Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive203

Requesting undelete of my user space page User:Sidonuke

Resolved

Just as the subject says. I had it deleted a few months ago due to leaving wikipedia but I have returned. Thank you! --Sidonuke (talk :: contribs) 13:10, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Done. Welcome back. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:22, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Many have stated category:rapists should be renamed convicted rapists

I'd like Category:Rapists to be renamed Category:People convicted of rape or Category:Convicted rapists. On the talk page and in the AFD, many people stated that it should. Calling someone a rapist who hasn't been convicted leaves Wikipedia label, and there are rules against that. So only convicted rapists should be categories as such. Can someone rename that please? Dream Focus 03:34, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

I created the Category:People wrongly convicted of rape. This is the base category, so if we can move pages into here, then I'd be all for it, otherwise I can manually do it over the next week. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 04:15, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

People wrongly convicted of rape? What? Unless the conviction was reversed in court, you can't say that. Dream Focus 04:21, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Have you considered taking it to categories for discussion (CFD) and propose the rename there? MuZemike 04:23, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh, never mind. I'm too tired, tonight. MuZemike 04:25, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Is there a page somewhere that list all these places that exist? I wasn't aware there was a page for just categories. And when you use the search thing, it ignores Wikipedia service pages, there no box to click to include them in a search. Dream Focus 04:30, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Whoops, I created another one during that period named that. I created one with and without the word wrongly. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 04:37, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Dream Focus: try searching here (hit Search and then choose Advanced, and it lets you choose the namespace where you want to search). Jafeluv (talk) 19:19, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

It looks like this may be a WP:BLP issue or a matter to discuss on some wikiprojects affecting time, perhaps even WP:CfD. There is a broader problem that having committed a rape does not mean that one's identification as a person is a rapist. Committing a crime does not make one a criminal, nor does having played football make one a "football player". In all cases there is a question of whether that is how to identify a person. Whereas most of the people on the category are clearly serious criminals, usually serial murderers, one would have to be very careful for WP:BLP reasons that the category is not used to impugn people accused but not convicted, convicted but then exonerated, or who have committed lesser (albeit serious) crimes related to statutory rape, among other things. I'm thinking of Roman Polanski here. Without getting into all the politics, it would be needlessly contentious to add him to the category, but not nearly as bad to add him to a differently worded category relating to child sex abuse, for instance. - Wikidemon (talk) 19:30, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Also, please note you can link to categories using this syntax, just like images: [[:Category:xxx]] - Wikidemon (talk) 19:33, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Unable to cerate a re-direct

Resolved

 – False alarm? Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 05:56, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

I am trying to make a re-direct from:

Milesian Monarch of Ireland

to

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_High_Kings_of_Ireland

Apparently some portion of this is on a "black list"

Please help,

Sake Wish —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sake Wish (talk • contribs) 11:51, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

It looks like you've already made the redirect: Milesian Monarch of Ireland. Is there something else you needed? Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 05:56, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

No thanks, got it... Sake Wish (talk) 10:15, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Lapsed Pacifist 2

This arbitration case has been closed a summary of the final decision is available at the Arbitration Committee Noticeboard.

- For the Arbitration Committee, Mailer Diablo 09:01, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Motions: Law/The Undertow and Disclosure of known alternate accounts

Decided on 11 October 2009 :

In a series of motions, the Arbitration Committee addressed the matter of a blocked user (The undertow) operating under a new identity (Law) that successfully gained adminship. The Committee also examined the actions of three editors who assisted this new identity gain adminship, despite knowing that the individual was circumventing a block.

Motions: Law & The undertow

The Arbitration Committee has been informed that Law (talk · contribs) is an alternate account of The undertow (talk · contribs), and this has been confirmed with the user involved. User:Law has now resigned his administrator tools.[1] At the time that the User:Law account was created, User:The undertow was subject to an Arbitration Committee block.

• General motion: The Arbitration Committee notes the resignation of administrator tools by Law, and further notes that this resignation is under controversial circumstances. The user is restricted to one account, The undertow. He is required to notify the Arbitration Committee in advance should he wish to change usernames or create a new account, in accordance with Arbitration Committee enforcement procedures initiated in June 2009.[2]
• The undertow is banned 6 months: The undertow is banned from Wikipedia for six months.

Motions: Disclosure of known alternate accounts

In response to a case request submitted by User:Jehochman the committee decided to reject the case and instead deal with the matter by motion.

• GlassCobra: GlassCobra (talk · contribs) nominated Law (talk · contribs) for adminship. Law was an undisclosed account of previously 9-month blocked and desysopped editor The undertow (talk · contribs), and GlassCobra made his nomination while aware of that fact and without disclosing it. GlassCobra has since agreed that this was a breach of trust incompatible with his holding the position of an ArbCom clerk and has resigned from that post at the Committee's request. GlassCobra has apologized, pledged not to repeat such an error, and is willing to accept a sanction.
• GlassCobra admonished: GlassCobra is strongly admonished for having knowingly promoted the request for adminship of an editor he knew was using an undisclosed alternate account. He was aware that knowledge of the former account's history would materially affect the request, and displayed poor judgment by failing to disclose that information along with his support.
• GlassCobra desysopped: GlassCobra is desysopped for having knowingly promoted the request for adminship of an editor he knew was using an undisclosed alternate account. He was aware that knowledge of the former account's history would materially affect the request, and breached the community's trust by failing to disclose that information along with his support. Adminship may be regained by request to the arbitration committee or via the usual means.
• Jayron32 admonished: Jayron32 (talk · contribs) is strongly admonished for having knowingly promoted the request for adminship of an editor he knew was using an undisclosed alternate account. He was aware that knowledge of the former account's history would materially affect the request, and displayed poor judgment by failing to disclose that information along with his support.
• Jennavecia admonished: Jennavecia (talk · contribs) is strongly admonished for having knowingly promoted the request for adminship of an editor she knew was using an undisclosed alternate account. She was aware that knowledge of the former account's history would materially affect the request, and displayed poor judgment by failing to disclose that information along with her support.
• Jennavecia's resignation: Jennavecia resigned her status as an administrator on October 9, 2009, while this matter was pending. Per normal practice regarding resignation under controversial circumstances, she may apply at requests for adminship or to the Arbitration Committee for the restoration of her administrator status at any time.
• Administrators reminded and encouraged: Administrators are reminded that while they have no obligation to enforce any particular rule, they do have an obligation to refrain from violating or assisting in the violation of community or ArbCom imposed sanctions, as with any other editor. Administrators who choose not to address block evasion themselves by blocking the new account, are strongly encouraged to notify Arbcom or checkusers of apparent ban or block evasion when they become aware of it. It is in the best interests of the project and the user(s) involved to address these situations early.

For the Arbitration Committee, Manning (talk) 16:13, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

• Clerk note - a previous version of this notice incorrectly listed a motion which had, in fact, not passed. This was an administrative error on my part and has since been rectified at all relevant locations. Manning (talk) 00:18, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
  • You forgot the discussion page link, too. ☺ Uncle G (talk) 10:52, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Discuss this

Possible sockpuppet?

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.

While this is a place for meta discussion, since this discussion mentions specific users by name it is not meta discussion. Another place for meta discussion is the village pump, and since this issue would be better informed with opinion from outside the admin pool, I suggest editors start a meta discussion where no user names are mentioned there. Hiding T 10:29, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

---

Resolved

 – Not the sockpuppet that was suspected.

Durova³²² 05:14, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

This is the place for meta-discussion.... --MZMcBride (talk) 23:14, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Hello all --

It's come to my attention that there may be impropriety by particular user accounts, but I'd like some others to take a look and give their opinions.

• Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles (talk · contribs) — potential sockmaster
• Elisabeth Rogan (talk · contribs) — blocked account of Le Grand
• Katerenka (talk · contribs) — matches the pattern of the Elisabeth account; needs to be investigated

In particular, edits to Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Kww 3 seem suspicious (by the Le Grand account and the Katerenka account).

If these suspicions are wrong, I apologize in advance. But I do believe that this is something that should be looked into. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:50, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for informing me of this thread, MZMcBride. I am quite happy that I am neither Elisabeth Rogan, nor Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles. If you would contact a member of the Arbitration Committee they can verify that this is the case as they are aware of my previous accounts name. –Katerenka (talk • contribs) 19:58, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Interesting. So ArbCom only has an issue with undisclosed alternate accounts if they're undisclosed to them? Perhaps someone from ArbCom will be by shortly to comment. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 20:04, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Read WP:CLEANSTART. There's a difference between an alternative account and an abandoned account. I do not edit from my old account anymore. And, yes, I hope that someone from ArbCom will be along soon to clear this mess up. –Katerenka (talk • contribs) 20:06, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Maybe I'm missing out. I only see one edit by Katerenka on the Kww 3 RfA: [3]. Why is this suspicious, and shouldn't it go to RFCU even if it was? -- Samir 20:21, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, this is on AN and not AN/I because I'm (also) interested in a broader discussion of the issue. The Arbitration Committee has pretty strongly spoken out against the use of alternate accounts. And people run across them pretty frequently. (And now we're distinguishing between "alternate" accounts and "refreshed" accounts.) All of this can create a lot of issues.... --MZMcBride (talk) 20:35, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

The arbitration committee did receive an e-mail earlier about Katerenka and the prior account used. The former account was in good standing with the clean block log, and the account's last edit was before Katerenka's first. So long as the prior account is actually RTV'd and edits don't start up again, we're good. (Plus I don't see how the kww edit is suspicious) Wizardman 20:25, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm still confused about this. The account was in good standing and had no block log, but the user decided to simply abandon it? That seems pretty atypical. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:31, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Atypical or not, it's what happened. The reasons are private/personal and as Wizardman said, I've not used this account or my old account in any way that circumvents policy. –Katerenka (talk • contribs) 20:37, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I did the same thing, because my previous Wiki name was the same I use on other sites around the web. Given the disproportionate amount of drama that happens here, I didn't want it to spill to my other activities, so I retired the old account and made this one. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 21:11, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) One more note: it's my understanding that the right to vanish explicitly involves a person choosing to abandon Wikimedia wikis forever. It was never intended to be used as a "clean start" mechanism; it was intended to be used as a "final goodbye" mechanism. Is the Arbitration Committee changing policy in this area? Or has it already? (Is any of this written down anywhere?) --MZMcBride (talk) 20:40, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Speaking as an editor, RTV is virtually never used the way it's intended to be. People say they rtv then immediately get a new account. Happens all too frequently. If the policy has changed, it's happened naturally through the community. Wizardman 20:44, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Without knowing anything about this specific case, this is indeed not a WP:RTV issue, since the user is not vanished. Rather, it is a case of "normal" sockpuppetry, i.e., one person operating several accounts. This is allowed by policy for the purpose claimed here, see WP:CLEANSTART.  Sandstein  20:51, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

I find your choice of wording somewhat odd, given that "sock puppetry" is defined in WP:SOCK as the use of alternative accounts in violation of that policy, which is not the case here. Anyway, WP:CLEANSTART is definitely a different thing from RTV, and both are totally allowed by current policy. I don't think a person who's been confirmed by an ArbCom member to be acting within policy needs to be further questioned about their motives on a public noticeboard. They wanted to abandon the old account, and whatever reason they had for it is their own business, don't you think? Jafeluv (talk) 22:19, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Not to beat a dead horse or anything, but I'm (still) having difficulty understanding all of this. The Katerenka account was created as a "clean start" account (according to posts on this board). But the account didn't start as "Katerenka." Color me confused. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:04, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually I think it's fairly obvious what happened there given that the other account was made and then immediately renamed and if you actually read the contributions you'll see the exact reason that she was trying to change her name (decided against using her real name) ok so a mistake to start it in the first place? Yea probably but suspicious? my god no, Not only do you appear to be beating a dead horse you appear to be outing in some ways as it took my around 1 minute to realize that was her real name. Jamesofur (talk) 00:22, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, someone should explain this to me (and to the larger community) in clearer terms. Scenarios:

1. If someone registers an account, decides to drop it and switch to a new one, is the new account allowed to run for adminship later? If so, under what conditions?
2. If someone exercises their "right to vanish" (and gets their user / user talk pages deleted) and then returns, what should be done about such accounts? Should the pages be restored? Should there be a way to look at the past contributions of an editor?

These are just two fairly common scenarios. Surely others can add to this list. The lack of clarity in this area is an issue week after week. And whatever pseudo-standards ("guidelines" as we call them) have been created are haphazardly and inconsistently applied.

Is anyone interested in perhaps making all of this clearer and more consistent? --MZMcBride (talk) 23:14, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

• Anyone can start a wholly new account anytime they want. If they engage in the same pattern of behaviour as the old one, they are liable to exposure. If they tell their "friends" they are the same account, they are liable to exposure. If they make a genuine clean start, no-one will ever know, even the CU's after a few months. In that case, there is no problem.
• I don't agree with user-talk pages ever being deleted (grudgingly acknowledge the case for real-named users who should've known better, but that can be noindexed). If old and new accounts can be reliably linked, either by personal attestation or behavioural evidence a la WP:SPI, then yes, they should be explicitly linked in wikitext so that the matter is transparent.
• This is independent of ArbCom knowledge and/or tacit acceptance. If facts come to light, they should be made known to all, unless serious real-world issues are involved. Franamax (talk) 23:38, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Someone should explain this to you (and the larger community)? Who exactly do you expect has the authority to clarify this ambiguous edge of policy? If you think precise clarity is needed on this, you should ask the larger community and codify the resulting consensus. --BirgitteSB 23:39, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, amen to the last bit. Someone definitely should seek clarification and consensus in this area. My reason for asking people to explain it "to me" is that there seems to be plenty of people with all the right answers™ on this board (or they're at least willing to post without equivocation), so I figured they might be able to clarify this area for me. Though it seems most of these people have run off to do other things. Oh well. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:53, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

I was under the impression this thread had been close but since you decided to reopen it my thoughts:

1. Why shouldn't they be allowed to run for sysop? The fact that they have exercised a very clear policy should somehow make them ineligible from being full members of the community? This seems to be totally against the entire idea of the policy and the community as a whole. If we are going to do that then we need to have a total conversation about the policy and get a consensus on changing it (I see no reason to). This is why we have people like arbcom so that people can keep a hidden connection between the accounts so that if something DOES come up (including any future sysop request) then we have trusted individuals who can show us that they did not have any problems with their old account. I find it very unlikely that someone would be able to get sysop without building up another large collection of material to gain the trust of the userbase.

2. I would think it depends on the situation. When you think about it how much actually gets deleted? Ok yes user/user talk pages get deleted. But admins (including arbcom) members can still see those and if the broad community doesn't know the connection between the accounts (as is the whole POINT) then who cares if the broad community can't see those pages? There really isn't a whole lot, if anything, that gets deleted especially if the old user had been here long at all since we're not going to delete contributions that are part of the encyclopedia since that would delete everyone elses work as well.

I'm going to be totally honest, as much as I respect you MZMcBride I am confused by this post. I can not see any real reason that Katerenka should have been brought up at all unless you were fishing for something. I really don't see any suspicious activity other then a new account that appears to be doing good work and trying to be active and hands on. Is this now automatic reason to be suspicious? There are MANY reasons to exercise the RtV and Cleanstart and most of them are for personal reasons that have nothing to do with problems that occur on wiki. Are there bad reasons? Of course there are and that is why we have Arbcom and functionaries who are able to look into old accounts. I think it is totally legitimate to want someone trusted to be able to look into the issue and therefore someone exercising Cleanstart to email Arbcom but other then that I don't really see any big problem with it. If the user decides to run for sysop I think that would be enough for most especially if the user is willing to agree to a checkuser to verify they aren't a sockmaster.

Also, may I ask why if you thought these were socks you didn't bring this to WP:SPI? I could even understand bringing it to BOTH locations but it appears you only brought it here. Jamesofur (talk) 23:47, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

All due respect, you're speaking about an area you're clearly not familiar with. Anyone familiar with the events of the past year wouldn't be so confused as to why these questions are being asked. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:53, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Please don't presume to know what I know and don't know. My confusion has nothing to do with why your bringing up the policies (which I have no problem discussing). My confusion is why you seem to be targeting one specific individual and to be honest hounding them. There have been way to many sock/alt account issues recently and I understand that. But the fact that you bring a sock accusation here and won't even bring it to SPI makes me think you may have had alternative reasons OR you were just fishing and knew it would be denied at SPI. I may have only been active for a couple months but I have been lurking around ALOT longer and have never edited on another account. The recent problems are BAD and I do not try to undermine them and would be more then happy to talk about them and my comments above are part of that I just think we're focusing on the wrong thing here. One of the biggest problems with the issues we've had recently is that it undermines legitimate reasons to cleanslate. Have there been issues in the past where arbcom has verified that a former account was ok but that has turned out to be wrong? I will admit that there have been cases that I have tried to read that were "blanked as a courtesy" but actually had no history so I couldn't read them at all (which is frustrating). I'm not trying to say thats the only reason that could get you concerned but it's one. Jamesofur (talk) 00:43, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Could you please clarify what it is you want from me? An Arbitrator came to this thread and confirmed that I am not circumventing policy and that my old account has not been used to edit since I have been editing with this one. I am also neither one of those users that you accused me of being at the opening of this thread. So I would ask that you please stop targeting me. If you would like to get policy clarified that is one thing, and something I would support, but I do not see why I have to be dragged into it. Thanks, –Katerenka (talk • contribs) 00:18, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

• There is a reason for the mantra "The Arbitration Committee does not write policy". Simply put, the Arbitration Committee makes its decisions based on application of (often ambiguous, if not contradictory) policies to the facts of a specific and narrowly focused situation. Limitations on the circumstances in which an individual must use only a single account, or at minimum an account that is publicly linked to the main account, are detailed in WP:SOCK. In the specific, narrowly focused case in which you refer, an editor who was currently blocked for a set period of time (after having his request for unblock refused by the Arbitration Committee) established a second account, began editing with that second account, and only then sent in a second request for unblock. It is acknowledged that the current Arbitration Committee cannot identify any formal response to this request, but in the absence of "yes, you may edit again", the status quo remained that the block was in place. In other words, there is a clear violation of WP:SOCK. Using that second account, the editor ran for adminship shortly after the block on the original account had expired, and did not declare his prior account. This situation is not fully anticipated in written policy, nor does it have to be in order to make a determination that the failure to link these two specific accounts had a material effect in this particular RfA. ¶ I agree that there are good reasons to look closely at the alternate account policy and streamline it; I will also note that there are some extremely good reasons for editors to use alternate accounts (both declared and undeclared), and for having serial single accounts. The discussion should probably be on WT:SOCK; indeed there has already been some discussion there. I do, however, urge the community to talk first and alter policy second; reactionary editing of policies often creates more problems than it solves, and basing policy on a one-off situation is a mug's game. Let's all take our time to work it out properly, instead of waving around an Arbcom decision. Risker (talk) 00:21, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Interesting choice of MzB to focus on a user with whom he has repeated hostilities as accused sockmaster, and the total randomness and lack of basis of the person picked on to be accused of being the new sock, without the least supporting evidence? (and a totally different behavior pattern, totally different areas of interest, and who didn't even give an opinion at the AfD in question but just posted stats and resolved a technical error) This serves him as an excuse to prominently repeat a name that exercised RTV, and to use it where it will be seen as part of a large discussion on general issues. I ask for redaction or possibly oversight--in this case I'm not going to redact it myself. I'm not sure whether to call it hounding or bad faith. I would support a motion here to bar MzB from ever commenting on that particular editor again. The general question is very important, and can be discussed elsewhere, without the use of names. (I should mention that i might well support MzB on the general question--I think our present policy of "see if you can get away with it" absurd and self-contradictory.) DGG ( talk ) 00:55, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I think it's wild to be suspicious of accounts that show up with full knowledge of both Wikipedia and its policies and Wikipedia's sister projects (like Meta). It's equally wild to be suspicious of accounts that make a concerted effort to try to show that they're female. And, of course, it's wild to be suspicious when someone says they went for a clean start as a particular account when that account has quite clearly been renamed recently. I don't know who MzB is or what position you're in to try to ban people from discussing the backward-ass and contradictory sockpuppet policies that this site has created. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:20, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

MzB, if your really could not figure it out, is my abbreviation for MZMcBride in the presernt context. Im trying to suggest he not discussa particular editor, but discuss the general policies, where he well might even have my support. What's weird is not the noticing the account, but making the connection. (now, i admit the possibility that I may have been greatly deceived, in which case I will of course apologize--I am not perfect, and have never claimed to be). But if it is as weird as I think it is, it seems to be a matter of trying to attack unrelated and parties to try to get rid of a particular editor, which is harassment plain and simple. DGG ( talk ) 02:31, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Are you absolutely certain you aren't confusing MZMcBride for User:MBisanz (The latter being a certifier of this RfC)? Protonk (talk) 05:29, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

MZMcBride, if you have any solid evidence, other than just a "gut feeling", then do a checkuser, otherwise this is "fishing" just like Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/A Nobody/Archive was. Ikip (talk) 06:28, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

I think it is important to include this: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/A Nobody/Archive it was closed "Checkuser is not for fishing, and I don't see enough evidence warranting a checkuser." Which can be said for this ANI. Ikip (talk) 06:20, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Question to Wizardman

Extended content

Your explanation above states, "The former account was in good standing with the clean block log" without actually confirming or denying whether Katerenka is Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles. Posting this query to clear up possible confusion. Two accounts are listed at the start of this thread. The Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles account block log shows only one procedural block pursuant to account renaming.[4] The Elizabeth Rogan block log shows one indefinite block[5] pursuant to a checkuser request. Arguably, that block was also procedural because the Rogan account was not used in violation of policy and the account was abandoned when the user renamed. If that editor is not the same person as Katerenka then read no more because it's none of our business who else it is. If Katerinka is the same person, then read further. The block log is far from clean; he's formerly sitebanned. Most of the user's block log is summarized at this page. Note the 6 week block for Attempted vote fixing at AfD, gross violations of WP:POINT., followed by an indefinite block for Sockmaster of User:Wikipedian, Historian, and Friend? The latter was his community siteban. The pertinent discussions are [6] and here Possible and confirmed alternate accounts and IP addresses: Femto (talk · contribs) 172.145.125.13 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) 152.163.101.8 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) 172.148.28.36 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) 172.128.209.177 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) 152.163.100.198 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) User:Wikipedian, Historian, and Friend? (talk · contribs) A Nobody (talk · contribs) The Wikipedian, Historian, and Friend account began editing before the six week vote stacking block had expired. When disruptive participation at AFD resumed he came to the attention of the administrators and his ban ensued. I gave him a good faith unblock several months later after he promised to stop the shenanigans. In August 2008 he invoked the right to vanish, yet soon afterward began a new account and resumed controversial activity. He failed to disclose that account to his mentors and denied his former username onsite until checkuser actually confirmed it, and for these reasons I resigned from mentoring him. Now a new account appears that begins editing two days after Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/A_Nobody began. If these accounts are the same person, their edits do overlap--both in time frame and in subject matter. Note participation on both accounts at two recent RfAs. If that doesn't actually cross the line it skates far too close for comfort when it comes from someone who was previously blocked and then banned for outright votestacking. If I'm smoking crack here, please say so right now. Are these not the same person? Durova322 01:21, 12 October 2009 (UTC) I was under the impression that they were confirming they are not the same people. I do think if we are concerned about it though just to do a CU request (though I would say the CU shouldn't out the old account just because). It was said that the previous account had a clean blocklog which would rule out A Nobody right? Jamesofur (talk) 01:29, 12 October 2009 (UTC) It doesn't look like either arbitrator has actually come out and said these aren't the same person. If these are the same editor, then what apparently happened was he misrepresented his history and the Committee failed at due diligence. Durova322 01:33, 12 October 2009 (UTC) Katerenka's not A Nobody or any of his accounts. Wizardman 01:33, 12 October 2009 (UTC) (Indenting weirdly due to following comments): Confirm that they are not the same person. Risker (talk) 02:17, 12 October 2009 (UTC) RfA/Pastor Theo: "Support, will make a great admin. Wizardman"[7] RfA/Law: "Strong support, Wizardman"[8] 67.160.100.233 (talk) 01:35, 12 October 2009 (UTC) Thank you. Collapsing query. 98.176.30.148 (talk) 01:56, 12 October 2009 (UTC) I have uncollapsed it. I don't think anons are allowed to collapse or close a thread. If I am wrong (my apologizes up front), please revert. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 01:58, 12 October 2009 (UTC) Per an email contact, I am recollapsing. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 02:05, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

This is a noticeboard

First: MZMcBride, you know where Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Motions: Law/The Undertow and Disclosure of known alternate accounts is, should you wish to discuss the latest Arbitration Committee announcement and the resulting confusion. (Manning forgot to add the link to the discussion to the notice, but I've since rectified that omission.) You also know where Wikipedia talk:Sock puppetry is. Second: It is most definitinely not good "to be suspicious of accounts that show up with full knowledge of both Wikipedia and its policies and Wikipedia's sister projects". It's downright foolish at this stage. On that point, you (now) know where Wikipedia:Requests for comment/new users is, too, where that discussion belongs.

