2 editors, that he had violated the 3RR. When User:Renzoy16 made the following edit summary "Removed information is relevant; User:Petergstrom has crossed WP:3RR" User:Petergstrom reverted with the following edit summary "I took it to talk, nobody cares. In actuality you have crossed 3RR" and continued to revert despite being notified by User:Renzoy16 and User:Jobas already.Huitzilopochtli1990 (talk) 03:15, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

• Support my impression from what I find in this huge time-sink/thread is that this editor's behavior, if permitted to continue unchecked, will lead to more huge time-sink/threads on this page. I'm seeing far too much WP:IDHT and POV-pushing, and far too little respect for the viewpoints of others. Lepricavark (talk) 23:40, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support based on recent history of remarkably unilateral changes to the Religiosity and intelligence page, a pattern of behavior which I seem to remember was also characteristic of PaM. John Carter (talk) 21:06, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
• Note: Further to Flyer's response to the Oppose (Conditional) above. this also appears to be a case where CU was taken over Behavioural.

• Support: Alongside the note above, Peter's response about taking it to talk and nobody caring? Rubbish. Why's he getting reverted if it's the case that nobody cares? Besides, why can't you move onto something else related to the topic while you wait for responses, I know pages that can take months for replies and don't complain! I think a Boomerang is in order. MM ('"HURRRR?) ^(Hmmmmm.) 19:25, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support a limited-time topic ban. Peter's edits on religious topics show a tendency to make edits which are problematic for several reasons - WP:NPOV, WP:RS and WP:LAWYER, particularly. Working and playing well with others are core values for wikipedia editors. Giving Peter some time to think about why he's not allowed to edit in those topics is a good thing, he'll have the whole rest of wikipedia to hone his getting along with others skills. I am not persuaded by the analysis of edits presented to support the sockpuppetry accusation, but I don't need to be to support this sanction. Peter, please take advantage of the fact you're still editing at all to consider why we're doing this. Nothing personal, just WP:drop the stick, for your own sake. loupgarous (talk) 12:12, 18 February 2017 (UTC)
• Comments: It looks to me like this ANI filing by Petergstrom was a preemptive strike, because he has clearly been stalking Flyer22 and was about to be reported at ANI for it. There is zero evidence that Flyer has harassed Petergstrom, and there is abundant evidence the other way around, and there is also substantial behavioral evidence that Petergstrom may be a sockpuppet. That said, I don't know what the correct sanction should be. At this point, it does not seem like Petergstrom is an asset to the encyclopedia. I will proffer some advice to Flyer22: Bad things happen when content discussions occur on usertalk pages. Stay off of usertalk pages, and in the future things like this (retaliatory stalking) will not occur. All content disputes should only ever be discussed and resolved on article-talk or project-talk. It's that simple. That said, I think a fairly lengthy or indefinite block for Petergstrom for disruption may be more (or equally as) appropriate than a topic ban at this point. Softlavender (talk) 12:53, 18 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support topic ban on both subjects. Medicine and religion are two serious fields and vandalism should be taken very seriously, especially there. Unfortunately we seem to be giving too much leeway for an editor who has not demonstrated that they deserve an opportunity to rehabilitate themselves. I don't see their use here after all this drama. I would also promote a lengthy block as an appropriate response to this behavior.TheGracefulSlick (talk) 16:37, 18 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support both topic bans for six months (or indefinitely, appealable in six months). User has made too many sweeping unexplained or inadequately explained changes to articles in both of these areas even after this topic ban was proposed. Softlavender (talk) 00:33, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Sock investigation

For those wondering why I have called Petergstrom a sock or what evidence I have, see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Pass a Method. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 03:38, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

I must give you props for the compilation of information on all of this. I am sure it took lots of time to collect. I also looked at Jytdog's comments on another sockpuppet investigation. I agree with Jytdog that the initial edits show some familiarity with how Wikipedia is used. Also the familiarity with some WP policy, including sort of frequent use of noticeborads - which most Wikipedians never really use, strikes me as not dealing with a someone new to wikipiedia. The edits mentioned by Flyer22 Reborn do show some similarity in style to some other past accounts such as the outlining style and similar interests in medicine and religion. I am inclining to agree that some sort of sockpuppetry may be at play. Normally, new editors learn some lesson after being blocked, but the recurrent blocking and alerting that has occurred from other editors seems to show experience with the process and also how to make a defense for it.Huitzilopochtli1990 (talk) 07:33, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

• Comment Behavioral data (analysis of the putative sock's edits) in this case strike me as equivocal, and don't establish or exclude sockpuppetry. That user might be a former user other than Petergstrom. If the CheckUser contradicts the behavioral data, WP:ROPE is indicated, not sockpuppetry sanctions. I'd hate the project to rely on subjective impressions over less equivocal evidence such as CheckUser when imposing sanctions of any sort against anyone. That's what the analysis of the behavioral evidence in this case looks like to me. loupgarous (talk) 11:48, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I second everything said by loupgarous, behavioural evidence is always 'balance of probability', in this case I am only persuaded of 'possibility' (on the strength of what has been presented to date).Pincrete (talk) 17:53, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

User replacing images with his own lower-quality ones

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

---

• Hemant banswal (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

User:Hemant banswal is an amateur photographer keen on introducing his own work into articles. A few are useful angles on local architecture which Wikipedia was lacking, but a lot of his edits are adding redundant photos that don't particularly illustrate anything and replacing useful and/or high-quality images with unclear, lower-resolution ones from his own camera. User:Pocketthis mentioned "a number of us chasing this guy" for this behaviour back in January; after I took the time to offer Hemant some talk page advice, and to patiently deal out warnings up to level-4 when reverting his edits, he's still replacing photos with his own less-illustrative ones and has not attempted to discuss these edits with anyone. Not sure where else to go from here. --McGeddon (talk) 12:51, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

It is my view that an editor who has taken or has found a photo which could improve a article should be bold and just do it (recognizing that a consensus of editors might conclude the article has too many or that this one isn't suitable. However, when it comes to replacing one photo with another one, absent situations where it is clear that the replacement is materially better, the editor should open a discussion on the talk page, ideally to get support, but at a minimum to identify lack of opposition, before replacing the photo.

I don't pretend to have invented this process, it is one I've seen used by editors I respect, but AFAIK, it isn't codified as a guideline {or maybe it has and I just haven't seen it). If it is a sensible rule, we might codify it as a guideline, then we would have a better ability to deal with situations such as thins, and could revert per a guideline, rather than having to create an ANI incident.--S Philbrick(Talk) 15:43, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

• What McGeddon failed to mention here is that this user, who claims to speak English on his user page, has NEVER replied to one of us. His talk page looks like a Rand McNally map of problems. Many posts of help offered, much advice offered by many. Replies from the user in question: ZERO. He is either suffering from mental issues, or just doesn't give a damn, and he just continues to run from article to article exchanging high res quality photos with amateur low res cell phone photos with no composition. He is trouble and needs a BOOT. Do what you will, I am personally tired of chasing him around. Respectfully, Pocketthis (talk) 16:12, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

• Blocked. @Pocketthis: (hello there, I remember your great pictures!). I understand your frustration, but we have seen many cases of users who simply aren't aware they have a talkpage, or what it's for. On the assumption that that's what's the problem here, I have blocked the user for two weeks, simply to get their attention. They have certainly been warned enough, and reached-out-to enough. Bishonen | talk 21:22, 13 February 2017 (UTC).

• Oh dear, McGeddon and Pocketthis, I forgot to actually place the block (being used to Twinkle doing it for me), and the user immediately came to my page, to give me a pie and have a chat. Some irony there. I told him to get back to his own page — I gave him a link to it and everything — and chat to the people who have taken so much trouble to reach out to him. Seriously. Now he's blocked. Bishonen | talk 21:36, 13 February 2017 (UTC).
• Lol...I got a good laugh at your post. It fixed a simply horrid day...:-) How did he end up on your page?? He finally replied when he was blocked?? I don't get it, but if this is heading toward some resolution with the problem: Bravo. Oh...thanks for the photography compliment, it certainly caught me off guard, as I don't remember speaking with you previously. Thanks Pocketthis (talk) 00:19, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
• WAIT!! of course! You were the lovely lady that came to my talk page regarding the UFO incident. I still have that on my page in fact. I kept it because it was such a nice gesture for you to make by coming to my page and discussing the images we see in the clouds. Nice to see you again..really.  :-) - Pocketthis (talk) 00:26, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

• I merely told him he had been blocked, I forgot to actually block him. (Twinkle does both together.) So he had no problem coming to my page. Which conveniently made me realize I hadn't blocked him... or I might never have noticed. I certainly remember your cloud pictures, Pocketthis. This sky is absolutely insane. Bishonen | talk 09:46, 14 February 2017 (UTC).

• On the 'downside', he still hasn't addressed any issues on his talk page, and it certainly isn't because he doesn't know where his talk page is. On the 'upside', at least you got a pie out of the deal! →Pocketthis (talk) 16:54, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
• Also, to end any speculation re: 'he may not know where his talk page is', I did a little investigating, and discovered that he blanked his Talk Page of 8,000 characters on February 10th, 2015. So much for that notion. Now my bigger concern is: What happens after the 2 week Ban? Thanks - Pocketthis (talk) 17:39, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
  • I'm watching his page, but two weeks is just about the kind of timespan that'll make me forget all about it in the mad rush that is Wikipedia, and the pie will be long gone. Feel free to report to me directly, on my page, @Pocketthis and McGeddon: and others, if you see renewed disruption from this account after the block expires. Bishonen | talk 21:01, 17 February 2017 (UTC).

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

Looking for broader community input

Good evening ladies and gentlemen.
There has been a recent discussion on my talk page which I would appreciate if you could go take a look at (User talk:Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi#Second eye..) for the full picture. But in summary, we have User:MilenaGlebova1989 who has created 154 short articles on individual Yoga positions (or 'asanas'). Winged Blades of Godric and Cyphoidbomb are doubtful they are notable, are poorly sourced- mostly WP:PRIMARY- and ought to be redirected to our List of asanas article. There being so many qualifies them, I suggest, for this single, centralised discussion to take place.
So in the interest of wider discussion, in appreciation of the benefits that 'the intervention of administrators and experienced editors' can bring (and hoping someone will know of a means of mass-redirecting if that is indeed the conclusion), here we are. No particular administrative action is requested- except, again, if there are tools available to redirect en masse- although it is probably worth noting that if this had been replied to, something could have been worked out earlier and we may not have to be here now. Cheers, O Fortuna!^{...Imperatrix mundi.} 16:32, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

• Redirect - As I noted on Fortuna's talk page, if this were a single article, I would have redirected to the List of asanas article on the basis that independent notability had not been properly established, but given that we're talking about 154 or so cookie-cutter stubs, it seems a massive undertaking to perform without discussion--and frankly, without help. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 16:44, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
• Redirect--As the iniator of the discussion, I find zero-notability in these standgalone stubs and propose an en-masse redirect to List of asanas. Winged Blades ^Godric 18:10, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

• Comment: These articles contain images with promotional watermarks[9] that were originally published under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0). If I understand correctly we cannot (yet) re-license them under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Creative commons says: "The 3.0 Attribution-ShareAlike allows contributions to be licensed under under a “Creative Commons Compatible License,” defined to mean licenses approved by CC as essentially equivalent to the 3.0 Attribution-ShareAlike license. To date, CC has not approved any other licenses as compatible. However, CC will develop a compatibility process shortly following launch of the 4.0 licenses."[10] Also see:[11]. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:58, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

• Redirect, absolutely. Having spot checked a dozen of the articles I didn't find a single one that did more than mention the name of the pose, as well as some WP:NOTHOWTO violating advice and a list of titles (with amazon.com links for refs) of books that describe it - no indication of notability, and the articles look like spam magnets for various publications that mention them. It may even be the case that they were created in order to name-drop the author of the book and website that the images were taken from, given that all the images appear to have the same source - the same user has created articles about both the author and the book, in addition to all the asanas. (If so, we should be grateful that there are only 154 articles, given that the book apparently lists more than 2000 of them...) --bonadea contributions talk 21:09, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Ah, that's a good note about the spam potential, Bonadea. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 01:55, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, thanks very much Bonadea: does this kind of thing increase google hits, or something, d'you think? O Fortuna!^{...Imperatrix mundi.} 07:17, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

I think it is likely that some SEO people believe that it does, anyway - I have very little idea of how google's rankings work, but spamming the name of a person or product to various pages is something I see happen occasionally. That's not a reason in itself to delete the pages I guess, but it makes my spam spider senses go all tingly... --bonadea contributions talk 21:04, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

• Yo, Cyphoidbomb... O Fortuna!^{...Imperatrix mundi.} 13:38, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

IanB2 and Vikings (TV series)

• IanB2 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Vikings (TV series) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

A discussion began at Talk:Vikings (TV series) § links from the cast list section by IanB2 on the validity of linking character from the television series Vikings to the historical figures that the characters are inspired by. After a discussion of intermediate length and an initial edit[12], later reverted[13], I gave a suggestion as to the linking, and that was to link to the historical figures, but for characters with entries only at List of Vikings characters, to not link them. IanB2 then took this discussion the wrong way, and did link the figures to the article of the historical figures, but specifically to the subsections of "Portrayals in fiction", or similar titles: the edit[14], and then a revert[15] by Sandstein, of which IanB2 reverted[16] again. This was disagreed upon in the discussion by multiple editors, but the editor has forced this version multiple times, claiming STATUSQUO, while the status quo is the version without the "Portrayals in fiction" links, which had stood for many years, with no other editor supporting their edits, and no consensus whatsoever. I removed the links earlier this month[17], over a month after the discussion, which IanB2 reverted[18]. I then reverted again in good faith[19], which is when IanB2 reverted[20] with no explanation or edit summary. When taken to their talk page after they reverted my removal with no reason, they gave no indication that they wished to contribute to a fair discussion while leaving the proper status quo in place. I attempted to remove them again today[21], with the flow of no consensus for the links to the subsections, but I was reverted[22] thrice- this[23] is where IanB2 claimed STATUSQUO incorrectly; I have since ceased to revert to prevent edit-warring. These actions well and truly fall under WP:OWNBEHAVIOR, specifically the fourth point as described below, and also the second point: An unrelated editor added[24] link to another historical figure, which IanB2 accused[25] me of adding "uncited links" in their revert of my edits, while not even removing the link. They then even restored[26] the link after I removed[27] it (noted that they later removed[28] it after it was brought to their attention). However, these actions definitely comply with the fourth point of OWNBEHAVIOR. If the editor wishes to take part in this discussion, they would do well to note that this is a discussion about their actions, not the content. Alex|The|Whovian^? 08:29, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

I am disappointed with both the tone and the content of the above. This issue arose originally from a point that I raised on the talk page of the relevant article, on 31 December. Arising from this discussion, Alex proposed a solution ("links can be directed to the reference to the television series in the historical figure's article - e.g., link "Ragnar Lothbrok" to Ragnar Lodbrok#In popular culture") which I implemented as he proposed. Alex subsequently changed his mind and has several times (twice on 2 February, three times this morning) returned to the page to revert the change, without providing any explanation as to why his own proposal should be reversed. Alex made these five deletions/reverts without contributing further to the talk page on the relevant article - until this morning the last contribution was mine of 3 January in which I say I am happy to discuss further. The appropriate way for Alex to have proceded was to have responded to my invitation and set out whatever are the concerns he may now have with his own earlier suggestion, not to repeatedly edit the page without offering any justification, and then bring the matter here. I feel that the WP:OWN allegation is inappropriate, since the proposal at issue was his own suggestion to begin with, and his recent emotional behaviour in the discussion on the television manual of style (culminating in his edits of 3 February, and multiple complaints from other editors about Alex's disruptive approach) indicate that this is a policy he might usefully himself review. Finally I note that Alex's three edits of the page today each revert my original change of 31 December, and I have returned the page to status quo each time, so for disclosure we would both appear to be in breach of 3RR IanB2 (talk) 09:50, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

And as I have mentioned time and time again, I revoked my stance on the decision, and found it to not be applicable to the article. I have provided plenty of explanation, which you seem to ignore, and that is that you have no consensus or supported for your edits. No other editor has agreed with the edits since you implemented them. I contributed to the discussion on your talk page, which you made it extremely clear that you did not plan to make any attempt at a civilized and fair discussion, and hence I left it. I brought the matter here due to the fact that I was concerned with your severe breaches of OWNBEHAVIOR, which are not just allegations, given that proof was provided in my original post. I would recommend that you begin immediate action to rectify what has been listed. I am not some angsty teenage that allows particular discussions to affect my contributions to other ones - I reverted my disruptive edits regarding the MoS changes, and withdrew from it. This does not affect my ability to discuss the issues regarding the cast list, and that you would assume it does shows that you think very little, if at all, of other editors on this site. I would also recommend that you actually read up on 3RR - your statements are false. This is not the status quo. The status quo is the version without the links, that the page stood with for multiple years, and the disruptive edits are the ones that were reverted by two editors, not just myself. For a version to be a status quo is, after all, a version that does not contain the edits being disputed. The edits being disputed? Those are the section links. Alex|The|Whovian^? 12:05, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Since no other editor has contributed to the discussion, or amended the edit to the article, for some weeks, Alex's references to "consensus" don't actually amount to any more than himself disagreeing with his earlier proposal that resolved the original disagreement. He has offered no explanation in relation to the substantive issue to explain his change of view or support his multiple reversions, for which the proper place is the article talk page. I have made no comment on Alex's maturity or judgement, but believe my positive attempt to resolve the dispute he created (by his own admission) within the MOSTV review speaks for itself (and may well be why Alex has chosen to escalate a relatively trivial disagreement to this administrators' page). Alex's three edits to the Vikings series page this morning each reverse my edit of 31 December, which in my view falls foul of 3RR, but I am happy to be guided by more experienced editors if I have misread this policy. IanB2 (talk) 15:37, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

The consensus, or the status quo, is the status of the article before the introduction of the disputed content. This disputed content is that of the linked sections, to which I am not the only editor that disagreed with it. This makes your claim of "Since no other editor has contributed to the discussion" incorrect; you seem to have forgotten Sandstein's contributions. The linking is not necessary, as when a reader visits the page for the historical figure, they expect to be sent to the information regarding the historical figure. They do not expect to be presented with information that is identical to that already provided in the series' article, regarding the figure's portrayal in fiction, of which no unique information is given in this particular section of the historical figure's article (differences from the actual figure, casting information, development, etc). But as I mentioned in the initial post, this discussion is to report your actions, and not a place to continue the discussion here. This report and matter is not trivial at all, as you have expressed not one but two major points of attempting to own the article. You need to recognize your actions, and begin to work on them. Since you are apparently not planning to read 3RR yourself, I will copy it for you: An editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page—whether involving the same or different material—within a 24-hour period. The three edits to the Vikings article do not violate 3RR at all. You have misread it, and a more experienced editor has indeed corrected you.

I don't think this is helpful, Alex. There is no "serious misconduct" here - even your own transgressions, which are more numerous than mine, don't fall into this category. It is quite obvious that you are posting here to pursue a perceived grievance arising from an unrelated discussion. I am pleased that you have raised a wider discussion on the issue of the links, rather than repeatedly reverting content that you don't like (despite being in the format that you yourself originally proposed). Meanwhile the mature thing to do would be to remove this discussion from the administrators' page to avoid wasting their time unnecessarily. Regarding 3RR, I stand by my view that your three edits within a few hours each reverted my original of 31 December, and therefore you were in breach. I haven't posted a report to avoid escalating this dispute unduly. Nevertheless as you are someone who has been blocked for falling foul of 3RR previously, I suggest that a refresh might be worthwhile. IanB2 (talk) 21:14, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

By all means, list my transgressions, if you think that there are more than those that you have committed. I'm not afraid of WP:BOOMERANG; I am more than willing to confront them, unlike yourself. I am posting here to bring your actions to account. You fail to understand your actions. I have no plans whatsoever to remove this discussion, especially given that other editors have contributed to it, so attempting to hide a report against your actions will not work. And I stand by the view that it appears that you believe that "exactly three" means "more than three"; I ceased to revert after the third, to prevent that very case. No violation has occurred. Shall I copy the policy gain, or would you read it from my previous message? Bringing up old cases won't support your arguments either. As you can tell, I have not violated 3RR since those particular occurrences. You don't see me bringing up any old reports against you; I find these actions to be in foul taste and exceptionally uncivil of you. Again, a display of not attempting to discuss in a fair and civil manner. Alex|The|Whovian^? 21:22, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

unless you insist, I don't think listing your transgressions would take this discussion (which really doesn't belong here in the first place) in a positive direction. I don't see that above conversation does either of us any favours. I was pleased when you decided to change approach and pursue the issue of the links in a positive and collaborative manner, and would rather build on that rather than be dragged back into another pointless dispute with you. IanB2 (talk) 21:36, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

So, there are none to list As I thought. I would prefer to remove the links rather the "build on" the links, hence my RfC. I will be leaving this discussion for the administrators to review, and decide what the best cause of action is for the deeds listing in the original post are. Alex|The|Whovian^? 21:40, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Why not hold a request for comments? NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 16:17, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

@NinjaRobotPirate: Submitted one. What are your thoughts on this report and user in question? Alex|The|Whovian^? 19:56, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, my hope is that the RFC will help resolve whatever problems exist here. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 21:05, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Dispute over removed material

A few days ago I've started editing Tourism in Georgia (country) article, I study tourism in university and thanks to that background tried to find every useful material what is in connection with Georgian Tourism. You can see how the article enlarged after my updates and new materials before and after. Working on the article I decided that it will also useful to include UNWTO classification for Georgia, in a tourism industry and reports this classification is wide used since UNWTO is the main tourism international organization. In that classification, you can see tourist arrivals, receipts, annual change and many other things. In general, the classification shows how strong or weak is a country in comparison to its neighbors or world countries. Here you can see about what material is the dispute ►[29]. After some time appeared User:Chipmunkdavis and made some improvements but he also removed that material about UNWTO classification. As I understood from his summaries he underestimates that international organization's role (maybe mostly because of incompetence in tourism). I restored his remove and opened discussion on his talk page. You can see that discussion's result. Instead of cooperating with me and having good faith he 3 times reverted (1, 2, 3) that material violating WP:3RR, he could ask me for more explanations but his only goal was revert and remove. Also, he thinks that this material is there only for Georgia's promotion as the European country, and he also said that is why I removed Asian category, but I wrote why I did so because according to the WTO classification Georgian tourism industry is a part of European tourism. You can see that in the end, I tried luck to solve the dispute without a third party but his answer convinced me that further discussions will not have a result and will be only edit-wars. One thing that really irritates is his position that he is master of wiki content and his the only truth and others have no rights or importance, you can place tons of arguments but none will be heard. He claimed that UNWTO classification is not used and it is not important (why?). In favor of me, I have my tourism study background and this excel file of Georgian National Tourism Administration's report where countries are classified under the UNWTO classification what once more proves that this classification is important and Chipmunkdavis is wrong. All in all what does wrong the material? it gives more information about particular country's positions in its tourism region, I think a problem is when we have a lack of information than information in details.--g. balaxaZe★ 13:02, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Giorgi Balakhadze, content disputes are not resolved here. See WP:DR for your options. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 14:25, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