This is a noticeboard, for notices aimed at (all) administrators. For policy discussions that involve the editorship at large, from the community's stance on sockpuppetry to how the community treats newly created accounts, the policy and guideline talk pages, Wikipedia:Requests for comment, and pages that address the community as a whole, such as Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), are the places. Follow the good example of the very Arbitration Committee notice that you are questioning: Put a notice here (on this noticeboard), and link it to where the proper discussion pages elsewhere are. Uncle G (talk) 10:52, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Banning specific editors from pages

Do we have any precedent for admins banning editors from specific pages? We've got edit wars at Abomination (comics) and Rhino (comics). I don't want to protect them because that feels anti-wiki, but I do want to stop the edit war and I think page banning the two editors might produce a resolution. I'm not really interested in blocking the two editors, it doesn't tend to solve the underlying issue. Although there's a school of thought that indefinitely banning one user might solve a lot of problems. Hiding T 11:15, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Possibly see Wikipedia:Banning_policy#Administrator_topic_bans. Nja²⁴⁷ 11:24, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Or just WP:ARBMAC. I see no problem with being a tad creative with precedent if Hiding thinks its appropriate. Moreschi (talk) 11:28, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks guys, I think I'll act citing those. Hiding T 11:30, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

User:DrBat and User:Asgardian page banned from Abomination (comics) and Rhino (comics)

I have page banned the above two editors for one month or until a resolution is reached regarding the dispute, whichever finishes sooner. Both editors have been warned that any editing of the pages in question prior to a resolution of the dispute will result in a block, initially for 24 hours but escalating to a maximum period of one month. Hiding T 11:43, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Appeal: As per Hiding's advice here: [9], I wish to formally appeal this decision here (now if this is in fact the wrong place, please cut and paste this to the appropriate area ande drop me a line).

With all due to respect to Hiding, who has offered good advice in recent times, I believe he has erred here and misread the situation. Yes, I have been editing both Abomination and the Rhino. I have, however, been as the Edit Summaries shows not reverting but rather making constant improvements: [10] & [11].

DrBat, however, has been making constant reverts, and adding nothing to the articles, despite being initially invited, then counselled and finally cautioned: [12] This user was also uncivil towards myself: [13] and formally warned about being abusive: [14]. Please also note that this user warned was last month about constant reverts [15].

My edits were also supported by other users [16] & [17] at Abomination and it is frustrating that despite this "hint" DrBat continued to revert at Rhino to an inferior version. I pointed out that this version lacked a correct lead and other material: [18], and that we could retain the peripherals and cotinue to work on the bulk of the article. Despite this advice, he continued to revert.

I have contributed to dozens of articles and make every effort to improve them. It took hours to complete Abomination, and Rhino was in fact almost finished. A check of the Edit Summary [19] and this line - The Rhino proves to be a perennial favourite in Marvel publications, appearing in over a dozen titles in solo capacity or teamed with dother villains - shows that I was just about to take the advice offered here [20] and create a summary of the signifiant issues, as opposed to a laundry list. Please also note that I wrote both versions, hence improving on my own work is hardly outrageous. The summary would number no more than six points, as opposed to the dozens of listings currently present in the 1990s-2000s section.

In conclusion, I do not appreciate the completely unhelpful attitude displayed by DrBat, and the fact that Hiding automatically places me in the same category as this user. Despite the claim on my Talk Page [21], I did not edit war. As the evidence shows, I did try and discuss the issue, on several occasions. I feel I do not deserve this punishment.

For your consideration. Asgardian (talk) 04:49, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Asgardian has already admitted to intentionally making the article unreadable before to prove his point, so I have a hard time assuming good faith here.

Furthermore, Asgardian's reference to my being "warned last month about constant reverts" was only over whether or not a category should be included in the article. Asgardian has his own history of edit wars, and it looks like he's getting involved in one right now over at the Dormammu article with two other users who don't like what he's doing to it. --DrBat (talk) 02:21, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

You have already been advised by one administrator that this was really nothing more than a bold edit, and demonstrated one style [22]. It should also be noted once again that I wrote both versions, and improved upon the original. This took hours. By your own admission: [23] you claimed that it would take more work to improve those versions, and yet when I continue to improve on what you felt was messy and overdone, continued to blindly revert. It is you who have not shown good faith, by being an obstructist and reverting every step of the way, and even resorting to namecalling, as shown above. You persisted until others supported my changes to Abomination.

Finally, there is no "edit war" at another article (only several users who did not grasp the principles of one of the Guidelines as to the inappropriate use of fictional statistics), so please don't cast dispersions. This is the issue for discussion, and I'd suggest letting the administrators deal with it. Thank you. Asgardian (talk) 06:03, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

You admitted to deliberately making the article unreadable to prove your point. Anyone who clicks on my link will see that for themselves.

This is the issue for discussion, and I'd suggest letting the administrators deal with it. Thank you

Then what does my editing the Stewie Griffin article have to do with anything, since you brought that up?

As for the advice you were given, Emperor said "I suppose it depends - some characters' appearances may all be worthy of mentioning. If it is merely 'and he turned up and battle X. The he battled Y and went of to fight Z' then no, only mention the important appearances. You need to judge it on a case-by-case basis." "and he turned up and battle X. The he battled Y and went of to fight Z" is a lot of what you were doing to the articles, listing pointless appearances like "Abomination fought Angel in the sewers." --DrBat (talk) 10:38, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Again, you are presenting opinion. Asgardian (talk) 04:32, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

For clarity

Just for clarity, I present diffs so that everyone can make up their mind. At Abomination (comics) we can see a diff between Asgardian and Dr Bat here. Notice the many differences, mainly consisting of mentions of individual issues, for example, Solo Avengers #12 and Marvel Super-Heroes vol. 3, #6 - 8. Now we can see a diff here, which covers twelve edits to the page over the course of two days, four made by DrBat and five by Asgardian, the other edits from anonymous or uninvolved editors. The diff is from an Asgardian edit to an Asgardian edit. Contrats with another diff, from DrBat to DrBat, again covering two days and twelve edits. As can be seen, both editors are revert warring to their preferred version of the page. As to the idea that the matter was nearly resolved, see this diff, noting the commentary in the two edit summaries. Asgardian appears to have rejected the idea of discussing anywhere, preferring instead to continue the dispute through editing the page. Hiding T 08:54, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

It appears you've taken a very narrow and limited view of the situation. The response ignores DrBat's overall conduct and the fact that I attempted to speak with him on his Talk Page on several occasions. You have also neglected the fact that he has constantly reverted back to inferior and incorrect material in the lead and other areas, a fact that he was advised of by another user at Abomination. I also advised you on your own Talk Page that I was attempting to communicate with him and remain impartial. As I said, the article was only one session away from a successful resolution before you unilaterally acted. Through all of this, DrBat added nothing to the process, preferring to revert, revert, revert. Asgardian (talk) 23:11, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Apologies

Clickety click too fast on the mouse and I reverted the above by mistake a while back, situation all normal now. --Dave1185 (talk) 06:47, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Dave, just saw that. Thanks for jumping back in. Regards Asgardian (talk) 06:51, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Category moving

I was wondering if there is an easier way to move the category "Rapists by nationality" to "People convicted of rape by nationality" than by doing this manually. I would do this manually, but it will take longer than I would like. As discussed above, the category has support in this move, but this should be moved soon. Thanks. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 17:25, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

It really should be listed and discussed at WP:CFD. If there is consensus, there are bots that would do the move. Vegaswikian (talk) 17:51, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

At the CFD for the category, it seems that that occured. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 18:23, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Spam blacklist or edit filter

I've been dealing with a sockpuppet on and off for the past few months. He seems to like adding links to his website, however I'm not sure whether or not the spam blacklist or the edit filter would be best to block these edits or at least be able to identify that the user is editing again. The website is www.japanhero.webs.com, but for whatever reason, he just keeps registering new "domain" names on webs.com and it ends up being www.[something]japanhero.webs.com. I know the edit filter will at least pick up on the text added, but seeing as the filters are deactivated every so often, would this string of text also be able to be blocked via the blacklist? It is a URL that has no use on Wikipedia (free web hosted webpages).—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 09:58, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Also it'd be nice to get some sort of block on this guy's IP because the last account (SygtWES (talk · contribs)) was created mere hours after the last edit of the previous account (KamenRiderDouble (talk · contribs)), and several accounts were found after I requested (via email) a checkuser.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 10:00, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Extended content

Zzz3 (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) Japanhero (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) Reimon ultra galaxy (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) BlackBatrusJapanHero (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) KomoriRUS (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) KamenRiderDouble (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) SygtWES (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) Astrfa (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) Afqwaeg (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) Wgfwgv (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) Ewhwsa (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) WAFw (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) WFWEAF (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) japanhero.webs.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com ultramanjapanhero.webs.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com ultrasevenjapanhero.webs.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com kamenriderjapanhero.webs.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com ultraqjapanhero.webs.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com kamenriderjapanhero.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com ultraman1967japanhero.webs.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com himitsusentaigorangerjapanhero.webs.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com jakqdengekitaijapanhero.webs.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com himitsusentaigoranger.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com himitsusentaigoranger.webs.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com kamenrider19791980japanhero.webs.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com kamenriderstrongerjapanhero.webs.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com kamenriderv3japanhero.webs.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com kamenrideramazonjapanhero.webs.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com ultramancejapanhero.webs.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com theultramanjapanhero.webs.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com ultramantarojapanhero.webs.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

This seems for now to be all (well, I thought).

My suggestion, webs.com can go onto User:XLinkBot/Revertlist (\bwebs\.com\b). Blacklist japanhero\.web\.com\b (no trailing \b to disallow extension of the page), and blacklist kamenriderjapanhero.com (\bkamenriderjapanhero\.com\b) as well. The revertlisting of webs.com should quickly show new socks popping up in the linksearch for *.webs.com (look for usertalkpages, this discussion should also be linked). We could consider to revertlist also \bkamenriderjapanhero\.com\b (to be ready for redirect sites, the bots try to catch that as well).

Spammers tend to be creative, but this should be a start. For the rest, WP:RBI in the end will do it. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:18, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

(List extended) --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:28, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't know how to do any of that.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 10:30, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

I have added the stuff to USer:XLinkBot. I would certainly consider to blacklist it as well. I hope XLinkBot is discouraging enough for now. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:35, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Ryulong, are you saying that all those accounts are socks? Mjroots (talk) 11:05, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

They are all linking to a website to which no one else knows about, as far as I know at least. They also tend to name themselves after identities from TV series to which the websites are for. Examples: [24], [25], [26]. Also, previous checkusers on the accounts came up with positive hits.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 11:17, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Certainly socks, indeed. Fail ducktest .. one more non-webs.com domain found, which will go onto XLinkBot as well. I'll investigate further .. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:31, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes indeed. And well done for adding webs.com to the XLinkBot list, a quick look at the linksearch results show a veritable spam-o-rama for loads of other unusable personal websites. Guy (Help!) 12:16, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

I have copied the list to WT:WPSPAM, and added a link to this discussion. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:50, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Mediator needed

The checkusers received a complaint from Sardaka (talk · contribs) that PoorPhotoremovalist (talk · contribs) was stalking him, removing pictures from various articles that had been added by Sardaka. Checkuser analysis shows that PoorPhotoremovalist is a sockpuppet of Adam.J.W.C. (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), a long-term editor with 16,000+ edits. PoorPhoto is blocked indefinitely. Adam.J.W.C. is blocked indefinitely, meaning "a time to be determined later." He may be unblocked on condition that he agrees to mediation with Sardaka and any other aggrieved editors, as described on his talk page. This situation needs an experienced editor or admin to facilitate this discussion. Thatcher 01:28, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Restrict interaction - play nice or you can't play at all. But is there a hurry? Adam has earned an extended time out. Grsz¹¹ 04:48, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

I see you have reset the block to a week. You've laid out completely reasonable conditions for his unblock and he seems to have agreed fully to them. Most of the work is already done (hopefully). Grsz¹¹ 04:52, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

No special hurry, but if he had decided to go to mediation I didn't want him waiting a month on the block for someone to wander over and offer to help. Thatcher 05:01, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Heads up for socks

Chances are there's going to be a bit of socking going on. Just a heads up.  GARDEN  09:46, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Blocked the IP admitting that he was the user evading his block (48 hours). WP:RBI hereafter, perhaps. Bencherlite^Talk 10:10, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Bridgeman v Corel UK Petition

Just a quick note (technically a quick canvassing session) for any UK users: Only 11 days left to sign the petitions.number10.gov.uk/publicdomain/ PD petition on the 10 Downing Street website. In short, it asks the PM to review the copyright status of photos of public domain works of art. In the US, taking a photo of a public domain photo is legally OK, and the photograph would also be public domain. In the UK, however, the owner of the painting can - in some cases - place restrictions on even an exact replica of the work, meaning that out-of-copyright works are essentially still copyrighted.

What the petition asks for, in essence, is a UK version of Bridgeman vs Corel. This would solve a heap of mostly legal problems for OTRS and Wikimedia as a whole, as well as freeing up PD work for use in the UK.

Only UK/Crown Dependency Residents or Ex-UK/CD residents can sign the petition. Apologies for posting it here, but I think this is something that most of us would agree with, and the more people sign, the more likely we'll get a good reply from it. Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 15:02, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not in the UK, but those who are would probably appreciate a direct hyperlink to the petition.  Sandstein  20:36, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

He appears to have given it above already. petitions.number10.gov.uk/publicdomain/. Seems to have to be done that way, due to setting off the spam filter. --Russavia ^Dialogue 12:23, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Talk page ban proposal on User:Calton and User:JohnHistory

Resolved

 – Restriction enacted.

Involved users:

• Calton (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• JohnHistory (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Applicable places of interest

• Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive569#Continued P.A. Incivility by User talk:Calton
• Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive565#Block for NPA violation by Ched

Due to the continued attacks launched by both editors on each others' talk pages, I would like to, as a last resort before any administrative actions need to be taken, proposed a talk page ban for both users on each others' talk pages (i.e. Calton would not be able to edit on JohnHistory's talk page and vice-versa). Commentary by the involved users and other users are welcome at this time. Regards, MuZemike 06:15, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

• Support as co-nom — Ched :  ?  06:20, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Note: we're not seeking further sanctions at this time, simply fair and equal treatment of both editors to stop the disruption and bickering. — Ched :  ?  06:23, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
• Support, subject to an initial fixed length of time being imposed, and any future non-civil communication thereafter invoking a block, as would a breach of the sanction. Mjroots (talk) 08:51, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
• Support, seems equitable and a fair test of both editors good faith. LessHeard vanU (talk) 10:28, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
• Support. Calton needs to do something about his incivilities a page ban might help. Hell In A Bucket (talk) 10:29, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Reality check #5: not agreeing with your skewed and inaccurate characterization of events =/= "incivility".
  • Reality check #6: applying double standards -- like your excusing ChildofMidnight -- gets noticed.
• Support. Both editors have rattled off at each other for far too long, they should take some time to cool down. --Eaglestorm (talk) 11:22, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
• Agree with LessHeard vanU. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 02:50, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
• Support. Unless MuZemike or Ched objects, perhaps this wording can be used for the sanction logs: "Calton (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is prohibited from editing User talk:JohnHistory or any of its subpages. JohnHistory (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is prohibited from editing User talk:Calton or any of its subpages." Ncmvocalist (talk) 03:37, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
• Support - I did not know about the dispute before seeing this ban proposal, but a quick read of the two editors' talk pages convinces me that the ban is needed. EdJohnston (talk) 04:33, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Something other than a "quick read" might have been better. --Calton | Talk 05:28, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

I have no objection to the result; I have every objection to its framing, which is false in every important respect.

This "dispute" is about something fairly simple: JohnHistory is using WP -- and my User Talk page -- as a WP:BATTLEGROUND. Not to improve the encyclopedia, not for editing, not for anything productive; harassment and badgering without purpose other than his own ego, pure and simple. He was requested -- multiple times and in a variety of ways -- not to do so, told that it was inappropriate and explicitly unwelcome. His response was to continue to do so (I would have thought that this recent piece of idiocy would be telling), and I called his trolling what it is, trolling. What I was doing was reacting to his trolling. At which point politically sympathetic Ched Davis swoops in to protect him, like he does for ChildofMidnight or NYObserver.

The irony is that the talk page ban is not only exactly what I wanted, but it's the source of the damned dispute in the first place. And yet we get this proposal with its simplistic and phony equivalency, the sort of disciplining as practiced by lazy parents -- or by parents taking the side of their favored child.

I suspect some of you have decided -- like the US government convicting Al Capone of tax evasion -- that I need to be "disciplined" and are seizing upon this as a convenient excuse. If so, doing something for the wrong reason is always a bad idea, however justified you believe it to be. --Calton | Talk 05:28, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

• Equating it as parents dealing with children eh? Reasonable enough I suppose. When you implied that John was retarded, I blocked you for a personal attack. Let's face it, you have a history of baiting, taunting and attacking editors who don't share your POV. You were warned back on Oct. 4 to behave. On Oct. 9, you were a bad boy. (who's trolling who Calton?). Quite frankly you should have been sent to your room for a week right then and there. Now when John responds on Oct. 11, and we try to find a fair and equitable solution to this disruption, you cry foul. Trying to bully another editor with only 1,000 edits off of the site simply isn't acceptable; you should know better. You can try to spin it any way you want Calton, I'm not buying it. If you want to equate yourself to Al Capone, I'll not stop you. There's full support for this ban, if you wish to appeal it further down the road, feel free. Until then, please try to get your act together young man. — Ched :  ?  12:01, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
  • But given this edit of yours, Ched Davis, it does appear that you are letting your external political views enter into decisions about using the blocking tool, here. Uncle G (talk) 14:10, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
    • Apologies for the out of sequence response here, but I wish to respond directly. Uncle G, I believe that you proceed from a false presumption sir. I have taken no actions with administrative tools in regards to any political motivations. I blocked Calton for a violation of our personal attacks policy - he referred to another editor as "retarded", and I blocked within policy for such an attack. I ignored his attack on me (primarily because I simply don't care what he thinks), and as this situation has escalated, I've sought "community" input for a reasonable solution. I don't edit in the political arena here - and I don't undertake any actions based on my personal beliefs. Will I continue to assist others that are attempting to edit here? Yes. Will I continue to attempt to stop personal attacks and disruption here? Yes. I have agreed with admonishment of others, even if I may have shared their viewpoints. I have stood by silently when I believed that editors I've agreed with in the past have been sanctioned - simply because I realized that they were just sanctions. I've been accused of "aiding" editors that I have never unblocked. If you feel that I have abused any item, admin or otherwise, then you are of course free to seek sanctions against me. I've done my utmost to be fair to all here, and I proudly stand by my efforts. I leave my "beliefs" at the door when it comes to article editing and administrative tools, does everyone else? I think not. I am not ashamed of what I believe in; I speak my mind proudly. I do not "edit" in any attempt to forward any "belief", rather I edit in an encyclopedic manner in an attempt to improve this project. I'm content to abide by even your own community de-admin project should you consider that to be desired. Say what you will. Think what you will. I will stand by my efforts here. If you have any further concerns, you are free to bring them up on my talk page sir. Kind regards — Ched :  ?  22:21, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
      • You're still not getting the actual point. It's edits like that one that have Calton believing that you are, in xyr words, not "an honest broker". You need to understand how Calton is seeing you. You're not apparently seeing that when Calton comes to you asking for help with JohnHistory and you do nothing but have a little friendly moment with JohnHistory instead, and then bring Calton and JohnHistory up here on this noticeboard, supposedly as equals, this isn't going to appear well. You didn't say to JohnHistory, at any point in your little chat, that what xe was doing was wrong, just as wrong as what Calton then returned in kind. If you'd just come out and said something along the lines of "Look JohnHistory, those edits of yours were wrong.", maybe we wouldn't be here, because maybe Calton would have thought that xe was getting the help that xe asked for. But you didn't; so instead we are looking at yet another onerous editing restriction that some poor administrator has to enforce. Full marks for being willing to ignore the abrasiveness of Calton's request, most certainly, but no marks for actually doing anything about it.

        The right way with these things, within Wikipedia just as it is without, is not some sort of "Votes for Bannination", but to simply say to someone, no matter that they may be one's friend, no matter that one may share political views with them, no matter what one thinks about evil political cabals secretly running Wikipedia from under everyone's beds, "Look, what you did there was wrong.".

        Consider: If Calton and JohnHistory were (say) volunteers in a charity shop and you were a volunteer supervisor, would you, when they started baiting and insulting each other over political issues, completely unrelated to the volunteer work at hand, tell them both to stop but then stage whisper to one of them that you wholly agreed with xyr side? Uncle G (talk) 02:11, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

• re to Ncmvocalist ... that's fine by me. — Ched :  ?  12:07, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
• I have been watching this for a while and I think the above is too superficial. For example, I note that JohnHistory is not a very prolific contributor to the project, there is more drama than content, and much of what he does contribute to content is accompanied by angry-sounding edit summaries (an additional complication to the fact that he chooses to edit mainly contentious subjects). Calton is a long-time editor and does not appear to me pushing a noticeable content agenda here, though he does seem to have been provoked by JohnHistory (which to my eyes appears to have been JohnHistory's intent, though I may be wrong on that). This response seems disproportionate. I am only seeing one source of problems here, and it's not Calton. Guy (Help!) 12:42, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
  • I don't support the view that being a long-time editor excuses the allegation regarding a "tame admin" made in this diff. An allegation I find ironic given the solicitation of Guy's view in this diff. If we are using a parent child metaphor, people need to play nice or not play at all. That's the spirit and substance of WP:CIV. Support the talk page banning in the hope it cuts down on the drama and encourages the editors involved to avoid treating Wikipedia as a battleground. The best way to deal with provocation is Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts, as long term editors should well be aware. Hiding T 13:46, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
  • I said that this isn't a simple X-and-Y-alike issue at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive565#Block for NPA violation by Ched. But no, there's not one source of problems. There's a confluence of a multiplicity of factors here, one of which that I wasn't aware of then but that contributes significantly to the mix is external political partisanship influencing administrative decisions. Everyone should be leaving their politics at the door here, from ObserverNY through Calton to Ched Davis. But this is not in fact so. Uncle G (talk) 14:10, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
• Calton, I said before that you yourself were one of the factors here. This edit was wrong. It wasn't a repeat of your request for JohnHistory to stop. It was baiting, pure and simple. If you want JohnHistory to stop, this isn't the way to go about it. It's the opposite of the way to go about it, in fact. The correct way is to stop. Just stop talking to JohnHistory. It's half of what you say is the desired outcome here. So enact your half. There's no shame in it. Continuation by JohnHistory does not reflect upon you. It reflects upon JohnHistory, quite clearly and obviously. If you stop responding in kind and JohnHistory continues, the "false equivalence" that you so dislike will become glaringly apparent to even the quickest of "quick reads". Just do your part of thing that you say you want to happen. Please.

  If there's one thing for you to remember here, it's that although (just like the world at large) Wikipedia is not free from those who give superficial attention and little thought to things, it's definitely not the case that all talk page watchers are stupid. Many people will recognize persistent badgering and baiting when they see it, without your having to respond to it in kind. Leave your politics at the door; remember that here you are a neutral encyclopaedist; don't use Wikipedia to bait others about their politics; and remember that reasonable adults can recognize people engaging in schoolyard-style provocation and silliness and that there are, despite popular rumour, a few adults around at Wikipedia. ☺ Uncle G (talk) 14:10, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

• "False equivalency" is the right way to describe this. Guy's analysis is correct. Calton, indeed, does sometimes over-react to goading and provocation; does one punish a dog for snapping when poked with a sharp stick? Especially when the dog has a reputation for snapping? Or does one attempt to restrict the children from harassing the dog? Keeping the two off each other's talk pages would be a good idea; but it's incorrect that it's appropriate to be "even-handed" here. --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 14:06, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
  • A muzzle is an effective way of dealing with a dog that has a tendency to snap. Whether that's a punishment, I don't know. It doesn't prevent you from also restricting the children from harassing the dog. It's incorrect that an even-handed approach is inappropriate. An even-handed approach sees each user dealt with accordingly. I'd hate to think we were advocating an unbalanced resolution. Hiding T 15:03, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
    • Why? "Balanced" is not a synonym for "just". Keep the kids away from the dog, and keep the dog away from the kids -- but recognize it was the kids who had the sharp stick. Calton wants this restriction; he just disagrees with the rationale for it. The dog didn't want the kids around, either. --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 15:27, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
    • I'm more than a little uncomfortable with the continued use of this analogy. Partly because analogies are inherently unreliable things, and partly because I don't think it's particularly flattering to describe Calton as an irritable dog. A dog isn't a rational, adult human being. We (reasonably) don't expect a dog to be familiar with dispute resolution procedures, or to know when to step back and ask for help in an appropriate venue. The only option the dog sees – and with some legitimacy – is to bite. A dog doesn't understand that responding to trolls is a waste of its time, and a dog doesn't realize that responding in kind will only encourage further trouble. We expect better from our intelligent, human editors. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:42, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
    • If Calton wants the restriction, why are we still debating it? If Calton wanted it, why couldn't the user do their half without the need for it to be imposed? As to balanced not being a synonym for just, best edit all those pictures of "Lady Justice" balancing those scales, eh? Hiding T 15:46, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
      • If that's what you think the scales are for, yeah, sure. Me, I think the scales are about precisely measuring the weight of arguments, and finding where the balance actually lies. Dropping the same size weight on each pan only maintains balance if there was balance previously. --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 15:59, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
        • If that's what you think I think, yeah, sure. Me, I think an even handed approach is one that is impartial and judges on the merits of the case, and the scales represent precisely measuring the weight of arguments, and finding where the balance actually lies. So I have no clue what you are arguing with or what you are reading in to my comments. If we want to focus on impartiality in this discussion, [27]. Hiding T 13:04, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
      • If we had a finished encyclopaedia around here, it would tell us that Justitia's scales are derived from Ma'at's scales in the Book of the Dead, where a person's heart was weighed against a feather. TenOfAllTrades is right on the money — Again! Please stop this, Ten. — with respect to resolving this based upon analogies about dogs. Uncle G (talk) 18:16, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
        • Yeah, it was a pretty dumb analogy. --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 18:25, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
• The one thing we generally all seem to agree on is that the talk page ban is a worthwhile remedy - particularly if it can resolve the issues short of other remedies. Whenever an uninvolved admin is ready to enact this.... Ncmvocalist (talk) 18:04, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
  • I think I'm uninvolved enough to implement, and from reading the diffs above, placing the restriction both ways makes sense. I'll go log it at WP:RESTRICT... --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 22:31, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
    • Logged, and editors notified. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 22:47, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank God. I would note that Calton violated the agreement to not comment on each others pages out of the blue, and then I responded and told him to stop it. JohnHistory (talk) 02:18, 13 October 2009 (UTC)JohnHistory

Template talk: Did you know is severly backlogged

Although this is not technically a matter "affecting administrators generally", I decided to go a little IAR and request help here anyway as I know that many people read this board. The suggestions at Template talk: Did you know at in dire need of more people reviewing them (it's almost impossible to fill a queue at the moment), so please, if you got some time, help out there. Regards SoWhy 11:18, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Speedy deletion concerns

User:Ani_medjool has recently nominated a number of Israeli-related articles & files for speedy deletion. The user has often expressed anti-jewish/israeli sentiments [28], which causes me to question their Good Faith in proposing the deletions. I would like the opinion of a neutral admin on how to proceed with this situation. --Nsaum75 (talk) 04:45, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Speedy deletion declined as they were Commons files. User given a final warning re nominations. Mjroots (talk) 05:54, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Question for other admins - do Ani medjool's actions here come under WP:ARBPIA sanctions. Ani medjool is named as having been notified of the remedies in the case. Mjroots (talk) 06:05, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

They do. Gwen Gale (talk) 13:58, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

In which case, are any further actions required, or should the warning suffice for now? Mjroots (talk) 16:25, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

A very clear warning is the next step. Tan | 39 16:31, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

I've already given a final warning. Mjroots (talk) 16:51, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Requests for Unblock is backlogged

Resolved

 – Backlog Managed by Xeno et al. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 17:22, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

We currently have 12 users in queue at Category:Requests for unblock, which is quite a high number (enough to trigger a backlog notice, at any rate). Usually we hover around 3-5. If there are any admins looking for something to do, that might be a good place to start. I'd handle it, but I'm limited in time this morning. Thanks, UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 13:32, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Two down already, thanks! I've also found one that might need a checkuser's touch, at MC10 (talk · contribs). Thanks, UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 13:53, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

I've done the easy ones. =) –xeno^talk 14:21, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks - 6 remain, and all are being looked at. Well done. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 17:22, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

DYK and Stakhanovite editing

Resolved

 – No administrative action needed at this time. Discuss remaining concerns with the DYK reviewers.

Durova³²⁵ 14:47, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

One thing I wanted to pick up on. An unintended consequence of projects like DYK that churn out gold stars for editors who churn in material is that occasionally the rewards can be addictive, with nasty results. Every now and then this needs watching.

What brought me here is the case of Nrswanson (talk · contribs). This editor is responsible for hundreds and hundreds of copyvios that took months to pick up on and even longer to cleanup. Seemingly addicted to getting his little "thank you" from DYK, he produced copyvio after copyvio at a startling rate, and continues to do so with new socks (which I've just blocked a big batch of). I am in no way blaming anyone in particular, nor suggesting at all that DYK contributions should become a thankless job. But it would be helpful if people kept an eye out for this sort of thing: having copyvios linked to from the main page is not good at all. If something looks too good to be true, it normally is. Someone down the line at DYK should really have raised an eyebrow at some point. Best, Moreschi (talk) 18:09, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

On a different but related note, it certainly casts the hilarious Wikipedia talk:Wikicup into a new light. Moreschi (talk) 18:58, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes that whole Wikicup nonsense is a perfect example of the wretchedly pathetic, if it weren't so tragically sad it would be laughable. RMHED 20:43, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Question: what in the world is wrong with the WikiCup? It's a friendly competition designed to create and/or improve content. Isn't that what we are supposed to be here for? —Ed (talk • contribs) 01:54, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Nothing wrong with it intrinsically, but the spectacle of people making, ahem, questionable claims of content creation to win is just ridiculous, albeit probably harmless. Moreschi (talk) 02:01, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

That editor was never part of the WikiCup. If he's doing copyvio, deal with it as copyvio. Please refrain from gratuitious commentary on unrelated productive projects. Durova³²⁵ 03:43, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Learn a new word every day. So to be clear, the incident is that Nrswanson (talk · contribs) is generating gobs of copyvio content? I'm going to trawl through the contribs in a sec, but can you put together some summary for us? Protonk (talk) 22:00, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Well that was fast, he's been blocked since april. I know this isn't AN/I, but what, precisely are we to be discussing here? Protonk (talk) 22:02, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

• Well, if you would like to trawl through the Nrswanson copyvios, you are welcome to help. He may have been blocked since April but his socks (of which I've blocked more today) are still churning out more, plus there are still some originals to be sifted. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Opera and various subpages thereof.

• As to the rest, Nrswanson's copyvios are not really the issue. My point is simply that editors at DYK and elsewhere could perhaps have exercised a little less credulity when it came to this bucketload of copy/pasted articles, instead of simply fuelling his game-playing fetish by giving him award after award. Not an incident, not wikidrama, not a dig at anyone, just a general point I would like to see people take into account in the future. And since it's admins who ultimately put these things on the main page for everyone to look at, I thought the admin noticeboard might be an appropriate venue to raise such concerns. Moreschi (talk) 22:58, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
  • I'm not trying to shut this down, just trying to get a handle on what you wanted to talk about. Protonk (talk) 01:05, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Some more details would be helpful if the people at DYK are to watch out for this sort of thing. What are the sock accounts, and what type of articles are these? It's very disturbing if such a large number of direct copy-paste articles were allowed on DYK as you say. ≈ Chamal ^talk ¤ 01:12, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

• For the sock accounts, see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Nrswanson, as well as Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Opera for the most recent ones. The articles are mostly classical music/opera related, as well as some drama-related ones. I can't be more specific than that because the cleanup effort has been mammoth: the work underway at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Opera/Subpage for organizing CopyVio Cleanup is just a taster of the rainforests still to sift: see old revisions of the sockmaster's userpage for how much he created even with his original accounts, let alone his socks.

• Any article that relates to opera or classical music that is presented for DYK by a newish user should probably be denied access to the main page until either myself, Folantin (talk · contribs), Voceditenore (talk · contribs), Antandrus (talk · contribs) or Moonriddengirl (talk · contribs) have had a look at the page and its creator. Moreschi (talk) 01:44, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

• Just a note here with respect to the copyvio in these articles. On the whole, it tends to be only in certain sections. Of the 84 articles checked so far, only about 10% had such extensive copyvio that the article had to be stubbed or completely rewritten. But we're only at the start of this, there are probably close to 600 articles to check. We're prioritising the ones that were DYKs or are linked from Portal:Opera and those that appear to be significantly based on Grove Music Online or other Grove reference books. But detecting the copyvio isn't easy unless you have some experience. Much of it is close paraphrasing (as opposed to straight copy/paste), and Grove Music Online is subscription access only. So, Moreschi's suggestion that you run any DYKs from new users (or unusually prolific users) past the editors mentioned, or post the query at WikiProject Opera is a good one. Voceditenore (talk) 09:43, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Declining Gaunkars of Goa unblock request

• Gaunkars of Goa (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

The unblock request by GoG has been sitting open at CAT:RFU for some time. Since I'm the last admin who commented on his request, it is possible that others could be waiting for me to take action on it. He was indef blocked by Cirt on 2 October for Personal attacks or harassment: also disruption, soapboxing, using project as personal forum, etc, and WP:ANI. I intend to decline the request and protect the page, since I see no continuing interest by admins in the possibility of unblock, and the arguments that others have left on the page aren't persuasive. This is a 'last chance' message to see if admins have anything further to say. EdJohnston (talk) 15:14, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

WP:AIV Backlog

Resolved

 – Sorted. –xeno^talk 17:48, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

There is a backlog at WP:AIV.--Zink Dawg -- 17:43, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

For those interested: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Dealing with frequent_AIV backlogs Equazcion (talk) 18:23, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

WP:AIV been backlog all day today. There been lots of vandalism.--Zink Dawg -- 20:52, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

How should we request rangeblocks?

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.

The rangeblock issue is resolved, the user name issue is being discussed on ANI Thatcher 23:38, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

---

Hi. I've been patrolling the Class B IP addresses assigned to our regional network (163.153.0.0/16). In addition to reverting mal-edits originating from just this Class B, I work with the school districts in this region to help them to insure that their students understand that such behavior is not acceptable. While all of the districts want to be good net-citizens, the actions taken vary district by district. Some request anonymous blocks by their assigned IPs. To date, when these requests come in I have posted them on Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism as seen at [29], [30], [31], among others. Today, after working with one district's administration, they decided that having their networks block for anonymous edits was how they wanted to proceed. Towards that end, I made a block request for their pair of Class C addresses [32] on Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism. It was recommended that the request be taken to WP:ANI. While this request did wind up with the addresses blocked, it obviously struck some admins as being a concern. Where would be the best place to make such requests? I'm ok with following any procedure and want to do what is appropriate. Thanks --NERIC-Security (talk) 18:21, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

ANI would work, AIV is typically for simple requests. –xeno^talk 18:24, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

ANI seems like the most appropriate place. I see rangeblock requests there often. I'm not sure who had a problem with you putting your request there, but I see no reason anyone should have such a problem. Equazcion (talk) 18:26, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I added the following suggestion to NERIC-Security's talk page. Perhaps other admins can comment if this would work.

I assume you can understand why we are sceptical about blocking IP ranges on demand without being able to verify the abusive use ourselves. To avoid such confusion in the future, may I suggest a couple of steps you can take:

• Can you verify your identity by emailing OTRS ?
• Can you also confirm the IP ranges you are responsible for and list them on your userpage ?

That way, you can simply add a link to the background note on your userpage in future AIV/ANI requests, and admins will know what to do.

Abecedare (talk) 18:30, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Moving the discussion with Abecedare here, this was my reply:

Hi. Both the IP range and the AN link are on my user page. I have exchanged e-mails with admins in the past, however, e-mailed submissions for blocks were not responded to and off-line discussions suggested that I use WP:AIV for requests. I've put a note in Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#How_should_we_request_rangeblocks.3F to see if there is consensus for how and where to post these requests. I'll be more than happy to follow up with whatever process is agreed upon. Thanks for all of your work as an admin. I know that patrolling just my corner is not easy, and appreciate everyone who works so hard at keeping Wikipedia running smoothly. Take care, --NERIC-Security (talk) 18:33, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm fine with using WP:ANI. Is there any special format or information that I should include in the requests made there? Thanks. --NERIC-Security (talk) 18:39, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

A similar format to the one you used at AIV should be fine.

Can you chime in at the ongoing ANI thread, confirming or disconfirming that the NERIC-Security account is being used by more than one individual, and also comment as to whether another username would be amenable to you? Thanks, –xeno^talk 18:41, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I suggest that you still identify yourself with OTRS to confirm that you are in an official position to make these requests, and have the OTRS certification posted on your user page. Then when you go to AIV to request an anon-block, you can point to the certification that you are an authorized representative to make the request. Thatcher 20:26, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree with this suggestion by Thatcher (talk · contribs). Cirt (talk) 20:40, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Xeno - Hi. I would not be amenable to a name change. I have been very careful to make sure that the only work that I do with this account relates to my job, and not to me personally. I am fairly active under my real name and do not want to have the two associated. The reason posted for the change has been cited as being to reduce future problems and since it is disruptive. My behavior with this account has been to:

1. Revert mal-edits made by anonymous users from the NERIC Class B IP range.
2. Place warnings on IP user pages form the NERIC Class B IP range in language where they are offered the opportunity for training on how to use Wikipedia.
3. Work with the school districts administration to educate them on Wikipedia.
4. When the students are tracked down, provide thanks and updates to editors who revert these mal-edits.

How is this disruptive?

Thatcher - Hi. I am not familiar with the OTRS process. I have sent an e-mail to the OTRS via [email protected] (which has bounced back), and to [email protected] and [email protected]. Will this generate the information for inclusion on my user page?

Thanks all. --NERIC-Security (talk) 20:51, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Both Thatcher (talk · contribs) and Rlevse (talk · contribs) have suggested that a name change is best. I agree with them. Cirt (talk) 20:53, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

And others User_talk:NERIC-Security/Archive_1#Username feel that the name is fine. --NERIC-Security (talk) 21:16, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

No, one user there said it seemed fine, while several administrators have said not so much. Grsz¹¹ 21:22, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

(undent) It looks fine from the OTRS end of things. It's ticket 2009101410052623, and I've tagged the userpage accordingly. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 21:19, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. --NERIC-Security (talk) 21:40, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Censorship

Hello. Pardon me if I come across as foolish, but some Wiki's have a rule that swearing needs to be censored. I need various redirects erected for me; WP:**** for WP:FUCK, and WP:******** to point to WP:BOLLOCKS.--Launchballer 16:59, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

No, we don't censor this Wiki. Thanks. ╟─TreasuryTag►hemicycle─╢ 17:01, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't think he wants to censor anything, but I'm fuzzy on the reason why he wants WP:**** to redirect to WP:FUCK. Tan | 39 17:03, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm guessing he wants to interwiki it, but can't because of local restrictions?--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:05, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps. I'm not sure why TreasuryTag is being so dismissive (in a rather dick-ish way, I might add), but is there really harm in doing this? I'm sorta on the fence about it. Tan | 39 17:09, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Tanthalas39, if you have a problem with my attitude, then the right thing to do is to politely bring it up. Calling me a dick does not endear you to me.

If you look at this user's contributions and history, the fact that they refuse to adopt a signature that doesn't come from an unsubstituted template, the fact that it's luminous blue, and they use it as a section header title; the fact that they constantly use the word "erecting" for no particular reason, you will surely appreciate why I think that Launchballer needn't take up too much of our time. ╟─TreasuryTag►secretariat─╢ 17:13, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

It's a good thing I'm not trying in any way to endear myself to you then. Tan | 39 17:14, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

I've removed the resolved tag, as it does not reflect the responses in this thread. Is there any reason not to trust the OP and let the redirects be created?  Skomorokh, barbarian  07:44, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

No good reasonf for these requested redirects has been given. If they want (for whatever reason) redirects/shortcuts without these words, they can already use WP:DGAF and WP:CB. And TreasuryTag has given reasons why not to trust the OP as well. Fram (talk) 08:15, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Have to agree. Also, if you really want to get technical, then there are a lot of Four-Letter Words that could fit with a shortcut like WP:****. Fuck is an obvious one, but so are Shit, Cunt, Cock, and Tits. Besides, we try to avoid shortcuts to shortcuts, just as we try to avoid redirects to redirects. There isn't a compelling argument here. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 12:11, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Surely star rating shortcuts have nothing at all to do with Wikipedia:Don't-give-a-fuckism and Wikipedia:Complete bollocks? Uncle G (talk) 10:45, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

There are two redirects for these articles that dont need to be censored: WP:DGAF and WP:CB, respectively. Do those work for the OP? Livewireo (talk) 17:21, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

• I don't really see why we can't just create these redirects if it makes Launchballer's life easier, for whatever reason. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 19:31, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Because we don't make redirects to redirects, and because no good reason for this has been given, and because good alternatives already exist, and because they are not really unambiguous (**** could just as well point to WP:DICK), and because there are doubts about the intentions of the OP? Fram (talk) 07:17, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

WP:RFD Backlog

Resolved

Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion has had a large backlog for at least a week. It's always sorta been an area that's not always attended to immediately, but it's gotten pretty bad lately. Killiondude (talk) 05:30, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

The backlog is down to four open entries, so I'm marking this as resolved. Jafeluv (talk) 09:38, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Revisiting Milomedes

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

As some of you may recall, longtime editor Milomedes was blocked indefinitely in August after making some unfortunate remarks at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Jack Merridew/Blood and Roses, which were construed as legal threats. I stand by my belief that those statements, while not direct legal threats, were an inappropriate attempt to intimidate other editors via fear of legal action -- a position which seems to have enjoyed the support of consensus -- but still, I'm not sure that anyone involved ever intended for Milomedes to be blocked forever.

Some helpful reading:

• Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive560#Legal threats by Milomedes
• Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive561#Lambiam and Milomedes
• Declined request for arbitration on the matter

I'll shortly be notifying important players of this thread. In the meantime, are there any additional thoughts or remarks on this matter, now that some time has passed? I'd like to be sure that the right thing was done, here. – Luna Santin (talk) 08:25, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

In the course of notifying previously interested parties, I found that one user who strongly favored blocking, Erik9 (talk · contribs), has since been blocked as a sockpuppet of John254 (talk · contribs). Not sure how important that is, in the grand scheme, but it seems worth noting. – Luna Santin (talk) 08:39, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

When the case was brought before the ArbCom, I wrote that I have no strong objections to unblocking Milomedes, and I continue to stand by that. However, other users who posted on the RFAr noted further problems, and that this was a pattern of intimidatory editing, and not a simple one-off incident. I did find his behavior of responding to one of my posts with a facepalm image to be very rude and condescending, and if that attitude doesn't change, he is not going to be too popular around here. My take on it is that Milomedes would be unblocked if he withdrew the statement that got him blocked in the first place. Sjakkalle (Check!) 09:31, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

As before, if he posts a statement saying he withdraws any threat of legal action he may have made on Wikipedia, then there's nothing in the way of unblocking him. Stifle (talk) 10:42, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up, Luna. I find myself in concurrence with what everyone else said here so far. Even discounting the views of Erik9/John254, consensus seems clear enough that there are inappropriate behaviors that need not to continue. But if some commitment was made (mandatory: no legal threats, where what a threat is... is not determined by Milo but by others perception of it. highly desirable: a commitment to be more collegial in interactions, no more intimidating, no more face palms as replies, and so forth) why then yes, an unblock seems warranted. But not before. This thread is good background but the request itself (and the commitments that need to come before) needs to come from Milo. ++Lar: t/c 10:54, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

As the blocking administrator, my position on the matter is the same as it always has been. When and if Milomedes makes an unambiguous, unequivocal statement that

1. he has no personal intent to sue Wikipedia and
2. he will make no attempt to advise others to sue Wikipedia and
3. he will not again attempt to sway any discussion or editing at Wikipedia by using the possibility of legal action to encourage or discourage any course of action,

I would support an unblock. Heck, if he makes such a statement, I will personally unblock him. So far, however, he has not yet done so. That has always been my position since the moment I blocked him, and that will continue to be my position. He makes it clear he will no longer use intimidation in the way he did, he gets unblocked. --Jayron32 13:36, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's it, the big IF. Too often I've seen unblocks done without a commitment from the editor to do anything. Without that commitment, he needs to stay blocked. →Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 13:50, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

• Milomedes has not requested an unblock, so why are we visiting this issue? — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 15:10, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Oppose unblocking Milomedes (in the absence of a direct request from him) per Bugs, HandThatFeeds and Jayron32. Unblocking him would only make sense if his attitude has changed. Until Milomedes files an unblock request that makes this change of his position clear, I don't see the need for WP:AN to take the matter further. EdJohnston (talk) 15:30, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

The people above are entirely correct that (a) there is normally no reason to unblock a blocked user who does not request an unblock and (b) legal threat blocks are only lifted after all real or perceived threats are withdrawn. That means there's nothing to do until we have an unblock request in which all threats are withdrawn as described by Jayron32.  Sandstein  20:26, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I support an unblock. I don't think there was any real legal threat in any of what was said. Larry refers to some other issues that were mentioned at RFAR by ... someone ... and I don't know about that stuff; never looked. I think Jayron's 3 point are plenty strong. nb: his point 2 could refer to me: I have had no contact with Milo other than the MfD and a few notes on his talk page; i.e. he did not advise me to sue the foundation (and I have no such intent;). I'd be fine with a statement from Milo that no legal threat was intended in the Blood and Roses discussion. If the other issues are of further concern, there are DR steps to be taken. Being blocked isn't right, here. Sincerely, Jack Merridew 05:18, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

This is the dodgiest block I've ever seen. In order to make a legal threat, it is a basic prerequisite that you have standing. "I'll sue you" is a legal threat. "You've libelled me and I could sue you if I wanted to" might reasonably be construed as one. "You've libelled that other guy and he could sue you if he wanted." is not a legal threat, and cannot reasonably be construed as one. Someone fucked up bigtime here. Hesperian 05:30, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Firstly, thank you for bringing this up Luna. My own view is similar to Hesperian's. Milo made it clear that none of what he was saying constituted legal advice or a legal threat when he clearly noted that it was legal academic/theoretical discussion, so on those grounds, the block was frivolous. That said, an RfC/U would've been useful here - not only to make out a claim of intimidation, but so that he was also given an opportunity to understand that Wikipedia is probably not the venue to be having legal academic/theoretical discussion. Frankly, it just looks like people got afraid from the mere words "libel" and "legal problem" and so an extremely dodgy block was made for so-called legal threats; imo, it shouldn't have been imposed, and therefore, should be lifted (even without an unblock request). Ncmvocalist (talk) 06:19, 15 October 2009 (UTC) That said, let me be clear that clarification in the way others desire obviously reduces a lot of drama, as would an unblock request in a similar fashion. But the rest of my comment stands in general. Ncmvocalist (talk) 20:44, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually, Ncmvocalist, if you look at the chronology of events, he never once attempted to explain himself or clarify his comments, even though numerous people asked him to do so. The ANI thread that led to his block was open for several days, with Milomedes commenting at the thread several times, and he refused to redact or explain his comments in a way that set anyones mind at rest. He clearly stated in his statement "If you do not do this.... someone can drag Wikipedia into court and force them to reveal your usernames". That his statements were not in the form of an "I" statement, but a "someone" statement does not change the fact that it was the use of potential legal proceedings to force other editors to bend to his will. If that was not his intent, he certainly, to my knowledge, made NO attempt to explain his intent in such a way that it set other editors mind to rest. He had a long time to do so, and never did. The ArbCom case (rejected) covers this in detail. The only defense of his actions has come from OTHER editors who have said "maybe, I could possibly read his comments in a way that wouldn't be a legal threat." Fine, but the only person who knows what Milomedes has meant is Milomedes, and we have not yet heard from him. If he requests an unblock, and makes a reasonable statement that lets other editors know he isn't going to intimidate people in this manner, he gets to come back. --Jayron32 15:46, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Beyond my little addition above, my view hasn't changed very significantly Jayron32 - and yes, I had read the MFDs and ANIs, and now I've read the "details" covered in the arb-request. The mere fact that there is dissent here on this, both now and even at the time (for an NLT concept!), suggests that this should have been discussed at more length in a more formal venue than these noticeboards or the noisy requests page where the case was almost certainly going to be declined. The urgency to block him as opposed to going through RfC/U for even a couple of weeks really did not exist; see also my previous comment on what RfC/U should've attempted to achieve.

In effect, I disagree/disagreed with Newyorkbrad who made an extended comment about this and suggested RfC/U could happen after the fact - to the contrary, it should've happened well before-hand. Hesperian has brought up the issue that there was no legal standing for there to be a legal threat - this is absolutely correct, and although Nyb briefly touched on this point in his comment, he managed to forget that this fundamental principle is what holds together the perceived legal threats provision. This provision therefore is not applicable in its true sense here. It's the only way that the limit is drawn so that the mere use of the word "libel" (where permissible) should not result in unreasonable perceptions of "omg, you're making a legal threat" in the same way that the word "fuck" (when used in permissible circumstances) should not result in "omg, you're being uncivil" (obviously, what should happen, what happens and what did happen are/were very different things). In any case, Nyb then drifts off onto a principle from an ancient case that nobody has read, thereby making it relatively useless for the matter at hand (the principle did not, and still has not, made it into policy, suggesting that perhaps it is somewhat flawed, like the original formulation of perceived legal threats before it was entered into policy).