User:NeilN yes I tried it first but they redirected me here because the case is not only about pure edits. Please do not close so fast.--g. balaxaZe★ 16:27, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Giorgi Balakhadze, you have zero posts on the article's talk page and opened a totally inappropriate DRN case solely accusing the other editor of wikihounding. You need to actually follow the dispute resolution process. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 16:33, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

NeilN see here my first discussion at WP:DR: Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard/Archive_147#User_talk:Chipmunkdavis.23WP:WIKIHOUNDING. That wikihounding was said because of a lot of past patterns when the user was appearing after my edits (even archiving his talk page at the same time as me) and was changing them in his manner. The rest is said above.--g. balaxaZe★ 17:00, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

So where to go? I just want to settle this case.--g. balaxaZe★ 17:03, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

@Giorgi Balakhadze: I've highlighted the relevant portions of the comment to you: " Report harassment or hounding at WP:ANI after reading the boomerang essay. If there is a content issue, discuss it on an article talk page." --NeilN ^{talk to me} 17:06, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

NeilN how to discuss the content issue with an involvement of other experienced editors? That article is not so popular. Anyway I want to discuss this case with admins to prevent future repeats. I am sure without this there will be a lot of similar cases.--g. balaxaZe★ 17:13, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

@Giorgi Balakhadze: Admins have no more authority in resolving disputes than any other editor. They have to abide by the exact same rules, so discussing it here first won't help anything. Please discuss it at the article talk first, and feel free to post a neutral invitation to come participate on the talk page of any relevant WikiProject. That should attract enough other editors to get things handled. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 17:20, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

@Giorgi Balakhadze:, how to discuss the content issue with an involvement of other experienced editors? Not by using ANI for that purpose. The WP:DR link gives you the proper options. Start by using the article's talk page. Ask for a WP:30. Open a WP:RFC or go to WP:DRN if those options prove fruitless. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 17:25, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Okay I will try your suggestions. Just to mention I've used that user's talk page to solve the problem, the issue is caused not mainly by material but by his attitude.--g. balaxaZe★ 17:32, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

• @Giorgi Balakhadze: Here are your options: You can go back to DRN and focus on content, not contributors. Any accusations of misconduct must be left out of it, but you can focus on the actual content dispute there. Otherwise, we can look into your allegations of Wikihounding here. Wikihounding is a form of harassment and, of course, we would never expect a user who is actually being stalked and harassed to engage in good faith dispute resolution with someone who's distressing them. However, you must provide evidence about the Wikihounding. You'd need to at least show us examples of how this editor is following you. If you can substantiate those concerns, of course we will help you. However coming to ANI and making bad faith accusations against an established editor in good standing with no evidence to back it up will not result in a warm welcome. Swarm ♠ 18:14, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Swarm I do not like to make reports about other people because they cause negative and I try to not make personally negative things. I had many confrontations with that user and he is "like controling" my edits. Of course I can start digging in histories and can find many examples of when he was appearing just after my edits but I hope this personal warning will make him stop such behaviour. --g. balaxaZe★ 18:23, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Giorgi Balakhadze has opened an RfC at Talk:Tourism in Georgia (country)#User Chipmunkdavis' dispute about UNWTO classification. In my view, it does not evidence a good reading of WP:RFC, and nor does it "focus on content, not contributors". I do think there are behavioural problems here. This is part of a continuous trend of misunderstanding or ignoring Wikipedia policy and guidelines (despite lecturing others on them), an unwillingness or inability to improve on that, and an unhelpful repetitive comments on contributors and appeals to authority (both in evidence here) that are not conducive to discussion. Tellingly, their participation in discussions rarely seems to last long. This has been going on for years now, and it would be nice to have some action taken on it. CMD (talk) 08:54, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

@Giorgi Balakhadze: I have closed that completely inappropriately worded RFC. Your misuse or incorrect use of various processes is now bordering on becoming disruptive editing. It is expected that editors read the all the instructions for implementing a process. You don't have to get all the little details right, but in this case "include a brief, neutral statement of or question about the issue" is in bold, simply written, and is expanded in Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment#Statement_should_be_neutral_and_brief. You are welcome to open a new RFC if you can follow these instructions. Chipmunkdavis, do you have any diffs to show this is an ongoing issue with Giorgi Balakhadze? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 14:00, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

What diffs are you looking for, and how far back? There have been various reports in different noticeboards (searched here), which contain relevant diffs, and I hope to some extent the posts in this latest series of events speaks for themselves somewhat.

The last time they posted on my talkpage it was a similar aggressive statement and a demand to use the talkpage when they hadn't touched it themselves ([30]), followed by an apparent threat to involve a wider audience([31]). Similarly relevant to this discussion, they've accused other users of wikihounding before([32][33]). The wider pattern is that they are extremely confrontational. They regularly accuse others of POV editing or similar ([34][35][36][37][38]), say others are lying ([39][40]), and call edits they disagree with vandalism ([41][42]([43]->[44])[45][46]). This takes place while they regularly change things to fit their POV (here's a dif where they call it "minor changes"), and say things like "In Armenian literature you can find many things that are far from truth". They also like to accuse others of edit warring, an interesting example being where they told someone off for edit warring with them ([47]) and then denied edit warring themselves ([48]). All this while telling others things such as that they don't understand Wikipedia policy ([49]). Complementing all this, as well as in their comments on other editors (such as in this discussion), there's a lot of WP:POT. The general tone of their contributions is easily seen by looking through their contributions. These diffs were all taken from their last 1000 edits, however warnings noting to not edit war and use the article talkpage go back to 2013 ([50]). CMD (talk) 16:25, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Putting many diffs without context isn't fair thing, I can defend all of the diffs and answer for all of them if one will have special questions. But here is one thing, your diff-readdines clrearly shows that you are wikihourding me even for me would be hard to find all my past edits and to show them is such way, I guess you are collecting and bookmarking all of them. Once more I will repeat what you show to users is a complete misrepresentation. Also what means 2013? That time I was new in wiki and had no idea about rules. Maybe better to speak about your violation of rules?He behaves very unfriendly and unfair. CMD you can revert other users but if I revert vandalism that is bad thing? I will repeat I can answer separately for each diff if someone will be interested.--g. balaxaZe★ 18:58, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Also if you involve Louisaragon here let me tell to the audience that you both were making intrigues against me and I wasn't tagged it was an intrigue of two users against third one, is it normal here?--g. balaxaZe★ 19:11, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

When I add some new materials or update existing you simply reverting it and will revert them once twice until other part will not stop but not you, you alwas push your view as the most right and correct and think that other users have no rights. That tourism classificaiton issue clearly shows that you reverted them just because you want like that and you can remove sourced contribution with a summary similar to "In my mind it is inappropriate" and that's all. This is very irritative and causes all of this.--g. balaxaZe★ 19:26, 15 February 2017 (UTC)\

Your first summary when reverting: Rv map which conveys little if anything, and rv ridiculous overrepresentation of one organisation's administrative divisions. Yep, those are well written and cast-iron arguments.--g. balaxaZe★ 19:49, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

I would have to say, having "endured" Giorgi Balakhadze's editorial pattern for a decent amount of time now, that its marked by extreme hostility, hot-headedness, no control over temper, and, perhaps most importantly (I'd say this is the root of the whole story) clear IRL grievances related to the political situation surrounding the country of Georgia, which he imports into Wiki. Its so apparant, there's simply no doubt about it. I will add that this is something that's going on for quite some time now as well. Everyone who disagrees with said user, will receive the full load from him at some point. These diffs are still pretty recent for example;

• "(...) maybe before your shameless intrigues you first talk to me a?"[51]
• "(...) so please have more dignity"[52]
• "(...) he tries to show me from the negative side and he lies ".[53]
• "Be sure Aragon if you continue behaving like this (POV based intrigues) and "throwing" to me dirty I will ask admins to review this case, to make special efforts and to call down your appetite in attempts to block me."[54]

Earlier examples, alike content;

• "You are lying".[55]
• "THIS ARTICLE IS ABOUT GEORGIA IN ITS INTERNATIONALLY RECOGNIZED BORDERS AND EVERYONE MUST ADMIT THIS."[56]
• "Sorry but you need more knowledge to understand what means imagined lines".[57]
• "You won't afraid no one with this cheap pathos about sanctions and my "POV".[58]

- LouisAragon (talk) 03:08, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

• Of course LouisAragon has appeared here, it would be pitty to miss such a chance right? As I said above those two users were involved in intrigue to blame to me that I am a sock-puppet (idea was LouisAragon's) and to achive a goal to see me blocked (because I cause trouble to them). Here you can see whole discussion without cuting some parts from a context as above mentioned users do [59]. This made me very angry and I answered to them after that LouisAragon even reportd me (because they like to report other users) but his misrepresentations and intrigues were ignored [60] (when something isn't true and one does it to fool people semantic meaning of this action is "a lie").
• Also, now I will start diging in history and will show to people that this is not a battle of a devil and angels. There is nothing new that all talks are around Georgia because I edit mainly about Georgia. Those two users have some kind of agenda towards it and do to Georgian-connected artilces biased edits but not with Russia, Iran, Armenia, Abkhazia or South Ossetia. The first big collision with them appeared when they removed sockpuppet's useful materials from the article Georgia (before sockpuppet was not blocked they had some disputes with some parts of material, but after his block they reverted everything and everywhere dispite that many of the contribution was useful), removed material was measured in thousands of bytes. I was against remove of so many useful materials and opened disscussion here ►[61] where admins clearly said Edits by a sock or a blocked user don't have to be reverted.

• Regarding LouisAragon's copy-paste of my comments about conflict regions I can put his POV when he says "Abhkazia and South Ossetia being a part of Georgia" [62] which clearly shows that he is not neutral. Even by wiki standards they are conflict or disputed regions but LouisAragon considers them sovereing as Turkey, US or Germany.
• Also, I said LouisAragon has its agenda to show Georgia as non-European as possible [63] (notice: CMD's revert about tourism was also about the same issue)

• Regarding CMD in the article of Georgia he uses every wiki rule what exists but do not use them with other articles for example with Abkhazia or South Ossetia, see here filling of the article with "citation needed" templates (only Georgia) [64], [65] of course I am not against citations but this is also some kind of biased editing, many "citation needed" make article worse (dispite that material was true and after I've found sources for many on them). Here [66] I found that other users also had same example of CMD's censorship like I have now.--g. balaxaZe★ 11:16, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Giorgi, providing diffs when being asked for diffs is not removing context. Nor is it a matter of any great hardship for editors to scroll down to read the conversation leading up to particular diffs. In fact if they do so in the case you mention, they'll note that despite your assertions neither LouisAragon nor myself thought you were a sock-puppet. The mention of the sockpuppet edit conversation is demonstrates a another continued lack of understanding of policies and guidelines, focusing on a single line instead of understanding relevant context. And this really shouldn't have to be said, but here's me adding cn tags to the Abkhazia article ([67]). CMD (talk) 12:05, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

CMD I was impressed with so many cn templates with Georgia and comparing two cn templates with Abkhazia gives nothing, even now I can fill Abkhazia or South Ossetia with cn templates there is still enough empty spaces but in Georgia nothing was left.--g. balaxaZe★ 14:06, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

That sockpuppet edit conversation clearly shows that what I was saying was proved by other editors (and it is not lack of understanding), it was not only my view that you both didn't have to remove all materials. My main idea was to keep useful materials, because I see wikipedia as a place of knowledge but not bureaucratic machine.--g. balaxaZe★ 14:16, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Ehm. We never thought you were a sock. How on earth you came to that conclusion, is beyond me. These responses once again clearly illustrate the point of this multi-faceted issue with said editor; its unfortunately far more than just a lack of understanding. - LouisAragon (talk) 02:58, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Maybe you were not direclty claiming that I am a sock-puppet but what you wrote there was clear fact of that you want to make intrigues to see those users blocked that have different view. You were disscussing that not with admins or someone else but with CMD and not tagging me (and as usually misrepresented reality).--g. balaxaZe★ 11:22, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Also, it is not you who can speak about others competence when you have such background [68] and speak to other user like this

It seems to me you have severe inferiority complexion like many diasporean Afghans, wich is quite understandable given the shitty history and reputation it has, and the shithole it still is nowadays. Pure barbarianism, tribalism, perpetual refugees, being ruled by foreigners for millennia, and child molesting seems to be interchangeable with people from that region.[69]--g. balaxaZe★ 11:55, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Not even gonna respond to this nonsense. It's time for further admin action handling, cause this is going absolutely nowhere, as always with said user. We've reached that typical point just like with those editors who have issues with moderators at ANI, and then start picking 3-4-5-6 y/o diffs (in general, old adressed diffs) of that moderator in question, in order to prove a point that they "can't say a thing about the editor". Lel - LouisAragon (talk) 15:50, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I've already said about you, your intrigues, misrepresentations and biased editing. The last diff was to answer your accusation that you are not a measure of someone's competence. --g. balaxaZe★ 16:27, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Request to enforce breach of agreement

I am coming here following a small peregrination to ask to just enforce a breach of agreement by editor Asilah1981, much in accordance with his incident history and long-running incongruous/erratic behaviour. After I posted a report here,[70] my request was turned down for not being the right place, and was referred here by Peacemaker67.

The editor in question was given the opportunity to avoid an incremental block by accepting an alternative, more constructive sanction, 3 month mentoring (see incident below) for which me and Wee Curry Monster, familiar with his activity showed an scepticism, in a way that the mentoring agreement has been equally breached eventually by the editor, as detailed by the voluntary mentor User:Irondome, here [71] and here [72]. This arrangement resulted after a very long, unpleasant Incident for personal attacks, [73] while at the same time he was being indefinitely blocked for WP:OUTING, ultimately lifted after the administrator trusted the editor. He has lately blanked his personal page. [74]

Other editors involved are shown in the latest ANI. User:Iryna Harpy is now busy off wiki and has been notified, she may not turn up. I should also ping Wee Curry Monster and Kahastok, although they may consider they have said all they had to say by now.

I should ask for a termination to the account as the only solution to continuous disruption to the Wikipedia. Thanks Iñaki LL (talk) 23:48, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

I have to tell that you've done a terrible job of explaining the problem. Could you please provide links demonstrating a current problem with this user's editing? Beeblebrox (talk) 02:15, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Beeblebrox and anyone else You are all welcome to carefully examine my editing history over the past couple of months here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Asilah1981. For the record, I have had three unsubstantiated sockpuppetry accusations launched by this editor against me linking me to random editors and have lost counts of his ANIs and attempts to get me permanently blocked, most recently a few days ago. I'm not particularly concerned by this fixation but if WP:BOOMERANG doesn't apply here, I don't know when it does. Asilah1981 (talk) 06:09, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

I actually did have a quick look at some of your recent edits, in an effort to understand the basis of this report, but didn't find any "smoking gun". From what I can tell, the idea here is that because your mentorship didn't work out, Iñaki LL thinks that automatically means you get blocked. While it's a shame that it didn't work out, WP:NOTBURO would seem to apply, you don't currently seem to be causing any real problems so there's no reason to block. Unless Iñaki LL can clarify why this is needed right now, I would advise them to just leave you alone and find soemthing more productive to do with their time. Beeblebrox (talk) 07:41, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

It would help Iñaki LL's editing experience if they did not continually assume that a disagreement is a personal attack. A recent revert on their userpage has the edit summary "unconstructive, gratuituous personal attack" when it was clearly nothing of the sort. Saying does not make it so. Basically, the lesson here is not to try and use dramahboardz and edit summaries as weapons of war. O Fortuna!^{...Imperatrix mundi.} 08:01, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

@Beeblebrox: I do not have the loads of time Asilah1981 seems to collect all the evidence, or dedicate as he does to litigation and removal of content on the WP in key topics related to present-day Spanish politics and history. The agreement was an alternative to a block, enforcement applies when someone skips sanction. I was suggested I add the link of the previous ANI, where there is lots of information, and came here for enforcement. The editor in question adapts continually, brings up the same parroting (I was accused...), and it has had consequences if you check his history. Other times there were technicalities involved, and I talked previously about my disappointment with the use of Checkuser for sockpuppeting.

@Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi: Please be fair with me and the evidence, compare us both's history and collect all the data. That aggressive, gratuitous edit in my talk page [75] suggesting some kind of collusion with the Nazis (apart from being disgusting) came just after litigation with Asilah, in his former confrontational manners, when it could just have been posted on the talk page of the topic in question. It is funny that you say it was a disagreement, it was an attack, check also this with Asilah1981's similar citing of the Nazis.[76] or this [77] (here, "libel" as discussed in the previous ANI does not refer to anything legal). By the way, I consider the latest editor's tone in his talk page to be sarcastic [78], seeming to use all the mild tone he has learned lately, since he said he would have to "change his strategy" (cannot find the diff since he blanked his page at different stages), does not sound very reassuring. Now after being strongly recommended by Irondome to stay out of contentious topics,[79] now he breaches the agreement, he comes back with an attempt to remove an article he does not like from WP,[80] so not having consequences for personal attacks (see latest ANI link above) seems to be playing perfect for him. Iñaki LL (talk) 09:19, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

You seem to be arguing that their behavior actually has improved, but for the wrong reason. Even if you are correct, it doesn't matter. Also, the diffs you are providing are old. Either provide evidence that there is a problem now that merits a block, or let it go. Beeblebrox (talk) 09:30, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

The OP is alluding to an earlier incident in which Asilah1981 sailed close to a permanent block as A) they had a WP:BATTLEFIELD mentality, B) indulged in personal attacks and were needlessly antagonistic. Mentorship was offered as an alternative to a block with a warning to abide by the terms of the mentorship or face a permanent block. The mentorship didn't work, Asilah basically did not keep their end of the bargain. See [81] where Irondome expressed his frustration. Since the withdrawal of the mentor we've not seen the same behaviour and I think this is basically tactical as Asilah has modified their tactics or is trying to stay under the radar. However, [82] is pretty typical of the old Asilah - he clearly isn't assuming good faith here. There isn't anything now that merits a block, I can understand Iñaki's frustration, but blocks are preventative rather than punative. I suggest WP:ROPE applies and when Asilah returns to the same behaviour is the time to bring up the previous discussion and failure of mentorship. WCM_email 12:49, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

As Asilah1981's former mentor, all I can say here is that a call to sanction A in some way at this stage is unwise. It may well be that A has indeed modified his behaviours in the light of the events of dec-jan, and that the mentoring in some way focussed A's mind. (My withdrawal of mentorship was primarily due to the terms requiring liaison with myself being sloppily and poorly maintained, which in my view made the mechanics of the mentoring untenable). It may be for other reasons. Who knows? The major outcome is that Asilah's behaviour has become less of an issue than two months before. Unless Asilah's behaviours rapidly deteriorate in the future, I think we have nothing to discuss here, apart from revisiting old threads and living in the past. Let events take their course. Being an optimist, I would like to think that Asilah has indeed finally taken advice and the threat of severe sanctions seriously, and has acted accordingly on how they edit and interact. Irondome (talk) 17:19, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, no, let me disagree here, your outlook is overall a positive one for the WP as I see it, but sorry in this case it is doing no good. A quick look to his recent history says it all. (Going through this at the bottom of this edit) Re Wee Curry Monster, that is what I thought for a period, but does that really work out when the editor in question is left to continue for months or years? The thing is that in exchange of this imaginative alternative to a block, as I was fearing, and I think you WCM also were thinking so, the punished has been me (us, the community), in that the breach of sanction goes unpunished, and I happened to detect further irregular editing early on (below). He has also seen a free rein to get into the contentious topics he was discouraged from [83] and does what he wants, basically, while I am now spending hours involved in this negativity that two years ago was infrequent rather than common, and is dampening the spirits of not only me but droves of other productive editors.

Just a quick note on the link above brought up by Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi. I perceived immediately the animosity in the intervention of that editor, out of the blue I should say, but decided to WP:LETITGO with a short talk on the article's talk page, in a way that now that editor's version is the one that remains in the article...

Some evidence of irregular editing by Asilah1981 (with his new milder tone) I happened to find lately, e.g. in Basque conflict: altering content of sources when nothing is said of the claimed statement in the reference, [84] just after ending the latest Incident in January. In Basque National Liberation Movement: adding POV/OR comment, [85] going in the talk page that “I will add the sources” (well, do it! WP:BURDEN, plus WP:FORUM), [86] when he is claiming to be an 'experienced' editor, for which he was quick to remove a notice to his talk page, added by WMC, off the top of my head (check history anyway). Well that does not look to me a proper experienced editor if his behaviour is anything to go by, after months of discussions, notices and warnings to him in article talk pages and his own talk page, as well as ANI Incidents. It reveals, as I pointed before, a total, recurrent inability to take responsibility for his own actions, and emphasis on POV.

Very recently in Bullfighting, he tests the patience of editors to the limit, recurrently, time and again, see here lately [87] [88] (when he was breaching agreement with the community and Irondome). I seems to thrive in litigation and discussions, and needs to bring attention. See also clear removal of accurate verified content with misleading edit summary in this article, [89] looking rather WP:JDLI, or breach of WP:CENSOR. Sorry this is far from proper editing after all. I should ping Cyphoidbomb and Joefromrandb who have an experience lately with Asilah1981 if they think they can also add something. Iñaki LL (talk) 00:06, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

My only observation on the editor's recent behavior (at Bullfighting) was that they launched into an edit war after being encouraged to discuss their changes. "There is no real need to take to talk. It is not even a question for debate." Clearly it was a questino for debate, if there was another editor (Joefromrandb) who disagreed. Protecting the article got the editor onto the talk page for discussion and that seemed to go okay, although with a few bumps from both parties. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 00:33, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

This complaint seems ridiculous to me. I found Cyphoidbomb editing an article and then locking it to be far worse than anything Asilah did. Whatever problems Asilah may have caused at the bullfighting article, the end result was a better article. Joefromrandb (talk) 01:57, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Listen, what I bring is evidence, I saw irregular editing by Asilah1981 (link I added above) and saw you were later reverting each other, with yourself claiming that you are getting tired of his editing ("inline text-citation" required, a perfect claim sticking to WP policies, you complained for his "trollish" behaviour...), so I refer to your edit summary. I do not know what the result of your discussion was to be honest. I also confirm the breach of WP:AGF (How many times?) pointed by WCM here [90]. I also add Asilah1981's latest edit here, with his customary nonconstructive editing, sticking to his personal political obsessions, like here,[91] where the editor shows a clear bias, skipping the main information by the Guardian ("the Basque separatist leader released after six years" [92], to obsessively emphasize his points (a convicted ex-ETA member, ETA this, ETA that, kidnapping, it really sounds like the Spanish government's obsession... everything is ETA...). This kind of behaviour also happened before in this very article when he tried to skip information on torture to Joseba Arregi (died). In fact, after his latest editing on Arnaldo Otegi, we still do not know that he was being released and was not a prisoner anymore, the main point is omitted (keeps calling him "a convicted"). Do not get me wrong, I am fine with adding details that may be relevant if they are in the source, but his editing is very questionable and contentious. And that just after he proposed the article for deletion after breach of agreement.