Finally, other than the case of intimidation that someone tried to make out at the request, Nyb rests his case upon the likelihood that Milo's advice would not be useful or acted on at any time. He contends that "Milomedes should have been at pains to clarify his meaning immediately" upon hearing concerns of it violating NLT, yet, I see something like this as sufficient evidence to suggest he was beginning to do just that; I don't agree he was given ample time to respond to community feedback in the way that dispute resolution would've allowed, had he been taken to RfC/U rather than blocked and subsequently to ArbCom. Frankly, if the chance of the action occurring (as outlined in Milo's legal warnings/advice/discussion) was "so exceedingly slight, indeed non-existent, that no reasonable editor would have been seriously concerned by the reference to it" as Nyb thinks, then the urgency to impose a block is even less of a priority, while the need to go through RfC/U is far greater to resolve issues and hear all views on the topic. This was a matter for the community to clarify and resolve collectively, with the user concerned - unlike what Nyb asserted, NLT policy, prior decisions, and policy discussions, were clearly not sufficient to resolve the concerns raised, otherwise this would not be raised again here. The user should've been directed to RfC/U to begin with.

Nobody denies the fact that the ultimate outcome may have possibly or probably have been the same later on, after the RfC/U. Or that there weren't other conduct issues that may have warranted a block later on for a different rationale to that which you cited at the time of blocking [33] - in such circumstances, I can't imagine Hesperian, myself, or anyone else finding the block to be one of the "dodgiest". However, that's not what happened, and that's why our interpretations and view are differing. Ncmvocalist (talk) 20:44, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

• Bring it back if he requests unblock, and tell us what he said in the request. Until then, he's blocked. No point wasting editor time on something he might not even want. Verbal chat 12:34, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
• If he asks to be unblocked, his request can be considered in the usual way. I don't see anything else that needs to be done here. Tim Vickers (talk) 16:37, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Milomedes could easily have not gotten himself blocked at the time by stepping back, but chose not to. In my experience with Milomedes, intimidation and brinkmanship of that sort was commonplace, and IMO he knew exactly what he was doing. The only different to the way things normally go on ANI is that for once the regular drama-mongers didn't intervene and start wheel warring over it, thus granting Milomedes the privilege of being immune to any future action. I don't trust that any of that would change with an unblock, especially a "hey, y'know, you probably shouldn't have had this in the first place" unblock. And on top of that he hasn't even asked, so I have no idea why it's even being brought up (has the "blocked users" table filled up or something?).Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 19:25, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Multiple IP stalker

It appears I've got a secret admirer, who is desperately seeking my attention. He/She has used the following IPs- User:166.205.133.83, User:166.205.4.61, User:166.205.7.162, User:166.205.135.183 & likely more possible to come. He she tends to 'revert' my edits & most recently threatened me on my userpage with future disruptions. GoodDay (talk) 20:58, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

*Yawn* another Obama conspiracy theorist. Should be easy to spot. <>Multi-Xfer<> (talk) 23:00, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Category:Importance or significance not asserted pages for speedy deletion has an immense backlog right now

about 85 articles currently nominated, need help cleaning it out Beeblebrox (talk) 22:58, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Now down to about 30 articles, thanks all for the assist! Beeblebrox (talk) 00:22, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Volunteer response team looking for voicemail respondents

Hi all,

The volunteer response team is looking for a number of English-speaking Wikimedia contributors to join their team to handle incoming voicemail enquiries. There has been a recent surge in queries left on the Wikimedia Foundation's voicemail service, which end up being forwarded to the volunteer response team for action. Unfortunately, the volunteer response team leaders have so far been unable to find sufficient cover to handle the increase in voicemail correspondence received.

If you would be interested in joining the volunteer response team to handle voicemail enquiries, and are comfortable volunteering your time to telephone people who have left voicemail enquiries, please leave the appropriate details at meta:OTRS/volunteering. Please make sure to mention in your nomination that you are interested in, and comfortable replying to, voicemail enquiries. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact one of the volunteer response team leaders listed at Wikipedia:Volunteer response team#List of volunteer response team leaders.

Regards,
Daniel (talk) 13:24, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Re-signing to hopefully give this another 48 hours in the sun, so to speak. Daniel (talk) 06:24, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

WP:UAA broken?

Resolved

It seems that the bot isn't removing the blocked users off WP:UAA. It still seems to be adding them though... some names have been blocked but have been left there 4 hours later. --Rschen7754 (T C) 04:21, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with the name watcher bot. The names are cleared by the AIV Helper Bot series. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 15:47, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Okay, well [34] - the names aren't being cleared. So the helperbots are broken? --Rschen7754 (T C) 16:05, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

They do seem to be operating - see bot 5 and bot 7. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 17:50, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Why are all those contributions AIV and not UAA? --Rschen7754 (T C) 18:22, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Okay I see the problem - the names are being removed off WP:UAA bot not the bot subpage. --Rschen7754 (T C) 19:55, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Beta editing capability has gone away

Resolved

As of October 16, 2009 at 03:12:00 am UTC (11:12:00 pm eastern time):

When you are using the beta to edit a page, it doesn't use the beta layout. It uses the old monobook layout instead.

Hope you can fix this soon!

- Samwb123 (talk) 03:13, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

This is not really an administrator concern, but rather a concern for the technical staff. You could file a question at The Technical Village Pump or file a bugzilla. --Jayron32 05:15, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

This problem is now fixed as of 17:44:00 UTC. - Samwb123 (talk) 17:45, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Edit filter permission

Resolved

 – Permission granted for view-only, see further comments here. –xeno^talk 17:30, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

I requested this permission here, following the procedure stated on Wikipedia:Edit filter, on 10 September.

After answering questions, I did not receive any further response, so I started a thread on the issue, Wikipedia talk:Edit filter#Permissions for non-admins; discussion on 7 October seeking clarification about the procedure/policy on this. There are no responses.

I wasn't sure where to pursue this, but as it is granted by administrators, I'm hoping this noticeboard is appropriate.  Chzz  ►  03:17, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Not to rehash old concerns, but the prior thread was a bit tldr. Can you succinctly explain why you need access to the edit filters? I don't think the edit-filter permission group need necessarily be an "exclusive" club, but in general one should have a concrete need to access a new permission. What sorts of work will this help you with? --Jayron32 05:14, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Précis: Persistent ongoing IP vandalism, many IPs, several articles. Wondered if EF might help; wanted to look at existing ones, suggest an appropriate filter (if made sense). I'd be more aware of the capabilities & would increase my knowledge of regex & how EF works.  Chzz  ►  14:30, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't want to be rude, but learning regex is a doubleplusungood reason to be offered access to the EF.

(16:35, 16 October 2009 Protonk)

Well, that was the short version, as requested. I did explain in the original request, that I have no intentions of changing any of the filters. "I'd like to be able to view the current edit filters; I don't intend to modify anything, but realize that the permission would enable me to do so" from the original request.  Chzz  ►  17:03, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

When it comes to learning regular expressions this book is pretty much a prerequisite:
Friedl, Jeffrey (2006-08-08). Mastering Regular Expressions (3rd ed.). Sebastopol, California: O'Reilly Media. ISBN 0-596-52812-4.
--Tothwolf (talk) 17:39, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia and nationalism - this is not getting any better

Main page: User:Moreschi/The Plague

See also: User:Moreschi/The Plague/Nationalist hotspots, User:Moreschi/The Plague/Useful links, and User:Dbachmann/Wikipedia and nationalism

And so we are nearing the completion of the bitter and painful Eastern European mailing list arbitration case, the latest in a long line (if you see the second subpage listed above in the "see also"). Time, I think, for some soul-searching.

I've been an editor here for over 3 years now, and an admin for over two. Much of that 2 years has been dealing with nationalist flaming: it's been immensely educational, occasionally entertaining, and normally downright frustrating. It forced me into retirement and it brought me back again, largely because it's just bloody addictive and there was no one else to do the job. Plus I still had some more articles to write.

But I won't be around ever, though I plan on being around for a while yet. There was a time when I did literally every single bit of arbitration enforcement, certainly as it pertained to nationalism (see Newyorkbrad's comment here). That, let me remind you, encompasses a huge geographical sweep, from Eastern Europe to the Balkans to the Caucasus to Israel to India to the American culture wars. The paucity of other people taking an interest in this enormous workload is shown by the enforcement logs of WP:ARBMAC and WP:ARBAA2, where it's just the same names doing the same old shit over and over. When one of those names goes, everything gets a lot worse. I think I could have prevented the equally painful and bitter recent Macedonia 2 case had I been around, and certainly on a general level disruption on Balkans articles had massively increased in my absence. From literally the minute of my return I've been putting out fires at souliotes, orpheus, thracians etc, with a bunch more I haven't had the time to attend to. Thankfully things seem to be settling down a little now.

We can't prevent nationalist flaming. Even if I had carte blanche to block every single nationalist disruptive editor anywhere permanently, it would make no difference even if somehow the people I banned didn't sockpuppet their way back. They'd just be replaced by a crowd of new flamers within a week. This stuff is tied to socioeconomic and political factors that are completely outside our control. But we can control the flaming itself, if not the causes.

The regime of discretionary sanctions etc that arbcom (actually, maybe I should just make that Kirill Lokshin) instituted is the best tool yet for dealing with this stuff. You might think, from the massive log of WP:ARBMAC, that it had failed. Not at all. These fires will always happen. The massive log shows they are being successfully put out. And the rate of cases recently has slowed down from the peaks of 07/08, but those that do arrive at ArbCom now are bigger and nastier, for all that they happened less often.

But the current admin corps is inadequate to the task. For one thing there aren't enough of us to keep basic backlogs consistently clear, let alone do this highly technical and time-consuming work. But, putting it bluntly, too many admins are from the wrong background to accurately deal with the problem. RFA criteria have long been viciously skewed towards knowledge of internal wikipolitics and technical procedures, something that benefits editors from a technical background (computer science, mathematics, engineering) and disadvantages those from a humanities background. More specifically, nobody has really cared about promoting people with the ability to evaluate sources and backgrounds (Kirill's competence when arbitrating this stuff came from his ability to appreciate the backgrounds of the editors at hand: this gave him an insight into where they were coming from). The broad knowledge of geopolitics that is so vital - and that I have been forced to acquire - is generally completely lacking. Most of admins are drawn from the white male population of the USA, who, thanks to the culture wars, have learnt never to interfere in matters of ethnicity for fear of being accused of racism: more generally, there is a failure to recognise that just because someone's a member of an ethnic minority doesn't mean they're not a small-minded nasty jerk (makes it no more likely, of course). We lack imaginative realists - in fact, I could pay no greater compliment to Dbachmann (talk · contribs) than to call him the ultimate imaginative realist.

Here's what we need. We need someone who can look at a nationalist dispute, be tolerably familiar with the background of the dispute and of the editors, have the access to familiarise himself quickly with what he doesn't know, and make a judgment call based on academic consensus over roughly where the content needs to be. Then administer from there. This is what myself and Future Perfect have tried to do at WP:ARBMAC. And it's worked. We do not need people who think that "NPOV" means "six of one and half a dozen of the other". We do not need cognitive relativists. We do not need admins who dumbly count reverts and make their decisons based off that. Knowledge that such people can be easily fooled by gang editing masquerading as consensus is what in part fuelled the creation of the EE mailing list, I am sure. Your job as admins, people, is the maintence of encyclopedicity. Everything else is secondary to that. Paraphrasing Dieter: admins lazily reviewing "evidence" presented by filibustering trolls without bothering to look at the underlying content dispute do more harm than good. That applies to arbcom as well. These people who can fix the problems are rare. But they are out there. Go and find them.

And if you doubt the seriousness of my post, take a look at my list of nationalist-related arbcom-cases, and the enforcement logs of some of the more recent ones. It might be quite a surprise.

Yours,

Moreschi (talk) 23:44, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

I understand your frustration, but where do you find such people "who can look at a nationalist dispute, be tolerably familiar with the background of the dispute and of the editors, have the access to familiarise himself quickly with what he doesn't know, and make a judgment call based on academic consensus over roughly where the content needs to be", we are but mere mortals. Rather than rely upon the personal qualities of members of this super-squad to duke it out heroically with these nationalists, perhaps a better way would be to design a process that could channel these conflicting forces into a positive direction. Rather than alienate all the natives, such a process could filter the radicals from the moderates, and thus make your job easier. The problem with the take-no-prisoners approach is the risk of being gamed by the radicals who target the moderates to drive them off the project. Piotr's approach is workable. --Martintg (talk) 00:22, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Martin, "radicals" and "moderates" cannot be so easily separated (see here for the reason why. I am not going with "take no prisoners", but you have to realise that these problems have no lasting solution, because even if all becomes sweetness and light with the current crop of participants in that EE mailing list case, the next generation of flamers remain unaccounted for. We can't cure the plague. We can only contain. The political realities of various parts of the world mean that most (though not all) of the problematic contributors become irretrievably radicalized before they get here, and we can't change that. Moreschi (talk) 00:27, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Call me naive but I think many editors can be deradicalized. Not everyone, no. Those who come here to push a holy agenda of "one and only truth" are beyond hope, but most others can be reined in, with the right amount of carrots and sticks. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 01:15, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Much of interest here Moreschi, and I hope this discussion will maintain a distanced perspective and not spur knee-jerk reactions to your observations. As well as the cultural backgrounds you mention, I'd postulate that RfA selects against editors who involve themselves in NPOV disputes, and prefers clean candidates those willing to get their hands dirty. Question: how do we entice or encourage editors to get into this line of work? One thing that might help would be an admin-orientated version of your essay that focused on approaching the problem and reflect the institutional wisdom of the few effective admins in this area. Respect,  Skomorokh, barbarian  00:38, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

I think that's part of the problem, Skomorokh, but another reason is watching what happens when a previously uninvolved admin does step in. I won't be dealing with any of the Balkan articles after going through the Kafkaesque horror of ARBMAC2. My total sum of edits to Macedonia-related articles is fewer than three article edits, participation in a couple of threads at Talk:Greece, protecting that article three times because of edit-warring on the talk page, and participating in the arbitration case (I was briefly a party to the case, but was removed when my lack of involvement became clear). However, I can guarantee you that any admin action I take will be loudly contested, and efforts to pin the ArbCom down on whether I could be considered involved were mostly ignored. Rlevse implied that I wasn't, but there was no other input, and repeated specific questions were not answered. The Scientology arbitration case (settled shortly before) made it clear that there was no "expiration date" on edits (the Arbcom pulled edits from two years previous to establish involvement in an article, so I wanted some concrete answers to establish what level of engagement constitutes involvement. Absent that, I won't return, and the other nationalist hotspots (A/A, EE, ARBPIA, and K/J) are either areas in which I am unfamiliar or unlikely to be able to function impartially. Reading through the ARBMAC2 post-mortem, it is apparent that I am not the only one who felt that way. Horologium (talk) 01:31, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Moreschi, not surprisingly, nails the problem pretty square on the mark. I could expand on some details, but instead I'll just directed interested readers to my very recent analysis of the Eastern Europe battlefield (also contains my proposed solution). I have analyzed the failure of an average admin to deal with such issues here, here and here. Moreschi is right that we need a special breed of admins to deal with this - ones who are knowledgable about given content, and even more importantly, understand why we are here (and no, this is not why). Please note that what is needed is a group of volunteers, from admin ranks but not only (mediators would have a good background) to create a taskforce (wikiproject?) that could mediate, mentor and when necessary, restrict and ban editors active in a wide ranging set of articles. It is crucial to undermine the foundations of nationalist battlegrounds by reforming editors (and banning those that won't be reformed), but it takes more than an average effort to distinguish who needs mentorship/mediation and who needs the good ol' banhammer in such cases. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 01:12, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Any editor can step in and analyze who is right and who is wrong in these disputes. An admin must push the button, but it can be extraordinarily helpful for any objective editor to participate in arbitration enforcement by reading the evidence and giving a credible opinion. Jehochman ^Talk 01:23, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Easy in theory, but given the criticism leveled at Sandstein, one of the most competent admins patrolling AE, not in practice. --Martintg (talk) 01:28, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree mostly, Moreschi. The current admin community is useless for anything but vandal-fighting and drama-bathing, and any nationalist group with some organization and experience will eat most dopey admins for lunch. We don't enforce content policies over shallow behavioural policies (despite this being an encyclopedia), preferring crap like WP:Edit war over WP:Neutral point of view, because, quite frankly, our admins can't do it. The biggest source of bother is not the limitless hordes of nationalists stampeding out of the old Soviet block, but the pastureland we've set up here for them to feed on. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 01:26, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

The reason admins prefer WP:Edit war over WP:Neutral point of view is because WP:Edit war is easy to understand and apply, whereas WP:Neutral point of view hard to understand and difficult to apply for many admins. If many admins are uncomfortable in applying WP:NPOV, what hope is the rest of us who look to admins to take the lead. Probably what is needed is some kind of WP:NPOV application master class for admins or something. --Martintg (talk) 01:36, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's exactly why it is preferred. And there is no hope of anything better, because the community is not interested in promoting and empowering people based on expertise or recruiting better educated users, and that's mostly because the drama loving cabals of seasoned vandal fighters and IRC networkers are not interested in listening to anyone who is not a clone of themselves, right down to the vacuous herd-like sanctimony and moronic lack of vision for wiki. The founders made WP:NPOV a policy, but their successors have made it so that any admin who expresses what they think NPOV is, is WP:INVOLVED, and is told not to act, thus forcing anyone who does want to act successfully to play a rather strange game. We encourage a numbers game just so anyone who can count to four, which is most admins, can enforce policy. And they wonder why counter-cabals like your own emerge?! Oh my, how we will laugh in years to come ... Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 01:56, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

I also want to wholeheartedly agree with Moreschi's analysis but would like to point out that the problem has deeper roots than just lack of successful enforcement of restrictions and the like. The same lack of background knowledge (as well as a deep seated desire to avoid controversy which may hurt one's "Wiki-career") basically short circuits the entire dispute resolution process right at the beginning. For example, if you ask for a 3O on a EE topic, chances are, you'll be waiting a very long time for one. And when it comes it will be something along the lines of "uh, you guys should compromise". And then when it leaves, oh, about a week afterward whichever party didn't get its way will go right back to trying to force through what they want. A similar situation occurs with RfC - there just isn't enough willing and capable uninvolved editors and admins out there to participate. So disputes fester and propagate rather than being solved. This means that editors who don't achieve their aims, or who really DO represent an UNDUE extremist fringe, can just "circle through" a set of articles - even if a 3O or RfC or just honest consensus keeps their POV out of one article they just move on to the next. And so on. As a result the only way to keep articles at least somewhat protected from repeated attempts to insert crazy stuff into them is to bring them up to GA or FA status - for some reason that still gets a bit of respect. But not every article in EE topics can be a GA or FA and its unrealistic to expect editors in this topic area to put forth that kind of labor effort. However, general EE topic drives for getting articles improved could help here.radek (talk) 01:41, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Yup. This whole "wiki-career" nonsense is a real pain in the backside. Back in the summer of 2007 I was controversial to a certain extent - I'd voted delete in something like 100 Afds in a row or something - but there was still enough recognition of "he's basically a good egg" to get me through RFA. I'm sure I would never pass RFA now, being infinitely more controversial - there's a reason I'm not open to recall! The same problems applies to arbcom elections, there being an increasing tendency to elect the bland and safe purely because they are just that. Sometimes this is OK: sometimes it's totally disastrous, as we've already found out. RFA crowd: lighten up and look at what really matters. Moreschi (talk) 01:49, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

I have to say I agree with the basic tenor of your comments. I might point out that religious content can be just as problematic, if not as often. What would be truly useful would be to have a body of admins (presumaably) who at least are generally objective and have reliable access to the most current documentation on any given subject. You, Dbachmann, and a few others are effectively doing the bulk of the heavy lifting here, and believe me when I say it is appreciated, but I can understand the burnout aspect really easily. I'm not sure what specific procedures might be available to create a competent corps of admins, and, even more problematic, how to keep them from falling victim to the temptation of power.

One thing Vassayana did in his recent attempt to improve content related to Falun Gong was to contact a number of editors regularly working with the broader areas it falls in and ask them to take part in the development of those articles. Something like that might work here as well, but I think finding the competent and willing people to take part in such a body might be difficult. If those problems could be addressed, though, that might be a solution. John Carter (talk) 02:03, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Religion and nationalism are more or less the same thing at a depth-psychological level: the urge to form combative groups to fight until the population pyramid is back in shape. This is best expressed in the national mysticism of Hindutva or Mother Russia, where passionate nationalism becomes inextricably intertwined with Russian Orthodoxy/Hinduism. Or just Israel/Palestine, where you can't separate the nationalist sentiments from the religious at all.

Speaking of Vassyana, who is one of our better arbs right now precisely because, I think, he did some really good work at FTN before becoming an arb: he knew what a fringe theory looks like, what a content dispute looks like, and what outright trolling looks like - there should be some advisory body of experienced dispute-resolution-competent admins who sporadically advise arbcom on nationalist cases. This would be part of arbcom's internal bureaucracy and should have no other role or connection with the community. It could also be used to figure out what the hell is going on with really arcane cases, like Franco-Mongol alliance. Current arbcom structure is not sustainable. The internal bureaucracy either needs massively expanding or arbcom needs to take far fewer cases (my personal preference), and become a much more minimalist institution dealing with wheel wars only, plus perhaps the odd exceptional case like this current mailing list trainwreck. But at the moment it's an insufficiently staffed yet cumbersome beast handing out pointless "admonishments" - god I hate that word - left, right, and centre, and taking many cases the sysop community, for all its faults, would handle far better. Moreschi (talk) 02:41, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

I am willing to deal with issues like this, but only if I know for sure that I have the support of someone or something which I know has the ability to actually give me backup. The Arbitration Committee is probably the only body on this site that has the ability to truly bring this issue to a head. They can do so by (per Horologium above) making it abundantly clear that uninvolved administrators do not magically become involved simply as a result of a mere attempt to resolve an issue. Speaking figuratively, if I knew that I would have immunity from a lawsuit aimed at my basic attempt to resolve a dispute, I would be more inclined to do a repeat of what I linked above. As it stands now, the very act of attempting to resolve a dispute, completely absent of your behavior in the attempt, is enough to get the crosshairs pointed at you. J.delanoy^gabs_adds 02:46, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

I avoid intervening in nationalist disputes simply isn't worth the grief, particularly given the lack of support which can be expected. In these disputes its not uncommon for groups of nationalist editors to gang up on the intervening admin and demand that their decision be overturned, their admin privileges be revoked, etc. The intervening admin rarely gets much support from other admins when an appeal is lodged, with many admins being seemingly willing to take accusations of racism, etc, made against the admin at face value rather than look into the matter. Nick-D (talk) 02:53, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

This is a hangover of the US Culture Wars, where accusations of racism are always taken at face value rather than being laughed out of court like most of them should be. The result is a Wikipedia admin corps with no real clue as to how to deal with such things, and who accord ethnic squabbles a dignity they simply don't deserve. Moreschi (talk) 03:10, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Do you have any RfAs that failed that should have passed? I don't doubt you; I just want to look so I can re-calibrate my RfA standards. Also, does dispute intervention *need* admin rights? How about a group of (known? trusted?) editors who get admin assistance (from a group of admins familiar with the situations but gently distanced to avoid burnout) when needed? NotAnIP83:149:66:11 (talk) 07:57, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

The main thing too is many admins just flat out refuse to deal with any article on ethnic conflicts. I mention the word Kosovo or Macedonia to other admins and they run for the hills. This is because a lot of these cases cannot be solved, even with blocks and bans, and people will use just one tiny edit or one block from a few years ago as a weapon against admins that want to take further action. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 08:35, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Looking over this discussion it seems people have a pretty good idea of what the overall problem is and what are its causes:

1. Lack of admins in a particular area who have knowledge specific to that particular area and thus the capability to "orient" themselves in all the disputes, bickering and mudslinging.
2. Admins who take the time to familiarize themselves with a given area being chased off on the basis of bias, involvement or just making an administrative choice that some particular people don't like (and to be a bit anti-pollyanish here, some "involved" admins really are "involved", even if they haven't edit warred or whatever)
3. The general perception that any getting involved in these conflicts is bad for one's "Wiki-career" or at the very least a tremendous amount of stress and putting up with crap. Combined with 1., this results in a sort of bipolarization of approach - admins either avoid the topic all together or they adopt a "nuke'em all and let god sort'em out" approach. Neither approach is really productive.

The hard part is coming up with solutions to these.

So here's a bit of a crazy idea that's been in the back of my head for some time now, with a lot of specifics left out. First, identify a topic area. Then develop a process (hard part) for choosing a few of the non-admin editors with sufficient experience in that area to become ... I like to call'em "Tribunes", along with a few admins to act as mentors for a topic area as a whole (rather than for individual users). Tribunes would have limited de-facto admin-like powers though not de-jure powers. Basically they would be able to "recommend" temporary article blocks (but not more than that) for disruptive users and page protection for unstable articles. The admin mentors would then quickly consider these recommendations and then issue the blocks or protections, subject to their discretion (I'm actually not sure if these admin mentors are really needed - just making a nod to the Wikipedia admin power structure here). Being one of the Tribunes, unlike being an admin, would not be indefinite but would rather last a pre-specified amount of time after which a period of ineligibility would follow.

This arrangement would have several advantages over the present situation and, hopefully, address some of the above mentioned problems:

1. It would involve knowledgeable people with expertise from a particular area which would remedy the profound lack of such knowledgeable among intervening admins (i.e. the so called "admin roulette")
2. The selection process - unlike the admin selection process - would reward expertise and to some extent (let's not get crazy) participation in "tough" topic areas. "Controversial" but essentially constructive editors could become involved in some admin duties. If one can get all hopeful, then maybe with due time a successful Tribuneship or two would actually be seen as an asset if a particular editor wants to try for an adminship.
3. It would stop a lot of potential disputes and edit warring in its track through carefully applied, though essentially "weak" sanctions. A lot of times, if somebody somewhere would just protect an article or ban one particular user from a single article for a few days for cooldown (without stuff going on their "permanent record" - the block log) the conflict would end. The trouble of course is always knowing which article to protect or which editor to give the chill pill too - that's why the tribunes would need to come from within a topic area.
4. The process would work mostly "on the ground" rather up top - i.e. ArbCom case after ArbCom case after ArbCom case. Freed from dealing with lots of this nationalist stuff ArbCom could focus more on where its comparative advantage lies.
5. It would deal with the issue of "involved" vs. "uninvolved" decision makers by making everyone "involved" - but with limited authority.
6. In terms of privileges and tools Wikipedia has build "upwards" from admins - we have checkusers and oversighters who have more power than regular admins. It would probably be a good idea to also try and fill in the big gap that's opened up between regular content-creating editors and the admins who can block/ban/restrict etc. them.

Ok, so it's a bit fanciful and probably too complicated. But let's be honest, Wikipedia's getting complicated as it grows and more complicated procedures for handling some disputes are obviously needed. The other choices are "let them fight", "nuke'em all" or an "annual ArbCom party" (or the equivalent at AN/I and AE). Would there be attempts to game it? Of course - but the scope for potential damage much less, and the potential benefits greater. The devil of course's in coming up with how these Tribunes would be selected.

Ok, end of pipe dreaming, back to reality. So, Deacon, how come I actually agree with you when you're speaking broadly and off the you-know-what topic?radek (talk) 10:20, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

RFC

Clearly this is not the place to seriously discuss how we might move forward on this issue. It needs an RFC, in the style of Wikipedia:Requests for comment/new users, which raised some good ideas. So here it is: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/The Plague (for want of a better name, and trying not to determine the focus in advance).

I suggest the Community Service idea (Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Eastern_European_mailing_list/Proposed_decision#Community_service:_Wikisource) be discussed there, I think that has some potential (not necessarily just for Wikisource - there's a squillion boring tasks on Wikipedia we could "sentence" editors to!). Rd232 ^talk 17:48, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

RFC in regards to an ongoing case for arbitration may be seen as inappropriate, particularly as the case is still running. Any discussions relating to the currently running case should take place on the case pages, not on an RFC. --Russavia ^Dialogue 05:09, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Why the hell would I start an RFC "in regards to an ongoing case for arbitration"? I thought it was pretty obvious that it was addressing the general issue of nationalism (and beyond that, of religion too), of which EEML is just one example which happens to be current. It's brainstorming on how we can do better on this. To take the position that we can't have an RFC to brainstorm on the general issue because there's a particular current case is like saying the government can't develop a White Paper because there's a case in the courts which might be affected if such a White Paper eventually led to a new law actually being passed! Rd232 ^talk 09:20, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

The majority of the community deals with long term disputes the same way motorists deals with highway accidents: everything slows down while people rubberneck. The rare individual who stops a car, sets flares, and tries to direct traffic to keep things moving gets treated like a problem when the "authorities" arrive. Durova³²⁷ 15:56, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

I like the RfC idea, in so far as we need to think about scope before we proceed to discussing a resolution for the extensive problems caused by nationalistic editors here. As an admin with a degree in international affairs, and a tremendously nerdy addiction to historical topics, I count myself as one of those who is not simply bothered by the effects of The Plague, but who is also cognizant of our need for an objective view of events and facts as opposed to a need to explain "The Truth". Simply put, is Wikipedia an objective source of truth, or a subjective source of truthiness? The Plague makes us a subjective, highly unreliable, and often racist or ethnocentric source of truthiness. That so many of the purveyors of this truthiness feel that they have an almost religious duty to present their POV in Wikipedia is in contrast to the majority of Wikipedia editors who simply have no passion for the project, or lack anything approaching the passion of those inflicting The Plague. I bring this up, in rambling fashion, because one of the very interesting components of the EE Mailing List ArbCom case are those emails which detail the extensive effort that went into bogging down any RfC, ArbCom case, or any other form of dispute resolution Wikipedia has available. I added myself as an involved party to the case specifically because I was schooled by the offending editors (and admin, as it turns out) when I attempted to pursue several courses of dispute resolution. Because I don't actually care about those EE topics with any real intensity, I moved on after a few months of spinning my wheels. Even more importantly, I am loath to take any kind of forceful action as an admin, even those actions sanctioned by ArbCom, specifically because I have seen several of the more reliable and capable admins who work in this area find themselves sanctioned. I genuinely want to be a more effective admin in these areas. I'm sure there are many others like me. But we do not have the protection of the community, and in fact, even have malicious admins operating in collusion with malicious editors. A recipe for disaster. We need to solve this, but we also need to establish a framework that acknowledges that we have been overwhelmed by those acting in bad faith. I have no idea how to go about doing this. Hiberniantears (talk) 15:58, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

I see a lot of disputes over place names in the Balkans. When we have repeated problems in a certain area, the community might be asked to endorse an expedited process that reaches a cut-and-dried result without the full debate that might normally occur. You might even give admins the right to 'freeze the name' for a certain period if the special process were followed. (Something like the full protection for articles, but there would be no MediaWiki support). The community would be asked to support giving blocks as a last resort for those who try to undo the frozen name. Freezing would be an admin action subject to normal review processes, like noticeboards. We are very cautious with full protection now, so this might work in a similar way. EdJohnston (talk) 16:43, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

Responding to Hiberniantears, regarding the EE space and editorial actions, I suggest considering:

• which is the action and which is the reaction
• which is the side which complains and historically files arbitration requests et al. to push their POV
• which is the side which brings reputable sources to the table and when prompted brings more

Your duping by Dojarca (my perception) was a key part of the problem and you are now obviously looking at the proceedings at the EE mailing list (per "spinning wheels" and "moving on") as vindicating your actions regarding Dojarca's lobbying. If not, I welcome your correction.

   If you wish to be a more effective admin and contribute to taking the heat out of the system, and I have made this suggestion more than once over years of editors pushing positions not based on reliable source but on opinions with no basis in fact, then place a total moratorium of 6 months, with option to renew, on all arbitrations of editor against editor—the primary means of controlling content when one does not have reliable sources.

   As for events such as Russavia's meltdown at The Soviet Story pushing Dyukov as a reputable source and threatening to overwhelm the article with Dyukov's criticism (this is a "historian" who Official Russia trucks out regularly to support their position on state-run media), this is the problem with consensus and that what is reputable is also not a matter of reflecting facts, but merely consensus. As long as Official Russia protects its version of history and not one based on facts, the EE conflict will continue. As you saw from your own experience:

1. Dojarca brought their whining about stonewalling to your door, you gave them a receptive ear
2. the opposing Plague members (and I use this because you yourself condemned me as a single purpose account at one point, subsequently rescinded) brought an extensive list of recommended reading of reliable sources to your door
3. and did you read any of those or just dismiss it as nationalist dogma? the latter I suspect as you
4. you wound up reporting yourself (!) for splitting an article against consensus and, I might add, in a manner in keeping with neither western, Baltic nor opposing Soviet "version" of history sources.

As long as well-meaning admins jump in without a full command of the historical facts, matters will only escalate. Please do not take this as personal criticism, I acknowledge the positive intent of your actions.

   Per my comments on principles at the proceedings, the issue is that consensus does not require any basis in fact, and even "reputable" is based on consensus. There is no verifiability required of anything written on WP, only agreement—and that agreement regarding Soviet versions of history versus reliable ones is a chasm never to be bridged until Official Russia reacts properly to the historical past, not with commissions supporting criminalizing contentions which cast aspersions upon the Soviet past as being "detrimental" to Russia.

   You wish to understand what more admins can do going forward. Your intervention only exacerbated the situation, as I believe Dojarca's success in inflaming matters provided the model for Offliner to subsequently (successfully) lobby admin Jehochman to file an arbitration on Offliner's behalf. In a WP where only consensus counts, recent more "proactive" adminship has only opened a new era for lobbying of admins for the purpose of waging content disputes. Again, let me be clear that I do not believe this was your, or Jehochman's, intent.

   The issue is believing this is only another content dispute, that is, differing opinions of the same set of facts, and that a traditional remedy can be found. It is not, and one cannnot.

   I respectfully suggest that where admins are concerned in this topic area, less is more. We already have the "Digwuren" sanctions. Simply apply them when on-Wiki behavior crosses the line. Along with a temporary ban on editor-on-edit arbitration requests, AN/Is, et al.

   As for any conclusions being drawn on off-Wiki communications, don't misconstrue as an attack the circling the wagons against the onslaught assaulting the building of content based on reliable sources discussing verified facts—which onslaught from my perspective includes your unfortunate intervention based on lobbying from one of the most biased (that is, pushing versions of history not based on facts) and combative editors in the EE space. Sometimes filibustering (your "bogging down" of admin actions) is the only tool left available when admins act (my perception) in a manner which escalates the conflict. That is part of the WP:PROCESS in the absence of facts counting for anything.

   Your first step in improving the situation is to understand your own recent role:

1. you can consider my advice or
2. just denounce me as being a single purpose account after all and just another symptom of the Plague.

My apologies to the rest for the length of my response here, but as I've indicated, this does not involve a simple content dispute. VЄСRUМВА  ♪  17:23, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Three Audit Subcommittee vacancies: Urgent call for applications

The process to appoint the three non-arbitrator members of the Audit Subcommittee is underway. If you are suitably qualified, please see the election pages for the job specification and application arrangements. Applications close 22 October 2009.

For the Arbitration Committee,  Roger Davies ^talk 19:13, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Special:AbuseFilter/213

A while ago I had requested this filter to be put in place, and since its activation (and during some deactivations), it's been triggered 109 times. It works for some of this user's edits, but his edits on another article are currently not tracked (due to the fact that there is no string to be blocked on his edits on the other article) and it would be helpful to either disallow or track the other edits (the IP used in the following diffs was blocked because it was triggering this particular edit filter).

• [35]
• [36]
• [37]
• [38]
• [39]
• [40]
• [41]

Is there a way to include this content into the filter or a new filter? It seems the only thing that's the same is that he capitalizes the section headers every time, and he deletes the "Adaptations" heading. The other edits this long term vandal performs don't seem to be as easy to track (blanking and date changing, blanking, blanking and number changing, a very clear pattern of abuse). This vandal has been hitting this project since December 2006. The edit filter has been the only sufficient way to prevent the vandalism, but other types of vandalism he performs still goes through. Bell Canada/Sympatico has for a long time been unhelpful when dealing with abuse from their users. But lately, this vandal has been using the same IPs over and over, but he still finds a new one (which has been used by him in the past) when his IP gets blocked for a long enough period.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:12, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

• Not sure, but I sprotected it for a short while to stop the current lame edit war. Guy (Help!) 23:05, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
  • This is not so much as a lame edit war as it is one person's crusade against Haim Saban for making the Power Rangers nearly 20 years ago. This person has been vandalizing since December 2006 and hasn't stopped since.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 23:21, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

New guide to checking open proxies

I've started a new Guide to checking open proxies, something many admins occasionally have to deal with. Feel free to review it, move it, and/or edit it mercilessly. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 22:59, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Backlog at WP:SPI

Just to let everyone know that there is a current significant backlog at WP:SPI. Contrary to other administrators' beliefs, any administrator can look at any case there and block and tag if necessary according to the instructions set forth for administrators. Please log any administrative sockpuppet actions per WP:SPI/AI and make sure they are handled per the appropriate guidelines as noted. Thank you, MuZemike 23:57, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

New noticeboard

Earlier today, I had this great idea, That we need a place for users to report issues that need immediate attention? I'm thinking of creating Wikipedia:Wikipedians noticeboard. I'm not sure if this will work. But it sounds like a good idea. Tell me what you think about this idea. - - - Do you think we need a Wikipedians noticeboard. Welcoming any ideas and comments.--Zink Dawg -- 06:43, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Immediate attention from admins or everyone? ≈ Chamal ^talk ¤ 06:47, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Everyone--Zink Dawg -- 06:49, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

So basically, a place where editors can seek the council of everyone on things that don't necessarily require admin intervention? There are a lot of places like that already, but a general go-to place might actually be a good idea. Equazcion (talk) 06:51, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Yea, They can post issues that don't necessarily require admin attention.--Zink Dawg -- 09:37, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Chamal: it may also work in reverse, i.e. a side-wide agregator of new threads no matter where they start (refdesk, VP, AN, XFD...). WP:CENT on steroids. If liquidthreads ever materialize they will take care of this; now too many things are off the radar screen. Then of course is the problem of sorting issues that need immediate attention from not-quite-so immediate ones. NVO (talk) 09:54, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

This is basically the Wikipedia:Village pump, isn't it? Except that VP is broken into parts (policy/proposal/technical), and nobody wants to post in the other part, Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)... Rd232 ^talk 10:05, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

We already have plenty of things like this. We also have announcement type boards- there's Wikipedia:Community portal, but I'm sure there's another one somewhere. J Milburn (talk) 14:12, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

What sort of thing would need immediate attention anyway? Ceaseless vandalism? Edit warring? Problems on the main page? All require admins and all are already covered. For high priority announcements, we have Template:Cent and the little popup messages on the watchlist, etc. (and the immediacy of those is often debatable anyway). Wknight94 ^talk 17:47, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

1. Strong Support, This new notice board would be a great place to deal with all issues. If it doesn't work out we can delete it.--Zink Dawg -- 17:20, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

The last thing we need is another noticeboard with an unclear and overlapping purpose. Mr.Z-man 18:03, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

• What is really needed is Wikipedia:Noticeboard noticeboard, a noticeboard where new noticeboards can be proposed. RMHED 20:06, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Reject RMHED's proposal, as it was not brought up at the correct venue: Wikipedia:Noticeboard noticeboard. --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:20, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
    • That's because the venue you wanted was the Wikipedia:Noticeboard noticeboard noticeboard, obviously. Guy (Help!) 21:47, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
      • Can you guys please take this to Wikipedia:Wikiproject Noticeboard Noticeboard. Thanks - Manning (talk) 00:17, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
• Support - I've been back and forth on this. In the end I think it might be valuable. Attention seems spread rather thin at the dedicated-purpose venues already present, like WQA and 3O, whose purposes already overlap often. Having a general-purpose editors' noticeboard might instead get attention more in line with the kind ANI gets, and I think that's what editors need. I wouldn't really have a problem if venues like 3O and WQA get slowly replaced by the centralized noticeboard. Equazcion (talk) 20:40, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia:Editor assistance/Requests already exists, too. Uncle G (talk) 14:28, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
• Well, if you guys really want bolded voting then count me in as a Strong oppose. There are already numerous noticeboards for dealing with myriad issues, and the point of this one escapes me utterly. In case you hadn't noticed, this idea is not being taken very seriously here because you have not presented anything concrete with a demonstrated purpose and a clear goal. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:26, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

WikiTweet

Yes we DO need a centralised noticeboard, but we also need strict rules to stop it becoming like every other noticeboard (ie. a morass of endless screed). I'm NOT in favour of another "general purpose" noticeboard because it will become unmanageable very quickly (which is why we created all the individual noticeboards in the first place.)

Essentially we need a "WikiTweet" (TM) page - a transcluded page that contained brief summaries of noticeboard items. This summary would contain a category (where it came from: ANI, AIV, VP-T, etc), a character limited summary (hence the Twitter comparison) and a link to the extended article. Of course this would need a template to be filled out which I'm sure some techie could design. (Ideally when people resolve items this template would reflect that and update the WikiTweet as well.) Manning (talk) 00:25, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

• Already exists see WP:CENT. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:31, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
  • No, WP:CENT isn't really like what I am proposing at all. Cent is for centralised discussions, generally ongoing and of broad scope. This WikiTweet idea is a centralised noticeboard for small items like AIV and ANI etc. Crucially, each listing is highly summarised and links back to the original noticeboard and section. Manning (talk) 00:36, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
    • Wikipedia:Coordination already exists, too. ☺ Uncle G (talk) 14:28, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
      • What about the Community bulletin board? Hiding T 17:53, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
        • Neither of those do much for me. I could see WikiTweet being useful - it could be applied to Wikipedia:Coordination, which currently just has headers, which doesn't seem all that useful. Plus, obviously, WikiTweet could be an actual twitter feed as well (says non-Twitter user). Rd232 ^talk 20:47, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

What do we need a new noticeboard for? Give me some specific examples of what might need to be urgently communicated to non-admins. ╟─TreasuryTag►hemicycle─╢ 18:23, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

• Yea, what he said, I don't see the point. In my experience AIV in particular is rarely backlogged, and some ANI threads are ignored because either nobody cares or nobody understands the issue being reported. I don't think "tweeting" (god I despise that term) would change any of that. Persons who wish to stay updated on these noticeboards already have a simple process for that, the watchlist. If your goal is to inform users who aren't on Wikipedia at the moment, go set up the Twitter thing, you don't need permission or anything for that. I'm pretty sure my wife would murder me if I started getting updates about Wikipedia while not even logged in though, so count me out. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:11, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
  • AIV is backlogged every couple days at least, sometimes twice a day; but that's neither here nor there. Examples for what might be posted at the centralized noticeboard can be found at 3O and WQA, and various other places that have been mentioned above in the "but we already have..." comments. I've had the displeasure of trying to use a few of these before, and found a serious lack of attention there. I've never even heard of the Editor assistance/requests page, and I've been here for years. It would be nice to have a central location that people can go to, and that people can direct others to, without having to first determine a classification for the type of problem at hand, and without having to be educated on all the various locations and their purposes. As far as it getting out of hand, I don't see it getting any more out of hand than ANI; but anyway this seems like the kind of thing that's easy come/easy go, as it doesn't seem to require any major changes (the tweet box or the editors' noticeboard). Either one can be implemented on a trial basis. Equazcion (talk) 22:28, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
    • I've never even heard of the Editor assistance/requests page, and I've been here for years. — That's always a problem. But in this case, you'll find it linked-to in the box listing various noticeboards right at the top of this very page. It might be worth taking a moment — you and anyone else here who didn't know that these things already existed — to just (re-)familiarize onesself with all of the things that are listed in that box.

      By the way: If you think that any of those processes are lacking volunteers to participate in them, volunteering is the solution. ☺ Uncle G (talk) 15:18, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

      • This is getting away from the point though. I'm aware that there are ways of familiarizing myself with all the various stuff we have, but I'm not the problem. Everyone knows about ANI. Perhaps everyone would know about the "editors' noticeboard", if there were one. As for volunteering, thank you for the suggestion; however this is a proposed feature that I'm hoping would retain a lot more attention than just my own. Equazcion (talk) 15:29, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
  • PS. I didn't give the tweet proposal a good read before writing the above. I think both the noticeboard and the tweet box are good ideas. In response to Beeblerox re: the tweet box: People's watchlists only tell them the last edit made to each page, not a list of issues currently posted. The tweet box would help attract attention to issues regardless of which section last got edited (which is often determined by which section is most popular, others perhaps falling by the wayside if they get no edits). Also see this related proposal regarding dealing with backlogs (AIV specifically). Equazcion (talk) 22:44, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
• The very last thing we need in Wikipedia is an additional place to watch. What we do need is better organization of existing ones. Does anyone know if the liquid threads extension being prepared for clariffying talk pages will be usable on noticeboards also? DGG ( talk ) 04:10, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
  • As I understand it, LiquidThreads would be used on all discussion pages; I don't see why it would be limited to pages in Talk: space. But that extension is still far from being live. It's just started testing on Strategy Wiki. I don't see this as an additional place to watch, but an eventual replacement of many of the individual stuff we currently need to watch. Equazcion (talk) 04:59, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
  • This is why I suggested, seriously, that WikiTweet might be an idea for an existing page, most obviously Wikipedia:Coordination, which currently shows just headers, not tweet-style summaries. Rd232 ^talk 16:46, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Two TFD discussions waiting for a close

Could an uninvolved admin close this and this discussion on Wikipedia:Templates for discussion. Especially on the second one the discussion is getting nowhere and I think all the regular tfd closers have commented in the discussion. Garion96 (talk) 11:39, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Have been closed. Garion96 (talk) 13:24, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

CSD not so speedy

I have recently noticed that items tagged for CSD are not so speedily, I have also heard of cases taking up to 4 days to be addressed. to that degree I wrote a script that queries the database and generates a report sorted by when the page was placed in the category. It is available here. any other questions or feedback welcome, if you want this for other maintenance categories just ask. β^_command 18:20, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Haste is necessary for some criteria – attack pages, vandalism, certain hoaxes; for garden variety notability/nonsense/promotion a few days wait is not of huge concern unless there is media exposure of the article or attempts to subvert the project afoot. Any way of researching whether this is a new problem/worsening trend?  Skomorokh, barbarian  18:48, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

this is a worsening trend, a year or so ago a page wasn't in csd for more than 12 hours at the longest. β^_command 20:00, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

The problem is twofold: there are lots of over-eager taggers hitting everything in sight with A7 and G11 speedy tags, and fewer active admins willing to wade through the massive backlogs this creates. Honestly, I'm not sure there's much any scripts or other automated processes can do about either of those issues. Education about the proper use of those two broadly misunderstood tags might help stem the tide a bit, but how do we accomplish that? Beeblebrox (talk) 22:03, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Before we go jumping to conclusions and tilting at windmills it would be good to see some robust statistics on the speed of speedy deletion over the past year.  Skomorokh, barbarian  01:18, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

I cant keep track the previous times but I am saving all reports that I generate from now on. (this tool updates every 10 minutes). β^_command 00:19, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Great, that should prove very helpful. Thanks,  Skomorokh, barbarian  06:24, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

I would like to see an aged list of candidates. I know that several users have lists of all CSDs. But if there was one that listed the ones that were there first at the top of a list, it might make processing a bit smoother. I only stop by there once in a while, so maybe someone has implemented this already. Vegaswikian (talk) 08:31, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Thats what this report is, a sorted listing of CSD by date/time of tagging. β^_command 20:45, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Entries lasting more than 24 hours are quite rare, but yeah I wouldn't be surprised that the rare entry lasts longer since other than high priority CSD types, things are processed more-or-less at random. Thus, older taggings are no more likely to go than newer taggings, and so by chance some things can last a while. In that regard, this new script is quite useful. Thanks! --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:59, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

To be honest, much of my CSD work tends to be on the most obvious candidates, as I know I can clear them quickly and leave the others for more detailed review, either by myself or others. Anecdotally, I have noticed a slight uptick lately of CSD candidates that could really benefit from either an AfD or more time to develop. Hiberniantears (talk) 17:15, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Whatever the robust or anecdotical evidence for the state of CSD backlog, age seems to be a useful alternate selection criterion to the systematic ones, so thanks.--Tikiwont (talk) 08:15, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

I haven't done speedy patrol much lately; I'm generally too busy doing OTRS and clearing out inappropriate images. We're running low on sysops, I think. Stifle (talk) 19:42, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

I check there several times a day, and keep rough track of articles not cleared from one time to the next. They are generally ones requiring judgment calls on problems like G11, which some new admins are apparently reluctant to make. There are a few that go over from one day to another They are usually ones involving some special problem, or requiring a slightly more complicated procedure than straight deletion, such as listing on copyright Problems. But speedies do tend to build up at certain times of the day, like Sunday night (US). We might want to try to encourage potential new admins from relevant regions. And I note that sometimes personal attacks are simply tagged A7 & may escape notice for a while. DGG ( talk ) 04:03, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

beta, if an article is tagged, deleted, and then reinserted and tagged again, does it show up in your report as the new time or the overall time? DGG ( talk ) 04:07, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

It goes by the new timestamp (it treats it like it actually is a new article). β^_command 21:18, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Er, Betacommand, you're not supposed to be operating scripts, remember?