The only pedagogy I see effective here is an indefinite or incremental block as the only consistent, didactic response, and avoid further unnecessary litigation. Actions have consequences in whatever life situation, on and off WP. Other than that he is taking the EN WP for granted: he was given a constructive alternative to a block for a personal attack (calling me "a terrorist"), a sanction, an agreement among wikipedians, and he breached it, he breached the trust, got away with it, and nothing is happening but myself being in a peregrination to ask for enforcement and engaged in this kind of editing I do not like. The situation is turning embarrassing, even farcical, and not for me, but for the English Wikipedia. Iñaki LL (talk) 23:39, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

The bottom line is he seems to be trying. You can't expect perfection overnight, or at all, for that matter. Joefromrandb (talk) 03:16, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Sorry I think I did not add the recent breach of AGF on top of that brought by WCM, see here [93] (I hope I did it right this time!) By the way, I reverted him in the Basque MLNV prisoners, for not adding edit summary in this sensitive article, a recommended practice of which he was informed in his talk page formerly at least two times by me and another editor. Regardless, keeps going his own way Iñaki LL (talk) 09:10, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

There's a line and, for the most part, Asilah has avoided crossing it, but not always. Asilah has already been advised not to engage in canvassing yet s/he does exactly that here, asking for the support of another editor who has backed them up in the past in a controversial AFD. That's highly problematic behaviour. Valenciano (talk) 09:24, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

A neutrally worded invitation to an AFD is not usually regarded as canvassing. However, this comment [94] is worrying, its rather evident that this user still doesn't get it. Still not enough to warrant a permnanent block yet. WCM_email 11:09, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Valenciano, WCM. Guys, come on, enough with this... Valenciano, I'm engaging with you positively in the AfD which I have the right to launch since there are serious concerns with that article. Maybe I shouldn't have (neutrally) asked Asqueladd for his opinion (he gave it to me privately on my talk page), WP:CANVASS is not clear on when/how you can do so. WCM note I'm backing off Gibraltar related issues and its not a strategy, I just understood how to behave on wikipedia, as you did in the past when you had similar behavioral problems. The Gib topic also bores me somewhat now. I also don't know where this idea of barring me from "sensitive" articles comes from. I edit articles where I find things are seriously wrong and need improvement. There are sensitive editors, clearly. Not sensitive articles. Also WCM, I know you and I don't get along but you are a brit and must see why I'm doing this AfD. Imagine a similar article about "Irish Liberation Movement prisoners" written in a similar way, you would not stand for it.Asilah1981 (talk) 11:57, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

There were such articles Asilah, still are, but I don't edit based on nationalism. Your comment there speaks volumes; you edit based on your belief on what is right not what is neutral. WCM_email 12:50, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

WCMMan, had I written that you would have posted the diff everywhere as a personal attack (it's not for me, I have thicker skin I guess). I'm not a nationalist, I'm a Sephardic Jew from Northern Morocco who has lived many years in Spain and has developed a close connection to and deep understanding of that country, yes. I have political views, yes (surprisingly I don't really have them about what you and I fight about, whether you believe me or not). I have lived in the UK too and I also love your country a lot. But I also try to be NPOV as per my own understanding. Where I see manipulation or false information, I tend to get involved. Maybe you feel the same way about your own editing. No one holds the absolute truth and sometimes we end up fighting simply on the basis of our dislike for one another. Look at Inaki, he just stated today that individuals convicted of assassinating hundreds of civilians and injuring, maiming thousands more are political prisoners and victims of an oppressive state. There is no way I'm going to convince him otherwise. Its a belief which is core to his identity. Everyone has a subjective take on things and that is why edit conflicts exist on wikipedia and that is why political violence exists outside of wikipedia. Main thing is we stick to the rules, but I guess they are rules of engagement. The underlying discussions can't just go away. There is also a fair share of nutjobs on wikipedia. There is one Melroross guy who appears every now and then and I have no idea how to deal with him.... Anyways, I think I should stop editing as much. Asilah1981 (talk) 14:57, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Are you deliberately pinging me after being requested repeatedly to stop? That's a distinctly WP:DICKish move and unlikely to convince me you've reformed. WCM_email 15:07, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

My apologies. No, not deliberate. I didn't know if you were following this page. I don't know why it bothers you so much, though. I wish people pinged me when discussing me.Asilah1981 (talk) 15:21, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

He takes now to alienating me after he tried that days/weeks ago with Kahastok and WCM (see Irondome's talk page), again calling me whatever dawns on his mind, basically spitting out his frustrations/rage on me, and spreading a profound negativity, First of all, I did not say anything he says above, it is perverse and revolting, appealing to the most irrational, visceral instincts, this is what I said, [95], the rest belongs to his elaboration.

Secondly, he has left a message in Spanish on my talk page, something he has done before and I urged him not to do so, since this is the EN WP and I perceive it as intimidating, whatever he may want to say. (In the MLNV prisoners talk page he made another personal attack against me an year ago, also in Spanish) He says that: I am being a nag, that he is trying to work and that every time he gets in the WP, "you [plural] are back to the issue again, give it up, it diverts my attention a lot". Absolute rubbish, if you take a quick look you will realize immediately that is is him meddling in all the controversial issues, adding POV/OR comments, etc. Lastly, he removed a comment by Valenciano he may have found uneasy with, so he just decided to remove it straight from the ongoing discussion/thread. [96] It is irregular in a WP article talk, and at first sight it looks totally irregular also in an Article for deletion discussion. Maybe someone can enlighten us.

The editor above is anything but collaborative in sensitive issues, where he usually engages, he seems to have an inability to take responsibility for his own actions and is overtly confrontational when someone view things differently. (May I add, in the Basque Autonomous Community, few people share Asilah's ultra-nationalist, confrontational views) The tone of his statements has changed, yes, he changed his strategy, as he pointed in his talk page in early January, now blanked. Still he keeps spreading a negative cloud over very sensitive issues that makes any collaboration extremely difficult. I think enough is enough, this editor is out of control. I should upheld my request to an indefinite block to avoid WP:Harassment (he is calling me whatever comes to his mind, in Spanish or English, obviously to keep me at bay), to prevent further escalations, and keep a smooth, positive editing. Failing that a topic ban in Gibraltar (if WCM finds that suitable) and Basque related, as well as "MLNV" prisoners and Basque conflict. Iñaki LL (talk) 22:32, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Actually for the record, (and this is my last intervention here), Iñaki LL you actually did say what I said above in this diff [97] where you write that these individuals convicted, for the most part, for murder are "just Basque prisoners victims of state repression. It may be ETA members, or it may be a journalist, like here, or Arnaldo Otegi, it is basically about Basques the state sees as a threat". We both know that the tens of thousands of Basques who were killed, injured, left widowed or orphaned, extorted, intimidated or forced to leave the Basque country for not sharing your political views would beg to differ. I know the Basque Country well and I know the reign of terror they imposed on its society, to the point that even today people feel uneasy discussing politics openly unless they belong to your end of the political spectrum. I do not have or want to accuse you of anything. You make your views patently clear. You have defined this collective of people convicted for political violence directed, for the most part, at Basque civil society as "victims of state repression". It doesn't offend me since I am neither Basque nor Spanish and no one in my family has been killed by or suffered at the hands of your so-called "victims". I am not leveling any personal attack or accusation against you, as you have been doing against me in these crazy ANIs which waste everyone's time. It just annoys me you want me eliminated from Wikipedia for disagreeing with your political stance and for opening an AfD on an article which has inherent WP:SYNTH and WP:OR issues. I have to say, it is a very familiar pattern. Asilah1981 (talk) 06:43, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I am not interested in your elaborations, your WP:BATTLEGROUND, and corrupt full-time for the WP. Bye. (Thanks for not pinging me) Iñaki LL (talk) 19:07, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

• Recommend closure of this thread. The complaint of the OP was vague, wordy, insufficient, and unsanctionable, and continued to be so. Both editors have had their say; both have been at least indirectly admonished; there is no current cause for overt sanction; and things are shaping up to be merely a content dispute(s), which should be dealt with via normal means (discussion and consensus on the talkpage of the relevant article[s], and/or WP:DR). Both editors should assume good faith, stop insulting each other, discuss content matters civilly and collaboratively on the talkpages of the article(s), stay off each other's usertalk pages, and avoid tracking the other's edits. No one should be edit-warring, and if they are, they should be reported to WP:ANEW. If all else fails, just avoid the other editor; let things work themselves out as they generally will on Wikipedia without our own interference or personal oversight. Softlavender (talk) 07:43, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Listen, this is my last intervention (sorry, I said that before) and I am fed up really. I may not be doing myself a favour by saying this, but at least I will be honest: I do not know if you have read anything or you have arrived on a satellite. If whatever I add here, you have made your decision with a quick overview, there is nothing I can do, no matter how many diffs I bring up here certifying irregular editing. Evidently the editor in question and me do not agree on POV, but my case has nothing to do with POV, it refers to a breach of sanction for a personal attack commited in order to pursue his goal of attempting a ban of an article, which he does with total safety. I respect his views, but he shows a complete inability to calmly discuss matters, and "treats" us with a visceral emotional rants where nothing, nothing substantial can be discussed.

My idea, besides my own views on each topic, is to guarantee that WP rules are complied at least in front my eyes, e.g. removal of verified content, with the same criteria that have been also applied to me. Assimilating me with this editor’s emotional rants where nothing can be discussed, his divisive/alienating attitude and his irregular editing is totally out of place, sets a very bad prededent, and what you are claiming about me and this reiterative infractor is just a guess for me (check the diffs, check personal histories). Although I do not want to run into this editor again, I foresee further escalation, not on content, but form. For Wikipedia purposes, the morale is clear for the infractor, breach a sanction and nothing happens. Very bad pedagogy for smooth, constructive WP editing, it is shameful really. (Thanks for not pinging me) Iñaki LL (talk) 18:53, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Again: vague, wordy, insufficient, and unsanctionable. The next time you file an ANI case against someone, it should be WP:DIFFs only, along with a brief (five- to seven-word) summary of each diff. You failed to do that in your OP or in the subsequent walls of text you have posted here, and now you are insulting my intelligence, and casting aspersions upon me, as well. Please re-read the very specific advice I posted above: [C]ontent disputes ... should be dealt with via normal means (discussion and consensus on the talkpage of the relevant article[s], and/or WP:DR). Both editors should assume good faith, stop insulting each other, discuss content matters civilly and collaboratively on the talkpages of the article(s), stay off each other's usertalk pages, and avoid tracking the other's edits. No one should be edit-warring, and if they are, they should be reported to WP:ANEW. -- Softlavender (talk) 23:40, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Bobsanders1991 compromised?

Bobsanders1991 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) Appears to be a genuine contributor but an abrupt change of article topic is seen in two incidents of apparent vandalism at Visigoths (egregious and questionable). Wanted to bring this up before any more damage occurs. —DIYeditor (talk) 02:17, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

I agree, it looks very odd for someone who has been editing for a year would suddenly start introducing deliberate errors. I've blocked them, we'll see what reaction that draws. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:27, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Maybe a CU could take a look to see if the technical data could indicate that the account was compromised? --Cameron₁₁₅₉₈ ^(Talk) 16:48, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

 CheckUser is not for fishing and would not necessarily be of any help. In many cases of of WP:COMPROMISED the account wasn't hacked, the user in question was just careless and left their account logged in on a shared machine, allowing a malicious this party to abuse their account. Unless another user knows them personally, there is no way to verify that they are back in control of the account. So unless they decide to own those edits and admit to vandalizing, this account is probably a done deal and they will need to start a new one. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:45, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Speaking of alternate accounts, if you check Th3Rea$on, you can see Wikipediaupload (talk · contribs) recreated it several hours after Bobsanders1991 created it. Wikiupload1991 (talk · contribs) also looks related; all three accounts have edited Anna Faith. Seems a bit fishy to me. Maybe this isn't such an innocent contributor? NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 20:00, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, that's not good. Pretty clear socking, rotating the accounts to edit the same article. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:31, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

He is now claiming his account was hacked/compromised, but so far has not addresssed the apparent socking. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:47, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

I just blocked another Bobsanders1991 sock, Sabrebonds9119 (talk · contribs). This one repeated Bobsanders1991's last edit to Anna Faith. It looks like we'll be playing Whac-A-Mole. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 19:07, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

And apparently he's now saying it was all just for "fun". I don't see what is so fun about using two accounts to edit the same article, but maybe I'm missing something. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:13, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

He seems to have gone full-on bad faith troll, just like that. That and the pre-made socks does suggest this was not their first account but with so many nameless trolls out there we'll probably never know which one this was. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:19, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Apparent personal attacks & conflict of interest Rod Culleton

Faroutyouaregood1 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has been engaging in what appear to me to be personal attacks, in relation to The Drover's Wife on Talk:Rod Culleton in this post, this post and on User talk:The Drover's Wife in this post. What appears to be a further personal attack was made in relation to User:Wikiain in this post.

The personal attacks, emotive language used in the main article edits that were reverted, 1 2 3 4 5 6, the original research in this comment, and the threat to create a sockpuppet in this comment all suggest that User:Faroutyouaregood1 may have a conflict of interest in relation to the subject of the article Rod Culleton. Find bruce (talk) 05:10, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

The last four sprays on Talk:Rod_Culleton were after my polite request to read WP:NPA on his/her talk page. Perhaps I was too subtle as I didn't have much time. -- ^Talk 07:59, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

I've protected the page and issued a final warning. Beeblebrox (talk) 08:10, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Scott Davis I thought your polite request was an appropriate way to put it for a new editor & I made a similar comment on Talk:Rod Culleton. It is only when behaviour continues that the comments need to be more direct. While the initial response was sub-optimal, the warning issued by Beeblebrox has elicited an appropriately contrite response on User talk:Faroutyouaregood1. Coupled with the couple of days protection to allow emotions to cool will hopefully be the end of it. -- Find bruce (talk) 00:27, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Procedural closes?

An IP editor is creating disruption by making a string of requested moves on tropical-storm articles, generally going against established guidelines. The three IPs look like socks of User:N-C16, and I have filed a report at SPI. (All the details are there.)

User:George Ho and I were hoping these twelve requested moves (most have been relisted now) could just be closed because of the socking. — Gorthian (talk) 07:53, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

@George Ho and Gorthian: I agree these IPs are socks of N-16. You can either close (or remove if there are no responses) the move discussions yourself, pointing to this thread in the edit summary, or point to a list of these articles. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 14:10, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

@NeilN: Here is the list of hurricane- and storm-related articles at RM. There are so many. I think "procedural close" would do best. --George Ho (talk) 17:50, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

All mopped up. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 18:09, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

What about Talk:Tropical Storm Dorothy (1970) then? There are two supports. The IP is not yet blocked, but most likely a sock. George Ho (talk) 18:31, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

And Talk:Hurricane Kathleen (1976)? George Ho (talk) 18:33, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

NeilN, thank you for your help. George Ho, I think those two will just have to work their way to consensus, since other editors are involved now. — Gorthian (talk) 19:17, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

OVERLINKING and redirect problems

Fmadd (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) Fmadd is a (relatively) new user on Wikipedia, but has already created quite a big stir. In the past two weeks alone they have created over 250 redirects and DAB pages (and a total of 942 redirs since joining). While clearly they are not all bad, the majority are somewhat nonsensical (such as thermomagnetic, Scattering_event, and a couple of not-actually-DAB pages that have already been deleted). From looking down their creation list, it almost appears as if they say "I don't know what this means", put a wikilink, and then attempts to shoehorn in a redirect to something that is vaguely related.

I was going to drop this and walk away, but after seeing three subsequent similar posts at the user's page I feel obligated to bring it up here. In the last two months there have been 5 threads on their talk page regarding overlinking and a half-dozen notices left for pages listed for deletion. They have displayed a rather alarming NOTLISTENING attitude, brushing off attempts at correction to things like "Wikipedia should be a...resource for AI training", "the more links the better", and finishing it all up with "I am utterly amazed that this is controversial" (hint: when a dozen different editors say it's problematic, it might just be problematic). A similar discussion at WT:PHYS has also been started, with similar results. Minutes after I nominated Organic dye for deletion (it had zero incoming links) they created 50 incoming links in a clearly POINTY response. Similarly, they brushed off being told that linking to dab pages like stellar explosion was not overly helpful.

Fmadd is clearly not getting the point, which is why we're here. The overlinking needs to stop, and the wanton creation of barely-usable redirects needs to stop. While we shouldn't just delete every redirect they've created, there are a bunch of them that could use some serious scrutiny and a ton of overlinking that needs to be looked at. Primefac (talk) 13:57, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

I have had conversations as well. To be fair: Fmadd is a relatively new user and has not yet fully grasped that Wikipedia is a community project that works by consensus. He thinks Wikipedia should operate the way he wants it to, not the way it does. I do not believe any sanction is warranted at the present time, but what is required is someone with a bit more clout than us humble users to firmly explain how things work around here. With any luck, that should solve the problem. 86.186.169.144 (talk) 14:22, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't think that being relatively new is a good reason to avoid sanctions here. 10 months isn't that new, especially with 10,000 edits (I've been on here for a little over 10 months and 11,000 edits, and I understand consensus, it's a fairly easy thing to understand). 1/3 of his edits were in the past month, but you should have a general idea on how Wikipedia works with that number of edits. ThePlatypusofDoom (talk) 14:45, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm a bit bothered by the fact that although User:Fmadd has commented on their talk page about the discussion here, and has been very busy editing, they haven't responded here. Doug Weller talk 17:16, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

I thought this was a discussion between admins. Fmadd (talk) 17:29, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

All this fretting about over-linking, when it turns out there's already a script that can change the colour of links (e.g. .. controversial pages can be marked and they no longer 'compete for the users attention'). I said I was amazed it was contraversial, because I can imagine there are technical solutions. With whats there now you can indeed de-highlight 'contraversial' articles. I bet the script or server side software could be further modified to mark certain types of page 'trivial' within a domain (hence blanked out by default) (e.g. all physics articles dont highlight trivial physics terms, all ) etc. I got the impression this is more about a 'priestly cult' mindset. It's only by arguing I managed to discover the highlighting script (several days in, he knew about it all along..) Fmadd (talk) 17:38, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fmadd/linkclassifier.css there's an example, I was able to modify that link-highlighter script to display 'articles marked for deletion' blanked out. Fmadd (talk) 17:42, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Fmadd, has made other kinds of problematic edits as well, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics#User:Fmadd and destruction of article leads. Paul August ☎ 17:39, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Seems like there might be some competency issues lurking about. If someone informs you that you are causing a problem, it's not a normal response to search for a technical solution that allows you to continue to cause the problem it's meant to solve. TimothyJosephWood 17:53, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

lol. as I thought, priestly cult mentality. Instead of improving a system, some people prefer to nit-pick, criticise others and so on. Thats why it was only many days into the discussion that someone finally told me there *is* actually already a way to colour code links by category. It would be easy to have a category of 'exploratory links', invisible by default, which are only visible if a user goes out of their way to highlight them with a custom colour scheme. Thats the first step, but imagine if wikipedia had a concept of 'prerequisites', where you could flag content according to what knowledge is pre-requisite, and dynamically blank content depending on what a user has clarified they already know. Fmadd (talk) 18:46, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Fmadd, you're missing the forest for the trees. We're telling you that per the Manual of Style, the overlinking guidelines, and (based on other conversations) SURPRISE and LEAD conventions, you should not be creating all of these redirects, and you are saying we need to start colour-coding our links better. In other words, you're missing the bloody point. Primefac (talk) 18:56, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

missing the point... there's already a facility for colour coding. My intuition was, "it is surprising that we fret about overlinking". There must be a way to improve the system such that contributing information is never a problem. Fmadd (talk) 19:03, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

No Primefac, I think you're the one missing the point. If we wrote a script that flipped all our articles around for us, then we could write everything backwards, and it would automatically fix it. But instead you want to be close minded and demand that we conform to your cult of directionality. TimothyJosephWood 19:06, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

nice straw man there. I'm talking about colour coding (which already exists) not writing articles backwards. Fmadd (talk) 19:10, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

You sure are. TimothyJosephWood 19:27, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

• Fmadd, you seem to be deliberately ignoring the central point here, which has nothing whatsoever to do with color coding. The concern is that redirects you are creating should not exist at all and you are adding unnecessary links in articles. You may be surprised that this is a real concern, but it is, and brushing it off by suggesting the rest of us use a script or whatever to mitigate it is not the correct response. You don't have to agree with the concern, but you are expected to respect the established policy and consensus on this issue. If you'd like to change the overlinking policy you are welcome to try, but unless and until such an effort is succesful you should abide by it. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:08, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• Fmadd, I agree with Beeblebrox. I'm going to ask you to stop adding links and creating redirects against current policy. You are very welcome to argue for changes in those policies, and to propose changes to the software to allow multi coloured links to facilitate those changes. But until you achieve a consensus that those policies should change, you must comply with them. Deliberately editing in contravention of policies just because you don't agree with them is disruptive. If you continue to do so, you will blocked from editing Wikipedia. WJBscribe (talk) 00:19, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

I also think Fmadd just needs to slow it way down in general. They are editing so fast it is impossible to conceive that they are really thinking things through. I see formatting errors and creation of double redirects in just their last few edits, with no sign that they are even aware of them. There's no rush, and it's always better to think about what you are doing before you do it. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:24, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

@Beeblebrox: I rather fear that the double redirects are intentional, not accidental creations - see my comment below... WJBscribe (talk) 01:00, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

I've left them a warning. Regardless of if they're right or wrong (though they're wrong) editing practices should be checked until a resolution is reached. Primefac (talk) 00:33, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Here's another example of the sort of problem this is creating - see Remote_control_(general). This appears to have been created by Fmadd on the basis that it will one day be a page with content (despite the fact that the disambiguator "(general)" is not used). See incoming links: [98] Numerous articles have had their links changed to point to Remote_control_(general). In addition several redirects have been changed to point to that page, apparently to deliberately create double redirects. This seems to be part of a master plan to restructure our articles about Remote controls and related topics. But instead of getting consensus to change that structure first, Fmadd has created a "web of redirects" to accommodate his vision of how the articles should be structured. WJBscribe (talk) 01:00, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

As a note, I reinstated the declined speedy and cleaned up that mess. Triple redirects! WTF. Primefac (talk) 01:05, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

• A thought regarding this incredibly disruptive editing - their edits have to be undone individually; we can't just unlink all links to their silly redirects because they used to point to valid targets... what a friggin nightmare. Primefac (talk) 01:15, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

  I've read some (not all) of the discussions with Fmadd, and my take is that this is a user who not only doesn't get it, he doesn't want to get it. He's even trotted out that old saw, the cabal of admins, in the form of a "priestly cult". Frankly, I don't believe more argumentation with him is going to stop him doing what he intends to do, so I think it's time for admins to consider a sanction of some sort to stop him. My first choice would be an indef block that would not be lifted until he promised to undo the mess he made, but more kind-hearted souls might prefer a topic ban on creating redirects and making wikilinks - I just feel it's likely that he wouldn't follow it, and we'd be back at an indef block. Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:06, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

  (edit conflict) see below. Primefac (talk) 02:20, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Question 1: block or no?