For one year, you are (i) topic-banned from any non-free-content-related work and related talk pages; (ii) subject to a 0RR restriction on any free-content-image-related work and related talk pages; (iii) prohibited from operating bots or running automated scripts of whatever nature; (iv) prohibited from inducing or attempting to induce others to operate bots or run automated scripts; and (v) subject to an editing throttle of a maximum of four edits every ten minutes (excludes reversion of blatant vandalism). After six months, you may apply to ArbCom for a review of the terms of this condition.
Why not hold off on that for a bit ? _{Naluboutes, Naluboutes}Aeria gloris, Aeria gloris 12:17, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

He's not running a script, and appears to be doing no automated edits at all; this looks like it pulls data from the database, which is not covered by the restriction. He can post that data, or an automated analysis of that data, as long as he does not do so more than 4 times in 10 minutes. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 12:26, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Ultraexactzz, it's a script, per his own words:

d. to that degree I wrote a script that queries the database and generates a report sorted by when the page was placed in the category.
He's prohibited from running scripts of "whatever nature" per Arbcom. (And to be honest, he's a good script writer, but the restrictions are what they are ) _{Naluboutes, Naluboutes}Aeria gloris, Aeria gloris 16:35, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

You cited the relevant restriction yourself: "prohibited from operating bots or running automated scripts of whatever nature". As I understand it, this script is run when a user requests the relevant page. (At least, that would be the obvious thing to do in this case.) Rd232 ^talk 16:49, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

That's how I took it as well. It was also my impression that the restriction dealt with scripts that edited, and that non-editing scripts wouldn't be covered. A restriction on non-editing scripts would be overly broad, and would include things like popups, which doesn't seem logical given the other elements of the restriction (edit throttle, etc). If the script doesn't edit, then the associated prohibition would be against reading too many articles in a given period of time, which we don't (and can't) control. Do we have a "Read throttle" or "Query throttle"? I'm asking, I don't know. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 17:49, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Just a heads up I know and understand the restrictions placed on me by arbcom, they govern my actions on en.wikpedia only. Up until file moving was enabled on commons I was running a bot there to do that. ArbCom could not control my actions on other projects and and if they tried they dont have jurisdiction for their actions the local leadership does. As for this particular tool I am actually not touching en.wp (the site) rather I am using a copy of the em.wp database that is held completely within the toolserver, which is run by wikimedia de not by the WMF so even IF arbcom had jurisdiction across all projects (something they will never have) they wouldnt have control of the toolserver. But lets end my rant for now. arbcom cannot control how I read wp. only how I edit it.

this report is a graphing of the oldest item in the category for about the last 21 hours. β^_command 21:18, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

David Quitmeyer

Can someone advise me as to the location of the policy that says, essentially, that a person cannot decide that there is not going to be an article about them if they are notable? I haven't run across this situation before and cannot put my hands on that specific policy. See the above-captioned article and its talk page for details. Accounting4Taste:talk 16:46, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:OPTOUT is a place where it was proposed that a person should be able to ask for deletion of his own article, and the proposal failed. That's kind of backward, but it's technically what you're looking for, I guess... Chubbles (talk) 18:42, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

This section of the BLP help page may prove helpful. It doesn't say exactly what you're looking for, but it does contain helpful information for those who are upset regarding their article and outlines what their expectations should be with regard to making changes. --Jezebel'sPonyo^shhh 18:45, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Who is a low profile individual may be helpful; in general the threshhold for successful self-requests for deletion would be for an individual who does not seek publicity at all for themselves in any fashion; i.e. they are a "private person" as defined by the Sullivan test, and not a "public figure" of some sort. If a person readily gives interviews to reliable sources, self-promotes their work, or otherwise personally seeks the public spotlight, then there is little ground to stand on when they claim they don't want an article at Wikipedia. For those sorts of people, what they are really after is to control their own message, and not privacy in any way. For people who do not, and have never, sought a public image, such as private individuals whose name has appeared in a paper, through no effort of their own, for connection to one or two minor events (see WP:BLP1E) then the default has usually been to delete those articles. If you wish to test this article, file an WP:AFD and see what the consensus is... --Jayron32 18:56, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone, for your prompt and useful assistance. I'll bring all of this information to the individual as best I can and see if I can assist further. Accounting4Taste:talk 19:01, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

I think DYK is about 3 hours overdue????

Looking at the DYK queue, there is nothing in any of the queues, and it looks like updating of DYK is about 3 hours late? Can an admin please look at, and get onto this. --Russavia ^Dialogue 21:14, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

I've done an update for the first time in ages, and the Main Page still seems to be functioning. Anyone else feel like having a go, or (better still) approving some of the submissions so that they can be used? Bencherlite^Talk 21:56, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Alternatively replace DYK with a picture of paint drying, though this might over-stimulate our regular readership. RMHED 00:14, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

how's this then? Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:20, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
Needs more beige. RMHED 00:29, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Why green? Is this some sort of attempt for Wikipedia to push its eco/left-wing agenda? Why not another color? Magog the Ogre (talk) 00:50, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

An ogre opposing green? Is that a streak of self-loathing, or should we expect a rendition of that old Ogre-Folk standard? Hiding T 12:37, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Audit Subcommittee elections: Urgent! Final call for applications

Time is rapidly running out. The closing date for completed applications is 23:59 (UTC) 22 October 2009. If you are interested in becoming one of the three non-arbitrator members of the Audit Subcommittee, see the election pages now for the job specification and application details.

For the Arbitration Committee,  Roger Davies ^talk 17:37, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Indefinite IP block

I noticed that the IP range 67.152.x.x has been indefinitely blocked for nearly two years. The rationale given here by the blocking admin (who is now apparently inactive) is that it was used as an open proxy by XO Communications. I can't seem to find any further discussion about this block or problems with this range of IPs; "XO Communications" only turned up one hit when I searched AN for it, and it was for a different IP range. It was my understanding that indefinite blocks for IP addresses were very atypical. (I originally asked about this here; that conversation didn't go quite as I thought it would, but the editors there suggested I bring it to general attention on this noticeboard.) Is there sufficient justification for this IP range to remain blocked indefinitely? Chubbles (talk) 17:45, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Indefinite range blocks are sometimes used where the owner of the IPs (XO), and the function of those IPs (typically dedicated web servers with open proxies), is likely to stay the same for the forseeable future. Range blocks are very convenient but often end up having collateral, and we are normally happy to adjust those blocks as appropriate, even if we have to lift the whole range block and block individual proxies instead. All that needs to be done is to show the extent of collateral. I suppose one important question is how were you connecting to the Internet, I mean was it on a phone, dialup, wireless, broadband or what? You weren't using an anonymising proxy were you? There seems to be quite a few on this network.[42] Maybe we can narrow them down. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 18:49, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

I have a broadband connection and am not using a proxy, but maybe my ISP at this location (XO) is? Chubbles (talk) 19:15, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

XO is your broadband ISP? My advice would be to ask a checkuser to have a look at the network you're using with a view to lifting the block. You'll find one either passing by here, or at WP:SPI. If you don't have any luck, remind me and I'll take a closer look. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 19:42, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's not really of personal interest to me, as I normally would only edit anonymously by accident. But I wondered whether there weren't some sort of inconsistency in willy-nilly blocking an IP range when I couldn't find any discussion or evidence of wrongdoing. Chubbles (talk) 20:06, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

I haven't looked closely, but this range appears to contain a variety of open proxies, typical of a hosting range, and it belongs to XO who have open proxy hosting ranges. I'm not going to say the block is warranted, but open proxies usually cause a lot of disruption and so we do what we can to block them. You'll find ranges like this are blocked routinely,[43] particularly two years ago. If there is any sign of collateral we usually try and adjust things accordingly. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 20:27, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

It's a moderately busy range; there's maybe a few dozen active editors there, including Chubbles and two administrators. Chubbles, not all of your edits are from this range; based on the timing, I'd say your workplace is connected to the internet through XO. A good number of your edits are coming from a computer more consistent with a personal setup, and those are not on the blocked range. I don't see that this block is proving to be particularly problematic, especially since I don't believe this is a domestic ISP; it seems more like a routing service for large companies. People who are going to usefully edit Wikipedia from work will usually have an account. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 20:43, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

An IP range block should be considered for 166.205.xxx.xxx, IMHO. GoodDay (talk) 19:40, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

GoodDay, I don't see what that has anything to do with this discussion, and we would need a much better reason than your humble opinion to knock out editing from over 65,000 addresses. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 20:43, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

RFC/U revamp

Question: Over at WT:RFC#Revamp I've proposed a revision of WP:RFC/U, which has been advertised via RFC, WP:CENT, and WP:SIGNPOST - but only a regular on the page has provided any input. I'd like to get on and get the update done, not wait for the arbitrary three-week deadline the regular set. There's only one clear outstanding issue, which is the naming of the forum/noticeboard/helpdesk/thingy. Input, anyone? Rd232 ^talk 22:01, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Speed of light

This arbitration case has been closed, and the final decision may be viewed at the link above.

• All editors are reminded to be civil at all times and seek consensus where possible, and encouraged pursue dispute resolution when necessary.
• Brews ohare (talk · contribs) is warned for his conduct in this dispute, and placed under a general probation for one year, under which any uninvolved administrator may impose sanctions if Brews ohare fails to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia or general editing and behavioral guidelines, policies, and expectations, despite warnings.
• David Tombe (talk · contribs) is also warned for his conduct in this dispute and during the course of the arbitration case, and is placed under the same general probation but for an indefinite duration. David Tombe may not appeal his probation for one year, and is limited to one appeal every six months thereafter.
• Both Brews ohare and David Tombe are banned from all physics-related pages and topics, broadly construed, for twelve months.
• Violations of the topic bans or general sanctions may be enforced by blocks of up to a week in length for repeated violations, to increase to one year after the third block. All blocks and other sanctions applied should be logged on the case page here.

For the Arbitration Committee, Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 22:23, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Discuss this

Three Audit Subcommittee vacancies: Call for applications

The process to appoint the three non-arbitrator members of the Audit Subcommittee is underway, with the election itself starting on 30 October. If you think you may be suitably qualified, please see the election pages for the job specification and application arrangements. Applications close 22 October 2009.

For the Arbitration Committee,  Roger Davies ^talk 21:33, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

History visability...

Someone might want to check the histories of this and AN/I... Keegan changed the revision visability after the RD2's, but the page historys of both AN/I and AN still show some of the summaries... - Adolphus79 (talk) 07:40, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Specifically the comments and edit history by IPs 76.208.13.165, 24.223.106.131, and 74.13.126.183 - thanks.  7  07:49, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

• Y Done revisions deleted. - Mailer Diablo 08:08, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure if this is related to this, but if it is, then you missed a spot. Until It Sleeps ^alternate 17:32, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

• • Not related. But its not worthy of redaction anyway. - Mailer Diablo 06:19, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Admin backlog tracker ?

Is there a template/ tool for admins to track the current backlog of the various tasks requiring admin attention ? I am thinking of something like User:Dragons_flight/Category_tracker/Summary (which is currently hibernating), but which also indicates the status at RFPP, SPI, AIV, Unblock requests, RMs, overdue XFDs etc, and excludes generic article maintenance isues. We currently have CAT:AB, but I frankly don't find it too useful. Abecedare (talk) 21:22, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Template:Category tracker is the current stopgap. MER-C 13:12, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Timonia

Resolved

 – After a little sister of all battles, Timonia was crushed by Wikipedia. The battleground was salted, the editor banished. Article salted, unblock declined, user talk page access revoked. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 20:31, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I blocked Gomezbuster (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) (24 hours) for persistently recreating Timonia after being warned not to. They responded by saying they will sue Wikipedia. While not 100% sure that they really meant that I followed up with an indefinite block as per WP:NLT. The removed the threat and I have readjusted the block to 24 hours. Although the other writings don't leave me very impressed and aI really don't think this is going to end with a productive editor. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 18:29, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

An indefinite block would be fine with me. It is obvious that this editor is not here to be constructive and it just playing around. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 18:35, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

"Please note: Timonia no longer recognizes Wikipedia as a credible source and Wikipedia has been banned from Timonian lands. You are not allowed to enter and are officially permanently blocked until you change your discriminatory practices. Allowing Timonia to exist on Wikipedia would allow the removal of this permanent ban!"

LOL! Nice to start my day with a good laugh. :) -- œ^™ 18:38, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

And I no longer recognise that editor. They've exhausted my quota of good faith for today. I've reinstated the indefinite block. Now please point me to other small nations that I can crush. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 18:59, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps someone will declare the wreck of the Baymaud an independent republic, and you can mount a naval attack. Deor (talk) 19:11, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

You know I was going to make a pun on navel but it turns out that page has two of the most disturbing images I have seen on Wikipedia. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 19:19, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Timonia's Secretary of War may want to discuss with Tim the dangers of leaking information about future military actions...</yawn> NPP, you have 3 weeks to prepare for battle. --Onorem♠Dil 01:26, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

If anyone ever feels like crushing a small nation, there's always Wirtland... -- Atama頭 21:25, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I need a copy of a deleted article.

This article that I remade because the article Joel Warady Group was blocked from creating. I need a copy of the original Joel Warady article before the one I made. FunnyDuckIsFunny (talk) 23:31, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I created User:FunnyDuckIsFunny/sandbox with the last version. Is this what you needed? Tan | 39 23:38, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I wanted the version of Joel Warady that User:K.duan2009 made. —Preceding unsigned comment added by FunnyDuckIsFunny (talk • contribs) 23:39, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

That is the version in your sandbox. Tan | 39 23:41, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

My mistake; I see what you want now. Check again. Tan | 39 23:42, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

While your at it can the Joel Warady Group article be unprotected? FunnyDuckIsFunny (talk) 23:44, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

That request needs to be made at WP:RFUP. Tan | 39 23:45, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

SOMEBODY NOMINATED IT FOR DELETTION!!!! FunnyDuckIsFunny (talk) 23:52, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Yep.Abce2|This isnot a test 23:53, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Since this is a straight recreation with no attempt at improvement, I am going to remove it from mainspace. Since it has some potential I am moving it into the article incubator for further consideration. --ThaddeusB (talk) 02:34, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

A reminder to Tan and anyone else reading this: The correct way to userify an article is to restore (undelete) it and then move it the userspace without redirect. If you just copy the text it makes it look like you wrote it, thus violating attribution. The article then has to be moved back to mainspace, not copied, or it will look like the person doing the copying wrote all the text (which may or may not be the case.) --ThaddeusB (talk) 02:16, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Page is now found at Wikipedia:Article Incubator/Joel Warady, with the proper attribution in tact. (The exact version that was originally restored is found in the article history.) --ThaddeusB (talk) 02:48, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Oops. Thanks for the reminder, ThaddeusB. Tan | 39 03:41, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

question

Resolved

 – This is an issue for Meta Wiki, not for the English Wikipedia.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 00:40, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Hi. Unclosed. This isn't an unreasonable thread. Spartaz ^Humbug! 03:23, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Im an admin on the dispute infested Persian wikipedia. There are only eight 6 admins. Our laws are basically copies of EN WP. I need advice from you. My question:

An admin gets involved in a content dispute in an article with some users (7 or 8 other involved editors I reckon). Some r against him, some side with him. Anyway, after a while, he leaves the dispute and quits editing the article entirely, and the fight of course continues and the article is heavily edited every day one way or the other. A month later, the fight heats up again between the same parties. Edit wars break out. The admin (who has not been involved for a month now) jumps in and (citing disruptive behaviour and edit warring) blocks the main responsible user for 24hrs. It turns out this blocked user was the same person the admin was involved with in their intense dispute a month ago. Now some ppl are crying foul, and claiming that since the admin was involved a month ago, and has therefore conflict of interest, he was hence not justified in blocking the user, whether he was right or not.

Do u guys agree? Is a month enough time to not be considered involved? When does one become de-involved? A month after you leave the article? A year after? Was this admin justified in blocking the edit warring user?

I'll read your input. As always, I'm grateful to the wealth of advice u give me.--Zereshk (talk) 21:22, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

A month wouldn't be enough on EN. A year might not even be enough here :) But on a site with only 8 admins, you might not have the luxury of avoiding conflict of interest to that degree. If another admin was available at the time to request an objective assessment of the situation, they should've probably been contacted. Would delaying the block until another admin was available have really been so harmful? Equazcion (talk) 21:28, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

we actually only have 4 active admins, and 2 semi-active ones. Politics is also always fiercely preventing any real progress. The admins are teamed-up against eachother for various political reasons. Often, many AN/I requests go unanswered for days. Many, such as myself, prefer to not get involved at all. It's a sad situation.--Zereshk (talk) 21:36, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

That does sound like a sad situation. I have some suggestions for how I would do things... but it sounds like Persian WP has a pretty different culture (though the same rules), so my suggestions might not be good here.

Concerning your current problem, if the edit warring is over, I think there's not much that can be done except the administrator could publicly apologize for blocking in a situation they were still considered involved in. On English WP, it's rare to see an administrator apologizing like this, but it shows maturity and humility when it happens; I respect administrators more when they apologize. Another option would be to get the other administrators to confirm publicly on the blocked user's talk page that they would have acted in the same way; but it sounds like the administrators would be divided; and it could backfire and cause more fighting. If the edit warring is still going on, however, I would request another administrator (you perhaps, if you're not yet involved there) step in and block the warring editors (on both sides, not just one). I think the involved administrator should not do this, even if they're trying to redeem themselves by blocking warring editors on "their own side".

But the long-term solution I think would be to just get more administrators; look for people you trust to be not be swayed by politics and see if they can be promoted. At the same time, I would try to bring the administrators together if you can, by encouraging them to not get sucked into the fighting, by giving compliments to "opponents", and by emphasizing the common goal of the project whenever you can. In fact, this is pretty good advice for us here at English WP... too bad we don't always follow it. -kotra (talk) 02:06, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I mostly agree with those above, so I won't repeat their points. However, I would like to add that page protection might have been a better solution, esp. if the "wrong" version was protected. --ThaddeusB (talk) 02:12, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I am one of the admins over there , actually due to the ongoing fight on the article, an admin protected that page, so that they would be able to get consensus about the content. But suddenly another admin who had highly content dispute about the same article with the blocked user, came and blocked him for 24 hours but didn't do anything to other side; and he was heavily engaged with that article. So I called this blocking unjustifiable and unfair, I do believe such action against users is misuse of admin tools while you have content dispute with them, and this kind of behavior – for an admin – is very poor --Mardetanha ^talk 18:21, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

What do you mean? The other side was blocked and warned by you (before the user got blocked by the admin). As for content dispute: The content dispute between the admin and the blocked user was over (in favour of the admin) when the admin was still active in the article. I.e. the admin left the article some time after the content dispute was over with the blocked user. In fact the admin made a large number of edits after the content dispute was resolved, before leaving the article for good. (none of the edits made by the admin after the content dispute were challenged at any time by anybody). Behaafarid (talk) 00:08, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

To the Persian WP admins - we are of course delighted to give assistance or advice to the admins of a sister project in any way that we can. However that does NOT mean that disputes from another project are permitted to be reignited over here on EN. Manning (talk) 00:38, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

In response to Behaafarid: the article in question is "criticism of the quran" and as you might expect it is a controversial topic. The recent conflict was only over removal of all the tags of the article, i.e. NPOV etc. Much of the article in question was in fact written by the blocking admin. The sections on the talk page of the article, discussing the neutrality violation, are about the writings of the blocking admin (that is Behaafarid who has written the above comment). It is no exaggeration to say that he is one of the main contributors of the article. Two days ago, two users (who were on the side of the Behaafarid in the content dispute) removed all the tags from the article without any consensus at the talk page. I reverted them only 3 times justifying it with a lack of consensus on the talk page, but was blocked by the admin. There are respected user on the Farsi Wikipedia that agree that I was right in restoring the tags. One of the two other users on the other side (that Behaafarid is referring to) was on, what might be called, probation. He was the user who started removing all the tags (who had little contributions to the article before by the way). He was blocked by another admin before my block for a host of policy violations (such as incivility). It is inaccurate to say that he was only blocked for his involvement in this issue. --DoostdarWiki (talk) 00:46, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I refrain from answering the allegations and other acts of skewing reality by you , since fellow English admins don't want to continue. Behaafarid (talk) 00:55, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I respect their comment that we should not continue here. Of course, if they are interested, they can ask Mardetanha or other Fa/En users for the details.--DoostdarWiki (talk) 01:02, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

There's nothing we can do for you here, except to express genuine sympathy. Perhaps what you need is more admins to allow the, er, less good ones to diminish in importance. Either way, it's something your community needs to decide for itself. ➜ Redvers^{❝It's bona to vada your dolly old eek❞} 21:18, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

As a matter of advice, I would say that staying away from an article for a month does not make an admin "uninvolved" if that admin had previously contibuted significantly to the content or was involved in prior disputes over the article. But this is something you need to work out for yourselves. Thatcher 00:32, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Non-WP:EN admins asking for advice

Without directly challenging Ryulong's closure of the discussion above, I'm not certain how a request by a sister project (the Persian WP) for advice on interpreting rules directly adopted from WP-EN is deemed as "not belonging here".

Given that meta users are no more likely to be familiar with WP-EN rules than the original poster was, I fail to see what service we provided by sending them to meta. (Of course, bringing actual disputes from sister projects here is never welcome). Manning (talk) 01:19, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Not withstanding the fact that the Farsi Wikipedia took their policies from the English Wikipedia, generally problems with one Wikipedia are dealt with on that Wikipedia and if things need to be dealt with any further, they go to Meta Wiki. The English Wikipedia should not be the police for all of the other projects, and at least not for WP:AN or WP:ANI.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 02:04, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't call it policing if they asked for advice. Equazcion (talk) 02:06, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Then I'll undo my edit. All I know is that there's a long history of other projects asking en.wiki to do things.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 02:13, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Merged with main thread. — Jake Wartenberg 02:15, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Ryulong - fully agreed about not fixing the problems of sister projects. But I believe we are by necessity an "older sibling" to the other projects. It is certainly not our role to do their laundry for them, but I think showing some benevolence on occasion is well worth it. Also, just for clarity I was not seeking to reopen the discussion as such, as I think we have actually gone as far as we can in assisting anyway. Thanks for your input, Manning (talk) 03:19, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps on smaller wikipedias there is an occasional need for external advice or even mediation, insofar as that can be done across language barriers. Given the activity levels on meta and en.wp it's obviously tempting to come here. Does Meta have a place where this might be handled? If so, it would be better for such cases to be handled there, with perhaps a note here that there is a current issue there which input from en.wp admins would be useful for. Rd232 ^talk 14:47, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, there is m:We need your help, and while it is often helpful (the Croatian incident, for example) it's not admin-specific. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 15:21, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Good enough - but it is fairly low traffic (34 threads in three years). I've added the link to Wikipedia:Meta, which was languishing a bit purposelessly, so I've adapted it to a similar purpose as the recently-created WP:Wikinews. Rd232 ^talk 01:42, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Concerns about the user Backslash Forwardslash

Resolved

 – nothing to see or do here. Jclemens (talk) 03:46, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

This administrator known as Backslash Forwardslash has been making new articles for deletion request every ten to twenty seconds and I fear that this could be hogging up discussions that were recently relisted for a more detailed consensus. FunnyDuckIsFunny (talk) 22:12, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

It is more like every other minute, and no, it is not an issue as the discussions are open 7 days so there is no "hogging" based on listed time. MBisanz ^talk 22:17, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I've finished, in any event. I told you here that a group AfD wouldn't work, as the articles are so different, but I hadn't noticed your comment following that. Pretty much what MBisanz said. \ Backslash Forwardslash / (talk) 22:19, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Vandalism

This post related to a specific problem, dispute, user, help request, or other narrow issue, and has been moved to the Administrators' noticeboard for incidents (ANI). Please look for it on that page. Thank you.

Tim Song (talk) 04:37, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Carter'’s warea protected against creation

I tried to create a Carter'’s warea as a redirect to Warea carteri, for which it is a common name, but

Carter'’s warea appears to be on a blacklist. Would an admin consider creating it? Thanks. --Rrburke^(talk) 20:51, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

What sort of error did you get? Prodego ^talk 21:39, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I've created this, but I suspect some obscure bug is being tickled here - clicking the formerly-red link triggered Mediawiki:Titleblacklist (the regex .*\p{Cc}.* <casesensitive> # Control characters , under # OTHER UNDESIRABLE CHARACTERS); copying the text to the search box did the same; but typing the text by hand worked and also turned the link above blue. Moreover, I don't see any invisible control character in the original link that would cause such a match. Unless this recurs, I don't know what to do about it, but I'm bringing it up nonetheless. — Gavia immer (talk) 22:08, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

What is that weird character between the apostrophe and the s? Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 22:09, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Okay, there is something there. I'm not sure what it is, because Firefox doesn't want to render it or copy it, but that's what's causing the problem. I'm not actually sure whether the parser bluelinking it is good or bad here. — Gavia immer (talk) 22:17, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I have heroically used Internet Explorer (don't worry, I have returned unharmed!) to identify the issue: a character from the Unicode Private Use Area. Such characters have no meaning in public communications, so the parser frankly ought to just strip them from submitted text. This is especially true given that Firefox seems to deal with them in a suboptimal way. — Gavia immer (talk) 22:33, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

It appears to be hex code 92, decimal 146, which is an undefined HTML character. Not that this will help; just thought I'm mention it. In the ASCII extended character set, it is a Right single quotation mark, and can be written with html code ’ - which looks like this: ’  Chzz  ►  07:32, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Hi... sorry: I cut-and-pasted the title text from a USFWS pdf file. It must've had a wonky character in it. Should've checked before posting here. Cheers! --Rrburke^(talk) 15:22, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Sal the Stockbroker

Moved to WP:ANI#Sal the Stockbroker. Someguy1221 (talk) 17:52, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Wack-a-mole hints and tips

I'm not sure if this is a general trend, but I've noticed an increasing incidence of block evading editors continuing to edit articles in my watchlist as IP socks or sock puppet accounts. There appears to now be a reasonable level of knowledge in the disruptive editor community about how to evade blocks, with the result that many of these characters can't be range blocked. Page protection can be reasonably effective in chasing them off (if they can't edit the pages they're obsessed with they tend to lose interest after a while) but is a bit of a blunt instrument as it also limits new and valuable IP editors. Does anyone have tips for countering these editors? Nick-D (talk) 07:13, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

This doesn't really help you in an immediate sense, but maybe learning about how they do it would give us clues on how to deal with it. Equazcion (talk) 07:20, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

WP:RBI? Ironholds (talk) 10:37, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

See if the edits come from a CIDR range, if so, a rangeblock may catch the lot of them. If the IP edits from the same person are completely random, it is likely they are using open proxies to mask their identity, so report them to WP:OPENPROXY for investigation. If its the former case, then the nice thing is a single rangeblock can shut them down. If its the latter case, then the user becomes a honeypot for open proxies. --Jayron32 02:06, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

It's an ongoing problem at the Reference Desks. Since they're 'walk-in' type pages, they see a lot of legitimate traffic from new or one-off editors to Wikipedia. Semiprotection for any significant period of time would effectively defeat the purpose of the pages, so we're stuck with RBI to keep damage down to a dull roar. On the topic of rangeblocks, caution should be used. It may be wise to consult a checkuser to get an idea of what sort of collateral damage would be incurred. (I know of at least one pernicious Ref Desk troll whose ISP seems to assign floating IPs from a pool of at least a full /16; he seems to be able to get a new IP by resetting his router/modem, and he's not above aging a drawer of hundreds of socks to defeat semiprotection or anon-only blocks.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:43, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

You don't need a checkuser to do collateral damage checks. Go to "my preferences" and click on the "Allow /16 and /24 – /32 CIDR ranges on Special:Contributions forms (uses API), as well as wildcard prefix searches, e.g., "Splark*". (Please report any issues here.)" Then, you can enter an IP range like 121.140.0.0/16 and it will return a full list of edits by any anonymous user in that range, colated by IP address. Very useful tool in planning and implementing rangeblocks. --Jayron32 19:56, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

a request.