Slight edit conflict with BMK above, but good timing I guess. First question is easy - if Fmadd refuses to accept the requests made here to alter their behaviour, do we block, or just impose a tban on creating redirects (i.e. a page-creation ban)? Primefac (talk) 02:20, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

• tban on page creation. I think a while actually making productive edits will allow Fmadd to see why we do things the way we do. After six months or so they're welcome to request the return of their page-creation abilities. Primefac (talk) 02:22, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• Blocked per their replies here. If this discussion "destroyed their faith in humanity" Wikipedia probably isn't for them. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:51, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• support indef. This isn't going to go well. GoldenRing (talk) 10:59, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Question 2: all those pesky redirects

Fmadd has made a pretty big mess. The question becomes what to do about their past editing history. I see two main options.

Proposal 1 (slap on the wrist)

Fmadd's past redirect actions are (mostly) overlooked. Interested parties are welcome to comb through them and RFD/delete/edit/restructure as desired, but no "official" action takes place.

Proposal 2 (more involved response)

Fmadd's edits are all looked over by some sort of task force. Unnecessary redirects (such as Particle physics experiment and India gained independence) are deleted and the pages that linked to them are reverted to their pre-redirect status.

• Support and willing to help out. There are just too many ridiculous redirects to tie up at RFD. I think a well-documented task force page (similar to the SvG case) would allow for transparency and some measure of REFUND should a reasonable redirect be deleted. Primefac (talk) 02:24, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• This is pretty much where we are at. Their stubborn refusal to even try and see the issue has now earned them a block, but there's still a mess to clean up. Beeblebrox (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 02:50, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• I will freely admit that I don't understand Fmadd's master plan, so I'd be useless in trying to help undo it - but let me ask this: is it not possible to simply run down his edits in the opposite order from which they were made, and arrive at a state before Fmass started his work? Yes, surely we would lose some edits which were actual improvements, but that seems like a small price to pay. Beyond My Ken (talk) 06:02, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
  • Beyond My Ken, I wanted to propose a "nuclear" Proposal 3 wherein we do just that - roll back everything, delete everything, and pick up the pieces afterwards. I wasn't sure how well that would be taken, so I didn't propose it. I suppose the worst that can happen is it isn't acceptable, so I'll do so now. Primefac (talk) 12:26, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Proposal 3 (nuclear option)

Roll back all edits, delete all pages. Small team to go through and undelete the few pages that might have been useful.

• I would support this if it was changed a little bit:

1. List all created pages in userspace

2. Roll back all edits that were not on pages this user created

3. Review all pages in the userspace

4. Delete all unapproved pages in the userspace

We did the same thing with wp:x1 (with the exception of number 2), and it worked well, I think the same approach will work here. Gamebuster19901 (Talk║Contributions) 14:06, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

That would work. I've already started compiling a list at User:Primefac/Fmadd. I completely agree with rolling back all of their mainspace edits, since 99% of the time it appears all they were doing was creating a link to an odd redirect. Primefac (talk) 14:30, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

In relation to point 2, I should note that Fmadd is sometimes correct that the links should be changed. The problem is that many did not need changing or, if they did, he often made the problem worse. We will lose some useful work if we mass revert his edits instead of reviewing each of them, but I estimate only about 10% based on what I've looked at in relation to Remote control. For example, there were some instances in which he changed articles that linked to that page when they would more naturally refer to Teleoperation (i.e. the process of controlling electronics from a distance, not the device that enables someone to do it). However, instead of linking directly to Teleoperation, he redirected Remote controlled to Teleoperation (which probably makes sense and shouldn't be reverted), and linked to that redirect (which doesn't). WJBscribe (talk) 14:38, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

WJBscribe, I concur that there is a small proportion of their edits that were actually useful, but given that I spent an hour untangling the "remote control" issue last night and ended up only keeping four edits out of about 100, I'd say in this case we should throw the baby out with the bathwater, if only for the sanity of those draining the tub. Primefac (talk) 14:45, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

I concur with Primfac, Gamebuster19901, and WJBscribe. This is the best option. ThePlatypusofDoom (talk) 15:33, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

As I mentioned above, I support the nuclear option, given the downside seems so low. Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:08, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

I'd support this iff the percentage of good contributions reported above is accurate. @Primefac:, yow is the listing coming? Do you have something the community can look at? Tazerdadog (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 01:06, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Tazerdadog, I've gotten User:Primefac/Fmadd into a reasonable shape. I've sorted the redirects by incoming link count, which will make proofing them a bit easier. I haven't sorted through their articles yet, but that's not quite as important. Primefac (talk) 01:20, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

After a spot-check of my own, I have to disagree with the assessment of Primefac and WJBScribe. I found that about 50% of the redirects were a net positive, especially with small tweaks applied. Therefore I have to Oppose this option. A more detailed review is necessary. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tazerdadog (talk • contribs) 01:40, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Tazerdadog, are you willing to support option 2? Primefac (talk) 01:56, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I support mass revert, unless somebody else wants to wade through it all in more detail. Isambard Kingdom (talk) 02:08, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Option 2, possibly combined with X3 is the appropriate response in my opinion. 50% is an unacceptable error rate, and based on my evaluation both a nuke and a slap on the wrist would have that error rate. I'd be willing to wade through a significant chunk of it. Tazerdadog (talk) 02:12, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

My 10% figure above was stated to be based upon review of Remote control based redirects. If link changes/redirections in other topic areas show as much as 50% positive edits, then I agree that this calls for a more nuanced step-by-step review of the edits. Such an approach would also allow editors to correct occasions where Fmadd identified a problem but applied the wrong solution - the optimal result is neither a revert nor keep Fmadd's edits in those instances! WJBscribe (talk) 11:21, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Discussion on the above questions and proposals

Fmadd, I guess this is the part where I ask you if you're willing to take into consideration the views expressed in this discussion as well as on the various talk pages you've been involved with. To summarize a few of the points:

• Decrease the number of redirects you create. Start discussions to see if they're necessary. Pipe otherwise.
• Slow down on the editing. Thing don't need to happen immediately. Finding out an idea isn't the best after two days is a lot easier to deal with if you then don't have to go back and fix fifty pages afterwards.
• Start discussions. Yes, I mentioned this above, but this goes for things like moving remote control unilaterally. Consider all page moves to be potentially contentious, and ask if it's a good idea first.

There are other points mentioned above, but these are the major ones. Does this sound reasonable? Primefac (talk) 02:29, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

well I can take a break from this, and amuse myself somewhere else for a while. I'm not going to stay focussed on making major changes if it takes several days of discussion.. I just wont bother. thats why I liked blasting my way through one issue at a time. If you dont like redirects then my workflow can't be used here. I might as well give up. Thanks for destroying what little faith in humanity I had.. they're just redirects.. and you have to get all "priestly-cult"/"control freak" over it. The point of redirects (or any other abstractions) is breaking problems down into smaller pieces, at which point solutions crystallise out more easily. Tension in "the plan" or ambiguity is just a sign of something else to fix. I've seen this situation many times before. Some people have more to gain from problems, than solutions. Fmadd (talk) 02:42, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Ok, that's enough. Deploying block hammer. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:46, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

(Non-administrator comment) If Fmadd hasn't been here before under another name, I'll eat my aussie hat. Flat Out (talk) 02:53, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

He seems fond of the "priestly cult" meme - anyone recall another editor using that? Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:09, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

"Easier to make mass changes and argue later" seems to be a hallmark, this is their work too Flat Out (talk) 03:29, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

If Fmadd isn't already back as Special:Contributions/Ll928, I'll eat my non-Aussie hat (it's got fewer corks). Dukwon (talk) 14:13, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

• As much as I've been opposed to similar solutions in the past, I'm really leaning toward the nuclear option, at least on anything that's purely a redirect. Looking through several pages of their creations, they seems to be an attempt to...I guess...manually create a search function? Probably fully a quarter of them are created as questions e.g., "should X redirect to Y?" or "is A the proper term for B?" I'm just not seeing much in the way of harmful collateral damage that would in any way outweigh the inordinate amount of time it would take to sort through these individually. TimothyJosephWood 13:20, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

We could expand wp:x1 to include redirects created by this user. Just an idea I thought should be mentioned. Gamebuster19901 (Talk║Contributions) 13:37, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Exactly. The main question in my mind, and I really don't know precisely how this works with the admin bit, but if all article creations are nuke-able with the click of a button, is there anything worth saving in the ~9% of their article creations that are not redirects, which would justify having to tag and delete 950 redirects. TimothyJosephWood 13:45, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

I won't support or oppose nuking everything outright without a review, but if it comes to it, I wouldn't get upset about it. I've added a different proposal under the Nuke proposal. Gamebuster19901 (Talk║Contributions) 14:13, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

New Speedy Deletion Criteria in Response

Since there seems to be consensus at this time to revert these edits, and issues VERY similar to this have happened before (see wp:X1) I am proposing a new speedy deletion criteria.

X3: Pages created en-masse by a single user, where the community has established broad consensus that the pages are harmful to the encyclopedia, would create significant backlogs in their deletion discussion areas, and the reviewing admin believes that it will not survive a deletion discussion. Once the community establishes that the backlog is cleared, normal procedures resume.

It is similar to wp:x1, except it can be applied to more situations so we don't have to keep creating new X criteria. X1 would be merged into X3.

Deletion reasons made under this criteria should contain a link to the discussion where consensus was established, and say "TYPE OF PAGE" created by "USER", to distinguish what situation the pages were deleted in. A list of situations where this criteria has been used should be created.

Example of deletion message: "Redirects created by User:Example, see discussion. Gamebuster19901 (Talk║Contributions) 18:10, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

I'd support that. I should have the full list of redirects soon, which would give an indication of how much this criteria would be needed. Primefac (talk) 18:24, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

This is more of a procedural point, but wouldn't this really be an expansion of X1 rather than the creation of a new criteria? TimothyJosephWood 18:26, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

The reason why I made it an X3 is because some deletion reasons currently just say "X1", and you wouldn't know that it was a Neelix redirect if X1 was expanded. It would be better to retire X1 and continue removing Neelix redirects under X3. Gamebuster19901 (Talk║Contributions) 20:07, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Does R3 "implausible redirects" already cover the case where a redirect is a special case of an existing general article/redirect? e.g. 3D unit vector when there's already unit vector Dukwon (talk) 09:50, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

• Support the creation of a X3 criteria for his redirects, and DAB pages. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 18:48, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• Comment If community consensus is necessary for a case to be added to this, isn't it just as easy for the community to authorise an X number criterion at the same time? I don't think this happens often enough for us to worry about running out of numbers. I can see this being open to the usual misunderstanding that many speedy criteria are. I'm not against the expansion of CSD criteria, but I think that perhaps keeping a specific number attached to a particular disaster one might be easier in the long run than having a catch-all criterion. I may well be missing something. (I know I'm missing my tea, and might see things differently later...) Peridon (talk) 20:04, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

It would take longer to get consensus for a new speedy deletion criteria than to get consensus for invoking an already existing one. A perfect example is this discussion. A discussion similar to this would have to take place every time. In the future, someone could just propose the use of X3 instead of creating a new X. We also wouldn't have to create new template every time, we could just use X3 with values. Gamebuster19901 (Talk║Contributions) 20:20, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose creating a new speedy criteria that could potentially apply to any user, but would support X3 being specifically in relation to contributions by Fmadd (talk · contribs). This situation is rare enough that we can afford to take the time to add to CSD on a user-by-user basis. WJBscribe (talk) 20:24, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose already covered by existing criteria. If a user were creating pages in specific contravention of a ban, WP:CSD#G5 is covered. WP:CSD#G6 is sort of the WP:IAR of deletion criteria as well, if you have a good specific rationale, which is likely to be uncontroversial, G6 should cover it. Especially if a community consensus has already determined that some large block of articles should be speedy deleted as part of a long discussion, then someone could just tag each one as {{db-g6|rationale = <link to original discussion>}} should suffice. I'm already troubled by the existence of the X category anyways, and I'd not like to see it grow. --Jayron32 20:34, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Comment G6 only covers technical deletions, and G5 wouldn't work in this case as the user was not banned at the time the pages were created. Also, X3 would probably prevent more X's being created. Gamebuster19901 (Talk║Contributions) 21:03, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Ah...WP:BURO anyone? If the community assessment is that the stuff should be nuked, who gives two figs what bureaucratic code is applied to it, just go ahead and do it per WP:IAR. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:26, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

If the community decides a nuke is in order, then the pages should simply be nuked, and the edit summary should link back to this discussion. On the other hand, if the community decides a manual review of the edits is in order, a speedy criterion to keep everybody on the same page makes good sense. Tazerdadog (talk) 08:15, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose Didn't we have that discussion already a few weeks back? The reason we use certain designations is that any user can see the designation in the logs and know why the deletion took place. The proposed X3 would mean people had to search for this discussion first. In this specific case, unlike the Neelix one, it would probably not be a terrible strain on WP:RFD if those redirects were listed there instead. We should take care not to create new speedy criteria unless it's really necessary. Alternatively, just nuke all the redirects he created, they are cheap and can be recreated easily. Regards SoWhy 21:45, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Inappropriate global reverts

A great number of non-redirect contributions were just reverted out by Primefac, which does not seem supported by consensus above and is contrary to existing policy and precedent. For those arguing that nothing Fmadd did was not a redirect problem, you are very wrong, and this has been a grave error. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 00:28, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Last night I spent the better part of an hour undoing a mess they made with remote control - they moved it to another location, changed 100+ wikilinks to unnecessary redirects, and generally made a mess of things. In every instance I've looked, they've done this. In one instance they changed pair production into Electron–positron pair production, which is a redirect to pair production! I did not find any good reason not to nuke everything and sift through the ashes. Primefac (talk) 00:32, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Congratulations, that's one of the ones that tipped me something was going on. That one appears to be connected to the problems called out above. Hoever, Pair-instability supernova didn't have anything I see as a problem, he added two perfectly good links (one via a redirect, but a link should have been there from that term, and the other one went straight in to the existing article). So, question: is my watchlist the only two articles with a 50% obvious error rate for a global revert, or was the global revert too aggressive?... Sample size small, but so far I am not impressed... Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 00:37, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

• [99] in "Second processor" where Fmadd removed a redundant word. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 00:45, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
• [100] in Zeus Web Server where he linked Static and Dynamic Web Pages (appropriate, good links) via redirects (inappropriate). Just reverting was wrong-o. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 00:48, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
  • ...annnd the same thing in Utopia Documents, a good link via a redirect that should have gone direct instead. And those three were just the last three things you reverted. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 00:52, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

• Either fix the problems you see, or just file it under collateral damage and let's get out of the morass and back to editing an encyclopedia. I don't see this kind of nit-picking as being very useful. Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:53, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I also don't find the "problems" you're highlighting here as terribly significant. Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:58, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict × 5) Their astronomy work was... less bad than the other stuff. Since I checked them all earlier, I can tell you - every single DAB they created they went in and created 5-10 links to it, regardless of if it even made sense (which it didn't). I found a huge copy-paste page move (which I did fix, by the way) as well as a ridiculous number of anchors placed in the first sentence of the article. Half of their edit summaries were "I don't know what this links to, maybe we can fix it later?". I will not deny that I undoubtedly reverted some decent edits, but I know that I fixed more than I broke, and by a significant margin. If you want to crawl through every edit I made, feel free to make a list and post it on my page, but at that point it's just as easy for you to hit undo as it is for me. Primefac (talk) 00:54, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

• Delaunay triangulation which was the fifth most recent thing reverted. With all due respect Beyond my Ken and Primefac, this is not collateral damage. This is clear evidence that "nuke it all from orbit" was the wrong thing to do here. I would be perfectly happy to take some fraction of the 900-plus edits that were reverted and fix them, but the right approach is what we do with copyvios and list them all out and have people take chunks of them and review them. And given the error rate in the blanket reversion, I suggest we do so from a position of undoing all the reverts and then cleaning up the underlying edits, rather than having to back through the reverts the hard way. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 01:00, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

• You've pointed out a few trivial errors: 4 out of 900-plus. That's hardly establishing a significant error rate. Also, I can;t believe you're using copyvio as an example of a procedure to follow: if you look at the copyvio area, you'll note that some of those have lingered there unchecked for a very long time, despite the hard work done by Brownhairedgirl and others. Here we have a case that's confined to a single editor, with what appears to be a fairly low error rate from nuking (or at least a significant error rate has yet to be established). Better, in my opinion, to nuke them all, and then fix the ones that didn't need nuking. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:20, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

• GWH: If you're pointing out these supposedly non-trivial errors here, why aren't you reverting them? Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:22, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

• • Those were 5 errors in seven checks; the last 5 reverts Primefac made (time wise) and the two articles I had watchlisted. So my error rate is over 70% on that sample. 4 out of 5 on the last 5 reverts, which are random vs the ones I watchlist (which aren't randomly selected, they're both astronomy/physics related, which I will accept for the sake of argument may have been better done). Maybe we should check some other random set of them, pick somewhere for me to start in the 900 and how many you think is reasonable (5 more? 10?) I am perfectly happy to / will fix those 5 articles, but I want to start doing so after we determine what the global solution is. If we have to undo all 900 reverts I'd rather baseline that than patch a few of them and then have to untangle it after. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 01:26, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
    • 37, 194, 477, 635, 743. Take 5 edits starting at each of those numbers, examine them, and determine the error rate for those 25 edits. (Don't worry about precision in counting, the numbers are just pseudo-random starting points - any five starting points throughout the sample will do.) Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:58, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Ok. Going backwards from [101] as there have been updates since my last comments... (apologies, going to create list, then have to get on train, then will check when I get home, so need some time for the details...)

• First group: [102] this was an inappropriate link, [103] complicated - old link to central processor unit, new link to category of families of CPUs that he created, right answer is probably a new article to explain what a central processor unit family is (the CPU article doesn't now) - neither Fmadd nor the revert actual best solution, [104] new link to redirect to category he created - not obviously wrong but revertable per discussion above, [105] one link replaced three; link to redirect to category (same as prior entry) that was less subject-appropriate than the original three, probably wrong of Fmadd [106]

two links - first: straightforwards, correct link. Second: created improper redirect, but a direct link to target was appropriate - right solution should have been to direct-link the second instead of via the redirect. Reverts respectively right, (neither), right per consensus, right, wrong/should have fixed instead for 2 halves Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 02:52, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

• Second group: [107] two links to one link via a redirect into the second link's article - neither way best, should probably be single link to anchor in Matrix (mathematics) where real and complex matricies are defined, [108] new link to the same topic problem as first entry second group - same solution, [109] same as first, second entries, [110] same as first, second, third entries, [111] ah, new problem. Link to redirect (consensus bad) that should have direct linked to a vanchor I believe was appropriate in Addressing mode which was reverted out as part of all of this, so is broken now. four (complicated, should go to vanchor that was never placed instead); fifth should have been direct linked to vanchor that should be replaced (how do we score *that*...?) Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 03:07, 18 February 2017 (UTC)
• Third group: [112], [113], [114], [115], [116]
• Fourth group: (approx start) [117], [118], [119], [120], [121]
  • Plus next one: [122] just because I watchlist it, will not count for 25
• Fifth group: [123], [124], [125], [126], [127]

(bottom of list) Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 02:22, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

• For what it's worth, five of Primefac's reverts of Fmadds edits show up on my watch list, all of which I checked, and only one of Fmadd's edits were, in my view, OK (which I restored). Paul August ☎ 02:27, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Ll928

• Ll928 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · blacklist hits · AbuseLog · what links to user page · count · COIBot · Spamcheck · user page logs · x-wiki · status · Edit filter search · Google · StopForumSpam)

New user LL928 and Fmadd seem to overlap quite a bit. - MrOllie (talk) 16:12, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Well spotted. Clearly a sockpuppet. Blocked. WJBscribe (talk) 16:17, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Refocusing

There, at some point here, were definitely some coherent options that got muddled by formatting and a lot of other issues. There seemed to be some general support for mass reversion and deletion, which itself got muddled by bureaucratic issues about creating a new CSD criteria, which then got muddled by specific reversions. So I guess my question to those involved is: what are the options that are still on the table, can we condense those into a couple that have general consensus, and can we decide between them? TimothyJosephWood 22:42, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

@Primefac: can chime in here, but unless I'm counting wrong, it appears to me that all of Fmadd's edits have been nuked, pursuant to the consensus in the sections above this one. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:44, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I would be impressed to find that all 1k of them have been taken care of, but if that's the case, and everyone's fine with it, then I suppose we can close and move on with ourselves. TimothyJosephWood 23:59, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I definitely don't see the consensus to nuke in the sections above. I'm happy if they were all legitimately reviewed, but I doubt that is the case. Tazerdadog (talk) 00:29, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

MarekValenti

User:MarekValenti has recently made edits to Talk:Neutral country and Talk:Battle of Singapore that appear to be similar to banned user User:HarveyCarter. In the case of the Battle of Singapore they appear to be purely provocative, as he states that Japan ended European colonialism and that Britain had abandoned colonialism in 1941. My apologies if this is the wrong forum.--Jack Upland (talk) 04:00, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

This link MarekValenti (talk · contribs) will make it a little easier to check on this. MarnetteD|Talk 04:13, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Definitely looks like Harvey. Writing style is similar too. 2600:1017:B020:6C63:E94A:120F:7491:7663 (talk) 06:02, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps opening an WP:SPI would be a better place for this? See here for the sockpuppet page. TheMagikCow (talk) 12:37, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

archive.is refspamming

For previous see Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Archive.is RFC.

172.94.3.46 [128], [129], [130], [131], [132], [133] etc.

An IP has linkspamming archive.is into Greene's Tutorial College. All links in the references had been replaced. Live links are being replaced as well as dead ones. Examples of live links that were replaced include [134], [135], [136], [137]. duffbeerforme (talk) 04:29, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

I think we should revisit the idea of a blacklist, because it doesn't seem like this has ever gone away. --Tarage (talk) 04:33, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Categories that supposedly do not help foster encyclopedic collaboration

• Note: There is an RfC about this at Wikipedia talk:User categories#Request for Comment on the guidelines regarding "joke" categories. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:12, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

VegaDark has nominated a swathe of supposedly unencyclopedic categories for deletion at the little-trafficked Wikipedia:Categories for discussion, see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2017 February 8, all with the rationale "Violates WP:USERCAT in that this category does not help foster encyclopedic collaboration" and some further remarks. Examples: Category:Users who donate blood plasma ("Additionally, this uses the incorrect "users" instead of "Wikipedians""), Category:Wikipedians who are "out to get you" and/or your garage band ("Seems to be some sort of joke category"), Category:Wikipedians interested in fighting unemployment ("Users who are serious about actually collaborating on improving content can create and join Category:Wikipedians interested in collaborating on topics related to unemployment"), and Category:Wikipedians who wish LHvU would come back ("I don't know what LHvU is, but it's completely irrelevant"). Apparently users who have these categories on their own pages don't get alerted that the cat is being proposed for deletion, at least Bishzilla wasn't told about the "wish LHvU [a k a User:LessHeard vanU] would come back". Oh, and I now see they're definitely not: VegaDark resented it as "disruptive canvassing" when a user undertook to ping the six members of the category Wikipedians who support a Federal Europe: "We should be polling community consensus, not the consensus of those who already self-selected to be in the category, which is not representative of the community as a whole". VegaDark certainly makes a reasonable point about the self-selection, but on the other hand: is it a group "representative of the community as a whole" that patrols the CfD board? I'm not sure. Maybe I caught it on a bad day, but it looks to me like there's a preponderence of people who're against social interaction between Wikipedians, on principle, and for the deletion of all categories that merely foster that.

I want to lodge a protest in this, more widely read, forum, because I believe social interaction between content writers is good for the project. I resent VegaDarks broad hint that people who have a few more-or-less jokey cats on their userpage are not serious about actually collaborating on improving content ("Users who are serious about actually collaborating on improving content can create and join Category:Wikipedians interested in collaborating on topics related to unemployment"). We are! Drmies put it more eloquently than I can,[138] in the discussion of "Wikipedians who wish LHvU would come back": "I would argue that this does, indeed, foster collaboration, if only because it unites us in our yearning for a more innocent past when we all sat down, smoked the herb together, and wrote up a ton of articles. In other words, keep." So does LessHeard vanU himself, who, now that he's able to say exactly what he thinks, expresses himself fruitily, and also points out that "People who live in the real world understand that shared foolishness fosters feelings of companionablism (damn you spellcheck) and shared experience - which is most useful when faced with the cloying baggage of bean counters and self appointed guardians of the soul-less compendium that this project was never intended to be."[139] I endorse that. I wish some more of us would watch CfD. Bishonen | talk 11:00, 16 February 2017 (UTC).

• There are two aspects to this- the questions being, do these catagories it help or hinder the encyclopaedia? Briefly, as to helping, it could be argued that they do. Not necessarilly in the material sense; but, if (as Drmies touched on, above) they foster a sense of collegiality or, dare I say- pace WP:NOTWEBHOST- a sense of collaboration and comradeship, then that can only be beneficial to the project. Then, do they hurt the project? Clearly not. And the only editors they exclude are those- as in every other catagory- who wish to be excluded. I think this is a casebook for WP:IAR. O Fortuna!^{...Imperatrix mundi.} 12:24, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• I think the proposed deletions are a misguided attempt to make WP more professional. The point that is missed is that in even the most rigorous workplaces we still bring in cookies for our coworkers, celebrate birthdays and babies, stand and talk for a few minutes about our kids, pets, former colleagues we miss, the cold that's going around the office ... These categories fall under the getting-to-know-your-colleagues process that fosters loyalty, cooperation, compassion and camaraderie. If people didn't do that at my company I'd be worried. We can't adopt a grim humorless "why aren't you people at your desks working!?" attitude - we're all volunteers. Acroterion (talk) 13:13, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
  • Acroterion, I did indeed bring cookies...hold on...I have Lemonades, Peanut Butter Patties, Caramel Delites, and a box of Thin Mints. $4, and I accept transfers to my off-shore Wikipedia account. Drmies (talk) 16:09, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
    • Thanks, I'll check in the break room when I finish with this afternoon's project submission. I'll take the Thin Mints, please. Acroterion (talk) 18:28, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• This seems sad and although I don't like being rude, a bit ridiculous. Acroterion may well be right about it being an attempt to make userpages more professional, but let's face it, those are the last things readers will see, and people have enough fun, silly, sometimes annoying stuff at the top of their user pages. As Bish says, we need shared foolishness - this place can be difficult enough at times, sometimes damn depressing, and if these categories get a chuckle, more power to them I say! To argue that they do "not help foster encyclopedic collaboration" or are "not useful for fostering cooperation" misses the point completely. And if they are "joke categories", a term used as a reason to delete, what's wrong with a joke? Another reason given for deletion is just plain wrong: "no reason to group users in this category & to seek out such users for any reason that can be reasonably expected to improve the encyclopedia." Seriously? No one is going to look at these categories and say "that person looks interesting, I might want to work with them". IAR! IAR! IAR!. Doug Weller talk 15:11, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
  • @VegaDark:, there was supposed to be a question mark after "Seriously? No one is going to look at these categories and say "that person looks interesting, I might want to work with them?" - like that. Doug Weller talk 21:36, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• I too am against deletion of any of them, unless they're overtly polemic (which none of the examples above are.) I also think this is another one of these things where we're really over-estimating how much the general reader looks into these things. Almost all of these sorts of things (categories on user pages) are going to go unnoticed by the vast majority of editors even, let alone your casual readers. We need to focus on much bigger issues on the encyclopedia, not minor harmless instances of navel gazing like this... Sergecross73 msg me 15:21, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• Seconding Doug Weller's comments. Allowing non-harmful (even if non-helpful) material for users' pages like these categories or like userboxes encourages community involvement, sense of belonging, and hopefully increase user retention. It's like being able to personalize your cubical at work. Minimal harm, likely benefits, overall net positive to the project. EvergreenFir (talk) 15:27, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• Wow, nearly a decade on and we're still fighting the same battles - see the various Wikipedian category redirects deleted at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/User/Archive/October 2007 (where I note VegaDark features heavily). I am mostly depressed by the lost time spend debating, deleting, (re)creating and (re?)debating these categories. They are harmless and there are clearly a lot of contributors who would like to keep them. @VegaDark: Have you really spent a decade crusading against Wikipedian categories? Please can we end this timesink and leave them alone? WJBscribe (talk) 15:39, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• I think Category:Wikipedians who are "out to get you" and/or your garage band is genuinely funny. Obviously should not be deleted. Bus stop (talk) 15:42, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• Is this related to the recent attempts to get rid of redlinked usercats? There was a long discussion about it somewhere. If the cat people want to make Wikipedia look more professional, they could perhaps start by putting their heads together to see if there is a better way of notifying affected people/articles when cats are proposed for deletion. The current system is fairly underhand.

  As for the point directly raised here, keep them for the reasons others have already said. - Sitush (talk) 15:43, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

• Comment I don't really see how this is necessarily an incident, as much as it is a larger discussion regarding these categories. I can certainly see the reasoning behind nominating them. DarkKnight2149 15:43, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• I am beginning to feel better already. The categories are indeed harmless, and, all in all, create a positive "work-environment" (at least imho). One might even think of a Halo effect by this so-called silliness. Lectonar (talk) 15:46, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• No breaks! Coffee is for closers! If you've got time to lean, you've got time to clean! Do more with less! Give 110% every day! Seriously, I don't think anyone would want to be a volunteer in a work environment where all fun and humor is totally eliminated.--WaltCip (talk) 15:49, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• I'm not surprised that a small group of editors trying to set and then implement policy as to what any user can put on their userpage has ended up here. I first came across this at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2016 December 16#Category:Wikipedians who don't GAF when the category turned pink on my userpage. I've been following the subsequent discussion; it seems there is a feeling among some editors that allowing users to categorize themselves however they feel makes it difficult to maintain the category system (e.g. [140], [141]), although I haven't seen a convincing explanation as to why. I asked what "lists of categories" this supposedly disrupts but I did not get a response. Personally I don't care what categories a user decides to place their userpage in nor whether or not those categories actually exist, so long as those categories aren't deliberately harmful. I'm not at all opposed to insisting on a structure for these categories (they should perhaps all be children of Category:Wikipedians or whatever) but I don't like the idea of any small group of users opining on what is or is not beneficial to encyclopedic collaboration, nor imposing that opinion on the entire project. I'm also pro-foolishness, in case anyone didn't already know that, and yes, I will enjoy your observation about having an opinion in a discussion about not giving a fuck.

Side note: Cydebot deleted this category with a link to the incorrect day's log. Bug? Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 15:50, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

• I facepalmed when I saw people nominating these categories for deletion with the rationale that they don't help the encyclopedia. I literally facepalmed. Because -not to put anyone on blast but it needs to be said- that is one of the most phenomenally ignorant rationales. Anything that makes WP more fun helps the encyclopedia, end of. This isn't an opinion or a judgement; this is a fact which can be confirmed by 99.9% of the population in general, and by 99.99% of all psychologists, sociologist and psychiatrists in detail. What about that remaining 0.1% and 0.01%? They're the ones !voting to delete these categories.

Anyone who cannot recognize that should read robot and human and write up a 5000 word report comparing and contrasting the two, because I strongly suspect you don't appreciate the difference fully. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 16:06, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

• Alternative proposal - Create Category:Categories that supposedly do not help foster encyclopedic collaboration, add the whole lot to it, give OP a barnstar for giving us a good inside joke, and call it a day. TimothyJosephWood 17:31, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• Comment - Wow, an AN/I post about this? Fist I get attacked [142] [143] out of the blue for a good faith nomination, now this? One need only look through my deleted contributions to see I've been making similar nominations for years, and I'm very proud of the user category work that I've done. I'm trying to follow our very own guideline over at WP:USERCAT in order to foster a more encyclopedic environment, similar to why we implemented Wikipedia:Userbox migration for templates. In the userspace, however, there is no "User category" namespace. Many of those above seem to think I am trying to stifle your views - that's completely incorrect. This has nothing to do with that - you are free to scream you wish a particular Wikipedian comes back all day long on your userpage - the only issue I have is doing so by way of a user category which violates our guidelines, a guideline I happen to be in full support of. Those who are annoyed with this should focus on changing the guideline that I'm attempting to enforce rather than take issue with me. And for the majority of those commenting above, there is currently an ongoing RfC (although about to be closed) that presented the option that several of you are encouraging (i.e. not directly requiring that user categories need to improve the encyclopedia). That option had virtually zero support. Based on that, the majority of positions so far expressed here represent a minority viewpoint as to what our policy on user categories should be, unless everyone above is simply arguing WP:IAR (IAR only applies when the result improves the encyclopedia, so I would strongly disagree that is the case here or with any of the user categories I nominate). If you want to open up a wider discussion about changing our policies on user categories, great! Again, I will stress that this should be taken up with changing policy rather than taking it up with me personally. That's like attacking the district attorney who prosecutes a case where the current law has been violated and you're a group suggesting that the law should be changed. Take it up with the legislature, please. VegaDark (talk) 17:48, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

• A guideline is not policy. And if people haven't picked up on your years of work on usercats that might say more for how the notification system (doesn't) work well and the ghetto-like nature of those interested in cats than it does about the WP community at large. - Sitush (talk) 18:05, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• Did someone mention userboxes? I thought they were all deleted back in 2005.[144] Thincat (talk) 18:23, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• @VegaDark: Your analogy with a D.A. would ring a little more true if (1) D.A.s were volunteers free to choose which cases they prosecute according to their whim; (2) Wikipedia guidelines had the force of law; and (3) a legislature was required to alter said guidelines. Unfortunately for you, (1) they aren't; (2) they don't; and (3) a simple consensus is sufficient - such as you can observe here and at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2017 February 8 #Category:Wikipedians who wish LHvU would come back. --RexxS (talk) 21:12, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

• Strong Support for "shared foolishness". Paul August ☎ 18:58, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• I find the argument that allowing editors the freedom to engage in tomfoolery that hurts no-one is not an improvement to the project to be ridiculously spurious. I further find the implication that 'enforcing' a guideline in a manner that annoys so many other editors in favor of bowing to the rather clear consensus in this thread and elsewhere to be equally as spurious. Finally, I find the suggestion that a formal process should be required to establish what the community has already made quite clear in this discussion and elsewhere in response to this issue to be right down there at the bottom of the quality slope with the other two. With those three considerations in mind, I'm afraid to say that I am honestly unable to muster up any respect for such an editor's judgement on just about any matter involving other people. A certain 5000 word essay might change my mind, however. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 19:02, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
• Further comments @User:Bishonen, As to "VegaDark certainly makes a reasonable point about the self-selection, but on the other hand: is it a group "representative of the community as a whole" that patrols the CfD board?", couldn't that argument be used to invalidate all CfDs? Why have CfD at all? We have a public forum for these discussions and neutral people who care about our category system participate, if you would like to reform CfD then by all means create a proposal. @User:Acroterion, I'm perfectly fine with Wikipedia not being this strict enviroment where we aren't always 100% working on content improvement, so long as this type of thing is seperable from our actual encyclopedic content. I would sumbit that my position reflects the wider consensus of the community based on the same rationale being applied to Wikipedia:Userbox migration getting unencyclopedic templates out of the template namespace. Unfortunately as I've already pointed out, that's not an option when it comes to user categories as there's only one namespace for categories, hence the guideline about what is allowable or not. I would also sumbit that the RfC I've already linked to, which has had far more participation than this has, has reached a different conclusion about the required utility of user categories to the project. @User:Doug Weller "No one is going to look at these categories and say "that person looks interesting, I might want to work with them" - I fully agree with you, which is why I nominated these for deletion. That's exactly what our current guideline requires for an acceptable user category. Perhaps you should work to get the guideline change if you believe consensus on that guideline has changed. @User:WJBscribe I'm a volunteer and am free to spend my volunteer time on the areas that most interest me. Reforming the user category system is one of those interests. I'm sorry you feel that is a waste of time, but it is my time to waste if so. @User:Ivanvector "I don't like the idea of any small group of users opining on what is or is not beneficial to encyclopedic collaboration, nor imposing that opinion on the entire project" - Isn't that all of AfD, CfD, MfD, etc? Again, if you want to reform one of these processes, create a proposal. but I can hardly be blamed for using the system we have in place to discuss these categories. @User:MjolnirPants "I further find the implication that 'enforcing' a guideline in a manner that annoys so many other editors in favor of bowing to the rather clear consensus in this thread and elsewhere to be equally as spurious" - I can just as easily point to the RfC I already linked to for a more participated on consensus suggesting that the types of categories I am nominating for deletion are not appropriate. I'm not sure why you think this small discussion should override an entire longstanding guideline without proper notifications on notice boards, Wikiprojects, etc. that would be affected by this change. It's also unclear exactly what you are suggesting this supposed consensus would result in. Overturn WP:USERCAT? Ban me from making good faith nominations at CfD for categories I genuinely feel are detrimental to the project? I'm also curious where this "elsewhere" is that you refer to where there is supposed consensus for this. VegaDark (talk) 20:39, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
  • My bad, I meant to put a question mark at the end of a sentence and failed. I meant to write "Seriously? No one is going to look at these categories and say "that person looks interesting, I might want to work with them?" Doug Weller talk 21:36, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
    • And the context of my comment (read the sentence before it) made that obvious. Doug Weller talk 21:39, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
  • @VegaDark: What RfC? You linked to WP:RFC, but there's no such consensus there, that's just a page explaining what an RfC is and how it works. The Userbox Migration link doesn't represent a consensus, but an informal compromise intended to avoid a contentious discussion that isn't actually applicable to categories (which can't be moved into userspace). As for actually applying USERCAT to your nominations (which no-one has accused you of making in bad faith, but rather with a complete lack of understanding of social norms), I've read through your nominations and rejected each and every instance of your insistence that these categories do not help facilitate cooperation between editors because any first-year psychology student (or socially-well-adjusted person over the age of 20 or so) can tell you that people are way more likely to cooperate with those they perceive as sharing their values, interests and qualities. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 22:10, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
    • I was referring to this RfC that I linked to in my first comment. One of the options there, option #4, suggests that users categories should not need to directly benefit this encyclopedia. This option had almost no support among all participants. VegaDark (talk) 02:50, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

So you have rejected multiple editor editors explanation of the benefit these categories provide to the project (explanations based in proven science as well as common sense) because reasons? Do you honestly believe that people will be more collaborative in an environment in which they are less able to express themselves, subject to more and stricter rules and in which actions which affect them are taken without their input, despite this being a project built from the ground up around the concept of inclusion? ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 03:42, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

• So, in this discussion about one persons good faith nomination of userspace categories which they feel are not appropriate of volunteers there is only one comment about the fact the nominator does not feel the need to notify those 'volunteer' editors of the discussion...? It has been a while, admittedly, but I seem to remember that in deletion discussions of any nature those involved previously in the matter were to be notified (as they might have in good faith been involved believing that they are complying with community policy). Perhaps things have changed, so a nominator need only provide their rationale and that consensus is whether the closing admin thinks they have made their case? It would certainly be much easier without bothering to weigh the counter arguments - because those who might have reason to provide them are unaware of the discussion.

Damn not understanding interpretations of reasons for deletions of categories, the nominator seems to be unfamiliar with a basic requirement of consensus (including inviting alternate understandings of interpretation) which was, when I used to contribute, pretty much core to the basis of editing. While consensus can be found in one person working to the correct perception of policy and guideline against how every many others working in good faith to an improper understanding, you will never be able to prove consensus if you do not allow the others the freedom to make their understanding clear before asking which stands best to the wording and spirit of the policy. I find it incredulous that an editor (and admin) has been able to populate deletion discussions with no basis in which to judge consensus as they feel (and no policy, guideline or essay quoted) that they need not inform the "self selecting" groups that will be effected. WP:Idon'tlikeit works all ways, and not just in the discussions themselves.LessHeard vanU (talk) 23:13, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

• • LHvU, I mentioned it once (not sure if I'm the one who mentioned it whom you noticed) and it had been mentioned once before. I share your surprise that this isn't a bigger concern in this thread. The thought of nominating user categories for deletion without notifying the only users who have demonstrated any interest in those categories looks awfully shady to me. I'm not suggesting this was a bad faith move, but the argument supporting it was basically that they wouldn't have been able to get them deleted if they had. It's WP:CANVASSING by omission. If you can't get a user category deleted if the editors in that category want to keep it, then it shouldn't be deleted. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 23:24, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
  • Oh my God he's back! Quick, get to CfD with Category:Wikipedians who wish LHvU would come back as it's clearly obsolete. Possibly I am missing some inside joke here GoldenRing (talk) 10:47, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

• As I like to say...

A Note to the Humor-Impaired

One should beware of those who cannot or will not laugh when others are merry, for if not mentally defective they are spiteful, selfish or abnormally conceited ... Great men of all nations and of all times have possessed a keen appreciation of the ridiculous, as wisdom and wit are closely allied.