Resolved

 – semi-protected by User:Chamal N

Hey Guys

i asked for protection here and I was wondering if I could get some response. Since i filed it, it has been vandalized and un-vandalized 18 times. Just when someone gets the chance... Tim1357 (talk) 23:30, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

DYK is almost overdue (resolved)

Maybe it's just my sleep-deprived brain, but the DYK Guide (which I just looked at in an effort to help) doesn't make much sense to me; maybe someone experienced with DYK could have a look and see if it can be improved. Anyway, can't we just let DYK fall back on random old DYKs? These messages are getting a bit frequent. Rd232 ^talk 13:27, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

The problem is, one of the administrators who used to do this most of the time is indisposed at the current time and likely will be for the forseeable future. No one appears to have taken up the slack. Until someone takes this job on voluntarily, we will continue to get these notices with some regularity. --Jayron32 19:52, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Is this approving hooks or just placing approved hooks into the queue? MuZemike 23:07, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

DYKadminbot's message is about the next queue being empty, so placing approved hooks from the prep areas into the queue. :) Not a stupid question, btw. –Katerenka ^☆ 23:09, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Got the backlog, removed the templated text. — Jake Wartenberg 02:48, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Arbitration Committee motion regarding Date delinking

The Arbitration Committee has passed a motion further amending Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Date delinking.

Wikipedia:Date formatting and linking poll, Wikipedia talk:Full-date unlinking bot#RFC, and Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Full-date unlinking bot indicate that Full-date unlinking bot (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights) fulfills the requirement for "a Community approved process for the mass delinking" in "1.3 Mass date linking" and the requirement for "[d]ate delinking bots [performing] in a manner approved by the Bot Approvals Group" in "2.1 Date delinking bots". The Committee thanks the participants for their efforts and encourages them to continue with their constructive work and consensus building.

The discussion and voting on this motion has been archived at Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Date_delinking#Date_delinking_bots_2.

For the Arbitration Committee, Manning (talk) 10:44, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Discuss this

A board & process to address multiple point copyright infringers

• WP:CCI

Wikipedia has several processes in place for dealing with limited copyright concerns--single articles or files, even a small grouping of these--but no workable process for dealing with massive multiple point infringement. While WP:COPYCLEAN has attempted to fill this gap with Wikipedia:WikiProject Copyright Cleanup/Contributor surveys, this solution is not ideal. It is difficult to publicize and to regulate, and in addition it may seem to suggest exclusivity. I hope that generalizing clean-up will encourage other contributors as well as making it easier to publicize the investigation option at relevant policies and guidelines. (To substantiate the need for this, I need only point out the listings currently at Wikipedia:WikiProject Copyright Cleanup/Contributor surveys and those few which have already archived. Additionally, these come up routinely at ANI, where response is hit-and-miss, depending on who is reviewing ANI in a given day.) The processes proposed are based on existing policies and practices for handling copyright problems (I've worked with many of these); the board is inspired in large part by WP:SPI. More information is available at the process page and in the purpose statement at the process talk.

I think this is critically needed. Wikipedia has chosen to address copyright concerns proactively, demonstrating due diligence, and when we know a contributor has widely violated copyright, we must have a streamlined process for handling it. The primary point for text copyright issues, WP:CP, cannot handle this specific situation: a listing such as Wikipedia:CCI/Singingdaisies would bring it to a halt.

Please help address this need. Your comments are much welcome at WT:CCI. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:23, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

any additional board is another place to check, and only a few regulars will do so, increasing ownership and decreasing general scrutiny and awareness. My comment is not intended to reflect adversely on the particular need or desirability of this proposal. DGG ( talk ) 20:48, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Just bring it here, we can deal with it. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 21:15, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually, DGG, part of the problem is that the additional board handling it is connected to a Wikiproject, and I think moving it away from said project will decrease ownership. User:Zscout370, who are the "we" you have in mind? Wikipedia:WikiProject Copyright Cleanup/Contributor surveys has nine of these currently open. Some of them are quite old. Some involve hundreds of articles. One recently completed was listed at WP:ANI, and so far as I know I was the only person there (aside from the lister) to contribute to it. If it were not for User:Kateshortforbob, the cleanup listing would still be open. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 21:56, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

I'll reiterate my request for feedback at WT:CCI. Particularly now that I've opened the RfC, we wouldn't want to fragment the conversation. I had already requested feedback at Village Pump, but so far no one seems to have responded...which is, really, kind of par for the course for copyright problems. :/ --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 22:32, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

User:Yankees10 and User:Johnny Spasm proposed editing restriction

Moved from WP:ANI - looks like this was probably the better place for it. Wknight94 ^talk 20:26, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

A nasty situation has formed between User:Yankees10 and User:Johnny Spasm. They were both recently blocked for edit warring at Pete Rose. For background, Johnny Spasm does some good work fleshing out baseball bio articles, but has some WP:OWN issues and is having difficulty maintaining his composure, esp. as witnessed by three other blocks earlier this year (unrelated to Yankees10). Yankees10 also edits mostly sports articles and does a lot of good work getting infoboxes consistent and fighting vandalism. My probably-oversimplified view is that Johnny Spasm doesn't like "his" articles edited, but Yankees10 edits every article. So they have come into full-blown conflict for the last month or two and both reached a new low as far as civility. The latest gems include [44], [45], [46], and [47].

I'm not sure the best course to bring an end to this but something the lines of:

Yankees10 restricted to not talk about or to Johnny Spasm or edit or discuss articles which have undergone recent overhauls by Johnny Spasm. Desired changes can be brought up at WT:BASEBALL.

Johnny Spasm restricted to not talk about or to Yankees10 and is restricted to 1RR on articles on which he has performed recent overhauls.

I haven't composed or participated in writing edit restrictions, so anyone is free to improve these. I am trying to be fair while preventing an all-out war. Wknight94 ^talk 17:09, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Not bad, although I'd add "both editors are reminded to stay civil at all times" since while this is mainly a content problem, it got ugly with the incivility.--Giants27(Contribs|WP:CFL) 17:52, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Topic ban proposal - Otterathome / web content

Since Otterathome (talk · contribs) is showing a complete inability to step away from the morbid equine, I would like to propose the following community ban.

Otterathome (talk · contribs) is banned by the community, for a period of one year, from any interactions relating to web content, including web series, actors/writers/production staff involved in web series, news sites covering them, and other topics as deemed appropriate by the evaluating administrator. This ban includes articles, talk pages, and discussions in the Wikipedia namespace. Infractions should be handled with escalating blocks.

Opinions? --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:56, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Is it a good idea for someone involved with a user to be proposing bans? Which diffs actually show something like incivility, revert warring or other bad behavior rather than just relentless pursuit of the removal of low quality sourcing? SchmuckyTheCat (talk) 18:28, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't see anything wrong with _proposing_ a ban. _Implementing_ would be an issue. And the issue is his refusal to accept anyone's definition but his own of appropriate sourcing/notability/etc. A brief scan of his recent contributions shows him asking the same questions over and over again, making the same threats to remove material against consensus, etc.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:39, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Related links:

• Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive569#Hounding.2FGaming_by_admin_SarekOfVulcan
• Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive202#AFD_closing.
• User:Otterathome/Deletion discussions

It amazes me how one admin can continue violate admin policies and push the envelope of WP:HOUND so far. Yet I'm the one in the wrong every time.--Otterathome (talk) 18:54, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Location of ban discussions being discussed at WT:BAN.

Shouldn't this discussion be at WP:ANI? Beeblebrox (talk) 20:28, 22 October 2009 (UTC) ANI should be for incidents requiring prompt admin intervention. This should be a longer discussion. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:30, 22 October 2009 (UTC) imo AN is the correct venue for community/topic ban proposals. –xenotalk 20:31, 22 October 2009 (UTC) And actually, right at the top of ANI, it says to go here for a ban discussion. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:32, 22 October 2009 (UTC) (ec) I'm not going to get involved in the dispute here, but I think that ANI is correct. I watch AN in order to see notices intended for admins. The editnotice for the page says "If your post is about a specific problem you have (a dispute, user, help request, or other narrow issue needing an administrator), you should post it at the Administrators' noticeboard for incidents (ANI) instead. Thank you.", not "only discussions needing prompt admin intervention". I don't see how the timeframe matters, but having discussions like this on AN seems contrary to its purpose... to inform admins of things. Take disputes to ANI—where you report incidents—and keep AN to "issues affecting administrators generally" (as it says in the editnotice). –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 20:35, 22 October 2009 (UTC) A community or topic ban proposal belongs here, imo. Made some arguments on this here. Agree with Drilnoth this should be discussed elsewhere though. –xenotalk 20:40, 22 October 2009 (UTC) From the header of ANI: To start a ban discussion, see the administrators' noticeboard. Seems pretty clear....--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:41, 22 October 2009 (UTC) Indeed, but I think a few months back the AN verbiage was changed to try and shuffle a lot of stuff off of it, so it no longer appears welcoming to ban discussions. Anyhow, I've initiated a thread here: Wikipedia talk:Banning policy#What is the correct venue for a community or topic ban proposal?. –xenotalk 20:44, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Sarek, you don't seem to be acknowledging the two points being made in response to your post. #1 as someone involved in disputes with Otter you shouldn't be proposing a ban, and #2 normal procedure for reporting problematic behavior (after discussion hasn't helped in resolving the issues) is ANI. If in the course of that discussion editors and admins feel a ban is appropriate they will suggest it.

I suggest you post your diffs and links to past discussions there with a request that uninvolved parties have a look at the history. Suggesting your preferred remedies isn't helpful because it biases the discussion towards your opinions, which carry the added weight of being an Admin. At the very least you should disclose that your involved and aren't an uninvolved third party making a report. It's not good form for an Admin to recommend someone they are in dispute with be banned for reasons that should be obvious. ChildofMidnight (talk) 21:02, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I see nothing wrong with an involved person proposing a ban. If nobody else agrees, so be it. BTW, CoM, do you have to complain about every administrative action every time somebody posts anything to AN or ANI? There was an administrator a few years back who got topic banned from ANI for repeatedly questioning admin actions. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 21:36, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I think it's a bit of an exageration to suggest I complain about "every administrative action". Having endured administrative abuse and incompetence on several occasions, I am well aware of the damage it can do. So I think it's very important to speak up when situations aren't being handled appropriately. Blocks and bans are potent tools that can do a lot of harm if used improperly, and we need to make sure those with power here lead by example and behave with civility and respect towards their fellow editors. Many admins would benefit from doing more in the way of mediation and discussion when dealing with good faith content contributors, instead of drawing and firing at the first sign of trouble. For example, in this instance I have suggested that Otter might benefit from some mentoring. The ways of the Wiki are not intuitive. I always prefer to see problems get solved and worked out in a collegial and collaborative manner. Whatever the outcome, Sarek's campaigning is inappropriate. ChildofMidnight (talk) 23:33, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not going to comment on the suitability/unsuitability of some users for mentoring. However, I agree with Who then was a gentleman only so far as noting that there is generally nothing wrong or inappropriate with an involved person "proposing" a ban (at least in this case), and users who participate in the discussion tend to take that into consideration when going through the discussion anyway. Ncmvocalist (talk) 13:49, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

It's long been standard practice that reports are supposed to be neutral and that disputants are expected to refrain from asking for particular sancitons. If there is an exception for involved admins that would be a particularly unseemly and inappropriate double standard. ChildofMidnight (talk) 19:37, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Huh? Irrespective of whether they are editors or have additional tools/privilleges, since when has it been a standard practice (or expectation) at AN/ANI for an involved user to refrain from proposing or asking for particular sanctions? I've been here since late '06, and it has never been an expectation/standard, except for users who fail to show a reasonable level of good judgement and common sense in their proposals. Users who fall under that exception risk having their proposals consistently/repeatedly rejected by the community and being sanctioned (as has happened in the past) - but that exception does not apply here. That Sarek imposed one unjustified block upon you, well over 2 months ago, does not entitle you to respond by exercising poor judgement with regards to Sarek now - your comments were (particularly the usage of the highly-charged word "campaigning") very inappropriate here, even in substance, and you need to avoid such comments if you don't want others to needlessly exhaust their patience with you. There was nothing unseemly here, and your perception of double standards, at least in this case, is unfounded. I hope that clarifies. Ncmvocalist (talk) 20:27, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree, it is perfectly OK to post a report and recommend a course of action. I don't know how you got the idea that this is not encouraged, ChildofMidnight. Tim Vickers (talk) 20:44, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

A fairly useful link to a past discussion is Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive202#AFD closing, in the course of which I proposed a community ban on deletion discussions for Otter which did not obtain consensus.

Here's a series of diffs where Otter asks over and over again which sources are independent and non-trivial.

• • October 4, 20:40
  • October 4, 20:53
  • October 4, 20:59
  • October 11, 19:12

Here's Otter repeatedly removing a criticism of his article tags, despite being reverted and/or told not to do it by a couple of other editors and admins.

• • October 11, 13:48
  • October 11, 18:06
  • October 16, 10:31
  • October 18, 17:33

Also, see this series of deletion/merge/DRV discussions:

• • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/LG15: The Last, August 3
  • Talk:LG15: The Last#Merge, August 12
  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/LG15: The Last (2nd nomination), September 13
  • Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2009 September 15, September 15

--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:46, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Well yes, you've posted a series of diffs where Otter asks repeatedly for people to explain how an article meets our guidelines. Since this was an AfD discussion, where people are supposed to provide evidence that articles meet our guidelines for inclusion, I fail to see how this is in any way inappropriate. Tim Vickers (talk) 04:52, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

The problem with any discussion of otter is it takes a fair amount of text to acquaint you to his ways if you haven't run across him. But he was blocked twice this month for being unable to back away from disputes in this area; his own user page is blocked from editing for another dispute. Admin Manning noted he could be very annoying (i know, he has caused me to lose some steam). I would think Otter could voluntarily apply his skills outside molehill-mountains of articles like Tubefilter, but he has not. --Milowent (talk) 05:07, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually, Tim, those are all from the talkpage of just one of the articles that Otter has bent his attention on over the past couple of months. The deletion discussions linked above are a different article. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 12:10, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Both sets of diffs are very concerning - especially the latter; if this is a repeated occurence, I'm seeing why some sort of sanctions may be warranted for the smooth functioning of the project. Ncmvocalist (talk) 20:44, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

More relevant diffs -- Otter @ GigaOM

• September 14, tags for notability
• September 15, asserts on talk that article "doesn't meet guidelines"
• September 15, when asked what guidelines the article doesn't meet, he pastes the notability template into talk
• October 3, tags for notability again, despite added independent refs
• October 3, claims that a ref about a conference organized by GigaOM was "Article about a conference the website owner attended, nothing much to do with the website"

--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 12:32, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Reading the GigaOM takpage, Otter comes across as a bit uncommunicative, but the initial response by Milowent of "otterathome has a vendetta against webseries related articles going on that is sad and pathetic" is a blatant attempt to personalize the discussion though an ad hominem attack. Even if you believe this to be true, how would making a comment like that going to help matters in any way? After comments like this Otter did a commendable job of sticking to a policy and source-based discussion. Tim Vickers (talk) 17:58, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but see the October 3 diff above where he completely misrepresents one of the supplied sources. That's not sticking to a sourced-based discussion, IMO. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:08, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

From my reading, he made a mistake and was corrected. Once his mistake was pointed out, he didn't persist in that argument. If he had continued to press that view I agree it would be disruptive editing. However, if he makes lots of these "mistakes", then that would exhaust my good faith. I'm not seeing a major problem since it isn't like these articles on Tubefilter, GigaOM and the like are clearly notable, but are rather borderline cases where people's opinions can reasonably differ. Tim Vickers (talk) 18:21, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Tubefilter may be of borderline notability, but GigaOM isn't even close to borderline. It's Otter's determination to get these articles deleted without being able to tell the difference that's the problem here. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:27, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I'd respectfully disagree there, the sourcing is pretty weak and the only in-depth independent source is from Valleywag, which mostly focuses on the author (who already has a separate article) not the blog itself. I agree it isn't in clear delete per WP:N territory since it is mentioned in some lists of notable blogs, but it seems reasonable to argue that the article does a poor job of establishing notability since none of the sources actually discuss and analyze the subject of the article. Tim Vickers (talk) 18:33, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm of a similar to view to Tim in this set; it is a bit too borderline, particularly based on the last diff. At first, I was very much reminded of the type of problem editing that I found with Mythdon. But it's harder to judge in this set of diffs (not links) than it was in the last set Ncmvocalist (talk) 20:55, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I looked at the references on GigaOM, they suck. Someone who is persistent in asking for articles this to get better sourcing is doing a GOOD JOB. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

I could look for more diffs, but I'd kind of like evidence I'm not the only one interested in this... Checking with the other people who have been involved would be a violation of WP:CANVASS.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:09, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

For the purposes of considering whether to file a RfC/U, it would not be an issue to check whether other involved people have encountered similar issues, and have evidence they wish to present. Ncmvocalist (talk) 21:16, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

You mean you want to get all the people who have disagreed with my deletion nominations to create mass drama to make me look like the bad guy. Like we've done once already. When you bring diffs on the same level as these [48][49], then you might have a case. Enforcing the deletion policy is not disruptive.

But if I was an admin and somebody kept trying to delete types articles I didn't want deleted, instead of discussing it with them I'd persistently stalk and hound them and keep requesting topic bans to stop them at all costs in an attempt to drive them off the website. Oh wait..--Otterathome (talk) 18:04, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Non-involved opinion

This should be closed. No evidence has been brought forth other than editorial and policy interpretation disagreements. SchmuckyTheCat (talk) 18:37, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

As another non-involved opinion, I disagree with the above assessment, and find at least half of the diffs (not links) presented are concerning. Should this be closed (as I make no comment on whether it is ready to close at this time), RfC/U would be the alternative venue to consider any further evidence. Ncmvocalist (talk) 21:16, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

• Personally, as someone who is involved, I'd like to see OaH do other things. His record of AfDs since May has been 20 deleted, and 15 not deleted. Few people have such a poor record of success. But what bothers me more is his persistence in placing 2nd and 3rd nominations when the article gets kept, even when he sees the consensus at the 1st is very strong. His % of success here is zero. But I still can not see banning him for this any more than doing similarly for someone on the other side. There seem to be many fewer problems of this sort lately, possibly as a response to these discussions, so discussing it does seem to have been having an effect. I wouldn't support even doing an RfC unless the pattern resumes. DGG ( talk ) 23:50, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Since consensus has been against me each time I've proposed sanctions involving Otterathome, I'm backing off. I'll unwatch the pages I added to keep an eye on him. There are definitely continuing issues involving his interactions with some of the other editors, though, so someone should continue watching to make sure they don't get out of hand. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 02:53, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

New master sockpuppet template

Hello. With the proliferation of various flavors of sockpuppet and sockpuppeteer templates, I have worked on consolidating. When it came to {{Sockpuppeteer}}, there were no inherent contradictions between parameter naming and usage between the variations, and I was able to adjust the existing template to be both backwards compatible and pretty much totally inclusive. However, when it came to {{sockpuppet}}, that was not the case. I worked on a new template, which can be found at User:Avraham/Sandbox/SPOM with many (but not all) permutations of its usage. However, this would call for a re-mapping of existing parameters. The mapping can be found at WT:SPI#Single sockpuppet template. While it is not complete, it should cover >99.9% of the 49K+ instances of the templates. We have discussed this many times at WT:SPI (see Wikipedia talk:Sockpuppet investigations/Archives/Archive4#First stab at combined sockpuppet template, Wikipedia talk:Sockpuppet investigations/Archives/Archive5#New combined sockpuppet template, and Wikipedia talk:Sockpuppet investigations/Archives/Archive6#Are we giving up on the combined sockpuppet template? for examples. Recently, the issue arose again at WT:SPI#Sock template cleanup. At this point, we would like some more input whether or not there would be any serious opposition to a bot-driven replacement and re-mapping of the templates, that would break most of them while the process is in progress. Also, there is an alternative template under discussion at WT:SPI, {{Sockpuppetry}}. Any and all input would be appreciated. Thank you. -- Avi (talk) 06:57, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Need Admin attention at DYK queues

Last update at 6 hours. Two preps full and update needed. Can an Admin move up the preps to free up the prep area. Thanks ♠ B.s.n. ♥R.N. 07:16, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Moved one to queue 4, uploaded and protected the image, but have to go now! Bencherlite^Talk 08:11, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2009

Yes it's that time of year again. As many as EIGHT Arbitration Committee seats are up for consideration.

Timeline:

• Now - getting organised & finalising details
• November 10 - nominations and candidate questions begin
• December 1 - Voting begins
• December 14 - Voting ends
• January 1, 2010 - new candidates take their seats.

Potential candidates are advised to start thinking about their statements. Volunteers are also invited to sign on to help with the housekeeping involved in an election.

The 2009 ArbCom election page

Manning (talk) 16:07, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Volunteers for helping set up and monitor the elections, join us at the co-ordination page.  Skomorokh, barbarian  16:47, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

United States

Stale

 – The edit war seems to have died down. If this reoccurs, please report to WP:ANEW. NW (Talk) 03:36, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

DCGeist (talk · contribs) seems to be getting into edit wars with several people on this article. It may be constructive, i'll leave that determination to you and abstain from further interaction with him due to this posting, I can provide diffs if needed. Doc Quintana (talk) 21:29, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

WP:RM Backlog

Hi. Sorry if it's bad form to go behind the automatic process, but I think that someone should take a look at WP:RM. Nearly three weeks' backlog at the moment... Tevildo (talk) 22:33, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes there's already been several requests to clean up the backlog in WP:RM. Anyone willing to help out see Wikipedia:Requested moves/Closing instructions. -- œ^™ 10:50, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I've knocked off two dozen; still plenty to go around.  Skomorokh, barbarian  11:43, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Arbitration Committee Elections 2009 - Invitation for Questions

Preparations are ongoing for the 2009 Arbitration Committee Elections, which will be held in December. The first step in the process is generating a list of General Questions that will be submitted by template to all candidates in this year's election. Questions may be broad and philisophical in nature, or may deal with a specific incident or case from the past year (or prior). General questions may not deal with an individual candidate or candidates - All editors will have a chance to ask specific questions or one or more candidates directly, once we actually have candidates.