— Leander Hamilton McCormick, Characterology; an exact science embracing physiognomy, phrenology and pathognomy, reconstructed, amplified and amalgamated ... (1920)

EEng 02:19, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Comment I wish this thread was a little less characterising one set of people as humourless, curmudgeonly killjoys (btw I'd put myself in the selfish or abnormally conceited category), and a little more focussed on whether 'categories' are the best place for such humour. Bishonen, whilst I'm sure that the 6 members of the "wish LHvU would come back", category are quite fond of it (and him), what on earth are the 95+% of editors who cannot possibly understand what this refers to, supposed to make of it? Therefore, how exactly is this fostering any kind of atmosphere? There are tons of places where humour exists in abundance, some of it is brilliant IMO, but what is funny to me may be incomprehensible to you and 'clogging up the works' with other people's humour is not appropriate IMO. Pincrete (talk) 00:28, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Topic ban Proposal

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

Consensus is clearly against. Cenarium (talk) 00:56, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

---

I wasn't going to go this far, but as VegaDark has raised the issue, "Ban me from making good faith nominations at CfD for categories I genuinely feel are detrimental to the project?", I'm beginning to feel that he really doesn't understand how far different his interpretation of "categories I genuinely feel are detrimental to the project" is from so many other Wikipedians' view in these cases. Therefore I propose:

• A topic ban of one month from CfD for VegaDark (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

Hopefully a brief rest from these labours will help clarify his mind on the need to understand what "genuinely detrimental to the project" means, and it may also show that the CfD process won't collapse catastrophically in that time. --RexxS (talk) 21:24, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose. This should never have been an incident thread. This thread is just a form of canvassing for those cfds. Any now you want to punish someone for daring to have a different opinion. Let's bring a speedy end to this bullying. duffbeerforme (talk) 22:26, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Shenanigans. Please explain to me what it is about ANI that causes editors who participate here to be predisposed to oppose the deletion of silly user categories. You said this was canvassing, now defend it. Please go on to make a case that this is any form of bullying. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 22:45, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

@Duffbeerforme: On the contrary, I don't want to punish VegaDark, but I do want to see an end to these sort of unwanted deletion discussions, where it is obvious that he is out of step with the vast majority. Sadly, he seems unable to see that. Taking a rest from the nominations for a few weeks should help him regain some perspective. Now, I'm going to ask you nicely to strike that personal attack where you call me a bully. You understand, I hope, why it would be better for you to do that voluntarily. --RexxS (talk) 23:24, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

This whole thread is one big bullying session. How dare VegaDark have a different opinion. Punish them. VegaDark is so far out out line with the community yet many of their cfds still have unanimous SUPPORT. All those venting their outrage here where it doesn't belong yet not comment at cfd? If you don't want to punish why are you proposing a punishment? duffbeerforme (talk) 01:44, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Please read Bully and try again. Even the proposal to impose sanctions isn't bullying. It's an attempt to impose a punishment, that much I agree with. But getting hyperbolic in your response isn't going to help your case because a hyperbolic argument is so much easier to defeat. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 03:37, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Uh huh. And were you going to explain how, exactly, [t]his thread is just a form of canvassing for those cfds? --Calton | Talk 03:43, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

The original post wa a call for people to look at some cfds. There was not an incident that warranted admin attention. This was the wrong venue for such a notification. The notification message was biased, making it inappropriate (termed campaigning). duffbeerforme (talk) 04:21, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I agree with everything but what you said about the notification message. That's only because I'm unfamiliar with the message in question and can't form an opinion. I just want to be sure that this discussion isn't going to dissolve into hyperbolic accusations of the other side utterly ruining WP for all time. Accusations like bullying and canvassing, when they don't clearly apply, should be left out so as to avoid unnecessary escalation. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 14:51, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

So in other words, no, you can't actually answer my question. --Calton | Talk 09:57, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Question clearly answered. Recipient clearly incompetent. duffbeerforme (talk) 12:22, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

• Support I have zero tolerance for wet-blanket busybodies in user space. EEng 02:25, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
• This is ridiculous - Just to be clear, for the record, the sole basis for this is 1) I made a good faith nomination (I don't think anyone is disputing my nominations are in good faith), 2) I defended my position on the nomination instead of agreeing with the dissent. Right? That's literally the basis here for this proposed topic ban? This is preposterous, and duffbeerforme is right on the money in calling this a bullying session. You all should be ashamed of yourselves for your conduct here. I'll also note before this brigade started that the nomination in question had three users agree with deletion and another one since. As Bernie Sanders likes to say, the notion that these type of categories are detrimental to the project is not a pie-in-the-sky idea that I'm out on my own on. WP:USERCAT didn't become a guideline by chance. But, how dare I have an opinion that you don't agree with, so ban me. That sounds like an action in the spirit of Wikipedia. I'll also note the discussion was just closed and the closing admin, User:BrownHairedGirl, noted the arguments for deletion were "well founded in policy." VegaDark (talk) 02:50, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

• You know, invoking "good faith" isn't the all-purpose shield you seem to think it is, since nothing about "good faith" precludes some action from being, say, tone-deaf, disruptive, clueless, racist, tasteless, rude, offensive, embiggening, obsequious, purple, and/or clairvoyant. Also, I didn't realize that one single editor (User:BrownHairedGirl) had become the sole arbiter of what is or isn't allowed on Wikipedia: when did she get the promotion?--Calton | Talk 03:43, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

• Ach, Calton, you're arguing with VegaDark, so there's no need to snipe at me.
  I closed a bunch of discussions which were ~36 hours beyond their 7-day period (having closed several dozen CFDs in the last week), and I didn't close all of them in a way which VegaDark would like. If the relevant guideline was different, then I would have weighed the discussions differently, but it is at is. I'm happy for anyone to take those closes to DRV if they disagree with my reasoning. Similarly, if if the consensus is to change the guideline to allow joke categories, then that's fine, and these issues can be reopened ... but when I close any CFD, I'll weigh it against the guidelines as they currently stand rather than against my own personal preferences or anyone else's.
  There's clearly a lot of support for keeping jokey user categories ... so why not open an RFC to test whether that adds up to consensus to change WP:USERCAT? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:01, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

• I'm not sniping at you, I was pointing out the ridiculousness of VegaDark's Appeal to Authority -- though as long as I'm here, I guess I will say that in my opinion, yeah, you made a bad, essentially unilateral decision. --Calton | Talk 09:57, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

• I agree with Vega. This is a fairly ridiculous problem, and as such, it inspired a ridiculous solution. We haven't even really tried good old fashioned discussion. Vega has commented a total of three times in this thread, and other than them, I'm the most active participant with four paragraph-length comments. The length of this thread is due to the number of participants (23 by my count) to have commented. The mere fact that a large number of people disagree with what Vega has been doing is no reason to assume that Vega will not, given enough time, listen to the clear consensus here and lay off.

so I strongly oppose the imposition of sanctions until such time as it becomes clear that sanctions are the only way to deal with this, because everything I've read about them tells me that they are intended to be a last resort. Give Vega a chance to concede the point before talking about punishing (because that's what this is) them for this behavior. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 03:37, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

• I will abide by consensus. If an RfC is opened and the conclusion of that is to modify the guideline to allow these types of categories, then I would have no need to nominate them (although I would disagree with that result, so be it). I don't think a discussion here is a proper substitute to override years and years of consensus and deletion reviews that for the most part follow this consensus. I'll also repeat what I said before at the user category RfC, the bottom line should be improvement of the encyclopedia. If ultimately the encyclopedia is improved by having these types of categories, I would be in support of keeping them. I'm not sure of a surefire way to determine that however. I'm certainly not convinced by any of the arguments put forth. At this point I can only follow my gut which suggests that fostering a more encyclopedic user category environment translates to a better encyclopedia overall, which obviously you disagree with. But I'll keep fighting to improve the encyclopedia in that regard until I'm convinced otherwise or consensus suggests otherwise. VegaDark (talk) 07:57, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I strongly suggest you not continue nominating these categories in the meantime. Regardless of any issue of consensus, it's clear that your actions are highly contentious, and continuing them while a discussion is ongoing is not a good-faith move.

I also want to remind you that there's no policy which states that consensus can only come from an RfC. Consensus is the ultimate goal of all discussions on Wikipedia. So arguing that there's no consensus here is a demonstrably wrong position. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 17:19, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

• Support. VegaDark, no one wants to stop you from making good faith nominations at CfD for categories [you] genuinely feel are detrimental to the project, they want you to stop making tone-deaf nominations at CfD for categories, which is actually detrimental to the project. If you want to play prosecuting attorney, there are other places. And MjolnirPants, given that VegaDark loudly and explicitly thinks he's doing the right thing and is treating this like some sort of crusade, then hoping that he suddenly see the light is wishful thinking. --Calton | Talk 03:43, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

And MjolnirPants, given that VegaDark loudly and explicitly thinks he's doing the right thing and is treating this like some sort of crusade, then hoping that he suddenly see the light is wishful thinking. I wouldn't know. Because we've barely gotten started actually discussing this. I would generally wait at least a few days to see if someone can get through to them before jumping to the conclusion that they will not change their mind. Had Vega doubled down by proposing a bunch of new user categories for deletion, or simply dismissed everything said in this thread without attempting to defend their actions, I might agree with you. But this is a very different situation than, for example, an editor who has been pushing a POV in article space for several months. It takes more than a look at their edit history and block log to know if Vega is likely to continue doing this. Even if we can't convince them, we can make them understand that the community opposes this sort of editing. And, for the record, Vega has been consistently using their interpretation of policy to inform their edits, a good faith interpretation that is wrong not due to some fundamental inability to understand policy, but due to a (rather ridiculous, but still) misunderstanding of organizational sociology. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 03:50, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. It makes no sense to sanction an editor for upholding an existing guideline, esp one which has been stable for a long time. If VegaDark is wrong to make these nominations, then the guideline WP:USERCAT is also wrong. There are clearly some editors who do feel very strongly that the guideline is wrong, so the solution is to open an RFC on changing it and have a moratorium on any related CFDs while that discussion is underway. But a ban without a change in the guideline, this looks like a lynch mob. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:11, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
  • PS I think it was foolish of VegaDark to propose this self-ban. Not a good way to calm things down.
    But despite the unwise ban-me-if-you-dare side of VegaDark's proposal, topic-banning anyone won't resolve the underlying issue of an outbreak of discontent with a guideline. Get a consensus on that, and the swirl of conduct accusations becomes irrelevant; but leave the guideline unresolved, and nothing is solved. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:02, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
    • User:BrownHairedGirl, VegaBlack did not propose it, RexxS did. duffbeerforme (talk) 05:29, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
      • @Duffbeerforme: thanks. I was tired and misread the proposal. Sorry, VegaDark. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:32, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. I don't see any disruption. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 05:12, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. Not necessary. The correct approach is to establish a consensus to: (a) make it clear at WP:USERCAT that such categories are permitted; and (b) to change the process at WP:CFD so that it requires that all users in a user category should be notified if someone nominates delete the category. WJBscribe (talk) 11:25, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. Over reaction. Paul August ☎ 12:39, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose VegaDark is acting in good faith. My chief concern is that a letter-of-policy approach comes off as heavy handed and humorless, and that policy ought to be modified to avoid a grumpy no-fun-allowed environment. I have other concerns about how CfD operates with respect to encyclopedic content that I'll take up in a more appropriate venue. Acroterion (talk) 13:15, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose VegaDark is acting in good faith implementing policy, and, dare I say it, whilst Drmies' defence of a category is VERY funny, none of the categories themselves seem even remotely funny, or even comprehensible in some cases. Pincrete (talk) 23:39, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

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

Long standing consensus over many years

WP:USERCAT is based upon YEARS of CFD and UCFD discussions. See also this Index of past discussions.

Yes people use categories at times to "snipe at the world/system/process/policy/event/whatever", and call it humour. And rather invariably when the tumult dies down, as it usually does, the categories are deleted.

This recent tumult is merely because ONE presumably well-meaning editor (NOT vegadark) decided to make a bunch of redlinked cats blue.

And once blue, they went before cfd.

In the past, rather than create more tempests in teapots (like the threads above, by the by), and as long as they aren't being too disruptive, polemic or battleground-ish, we just eventually kind of quietly turned a blind eye to the red linked protest/humour cats, and when the tumult died down, removed them to clear the tool (Special:WantedCategories), and life went on.

I doubt this will be much different.

So I guess my suggestion is: Enjoy your pitchforks and torches fest, we seem to have one of these fairly often these days, next it'll be about pop culture lists again, no doubt. A big kerfuffle, wasting everyone's time when there's an encyclopedia to manage and edit. Shrugs, whatever.

If you want a solution, just delete those recently created category pages, leave them red on userpages for now and hold an rfc on redlinked categories.

In the meantime, trying to string up a hardworking admin who does a lot of that behind the scenes housekeeping work, seems rather counterproductive, just a thought. - jc37 06:52, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

You seem to be confirming that the categorisation regulars (or a subset of them) tend to operate in a way that has the appearance of being underhand. And that, as I said in my first post in this thread, this is connected to the recent brouhaha concerning redlinked cats and Special:WantedCategories. Some people need to get a life, it would seem. - Sitush (talk) 10:11, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I see no such confirmation in Jc37's post. What exactly are you suggesting is underhand, Sitush? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)

(EC)Well the way it is phrased indicates they are just 'quietly' deleted when no one is looking. IMHO I dont think this is a terrible way to deal with clearly unencyclopedic silliness, but then I think the entire fight over it is ridiculous. People complain about red-linked cats, so editors make them blue, then people complain there are useless blue cats and try to delete them. Its a manufactured and pointless merry-go-round of hysterical pitch-forking and anyone involved on all sides should just go find something else to do. The key point of applying IAR to policies and guidelines is that by IARing, you are improving the encyclopedia. And frankly there is little to recommended IAR on any side here, either for the existence or non-existance of silly cats. Only in death does duty end (talk) 11:48, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Indeed, that is how I read Jc's comment re: when no-one is looking. If that is what is going on, it's a poor show. The categorisation people are often beleaguered as it is without creating a rod for their own backs. - Sitush (talk) 11:57, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

That's not a particularly good faith interpretation of an explanation of how routine housekeeping continues unseen, and is uncontroversial 99% of the time, but is periodically interrupted when someone decides to create a drama over a soon-forgotten bit of trivia.
It's disappointing that so few editors seem concerned that Special:WantedCategories is clogged up with redlinks on user pages, impeding the ability of editors to do the maintenance task of fixing the redlinks which actually need fixing so that readers can navigate between articles. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:01, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

@Jc37: It strikes me that you propose a rather odd approach to Special:WantedCategories. Instead of creating the categories that people want, you instead propose to remove the redlinks. Would creating the categories (assuming they're not inappropriate - offensive, divisive, polemic etc) not be the more natural response to entries in Special:WantedCategories? The RfC that people seem to want going by this thread isn't about redlinked usercategories, it's about making WP:USERCAT more permissive of these sorts of categories, so they stay blue. That would also be a solution that would avoid "wasting everyone's time when there's an encyclopedia to manage and edit". After all, as I pointed out and you confirm, these nominations have been going on for at least a decade, so your current approach is not avoiding time being wasted on this issue. I agree that the fight over user categories is a waste of time, but I think it might be time to try a different solution. One that might actually work (by which I mean, actually settle the issue, so that people can move on to other things). You've tried the stick, how about trying a carrot instead? WJBscribe (talk) 11:42, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I apologise if I was less-than clear in my comments.

First, I didn't suggest anything underhanded or whatever. everything is transparent (this is a wiki afterall). I was talking about avoiding needless drama. There is a long standing consensus that categories (not just usercats) should not be used as "tags" or "labels" to a page. The point of categories is navigation. And though we shouldn't worry about technical overhead, there is a bit of one with categories. So we keep it in mind, but we don't panic over it. (there's also the category clutter issue for articles but that's beyond the scope of this discussion). And categories have limitations due to their technical side (not able to cite a ref for cat addition, or even logging when they've been added or removed).

So there's more going on here than suggesting that some people seemingly with no sense of humour are arbitrarily out to spoil someone's "fun" protest.

I'm not going to even try to restate the long history of category discussions which led to things like WP:OCAT, or it's usercat relation which is transcluded to USERCAT.

What I was trying to say is that there are always "freedom of speech" POV pushers on wikipedia, who seem more interested in playtime and protest and such. Once upon a time there were the userbox wars. When that dust settled, there still were usercategories which was a problem due to technical issues among other things, so (as I recall) the result was: If you want to make a statement on your userpage (within USERPAGE guidelines of course), feel free. But using the technical means of the category system, clogging up it's various tools and such, is not the way to do that.

Will there always be those who say IWANTIT? Sure. And whenever the parade they're in is done with their protest placards and posters, the street sweepers will come along and clean up the mess after them. What I was saying above is that at some point in the past, we just mostly stopped trying to clean the streets during the protest : )

But anyway, this is a tangent. As I said above this whole thing with vegadark happened due to a confluence of technical issues, and had ZERO to do with the IWANTIT crowd, who showed up, not even knowing what the initial issue was. sigh. Always another event (excuse) to whip out the pitchforks.

The duality of the category system is that while categories have editable pages "attached", categories themselves aren't actually "pages" as such. it's an idiosyncracy of the navigation system of their design.

So imagine if a bunch of categories with redlinked "pages" had someone create those pages which turned the links blue? He has said he had no interest in the cats, so this had zero to do with iwantit, and more to do with cleanup. And by so doing, created a different cleanup issue. I believe vegadark (who has - rather patiently, I think - tried to explain this) nominated them for cfd rather than just speedy deleting them as patent nonsense (which most were).

So my point was: let's undo the original contention. If we "un-create" the bluelinks (which noone wanted, which even the bluelink maker did for merely tool cleanup reasons), then we return to the status quo, and remove the disruption, which, as we are all good wikipedians, we all hope for of course.

And once the disruption has been removed, have an rfc. Go have fun. But, as we all know, a single local consensus here is not likely to overturn multiple broader, stable, consensuses, without community-wide discussion. Hence: a legitimate rfc. Try the village pump : )

I hope this helps clarify. And I believe WJBscribe is aware I respect him and his thoughts, so please do not read any "tone" here as intended as anything but my sense of respect for him (and others) and merely my sense of "blah" at this situation. Happy editing : ) - jc37 13:59, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I think we're agreed that an RfC is needed to resolve what the wider consensus is on this issue. You believe that the wider consensus supports your practice and that it is only a "local consensus" at WP:ANI that is dissenting. By contrast, the vast majority here believe that it is a "local consensus" of CfD regulars that is out of touch with wider consensus. No doubt we'll end up finding out who is right... WJBscribe (talk) 14:19, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Speaking as a technical nobody, a little bird who edits completely on instinct, I still have NO idea what these supposed category problems are all about. They're not tags, but for navigation? Well, I can navigate via tags--but in the case of these user categories, those deemed useful and those deemed useless, I have actually navigated through them to go from one user page to another, for instance to find that certain kind of editor with that certain skill or--gasp--interest, because we have many editors and sometimes one needs to seek one out for collaboration, on an article or on some administrative or behavioral matter. BTW--our cat only has three members? Don't tell LHvU... Drmies (talk) 16:23, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

• Note: There is an RfC about this at Wikipedia talk:User categories#Request for Comment on the guidelines regarding "joke" categories. I added a notice at the top of the thread, but most editors are editing the bottom, so here it is, as well. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 17:21, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Paid editor moving own drafts to mainspace

Early today I wrote at User talk:Janweh64 "Wikipedia, for reasons that I just can't understand, tolerates paid/COI editing in draft space. But where exactly do we say that paid editors can then freely move their own drafts into mainspace? As a paid editor, "you are very strongly discouraged from editing affected articles directly". But by creating a draft and then moving it yourself, you are effectively doing exactly that. I've moved Matt Holmes (entrepreneur), Himanshu Khagta, Legs4Africa, Miss Tara and KDDL Limited back to draft space. If and when you think they are ready to be included in this encyclopaedia, please submit them in the normal way."

Janweh64 had written those pages in draft space, with an apparently proper declaration of paid COI, but then instead of submitting them for review, just went ahead and moved them. The editor has not troubled to reply to my post (and indeed, is under no obligation to do so), but since moved two of those five drafts, Miss Tara and KDDL Limited, back to mainspace. While I don't see that any hard-and-fast rule (that I know of, anyway) has been broken, this appears to be highly inappropriate behaviour for a paid editor. At the very least, I suggest moving those pages to draft space for now. If others agree that the behaviour is inappropriate, a page move ban might be considered. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 16:49, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

It is my belief that I have not violated any policy as stated above. However, moving articles to draft space is a move to circumvent the readily available avenue for addressing this issue which is to nominate such pages for deletion. Justlettersandnumbers has essentially achieved their goal of deleting these articles without any consensus or input from other editors. I believe the inappropriate behavior is theirs. I have made every effort to follow the policies.—አቤል ዳዊት^?(Janweh64) (talk) 17:08, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

You should not move articles into mainspace when you have a COI. You should request review as the template allows for. You absolutely should not move an article back to mainspace after it's been moved back to Draft. Wikipedia is a volunteer-run, charity-funded project. Writing for profit is already evil. Overriding the judgment of others like that? It will just get you banninated. Guy (Help!)

Guy, can you please explain what you mean. Where do I place said template when the page does not exist.—አቤል ዳዊት^?(Janweh64) (talk) 18:03, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Wait, I get it now. Can you please return the articles to draft space so I may request the edits on the draft talk pages so that a volunteer may evaluate them. I am sure that they are notable per WP:MUSICBIO criterion #2, WP:LISTED and WP:ORGDEPTH. They do not qualify for speedy deletion per WP:G11.—አቤል ዳዊት^?(Janweh64) (talk) 18:24, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Is that the policy? Is it forbidden for a paid editor to move an article from draft to article space? Sir Joseph ^(talk) 18:52, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Nothing is ever forbidden here, but it's a terrible idea, especially for the subject - being identified as a person or firm that paid to get an article on Wikipedia is not exactly a badge of honour. I'm happy that you now get it and have moved them back to Draft. Guy (Help!) 21:34, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Guy, the discussion below leads me to believe I was perfectly within my rights. I only meant I understand what you mean. I would rather wait for the outcome of this discussion. As for badge of dishonour, the list of subjects that employ paid editors is extensive. Clarification: you have first deleted then you have moved them to draft after (I assume) reading discussion below. I am of the belief that a move to draft is not necessary and was just capitulating per your warnings.—አቤል ዳዊት^?(Janweh64) (talk) 22:17, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

WP:COI - content should be left to people without a conflict. Fine to create a draft, fine to request review and posting to mainspace, bad idea to move to mainspace yourself, terrible, terrible idea to edit-war back into mainspace after it's moved back to daft. That's not especially controversial I think. Guy (Help!) 18:57, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Firstly, that's a guideline, not a policy. Second, it does not say that editing is forbidden. The most I saw was that editors "should" not edit, but I can't find a policy that says it's forbidden to move an article. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 19:24, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Accusation of edit war maybe premature. I only reverted the move once because I believed it was inappropriate as I stated above.

WP:COI says "generally advised not to edit affected articles directly." This is clearly intentionally left ambiguous.

WP:COI - no where states "content should be left to people without a conflict." It also has no mention of "posting to mainspace" therefore posting to mainspace is simply an edit which is only discouraged. —አቤል ዳዊት^?(Janweh64) (talk) 19:11, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Sir Joseph, AFAIK there is no policy or guideline that forbids a paid editor from moving an article from draft to article space. - GB fan 19:27, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

GB fan, thanks, so we can then close this thread. The OP reverted a valid move and the paid editor rightly (or wrongly) moved it back. Nothing to see here other than some COI warriors. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 19:33, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Not to stop the process but the articles in question have now been inappropriately deleted through WP:CSD by Guy.—አቤል ዳዊት^?(Janweh64) (talk) 19:38, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

That was a piss-poor action. I would ask an admin to undelete. This is an admin action by an involved administrator and is not cool at all, especially for someone throwing guidelines around. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 19:42, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Just to add that I have no idea if the articles in question are good or should indeed be deleted, but it reeks of INVOLVED for an admin in this thread to do the deletion. There is no urgency to have an article deleted that another admin can't do the job. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 19:50, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Matt Holmes (entrepreneur) is at Draft:Matt Holmes (entrepreneur), Himanshu Khagta is at Draft:Himanshu Khagta, Legs4Africa was deleted, Miss Tara was deleted and KDDL Limited was deleted. - GB fan 20:08, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Note: I stopped short of moving Draft:Matt Holmes (entrepreneur) and Draft:Himanshu Khagta back because I believe Justlettersandnumbers action in regards to those articles is appropriate. There is not enough to prove notability as I state in my user page. They should probably stay there till notability can be better established.

The other three though I have nominated for undeletion: here—አቤል ዳዊት^?(Janweh64) (talk) 20:55, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, WP:COI is a guideline, and as it says in the Subcat guideline template transcluded to the top of our guideline pages: "It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply." It does represent consensus, and should be followed unless there is a valid reason not to. Ignore it at your own peril. Mojoworker (talk) 00:27, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

So, Sir Joseph, you appear to be trying to suggest that JzG should not have posted here after deleting those articles. Why not? Isn't it rather normal for an admin to explain an action after making it? What exactly do you see as "piss-poor"? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 00:57, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Is that what I wrote? Sir Joseph ^(talk) 01:03, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Sir Joseph ought to refresh his understanding of what WP:INVOLVED means. In particular, an admin is not involved when their actions have been administrative and not as an editor. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:05, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Oh and "very strongly discouraged" is about as close as the Wikiworld gets to "don't do this". What it means is that most editors wanted to forbid it but enough people objected that a compromise was reached. What it should be read as is "You're going to get into a heap of hurt it you do this." Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:08, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Examples of Wikiworld "don't do this": WP:HARASS, WP:PERSONAL, WP:3RR, WP:SOCK, WP:VANDAL.... —አቤል ዳዊት^?(Janweh64) (talk)

The articles have been undeleted and Guy's actions or involvement is besides the point. The questions are simple:

1. Is a paid editor not permitted to move an article from draft to mainspace?
2. Is a paid editor required to submit articles for review before moving to them to mainspace?

All assuming off-course that paid COI was properly declared as I did. I would like the answers to these questions as much as anyone.—አቤል ዳዊት^?(Janweh64) (talk) 02:04, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

The community has repeatedly chosen not to ban paid editing. Accordingly, a paid editor is allowed to create articles and move them into mainspace. As I gather you know, the proviso to that is the need for full and public disclosure of your relationship with the client.

With that said, while it is allowed, if very strongly discouraged, you run into other problems. Most paid jobs I've seen have tended to be for articles that are marginal at best, and even good editors, faced with pay if they create it and none of they don't, tend to be poor judges as to the viability of the content. Having someone independent decide if it should be moved to mainspace allows that bit of distance which helps everyone - Wikipedia is more likely to get a viable article, the paid editor is less likely to have to explain why the article has been heavily tagged and sent to AfD as soon as it was created, and the client is more likely to get an article that stays. The other issue is simply practicality - if you are doing something controversial (and paid editing remains controversial), it is best to stay as far on the right side of things as possible. By not editing it directly, or not moving it to mainspace, and having independent editors help, you might still fail to get the article up, but you'll avoid most of the ire that you can provoke by ignoring the guidelines. - Bilby (talk) 02:24, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

A few minutes ago I moved Draft:Legs4Africa, one of the drafts discussed above, to mainspace. It seems tolerably good as is. Please don't take this to mean that I think it was a good idea for its creator to do the same thing a little earlier, or that anyone was wrong to move it back. I chose this particular draft rather arbitrarily. I haven't looked at the others and I do not intend to do so: I hope that some other editors will look at them and judge them on their merits. -- Hoary (talk) 07:48, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Hoary, I did. (Janweh64), I hope you will take a look at those individual edits, not because I'm necessarily right about them, but because I think I have a point: excessive detail and references that are really links to the company website and to (promotional) videos are hallmarks of COI editing. When all that stuff is stripped (and the article has now lost half of its size), what we have left is six newspaper articles, which in the current atmosphere is enough to pass notability guidelines, I suppose. Anyway, I think the article is more encyclopedic now, though your boss may like it less; still, I think I did you a service, and you can transfer my fee to my off-shore Wikipedia account. Drmies (talk) 16:40, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Has a paid editor the right to move their drafts to mainspace? Technically, yes, although it is a very bad idea. Has any other editor the right to move these pages then back to draft space? Yes, there is no policy forbidding this either (and lots of reasons to support this). To avoid such a cycle, it would be much, much better if Janweh64 stopped moving his pages to the mainspace and submitted them for review instead. Fram (talk) 08:20, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

• It might not be strictly forbidden by policy, but the content of those drafts make it pretty obvious why review is an extremely necessary thing in these cases. Legs4Africa is actually pretty decent. Draft:Matt Holmes (entrepreneur), on the other hand... An article about the holder of the world record for the longest handshake? Really? Sourced to blogs, self-promotion platforms, LinkedIn and business database entries? I'm not seeing it. Draft:Himanshu Khagta is, in a way, worse, because it appears to be sourced to well-known reliable sources... but those articles are not about him, they just use his photography. Buying a photograph from a stock images collection does not constitute significant coverage in independent, reliable sources. Some of those articles are clearly not ready for article space and the fact that this editor chose to move them there shows that his COI has clouded his judgement. GoldenRing (talk) 10:37, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I invite you to examine the statements I made on my user page long before this discussion began. —አቤል ዳዊት^?(Janweh64) (talk) 11:40, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

@Drmies:As far as I know, references to the company website are permitted as per WP:SELFPUB. A close inspection will reveal conformation bias in anything. And (at the risk of poking the bear) your actions are slightly WP:POINTy behavior as OP has taken your edits as license to continue by removing everything from the infobox. Two editors have found the article acceptable before you. What would happen if we chose an article you created and put it under a microscope. Or even better what would happen if we chose another article I created but have no COI (and there are a few). Where does COI end and simple incompetence begin?

On the contrary, my "boss" would be just as happy. His only concern is the lack of understanding in the absolute dominance Wikipedia has. You fail to realize the amount of power you have and how easily large corporations can influence your decisions, not by direction but sheer size and media influence. Please consider the examples: Apple Inc. reference section which has (94 out of 429) references to apple.com with a couple press releases and endless product pages, FA-articles Ace Books (8 out of 55), BAE Systems (37 out of 199, includes press releases), Holden (6 out of 179, 3 press releases), Cracker Barrel (9 out of 89, 5 press releases) and you can check the rest yourself. What you have demonstrated is my sheer admiration of Legs4Africa!

Can we please end this before someone accuses me of WP:PAYTALK or I am to be flogged and paraded some more? Consesus is clear. I am not strictly forbidden to move articles to mainspace. I am strongly discourage from doing so and very strongly encouraged to use a review process.—አቤል ዳዊት^?(Janweh64) (talk) 21:34, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

And to the question by Mojoworker: Why do I even ignore this guideline instead of the review processes available? Please notice the 8 months backlog for request edits most of which are nonsense no one has bothered to decline? And Hoary, thank you! —አቤል ዳዊት^?(Janweh64) (talk) 21:48, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Please block for copyvio / promo editing

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

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Dougernst has repeatedly added copyvio text, which is promotional as it comes from the subject's website, to Napa Valley College. They have continued despite several warnings, reverts and revision deletions. However I feel a little too involved to block, so could someone else please? BethNaught (talk) 22:09, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Done. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 22:16, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Claiming you are too involved to block someone but asking someone else to block them is really no different. Now in this case it certainly seems like a good block, but I trust that NeilN did not block solely on BethNaught's (involved) recommendation but checked the circumstances for himself and deemed the block appropriate. Mr Ernie (talk) 22:51, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

That is completely untrue. The blocking admin always takes full responsibility, and would never block unless they had closely and objectively reviewed the situation. Admins come to noticeboards all the time with issues they may be too involved to use the tools on. Softlavender (talk) 00:17, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

@Mr Ernie: 1) Yes, I checked. 2) No, there's a significant difference between claiming you are too involved to block someone and asking someone else to block them. Admins are still content editors and can still ask other admins to perform admin actions they can't perform themselves because of WP:INVOLVED (e.g., at RFPP or ANEW). 3) Most importantly, I do not believe WP:INVOLVED applied to BethNaught in this case at all. She could have made the block and I would have fully supported it as appropriate. This type of copyright infringement is a straightforward case and giving warnings and removing the infringements does not make an admin involved. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 00:19, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. I have trust in your and BethNaught's admin actions. To me it just looked weird for an admin to request a block because they were involved. Mr Ernie (talk) 00:32, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I do it sometimes if I see edit warring on an article I've non-trivially edited in the past. "I'm not blocking per INVOLVED" gets added to the ANEW report to stave off "why the heck aren't you handling this yourself" questions. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 00:42, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I've seen a number of editors asking admins to block a specific editor, both here and on admin talk pages, with immediate, positive results. I've done it myself, though I'm not going to dig up the diff to refresh my memory of who and why. The only difference here is that we can extend a little extra trust that an admin has the experience to have made a good call on whether the other editor should be blocked. But as Softlavender said, the admin who does it takes responsibility, just as if the request came from a normal editor. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 03:57, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

If an administrator has even a slight belief that he or she might be seen as involved in a situation where using admin tools would possibly be seen as inappropriate, coming to ANI and asking for another uninvolved administrator to review the situation and take appropriate action is not only the expected thing to do, it's the right thing to do. BethNaught's decision to err on the side of caution and ask for another administrator to review the situation was both logical and the responsible thing to do. Level-headed and intelligent administrators who care about the responsibility and the community trust that comes with having the tools and using them in the manner that is expected and in a completely neutral viewpoint would do exactly what BethNaught did, and she should be barnstar'd and applauded for doing so. This is exactly what to look for in good administrators. :-) ~Oshwah~^{(talk) (contribs)} 08:58, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

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

81.96.151.42

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

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• Tablespoon (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• 81.96.151.42 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)

Edit warring, removal of properly sourced material. Request a brief block.

Reverts: [145] [146] [147]

Warned on talk page here: [148]. The last revert came after this warning.

Attempt to discuss on article talk page, with ping to this user: Talk:Tablespoon#Serving or eating?

Kendall-K1 (talk) 22:12, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

The correct venue for this report is WP:ANEW. With a newish IP user who is only engaged in edit-warring despite warning, the technicalities of 3RR are overlooked and a slo-mo edit war is treated as a violation. Softlavender (talk) 00:00, 17 February 2017 (UTC) Pinging Kendall-K1 in case they are not watching this page. Softlavender (talk) 02:23, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

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

Claims of impersonation

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

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Suggestions have been made at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Lrednuas Senoroc that new account Srednaus Lenoroc might be impersonating Srednuas Lenoroc (note the subtle spelling differences between those three accounts). This claim is based on the fact that Lrednuas Senoroc was previously blocked for impersonating the same editor. Personally, I think that Srednuas Lenoroc has simply created a new account and is now editing as Srednaus Lenoroc, but attempts to establish whether this is the case (e.g. at User talk:Srednaus Lenoroc#New account and Wikipedia:Teahouse#Sock Puppetry -- Do the accusations never end?) are not getting very far. I am bringing the matter here to see if we can get to the bottom of it. Cordless Larry (talk) 00:10, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Could be a joe job. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:01, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

The SPI case regarding Srednaus Lenoroc was submitted by @Sir Sputnik: and again, I have said that if Srednaus Lenoroc is new account of Srednuas Lenoroc, then he has nothing to to do with that  SPI case. And also, @McGeddon: recommended that if he is Srednuas Lenoroc himself and created a new account because of a forgotten password or something, then it should be flagged on both of their user pages [149] and that's all. However, he didn't admit that he is Srednuas Lenoroc, despite he knows that it will help him. On the contrary, he claims that all those similarities (user names, editing styles, etc.)  are just a "coincidence" and blamed other editors for being "conspirational" and involved in personel attacks many times. I think the reason is simple: Because he is not Srednuas Lenoroc, but a separate editor impersonating him-most probably the same sockmaster, Lrednuas Senoroc, aiming to create a mess to undermine the SPI cases about him. Please note that, the editor commented on 7 times on 9 January 2017 case with an inexplicable attempts to acquite the ip socks and suspected sock accounts of Lrednuas Senoroc, whereas he just made 5 comments on 16 February 2017 case, the case which is openly about his own account. It is just weird. 46.221.164.49 (talk) 01:32, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Maybe so, but the new user account is being used mainly to fix hundreds of grammar and spelling errors.—Anne Delong (talk) 04:22, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Posting in the wrong section could be down to competence problems. Note that Srednaus Lenoroc has also posted comments on userpages, such as here and here. Cordless Larry (talk) 08:01, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

So you are saying that he has been editing Wikipedia for almost 2 years and still does not know where to post. His edit summaries, by contrast, do not seem such amateurish. I think a CU may solve this problem.Anyway, admins will decide. 46.221.172.216 (talk) 08:48, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

From their edit histories, this user spends almost all of their time here searching for one particular typo or basic grammar mistake and then rote-replacing it with a (usually) correct alternative in dozens of the search results. They do not seem particularly interested in how the rest of Wikipedia operates. --McGeddon (talk) 10:10, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

So are you telling me you did not do any due diligence and look at the history of the original account?Srednaus Lenoroc (talk) 14:01, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

The situation involving the different user names has already been explained and discounted as infiltration by the sock puppet. It is not within my ability to change a mind that is unable to understand that. As for competency when it comes to the idiocycracies of WP it needs to be understood by those that are far more cognizant of WP that there are in this world those people that may be involved with WP that are not so invested in the system as to learn all those idiosyncacies. So now I imagine that within the purview of WP I am being disruptive. That is the fault of how WP functions. Again, I am unable to change the minds of those that are unable too. As for where that explanation is, that I am unable yo provide because I do not remember how to get there. Again, you need to realize that those people who are involved with WP may not be so invested in WP to understand ALL of its idiosyncracies. But if people are willing to so easy levy accussations then they should be so easily capable of reading the record. That seems only fair.Srednaus Lenoroc (talk) 10:16, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

It hasn't been explained with clarity, Srednaus Lenoroc. With this edit, you suggested that you set up a new account, but here you suggest that it is a coincidence that your account name and editing behaviour is so similiar to Srednuas Lenoroc. So, to help clear this up, could you clarify whether you were previously editing as Srednuas Lenoroc and are now editing with a new account? Yes or no will suffice. Cordless Larry (talk) 11:39, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

(talk) You go so easily from the "WE" to the "I" in explaining your suspicions. The correct grammar would be "these users'"Srednaus Lenoroc (talk) 11:09, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

talk How is it that you are able to get a contributions list for "L" when there is very little listed and what is there has bnothing to do with repetative editing--only Turkish.Srednaus Lenoroc (talk) 11:17, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I explain in clear detail as to what happened and then get accussed of being infiltrated by the "L" original user? Give me a break. If you want to accuss someone of something then read the record before you do so. If you have not then that is your fault.Srednaus Lenoroc (talk) 11:41, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I found this discussion after discovering an editing campaign by the new S.L. In the week or so since the account was created, the user has introduced nonsensical phrases across many articles, apparently stemming from a lack of English fluency, and leaving the edit summary "grammar" (contributions link). This user is generating a lot of clean-up work for others. Eric ^talk 13:23, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Cordless Larry I do not expect this situation to end well because it will be decided that I have been disruptive and uncooperative and challenging WP's authority. But I just read through your links as to my explanation and you are wrong. These are not my explanation. I cannot tell you where it is because you have to realize that in this world there are people that are not as invested in WP as are you and others and do not get into all the idiocycries of the functioning of that group. Again, I can see this not ending happily as I will at least be seen as challenging WP's authority. I cannot tell where it is that I explained but I did and as it has been pointed out that I seem to be unfamiliar with how to put where what needs to be put you will need to look further; but I know it is there because I distinctly remember that the explanation in all its detail was discounted as being written by the user that is banned from WP and my system having been infiltrated. Everyone can go to the depths of the ocean in explaining consistencies but the fact remains that an explanation has been given, was discounted by your lower authorities and now we are at a forum that is to decide a question that has already been decided by people that decided that my explanation was fictional? Again, I do not see a happy ending here because it will be viewed that my actions have challenge the authority of WP and the integrity of all those who decided to weigh-in on this situation and create something out of nothing. Predict that I am wrong? If I cannot tell you the exact place then maybe you should contact those that did comment on this situation did they discount my explanation? Then Voila. But that person may not want to become known as the person that caused a bother for everyone else when it could have been settled long ago. But I can see that the examples used clearly are critical of WP and those that are involved. But the fact of the matter will remain that a lot of people went out on a limp at their own expense. Again, I do not see this experience ending happily because some people have fooled themselves. I am not responsible for that. I did not compel any one to do what they did. Again, I do not expect a happy ending here because WP is unable to critique itself. From what I understand there is the Miranda Decision in the US. Why? Because the police were unable to critique themselves in the handling of people that become involved in alleged crimes. When you have an organization whose upper echelon is filled with people that have been selected by others of a similar mind set it does not take long for their to be a mentality similar to a carouse--going round and round and getting no where. The person who will make a judgement on this will be someone that has been vetted by WP that like so many others is highly invested in retaining the integrity of WP and does not like to be challenged by the rank and file. I do not expect for you to accept this because you are part of the system. Your authority is invested in this system. A challenge to a closed organization is not appreciated. It is very easy to label someone as disruptive and uncooperative. All it takes is one person of authority to do so to even cause there to be a suspicion.Srednaus Lenoroc (talk) 13:49, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Since you cannot find your explanation and that I have apparently been unable to find it, could you just answer the question again here: did you previously edit using the account Srednuas Lenoroc - in other words, are these contributions yours? Cordless Larry (talk) 13:54, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

• I note they ae not answering the same question at SPI either. Not answering a simple question in two forums, then. O Fortuna!^{...Imperatrix mundi.} 13:58, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I am very close to blocking them for disruption based on the reply above and on SPI. I'm getting the feeling we are being played here. RickinBaltimore (talk) 14:00, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Seconded, after following this this thread. Clear case of obfuscation. Lectonar (talk) 14:04, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

So is everyone telling that they have not bothered due diligence and look at the contributions list for when these accounts were active? Because that seems rather foolish? Especially after my original explanation that was discounted.Srednaus Lenoroc (talk) 14:16, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I've looked - I even supplied a link above (where my unanswered question for you is). Cordless Larry (talk) 14:20, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Does anyone want to apologize now or after the second explanation?Srednaus Lenoroc (talk) 14:17, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Will you answer the question posed to you? Simple yes or no, is this other account yours. RickinBaltimore (talk) 14:22, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

And by that we mean is Srednuas Lenoroc a previous account of yours? I think everyone now accepts that Lrednuas Senoroc is nothing to do with you so nothing to do with the SPI. The question is have you had a previous Wikipedia account that for some reason you abandoned last year and then created this account recently? Nthep (talk) 14:29, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Which question so that I know about what it is that you are talking about. It seems like there have been a few people acting foolish here since it is so easy to cast aspirsions on people then leave it to others to clean up. That is a problem with a shark attack mentality. Again, I do not see this situation ending happily because people have been acting like fools.Srednaus Lenoroc (talk) 14:29, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

One last time: did you previously edit using the account Srednuas Lenoroc - in other words, are these contributions yours? Cordless Larry (talk) 14:37, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Propose indefinite block for User:Srednaus Lenoroc

• Ultimately due to the fact that it might focus their attention on what the community wants rather than merely what they are willing to give us. This situation is absolutely ridiculous. They are refusing to answer one simple question, and that should tell everything we need to know. Either they are a sock, and are trying to fillibuster us, or they are not, and we have been trolled for the last day or two. Two massive- and massively convoluted- threads, here and at SPI- have not yet received astraight answer, and indeed it is purely due to this editor that they are so convoluted. Instead of the requested yes / no answer, we get walls of text and evasiveness. End this farce now please, and we can get back to what we are meant to be doing. O Fortuna!^{...Imperatrix mundi.} 14:30, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
• Support block if SL refuses to answer this very simple question. Their behaviour demonstrates an inability to work collaboratively, which is a required skill. Cordless Larry (talk) 14:36, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
• Blocked. The evasive argumentative tone whilst avoiding the simple question points me strongly towards the conclusion that this user is WP:NOTHERE. Until they provide a straight answer to the question they have been asked, I think a block is now appropriate or these discussions are going to continue for ever. One we or another, we seem to be being trolled. WJBscribe (talk) 14:39, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

• Should the Srednuas Lenoroc account also be blocked? Cordless Larry (talk) 14:40, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
  • Yep, I've blocked that one too. WJBscribe (talk) 14:46, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I support block for Srednaus Lenoroc but I don't think user Srednuas Lenoroc should also be blocked. 'Cause we still don't know whether these two editors are the same or one editor is just trolling on WP by impersonating the other editor. I think, we are simply being trolled, since it is absurd not to answer a simple question and creating such a mess. 46.221.178.57 (talk) 14:59, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

The interaction analyser suggests it is phenomonally unlikely that they are different editors :) O Fortuna!^{...Imperatrix mundi.} 14:47, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I am not sure. Both were just randomly editing multiple articles and it is not a surprise that some articles they edited were overlapped. I mean, this alone doesn't prove that they are the same editors. 46.221.178.57 (talk) 15:07, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

• Block reduced to 48 hours. As the user has now confirmed the previous editing as Srednuas Lenoroc (talk · contribs) and given a plausible explanation for the change (although not their 6 day delay in giving the answer), I have reduced the block from indef to 48 hours, which I think is the appropriate length to reflect the recent disruptive editing. Should problematic editing continue after the block expires, we may need to consider reinstating the indefblock. WJBscribe (talk) 16:11, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Is no one remotely concerned that 46.221.178.57 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) just appeared out of nowhere and started supporting a user in a sockpuppet case? Like is that just me? EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 18:26, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

The IP wasn't supporting anyone accused of sockpuppetry, but I have indeed been wondering where they appeared from. It seems to be a dynamic IP, so it's hard to track how long they've been editing for. Cordless Larry (talk) 18:39, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Bizarrely, here that P is arguing that it may just be a coincidence that the two SL accounts edited similiar articles, so they needn't be socking; whilst over on Srednuas Lenoroc's page they are arging that they are most probably socking. Any reason for that we can think of? O Fortuna!^{...Imperatrix mundi.} 18:54, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

It seems that you misunderstood. I was pointing that, the user is just trolling through impersonating other editors on WP. As for talk page response, I was talking about his inconsistent answers. Actually all in these edits, i was pointing that the user might be a seperate editor trolling on WP. 46.221.174.114 (talk) 19:10, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

H'mmm... OK. O Fortuna!^{...Imperatrix mundi.} 19:34, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

The 46.221.* IP user raised an SPI against impersonator Lrednuas Senoroc last December, and has drifted into commenting on Srednaus, I think with some concern that Srednaus may have also been this impersonator, although it's awkward to check with the dynamic IP. How about getting a username, 46.221? --McGeddon (talk) 19:56, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Mr @McGeddon:, I'll reply you on your talk page, since it is a bit off-topic. And it would nice, if an admin close this section. 'Cause I am almost tired of checking the revision history of that page. The user really created a mess in both of the project pages. 46.221.174.114 (talk) 20:09, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

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

Train wreck

Dear editors: Because I was busy in real life today and had only the occasional moment to read the Wikipedia talk pages, without any time to research and write posts, I had to stand by and watch a prolific and hard-working Wikignome hounded into retirement. Today I had more time, so after severeal hours of investigation, here is my Wikipedia:Assume good faith analysis of what happened:

In May 2015, a new user, Srednuas Lenoroc, set his computer to keep him logged in and remember his password, and between then and July 2016 proceeded to make more than 20,000 mostly small fixes of typos and MOS changes. In November 2015, another account, Lrednuas Senoroc, was created by a user with a totally different editing pattern who apparently picked an existing user name one at random and changing a couple of letters (User talk:Srednuas Lenoroc#re: User:Lrednuas Senoroc) The new user was advised to change user names, and after two days that account was blocked. Problem over, apparently.

On February 9, 2017, after not editing for eight months, Srednuas Lenoroc got a new computer which didn't have his account information. Unable to remember his password, he logged in using the "make an account" process, thinking that he had used the same username (see his comment here), "I put in the user name I previously used and WP accepted it" and not realizing that that only worked because he had transposed two letters. As Srednaus Lenoroc, he began his pattern of improving the encyclopedia by making more than 1500 improvements over the next few days, stopping occasionally to ask for help at the Teahouse. But things began to go wrong!

First, an editor accused him of using a bot without permission. He replied that he was just using the search engine to find misspellings and fix them. (I spent an hour or so this morning doing the same thing and had no trouble replicating the editing pattern.) Then he tried to point out a problem with an article (Talk:AltX#Recommend deletion), and took offense at the patronizing reply of one editor. He added a link to that editor's talk page to his own, but was told in no uncertain terms to keep away (from a page he had never edited) and called a troll (User talk:Srednaus Lenoroc# Friends). After another editor reminded him that these links created annoying "pings", he stopped adding the links.

Next, he was notified that he'd been mentioned in a sock puppet investigation. He was asked why he made a new account, but didn't respond at that time. The question would be confusing to one who didn't realize he had changed his username.

He just kept on fixing typos and date-related grammar. But next he was notified of an WP:ANI discussion (Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Claims of impersonation) suggesting that he was impersonating another user. He tried to explain that all of that impersonation business was investigated and his involvement discounted in 2015, but was unable to get his point across. His posting clearly shows that he thought the editors were asking about the 2015 impersonator, Lrednuas Senoroc.

Then, after hundred of other good edits, he made a series of edits changing "close up" to "forward" in some military articles. When Eric asked him to stop, guess what? He did, immediately, and started discussing it on his talk page. Eric reported him at ANI anyway, in a post the made it seem that most of his edits are bad (not true; aside from the "forward" issue, I have looked at a couple of hundred and found three errors).

At this point Srednaus Lenoroc was becoming agitated and began to make rambling and somewhat sarcastic postings on various talk pages, including the Teahouse which had helped him before, complaining that none of this made any sense. He confirmed in this posting that he did make a new account because he couldn't access his old one, but still either didn't seem to realize that his user name has changed slightly or didn't understand why anyone cares. He continued to assert (for example HERE) that he is not Lrednuas Senoroc, and expressed bafflement as to why he was continually accused of abusing multiple accounts (understandably, since neither his previous account nor the other short-lived account have been active for more than eight months).

The next day, Srednaus Lenoroc was blocked indefinitely. His crimes are, as far as I can see, (1) adding a couple of links to user talk pages to his own and not wanting to remove them, (2) making grammar errors in maybe 2% of his edits, (3) not responding right away when accused of various things he didn't do, and (4) complaining, at ANI (the talk page set aside for such complaints}, at the Teahouse which is supposed to help people (his posts were removed), and at the sockpuppet investigation (to which he was called), that he was being hounded and treated unfairly (this is apparently disruptive).

Srednaus Lenoroc has marked himself as "retired" on his talk page. He left a posting comparing Wikipedia to a shark tank. The incident seems to me more like bear-baiting, and so Wikipedia has lost a prolific if somewhat fractious Wikignome. I can tell you, if any of this had happened to me, I would not be editing today.—Anne Delong (talk) 16:48, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

That, indeed, is a disconcerting story. But it does looks like the block was reduced to 48 hours (per talkpage, question has been answered so reducing block to one [?] for disruptive editing only). As an afterthought, Anne Delong's comment is a a bit heavy on text (which I did read!), but light on evidence (especially "crimes" 1-4 paragraph). We can't really be expected to go hunting for the diffs; the onus is on her to provide these for us here. But again, it is too bad the editor retired. Hopefully, he will reconsider. El_C 17:00, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, I was running out of time near the end and had to leave for a music event and have just returned. I neglected to provide a link to the user's talk page where some of the discussion can be found, although I did provide a link to the user himself, and clicking on the word "talk" isn't that much of a hunt. Everything else is either in the diffs and links I provided further up in this section, except that I forgot to link to the Teahouse: this diff shows a highly agitated editor lashing out in frustration after the Teahouse hosts (doing their best to explain in their usual friendly fashion) direct him back to the talk pages where he feels he has been attacked.—Anne Delong (talk) 23:54, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I realize he's agitated and that it wasn't his fault, but in fairness, he didn't do a lot to clear the confusion there. In fairness, I don't know what I would think reading it, if I didn't have the context. El_C 00:05, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

• That's one wall of text that's worth reading! If accurate, it should be a case study in driving off good editors. Unfortunately there's no email this user link for this user, but perhaps a carefully crafted talk page message could do the trick? EEng 17:53, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Hello @Anne Delong and all- Sorry if I contributed to an erroneous block action. I admit that I tend take a less than charitable view when I (all too often) run across someone with English challenges making obsessive mass changes across many en.wp articles with unhelpful or empty edit summaries. A quick glance at SL's interactions with other editors seemed to confirm for me that this was a contentious user, one who takes up a lot of people's time seeking strife and drama on Wikipedia. It could be that I didn't research the issue enough to draw that conclusion and warrant adding my comments--I don't know. Anne, I would like to point out that I did not initiate the ANI report; when I found it, I merely added my observations regarding the "closed up"/"forwarded" campaign. Eric ^talk 21:29, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Is User talk:Srednaus Lenoroc the correct place to send an encouraging message to this user? Contentious or not, the gnomes do so much great work here. They often fix things you overlook when writing content, because once you've read an article 50 times, you start to forget what it says and overlook typys. Typo intentional. White Arabian Filly ^Neigh 23:13, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes. I'll leave a message too. EEng 23:26, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

User:TheValentineBros probable hoax/vandalism

TheValentineBros (talk · contribs) edits occasionally on film and music articles, with seemingly constructive edits, adding categories and content, including with citations sometimes. However much of what is added appears to be factually incorrect, beyond the point of simple occasional error. A couple of days ago, for the second time (see also 22 January edits), they added the category "song written for a film" to a large number of songs, eg here, none of which were written for films. Today they have added details of films supposedly in production by an animation studio to that studio's page, but none of the cited sources mention the studio's involvement. I have reverted all these edits and left a note on their talk page, but it increasingly looks like an account simply dedicated to adding small amounts of hoax material (their user page also boasts about being banned from YouTube). Past unreverted edits may also need to be reviewed. N-HH talk/edits 12:08, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

From his (their?) talk page, it looks like TheValentineBros has a history of creating fake articles when bored. One question I have is whether this is a shared account. The user page makes it sound like multiple people, who used to operate a YouTube channel, now operate this Wikipedia account. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 15:52, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

That could explain why some of the edits in the contribution history seem OK, whereas others are clearly and repeatedly introducing falsehoods. The latter could of course also be due to genuine error, but there's definitely something not right here. Another explanation for the variation is that there is a conscious effort by whoever runs the account to hide "bad" edits among good ones. Or that they wake up on different sides of the bed each day. N-HH talk/edits 18:23, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

• This is bizarre. This user may have a constructive streak, but it's evident that inserting unsourced information and/or outright vandalism is a hobby of theirs stretching back years. Furthermore, it's evident they've made no effort to heed the numerous warnings issued to them or. They haven't been in contact with another member of the community in years. Based on the fact that their problematic behavior is so subtle it can easily go unnoticed, and the fact that they've flown under the radar for several years without consequence, I don't think "keeping an eye on" this user would be beneficial. This user needs to establish communication and directly address these issues before they can be allowed to resume editing. Blocking indef. Swarm ♠ 07:34, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

2601:84:4502:61EA:E492:DB5F:B7AA:EB86

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

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This IP s making highly controversial edit in the category system, and is edit warring about it. Obviously a sock. Debresser (talk) 15:02, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

User has admitted to being ChronoFrog,[150] a SPA with an agenda to push. I think the user is NOTHERE and should be blocked for the socking, editwarring and for not being here to build an encyclopedia. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 15:03, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

And I didn't like this edit, which sounded a bit like a threat.[151] Debresser (talk) 15:06, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Or this one: [152] Sir Joseph ^(talk) 15:08, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Again, given what I've seen you both do, you are in no position to call anyone an SPA or accuse them of POV. Further, if you look at my edit history, I've worked on more than just Jewish articles. The first edits I made here were on a TV series. Nowhere does it say that I'm required to log in every time I edit, especially if I'm not even using that account anymore.

"And I didn't like this edit, which sounded a bit like a threat." It isn't a threat. Several articles are being written about this as we speak. Have fun. And yes, you will both be outed publicly.2601:84:4502:61EA:E492:DB5F:B7AA:EB86 (talk) 15:12, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Is that a THREAT of OUTING? Can we please get some admin action quickly, I don't need to have to be threatened and bullied on here. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 15:14, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Already range blocked by Bbb23. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 15:40, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

This thread is obviously evidence of a conspiracy, though I can't be arsed to find out if it's a Zionist, anti-Zionist, left-wing, vast right-wing, or moderately militant conspiracy. Sir Joseph THE TRUTH WILL COME OUT YOU CANT SILENCE US and all that blah blah. Thanks to all, and let us admins know if we need to semi-protect this or that. Drmies (talk) 16:43, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, I guess I need to wait for the "Sir Joseph is an anti-semite" article to hit the newswires. Should be an interesting read. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 16:49, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Oh so y'all were running an anti-Zionist conspiracy. Good to know--I keep note cards on my desk to keep track of who's doing what. Drmies (talk) 16:58, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Wait, that's what we are doing this week? I swear I can't keep up! RickinBaltimore (talk) 16:59, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

No, let's keep things simple. This has nothing to do with Zionism. It's just me being an anti-Semite. We should be glad this is one area where the IP conflict hasn't reared it's ugly head. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 17:07, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Since you admit being an antisemite, I suggest an indefinite topic ban from all pages related to professional competitors in 4th to 5th century BCE Greek drinking games, broadly construed. We just can't trust such horrible bigots to edit those articles objectively. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 17:31, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

• Hey, I was just thinking... What if Trump liked to edit Wikipedia instead of tweeting? EEng 18:51, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

WP:CIR TimothyJosephWood 19:47, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

We're gonna make some tremendous improvements. We're gonna flush the swamp, kick out the Washington Post and get some real sources in here, like Breitbart News and Infowars. We're gonna make yuge changes to policy, and when we're done, we're gonna build a wall of text so high no new editors will ever join, believe me. And while we're at it, we're gonna indef block Jimbo. And Jimbo's gonna pay for it, trust me. I have the best paid editors, the very best. We're gonna do great things. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 20:43, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

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

My attention was brought to this article, in which I am called, apparently, both an ultra-right wing Israeli “settler” (with link), as well as anti-semitic. I do see the irony of the case. Debresser (talk) 17:22, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Given Trump's level of understanding of Middle East affairs, as displayed during Netanyahu's visit, that might be him editing after all. EEng 19:04, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Ban evasion

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

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Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Hidden Tempo

This was opened yesterday, but the implications are clear:

The Patriot Way (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is an account created by Hidden Tempo (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) to evade his topic ban. The person behind these accounts has admitted to as much on the SPI [153].

jps (talk) 18:22, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Aww geez, I guess I should kick this to WP:AE? Sorry if so. WP:BURO got me down. jps (talk) 18:32, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

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

Modern Sciences, disruptive editing

I want to inform that the User:Modern Sciences heavily pushes POV, removes content from articles and vandalises articles.

• Robert Kocharyan (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Serzh Sargsyan (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Aşağı Ağcakənd (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Shusha massacre (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Political status of Nagorno-Karabakh (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Guba mass grave (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Baku pogrom (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Füzuli (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Lachin (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Economy of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Puppet state (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• List of territorial disputes (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• History of Nagorno-Karabakh (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Madrid Principles (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

I regret that after 4 warnings and many reverts the user is still engaged in disruptive editing. Therefore, I ask admins to take all the necessary measures to stop the user from disruptive editing. Boaqua (talk) 20:34, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Pleas supply actual WP:DIFFs that show the disruption. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:21, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not seeing it. His edits are a bit WP:POINTY, but are referenced. OP seems to be an Azeri upset with the edits based on the editing history.70.209.144.80 (talk) 23:38, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

@Beeblebrox: You can check the history of the articles I linked. For example these edits:

• Robert Kocharyan : (1), 2 hierarchy? City, Province, Country.
• Serzh_Sargsyan: 1 hierarchy? City, Province, Country.
• Aşağı Ağcakənd, Shahoumian, Shahumyan, Shaumyan is an Armenian name
• Nagorno-Karabakh independence referendum, 1991 :
• Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast: 1, 2
• Azerbaijan this article (Manipulation of the source material)
• Karabakh horse: 1
• Armenian-controlled territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh: this edition
• this
• Zəngilan: 1
• Azerbaijan: 1
• Armenian: 1, 2
• this
• Shahbulag Castle this
• this

Unfortunately, All of the editions of this user done be this method (Manipulation of the source material - deleting sentences, replacing with of other words or sentences, ...), Examples that above I mentioned are only a few of them. Dear reviewer admin I wanna inform that the User Boaqua heavily pushes POV, removes content from articles and vandalizes articles. I gave some Warning to him no responses

I dont know why Admins Waiver to his disruptive editing I dont know??

Modern Sciences (talk) 17:13, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

@Beeblebrox: You can check the history of the articles I linked. For example these edits:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Madrid_Principles&type=revision&diff=765881957&oldid=765881587

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_Nagorno-Karabakh&type=revision&diff=765882469&oldid=765882276

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_Kocharyan&type=revision&diff=764738072&oldid=746419341

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Serzh_Sargsyan&type=revision&diff=764737838&oldid=762912719

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Guba_mass_grave&type=revision&diff=765881808&oldid=765881495

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Economy_of_the_Nagorno-Karabakh_Republic&type=revision&diff=765638657&oldid=754064945

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Puppet_state&type=revision&diff=765631561&oldid=761130010

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_territorial_disputes&type=revision&diff=765633057&oldid=765599902

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_Nagorno-Karabakh&type=revision&diff=765639212&oldid=764597602

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Madrid_Principles&type=revision&diff=765632003&oldid=756138341

The user was also warned by an admin, but continued his disruptive editing. Boaqua (talk) 00:12, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Long-term Edit warring on List of Resident Evil characters

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

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• 31.7.108.250 (talk · contribs)
• 2.180.175.153 (talk · contribs)

I have noticed that two IP edits have been involved in a long-term edit war on List of Resident Evil characters. Please note that I have issued a warnings to these IPs in the past, but they keep changing.[154][155] There seems to be a dispute over the placement and organization of certain video game characters in this article. I first noticed this in February 2015. I initially warned both editors in December 2016 and invited them to a discussion on the article's talk page. Neither party replied nor heeded my warning to stop. I was able to request protection to stop the disruptive editing, but the edit warring resumed once the protection expired.

Some of the IPS involved in this edit war:

• 31.7.108.255 (talk · contribs)
• ‎2.180.44.63 (talk · contribs)
• 31.59.147.169 (talk · contribs)
• 31.59.147.111 (talk · contribs)
• 31.59.146.187 (talk · contribs)
• 31.59.151.209 (talk · contribs)
• 2.180.165.155 (talk · contribs)
• 2.180.41.171 (talk · contribs)
• 2.180.43.177 (talk · contribs)
• 46.100.129.93 (talk · contribs)
• 80.246.239.243 (talk · contribs)

There's a methodical and distinct method for how these anons are undoing each others. Does anyone have suggestions to help resolve this problem? Thanks, --  StarScream1007  ►Talk  02:16, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

@StarScream1007: A rangeblock is probably in order. Is there an admin available who knows a thing or two about IP addresses (not me, sadly) who can make an appropriate call about a range of IP addresses to block in this case? I JethroBT ^{drop me a line} 02:22, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

If the only article being targeted is List of Resident Evil characters, it is simpler just to semiprotect that, which I have now done. The IPs are too scattered for range blocking to be a simple matter. EdJohnston (talk) 03:50, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

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

Legal threat

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

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Received legal threat and was called a "shmuck" by someone who didn't like me adding sourced material to his Wikipedia article. Makeandtoss (talk) 03:16, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

@Callanecc: Makeandtoss (talk) 03:18, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Blocked by Oshwah per WP:NLT --Cameron₁₁₅₉₈ ^(Talk) 03:24, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

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

User:Twitternotices is impersonating a journalist

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

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This users first edits were to the article Anca Verma, an article were we have been struggling to deal with editing by this person's legal firm via multiple socks.

When I asked User:Twitternotices about this they replied they were a journalist in India. When I reached out to the journalist in question via linkedin the journalist stated that they are not editing Wikipedia.

Wondering peoples thoughts on this? And what we should do? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:47, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

My first reaction would be to indef block until we can figure out what the heck is going on, but we still need to respect innocent until proven guilty. As such, it may be a good idea to ask questions of the user and if they don't respond and/or become disruptive, then we can start taking further measures. Twitbookspacetube (talk) 10:12, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't see anything in their contributions that suggests they are impersonating anyone. I assume the evidence was forwarded to you via email or some other means. If so, the correct policy response is at WP:BLOCKEVIDENCE: If a user needs to be blocked based on information that will not be made available to all administrators, that information should be sent to the Arbitration Committee or a Checkuser or oversighter for action. These editors are qualified to handle non-public evidence, and they operate under strict controls. The community has rejected the idea of individual administrators acting on evidence that cannot be peer-reviewed. Please follow this policy. -- Euryalus (talk) 10:28, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

I am just doing my job and fairly editing articles (without any bias). Yesterday I created a new article on Iulia Vantur another Romanian celebrity which is not yet complete. I am new to Wikipedia and I wish to continue here for the good of society. Twitternotices (talk) 11:04, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

@@Twitternotices: Now, when you say I am just doing my job and fairly editing articles, do you mean that your "job" is editing Wikipedia articles? My understanding is that paid editing is allowed, but it needs to be disclosed, and you earlier explicitly denied having a COI in this area. I would tell you what you need to do to prove your good faith, but if you really are editing in good faith it should be obvious. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:31, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Have restored this thread from here. User:Euryalus as an involved user you should not be closing it. I am well aware of WP:BLOCKEVIDENCE and am happy to share the evidence with other admins by email. I will ask the journalist if I can post his reply here. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:15, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

@Doc James: Mildly, I have no "involvement" in this dispute, and am a little surprised at the aspersion. It is a routine admin function to point out which policies apply to an issue under discussion, and doing so does not make one "involved" in the terms of the policy. That said, I have no objection to this thread being reopened if anyone has anything substantive to add. If you have evidence that would justify a block or other sanction of user:Twitternotices, please do make it available in accordance with en-WP policy. -- Euryalus (talk) 11:42, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

User:Euryalus You have been involved in the dispute regarding the balance of undisclosed paid editing versus outing. You have commented 14 times here and a further 9 here

As I said if any other admin would like evidence I would be happy to provide it by email. Also we are waiting on an answer to User:Hijiri88 question by User:Twitternotices. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:50, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Your reading of WP:INVOLVED is incorrect, but this back and forth is unproductive so I'll leave it there. Thanks for the reassurance re Blockevidence, and I'm sure you'll keep it appropriately in mind in pursuing this specific ANI issue. -- Euryalus (talk) 12:28, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

• There was an SPI lodged regarding this editor; supposedly, insufficient evidence. But the suggestion still stands; a comparison of their respective edit summaries is interesting. Twitternotices [156], Mainstreamwikipedia [157], Ultimatebeneficiary [158], Authorincharge [159], etc. O Fortuna!^{...Imperatrix mundi.} 13:31, 18 February 2017 (UTC)
• If a user needs to be blocked based on information that will not be made available to all administrators, that information should be sent to the Arbitration Committee or a Checkuser or oversighter for action. These editors are qualified to handle non-public evidence, and they operate under strict controls. The community has rejected the idea of individual administrators acting on evidence that cannot be peer-reviewed. So, if you have had private communications with User:Twitternotices and a journalist that they claimed to be, you should be sending that evidence to Arbcom. Sharing that evidence with an ordinary administrator would be contrary to policy. Checkuser has found the suspected socks to be stale, and there doesn't appear to be any public edits needing oversight. I can understand how any content about the Vermas, positive or negative, might be subject to disputes and disruptive editing. If that's proving to be too much of a burden to patrol, I'd say the solution is to raise the protection level on the article(s). Going the route of blocking editors with less than a dozen edits is like playing whack-a-mole. You don't have hard evidence of sock-puppetry, and the editing history is simply not long enough to establish anything behavior-wise. wbm1058 (talk) 14:04, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

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

Devencci2005 – disruptive editing, part 3

Previously reported here twice and blocked each time for not using timestamps when updating statistics, Devencci2005 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) just doesn't seem give a s*** while also using transfermarkt as a source which is considered unreliable here as they have been told repeatedly. Robby.is.on (talk) 14:11, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Persistent copyright violation by new(ish) editor Barney Herdsy

Barney Herdsy has a particular interest in the Billy Smart's Circus family, and has repeatedly been adding unreferenced (and often trivial) material to associated pages. More importantly, he/she has now been warned three times for blatant cut-and-paste copyright violation (most recently from the Daily Mail - not a reliable source in any case). They have failed to respond in any way to repeated postings on their talk page, but have merely repeated their behaviour. Ghmyrtle (talk) 14:33, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Indef blocked with a note on how to get unblocked. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 14:53, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

IPs from Massachussets (possible sockpuppets)

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• 2600:1000:b002:e6c5:c889:9593:a844:7f82 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
• 2600:1000:b079:8746:3:ceef:1b81:73ff (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
• 2600:1000:b00f:5225:f07b:adf7:c6a4:732e (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
• 2600:1000:b071:ee3b:18ab:b714:134f:946f (talk · contribs · WHOIS)

All geolocate to Medford, MA and appear to be sockpuppets with one purpose only. See [160]. 69.165.196.103 (talk) 16:38, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Semiprotected Michael Brandon. EdJohnston (talk) 16:55, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

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

Help reversing page move vandalism

Patrash Hembrom recently moved, among other pages, Help:Introduction to editing with Wiki Markup/3 to Lucash The Hembrom for no reason. Can some admin please fix this? Thanks. A look at this user's contribs may also help. SkyWarrior 21:08, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Probably cluelessness. zzuuzz fixed one move, I fixed the other. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 21:30, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you. SkyWarrior 21:31, 18 February 2017 (UTC)