The submission of questions is limited to editors eligible to vote in the election (You may use this utility to check your eligibility.), but all editors will be invited to discuss the candidates, once we have candidates to discuss. Questions should be submitted at The General Questions page. If you have additional questions or concerns regarding the question process, please ask here. Thank you for participating. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 12:56, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Children of the Nations

User:Usdemocrat is continually adding unsourced controversial text to the Children of the Nations article. Can someone take a look at this? DCEdwards¹⁹⁶⁶ 20:34, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

This is unsourced and controversial, and there is no sign of intent to discuss. Just blind reverts. Usdemocrat is now at 5RR; I'd file at WP:ANEW but I can't stay online long enough to link the diffs. --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:43, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

PR lost in the page move shuffle

When pages got moved Wikipedia:Peer_review/Carlos_Zambrano/archive1 got lost in the shuffle. I believe it belongs to the soccer player but is badly linked on the baseball player's talk page. I am not sure if the PR was suppose to be moved or if {{ArticleHistory}} just needs to be updated.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 02:41, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

It's for the baseball player, see the second bullet point in the review.--Giants27(Contribs|WP:CFL) 02:43, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I've also now moved the page to Wikipedia:Peer review/Carlos Zambrano (baseball)/archive1.--Giants27(Contribs|WP:CFL) 02:46, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Children of the Nations

User:Usdemocrat is continually adding unsourced controversial text to the Children of the Nations article. Can someone take a look at this? DCEdwards¹⁹⁶⁶ 20:34, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

This is unsourced and controversial, and there is no sign of intent to discuss. Just blind reverts. Usdemocrat is now at 5RR; I'd file at WP:ANEW but I can't stay online long enough to link the diffs. --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:43, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

PR lost in the page move shuffle

When pages got moved Wikipedia:Peer_review/Carlos_Zambrano/archive1 got lost in the shuffle. I believe it belongs to the soccer player but is badly linked on the baseball player's talk page. I am not sure if the PR was suppose to be moved or if {{ArticleHistory}} just needs to be updated.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 02:41, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

It's for the baseball player, see the second bullet point in the review.--Giants27(Contribs|WP:CFL) 02:43, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I've also now moved the page to Wikipedia:Peer review/Carlos Zambrano (baseball)/archive1.--Giants27(Contribs|WP:CFL) 02:46, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Persistent adding of unsourced POV material

The user User:Haider Ebrahim is persistently attempting to add unsourced , POV material to the article Muslim Zionism despite multiple warnings. Marokwitz (talk) 18:07, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

First of all, this doesn't really belong here, this probably should have been taken to WP:ANI instead, or better still dispute resolution. Secondly, I see no attempt has been made to discuss this matter on the article talk page. Thirdly, this appears to be a new user and therefore we really should assume that he's not up to speed with Wikipedia policies yet - indeed, the only attempt at communicating with him have been warning templates placed on his talk page, which is pretty bitey to say the least. Bettia (talk) 14:52, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Are you saying that using standard templates violates WP:BITE? I disagree. The messages are polite and informative. Auntie E. 16:39, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

A template that essentialy says "Stop vandalizing this site or you will be blocked" is pretty damned bitey to a new user that is not explicitly vandalizing, yes. Shereth 16:41, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Agree with Shereth. This user never vandalized the project. Bettia wasn't calling templating bitey; they were calling the specific template used in the wrong situation bitey. Tan | 39 16:44, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lucia Gorea

Would somebody please close and archive this AfD? The article has already been deleted under WP:CSD#G7 but the AfD still needs to be formally closed. An IP, 96.49.98.172, tried to blank the AfD. It could be the subject or the author of the article requesting courtesy blanking of the AFD, I am not sure. Perhaps the closing admin may want to courtesy blank the AfD (or at least consider it as an option). Thanks, 98.212.63.90 (talk) 15:37, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Done. Tan | 39 15:42, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

OK, thanks. 98.212.63.90 (talk) 15:45, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

• A reminder: we can use {{nn-userfy}} in these cases, it is less WP:BITEy. Guy (Help!) 15:49, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Less bitey than what? I can't find any bitey edits. Tan | 39 16:20, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Scientology The French branch of the Church of Scientology convicted of fraud

Just thought i'd drop a note here. Scientology leaders in France have been convicted of fraud in that court. The information has already been added to several Scientology-related articles. However, since Scientology has a history of using Wikipedia for their own agenda, and is under arbcom restrictions, I think it might be prudent to have some admins keep an eye on Scientology-related articles for smearing or whitewashing, from either side. Thanks, The Wordsmith^Communicate 14:21, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I'd just like to point out that Scientology is an idea, and as such, is not bound to legal concepts like "fraud". As a belief system, it cannot be taken to court and convicted of legal wrongdoings. People are convicted of fraud. This is of course, nothing to say about the validity of Scientology one way or the other, just that we should be careful in the ways in which we describe events, like in the title of this thread. --Jayron32 14:57, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

This is right and wrong: the concept of scientology as a religion is widely thought to be fraudulent, a deliberate scam by L Ron Hubbard to game the IRS. However, in France, the convictions undoubtedly apply to individuals not to the organisation. Guy (Help!) 15:52, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually, looking at the news reports, the French judge brought to trial two entities: the church itself and one of their bookshops in France, and seven of their members. Not sure which were convicted and which weren't. At most the title should say "the French branch of the Church of Scientology", since the church itself is represented by legal entities that can be, and have already been, sued and fined at a couple of places.guardian article 9 September 2008 You are totally right in that "Scientology" itself is an ideology, this title here is probably just a handy shorcut to "Church of Scientology". You are right in that we should be careful in the wording, and I have changed it. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:50, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps the best course of action here is "Just the facts, Ma'am." Wikipedia's administrators often share a heads-up about possible vandalism when an event hits the news. The original wording of this heads-up has been corrected and appears to be reasonably accurate now. Related but abstract discussions are unnecessary. Durova³⁴⁸ 16:07, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

You are correct, the title was just a shortcut to Church of Scientology, and I wasn't insinuating that a belief was convicted of fraud (which would be silly). In my post, I said "Scientology leaders in France", so I was assuming people would pay attention to that part of it. The Wordsmith^Communicate 02:58, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Informing editors of ANI threads

Many editors who are the subject of threads at WP:ANI are not being notified of the discussion as required by the notice at the top of the page. Also, some editors are raising ANI threads without discussing the issues with the editor in question first.

What is the best way to deal with these issues? One way would be for us admins to refuse to accept the complaint where there has been no prior discussion with the editor being complained about and/or the editor being complained about has not been notified of the raising of the issue at ANI. Mjroots (talk) 11:44, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

For the first situation, I'd think the path of least drama would be for the first responsible commentor in to take a look and see if the second party has been notified, and if not leave a courtesy note. On the second situation, if it's something that should be able to be worked out between the two parties if they tried, that would be my suggestion. Ask them to try discussing it.--Cube lurker (talk) 13:44, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Don't forget that this used to not be a rule, and it was added to the top of the page only recently. In fact, I can clearly remember when people were told it was common courtesy to notify the subjects and they actually refused to do so. So now that it's become a rule, it's far easier to just notify the subject without getting into a war about whose responsibility it is to do it. 99.166.95.142 (talk) 15:36, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I spend about 10 minutes a day, at various points, patrolling new threads on ANI about other editors. I then take a look at their talk page to make certain they have been notified. If not, I drop the ANI-notice on their talk page. In essence, I assigned myself to be a clerk of a sorts. Yes, editors opening a thread about another editor must make all parties informed. If that doesn't happen then we should try to make sure of it. Basket of Puppies 22:02, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Chako Paul City

Just for you information...

• Chinese media finger Swedish lesbian enclave, 6th October 2009, theregister.co.uk
• Almighty rumpus in Swedish lesbian enclave - Drunken Welshmen cop a pink pasting, 9th October 2009, theregister.co.uk.

We diskussed this issue today on de:Wikipedia:Auskunft#Xinhua entdeckt geheime Stadt in Nordschweden a little research showed this to be a hoax/fake. Since I'm not 100 % sure what to do whith the en article - I thought it might be the best idea to give you a hint. Kind regards, --Nemissimo (talk) 16:58, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I've adjusted the wording a little to make it more clear it is fictional, with a couple more citations. Probably not an admin issue, but thanks for the information. -kotra (talk) 04:40, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Need for new guideline

Resolved

 – Administrators have no special standing in establishing new guidelines. In this highly sensitive matter it may be best to consult the Arbitration Committee directly regarding recommended practice, since appeals would go to ArbCom anyway.

Durova³⁴⁸ 21:39, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Seriously, the crafting of proposals for site guidelines is not a function of this noticeboard.

I recently learned [50] [51] that Wikipedia has a block on sight policy on paedophiles identified through on or off wikipedia activities. As someone who watched a lot of shit go down on LiveJournal a couple of years ago (great fun, Harry Potter fen getting bumped off the site in the mistaken belief they were child abusers) due to the absence of clear policy, I am concerned that we don't have this written up anywhere, and don't have a guideline as to how to deal with particularly off-wiki evidence of paedophilia. Posting a "blocked for paedophilia" message [52] is a point of no return - even with oversight it could be hard to restore a reputation if the blocking admin was wrong (I'm not referring to situations where the editor has been actively promoting paedophilia on Wikipedia, but where the evidence comes from off-wiki). To protect users and admins, there should be a guideline that covers investigation and when and how to 'out' an editor as a paedophile. I'm prepared to write same (I had a limited hand in the LJ policy rewrite) but it might create an unwanted shitstorm, so I thought I'd post the idea here first, before actually doing anything. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 17:21, 28 October 2009 (UTC) The block was ostensibly due to "pro-paedophilia activism" (block log, notification); I can only assume no administrator would do something as repugnant and disgraceful as block an editor because of their sexual orientation. I should hope it goes without saying that there is no such policy on this project.  Skomorokh, barbarian  18:26, 28 October 2009 (UTC) Addendum to this; it seems that I am in the minority to understand the term paedophilia to refer to a sexual orientation, and that this use might be idiosyncratic or insensitive. Apologies for any confusion.  Skomorokh, barbarian  02:31, 29 October 2009 (UTC) Ryan's been fairly clear that the block was because of this [53] (it shouldn't get you picked up by the Feds, but probably safer not to access at work), and that Wikipedia policy is that paedophiles may not edit Wikipedia at all. The blockee has made no edits to Wikipedia which appear to advocate having sex with anything, as far as I can identify (I've been monitoring him for quite a while - he makes terrible redirects and got into quite a lot of trouble for it). My concern is that on the basis of evidence as limited as this, a number of persons caught up in the LJ strikethrough would be barred from editing Wikipedia and targeted (again) as paedophiles/child molestors, even though they are exclusively females writing m/m slash involving fictional characters which are fictionally underage. Hence my desire for a clear guideline which covers how any off wiki investigation is to be carried out where there is not also on wiki evidence of either paedophile activity or advocacy of unlawful sexual activities. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 19:17, 28 October 2009 (UTC) Admins block if they are concerned and refer to ArbCom by email for review. This is one of the few narrow areas that open discussion is not in the best interest of Wikipedia. If you have questions or concerns about this, please contact the arbitration committee's mailing list. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 19:37, 28 October 2009 (UTC) FloNight, it's that sequence exactly which is bothering me. They block AND THEN inform ArbCom for review. At which point, the editor has already been labelled a paedophile. You shouldn't be publicly sticking that label on people UNTIL it has been through a process. That's what I want the guideline for - to say that if you discover a suspected paedophile through an off-wiki source, you wait until more eyes have examined it. You can watch the editor like a hawk, you can even block them, but labelling them a paedophile on the say so of a single admin is opening the admin up to a potential host of problems if they have it wrong. Elen of the Roads (talk) 20:08, 28 October 2009 (UTC) Elen, Ryan Postlethwaite is not the source of Wikipedia policy, these pages are, and I would be extremely surprised to find a specific Wikipedia policy that condoned blocks of that rationale. The relevant policy here as far as I can tell is Wikipedia is open to all, which I quote in full: It is not an accepted practice to ban users from editing Wikipedia unless they are actively disrupting, endangering, or otherwise harming the project. Such bannings usually require either broad community consensus, an action from the Arbitration Committee, or an action from Jimbo Wales. In addition, "The Wikimedia Foundation prohibits discrimination against current or prospective users and employees on the basis of race, color, gender, religion, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, or any other legally protected characteristics." - http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Non_discrimination_policy As FloNight alludes, it would be not be wise to rush to conclusions or try to formulate responses (such as guidelines) until the facts of the matter have been responsibly investigated, the case-specific outcomes discussed, and the dust settled.  Skomorokh, barbarian  20:29, 28 October 2009 (UTC) Not trying to say Ryan is - it's clear he considers there is a lead on this. I'm not asking for anything to be done about this block. What concerns me is the sequence whereby a single individual can brand an editor a paedophile. That is not a good way to do things. A policy that says 'the information has been reviewed by ArbCom, and will not be released except to the editor concerned' is wouldl be one way to go. Elen of the Roads (talk) 21:10, 28 October 2009 (UTC) Such bans have been common for a long time, although generally it is better for neutral block log entries and notices that refer people to the arbitration committee. My view on these is that all such blocks should, if possible, come directly from arbitrators with a specific note that the block is "per ArbCom." This avoids problems with scarlett letters and wishy-washy evidence, and limits on-wiki discussion of something that can be (and has been) very inflammatory. Nathan T 20:54, 28 October 2009 (UTC) Nathan, quite. I would expect Wikipedia to need and have policies about how to deal with suspected paedophiles - having observed the LJ debacle, I can testify to the chaos that emerges when things are being done 'on the fly'. I have no wish to create an environment that is paedophile friendly. However 'I call 'em as I see 'em' leaves the administrator open to criticism (and potentially worse if they get it wrong). Some guidance as you describe would be quite appropriate, along with a line in WP:BAN that clarifies the position of paedophiles vis a vis Wikipedia would cover it. The guidance could specifically state that bans are issued by Arbcom and evidence will not be released to anyone but 'the accused' without a court order. Elen of the Roads (talk) 21:06, 28 October 2009 (UTC) Previous experience has shown that having a (visible, debatable) policy attracts odious trouble in and of itself, due to people thinking that we're a nifty social experiment that just happens to have an encyclopedia lying around for some reason. The Arbcom approach is the only one that lets us concentrate on being an encyclopedia; it's far from perfect, but every other approach is much worse. — Gavia immer (talk) 22:10, 28 October 2009 (UTC) (edit conflict):::Disagree. LJ showed that. Having a sound procedure to point to should damp down drama - by the time it hits the storefront, the evidence has been reviewed, and a verdict handed down. Sound procedure also protects the foundation - the Wikimedia servers are in the US I believe, and so are covered by US law (this came out with LJ). A paedophile in cyberspace may be being tracked by law enforcement, and depending on the evidence, there may be things which should be referred to the authorities. In other areas of this type there are some clear guidelines as to what to do, I am surprised these are not present here. Elen of the Roads (talk) 22:15, 28 October 2009 (UTC) The policy is not "paedophiles cannot edit Wikipedia" (I'm aware of two who are respected editors), the policy is "engaging in anything that resembles pro-paedophilia activism is grounds for a permanent ban which cannot be discussed on-wiki". --Carnildo (talk) 01:35, 29 October 2009 (UTC) To third this - This is an area which is sensitive for several reasons, including the privacy of the blockee, and Wikipedia's reputation as a project and our standing in the world as a whole. Pedophilia advocacy has been determined to be incompatible with the project's goals and public reputation. Anyone who appears to be engaged in it is to be blocked. Due to the sensitivity (both to Wikipedia and to the blockees reputations, some of whom might conceivably be blocked in error or due to miscommunications), and the general inability to discuss the topic area in public, Arbcom has reserved block appeals and discussions on this to private discussions at their level. If admins block for this reason, they are requested to NOT discuss on-wiki, and to send a note to [email protected] explaining their reasoning for the block so that Arbcom can conduct reviews and appeals in private, if necessary. If blockees object they are directed to contact Arbcom directly via email. I have done a couple of blocks under this, and other than sending the notifications in am not privy to what Arbcom has done following them. I am not aware of any mistakes and appeals which resulted in the blocks being overturned, but as those discussions are private one wouldn't know... Generically, this is not an area where new admins or those who are faint of heart should tread. We have to examine a situation and determine if someone's a legitimate researcher, sometimes if they're just a victim, or someone who's just concerned/interested in the topic. There are many people who fall into those categories who aren't pedophiles and don't advocate it, who sometimes might post something which could raise suspicions. We can't be blocking over minor concerns or single incidents which might be misinterpretation. This takes extra delicate handling and care. And yet - if there is one, and they pop up annoyingly regularly - we do need to act, and not just turn a blind eye and sweep it under the rug. We banned the behavior (advocacy) for a bunch of very good reasons - our reputation as a project, to protect underage Wikipedians, etc. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 02:37, 29 October 2009 (UTC) Your statement doesn't seem to address off-wiki advocacy, as was I believe the case here. Equazcion (talk) 02:47, 29 Oct 2009 (UTC) I'm not sure what all the fuss is here. Sure, there might not be a policy or guideline or whatever, but there is something else: IAR and common sense. As children do edit here, we should take some responsibility to ensure there are no problems for them, including not allowing self-identified pedophiles to roam around freely. Majorly talk 02:49, 29 October 2009 (UTC) There was a guy who once had a box on his userpage that said he thought all Americans should die, with an image of a burning flag. There was a whole controversy over -- get this -- whether or not to force him to take down the box. I don't think anyone even made mention of the possibility of a block. Americans edit here, along with American children. I don't know, something seems off, like pedophilia is the new red scare, worse than murder. I get it, the general feeling is that it's so sick that logic doesn't necessarily have to apply, but still. Equazcion (talk) 02:54, 29 Oct 2009 (UTC) I think I recall it. However, there are differences. Thinking that all Americans should die is something that is not achievable (unless the person had access to several atom bombs or whatever). It's an opinion that can never be turned into reality. Child abuse/grooming is very real, and happens, on the internet and in real life. There is always the risk that it could happen here. There is no real risk of wanting all Americans to die. Majorly talk 02:58, 29 October 2009 (UTC) And there's a public perception issue as well, which I believe the Foundation has asserted in the past. Crafty (talk) 03:00, 29 October 2009 (UTC) There's a risk of furthering the goal of killing them all, though. Americans die all the time just for being Americans. Regardless, you're advocating IAR and common sense as judgments of who can and can't edit here. If you didn't have the taboo of pedophilia behind you on that, this would never fly in any other situation, even one just as "potentially dangerous" for people. Someone who proclaims a rape or murder fetish off-wiki would probably be able to stay here, because those are, strange though it may seem, more acceptable. Personal abhorrence shouldn't play a role, but if it must because most people share the same feeling, then there must also be a policy. We can't rely on individual people's judgments for something like this. Equazcion (talk) 03:07, 29 Oct 2009 (UTC) As a non-admin, I don't usually get involved with these debates, but I have to strongly disagree with you there. As someone whose job requires me to deal with pedophilia-related offences, the combination of pedophiliacs and the internet is extremely problematic, specifically the issue of luring. The internet isn't the same kind of tool for murder, etc. I'm not going to chime in on the debate about whether Wikipedia should have a specific policy or not (and, from what I can tell, is not going to be decided here), but I don't think it's fair to say this issue is from the "taboo" of pedophilia - it's from a very real and dangerous problem. Singularity42 (talk) 03:15, 29 October 2009 (UTC) I think Singularity42 hits the nail on the head, as it were. Rape/murder are obviously bad things, and perhaps as bad, or worse than child abuse. However, they are things that can only happen in real life. They cannot happen online. Majorly talk 03:21, 29 October 2009 (UTC) It's a good point, but the issue before us is whether or not a policy is warranted. If luring is the concern, and all self-proclaimed pedophiles are to be banned, then that should be in a policy. Why leave it as a matter for IAR? Equazcion (talk) 03:32, 29 Oct 2009 (UTC)

ArbCom

Resolved

 – Village Pump, ArbCom talk pages...not an AN issue.

Durova³⁴⁸ 03:25, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I know this'll probably get me some funny looks, but isn't the whole ArbCom process a bit complex? possibly to the point of instruction creep? I've just pointed an editor in that direction, and it looks terrifying to a non-proficient WPian. Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 00:39, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

The arbcom process is a model of bureaucracy, but I figured that was intentional. You know, so that they don't get bothered by anyone who's not really motivated. Equazcion (talk) 01:57, 29 Oct 2009 (UTC)

I got my brother blocked...

I vandalized Wikipedia while not logged in more than a month ago – I do not have an account. My brother does, and when he tried to log-in, he got blocked because of me. He tried appealing, but it was denied because a “check user” was needed. What to do? 75.60.109.110 (talk) 05:29, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Can't say anything without knowing what IP you were editing under, and what your brother's username is. Someguy1221 (talk) 05:31, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I don’t know the IP – it changes. But his account was User talk:MRTC Penguin. 75.60.109.110 (talk) 07:18, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

As an act of extremely good faith I have unblocked the account. I shall be monitoring it closely, and will leave a message to other admins about the nature of this unblocking. If there is any vandalism (either logged in or not) then the account shall be blocked indefinitely again, and all "administrative good faith" will probably have been burned. Manning (talk) 07:22, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

This does happen. I myself was in a similar situation, on the blocked end of the pole (coincidentally, my username also pertains to penguins o.O). I suggest you don't vandalize again, as that will almost certainly get your brother indef'ed. Inferno, Lord of Penguins 14:07, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

ArbCom RFC

With the upcoming ArbCom election, I thought this was worth publicising. (I'm posting this as a regular editor, not as an ArbCom clerk).

Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Arbitration_Committee_2

Two issues are being examined, whether the committee should have 15 or 18 members, and whether term lengths should be cut to two years. Manning (talk) 06:41, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

The method of electing the Committee has also been added as an issue under discussion.  Skomorokh, barbarian  14:00, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

As well as the issue of whether ArbCom elections should stick with public voting (as done in previous years), or move to a secret ballot process. I strongly encourage everyone to participate in the RfC, to ensure we have a broad consensus on these issues. --Elonka 19:25, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Admin help at WP:REFUND?

Resolved

 – help offered --ThaddeusB (talk) 20:35, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Hello, Could an admin respond to this request [54]? I posted this on the talk page for WP:REFUND a day or so ago, but xe has been waiting for a while to get a response. (I got involved because it first came to DrV, a place I hang out.) Thanks, Hobit (talk) 17:59, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

These appear to be 59 articles on constructed languages that were deleted due to lack of notability. I don't see any policy issue in retrieving these deleted articles, but they should probably be sent by email to User:Hobit. This task needs a patient admin volunteer. EdJohnston (talk) 19:16, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Just a note that I'm not the person who wanted them. Just the messenger. If they are sent to me, I can get them to the right person of course. Hobit (talk) 21:33, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Unblock template help

After Prolog issued a block, Deadalus821 requested an unblock, and after consulting with Prolog, I've unblocked. However, I'm unsure what exactly to do with the tlx|unblock template; could someone who knows what they're doing please look at Deadalus' talk page and fix the template if necessary? Moreover, I'm not entirely sure that all autoblocks have been disabled (when I clicked on the "active autoblocks" link in the unblock template, I got a "This page cannot be displayed" error), so would you check that as well? Thanks. Nyttend (talk) 17:53, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

The template looks good to me. I clicked the autoblock checker tool thingy and it said no active autoblocks were present. Equazcion (talk) 18:35, 31 Oct 2009 (UTC)

Ethnic provocation on Balkan Articles

This is a complex one (aren't they all) User:Aradic-es an ethinc Croat and fairly nationalist by his own userpage (e.g. Support userboxes for Franjo Tuđman). Has several times tried to add information to a page on another ethnicity (Bosniaks). I hate to highlight the ethnicity but feel in this case it may help. The information has not always been technically wrong but early additions were poorly sourced and mocking in their tone. I have just undone a recent addition of his that added information including the "conquest of Ratko Mladic" and warned him on his talk page here. Can an admin please just use balkan sanctions and prevent him from editing Bosniaks as he is simply trying to provoke, his additions are highly inflamatory including the word 'conquest' for what turned out to be the most horrible genocide against Bosniaks of the whole recent Balkan conflict. The problems are not always obvious to someone who does not understand the issues but please also look at his block log and previous Balkans warnings against him here and here which show provocation seems to be his usual modus operandi. Polargeo (talk) 18:14, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Looks like a standard case for the dispute resolution process. Prodego ^talk 19:16, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I have no personal dispute with this editor. I am not a Bosniak and have nothing to do with former-Yugoslavia in my daily life. I am trying to highlight ethnic hate edits, disguised but not disguised enough. I would just appreciate a competant admin doing something about it, as is allowed under Balkan sanctions (maybe I should have just gone to my favourite admin and asked personally). If it is not possible to do something then hey fair enough, I tried. Polargeo (talk) 19:32, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Some of us know all about it. Feel free to notify him via the template here, and if he keeps it up, message me and I'll look into it myself. There is very little tolerance for these kinds of editors. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 22:36, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Per this, he was already notified last year. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 22:41, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

• Topic-banned for a week by Ricky, with threats of block if he repeats. Thoroughly endorsed, we can have no tolerance for this kind of silliness. Moreschi (talk) 23:07, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

LOL ,this is total nonsense.This is not what I (or some other Croat) say about Bosniak That is what they say about themselves. As I have explaned hereAñtó| Àntó (talk) 10:53, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

So based on two blogs you linked to on the October 2nd (only this being relevant) in a section with no actual discussion at all, you waited three weeks and decided that you would add this paragraph including links to 13 other websites (of reliability I'll doubt)? I want to make sure I understand your justification. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 06:45, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

citations can be verified easily. All 13 of them. About Mustafa Cerić it is written in Bosniak press.Statements of Amhet Davutoglu as well.The riots after EURO 2008 also [55] etc.

the Ratko Mladić statement is well known and there is a source for that.saying that Identifying Bosniaks with Turks is final citory of Ratko Mladić also come from Bosniak journalists.07:26, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Regarding my choice of words about Srebrenica conquest... yes in Srebrenica was genocide.I did not deny) that . I just mentioned the fact that Serbs conquered Srebrenica (and from military termnology that word is appropriate) . For Serbs it was off corse victory for Bosniaks (tragic) loss

What is innapropriate in my words??

my conflict with PRODUCER dates from May 2008. As I was able to see he is not ready to discuss at all.Añtó| Àntó (talk) 07:32, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

You said Ratko Mladic "conquered" Srebrenica. He did not, it was a UN 'safe haven' that he walked into with no resistance because the UN had disarmed it. He rounded up all of the Bosniak men and killed them in the biggest massacre in Europe since WWII. Your mention of his quote which translates as this is his "revenge against the Turks" was used as part of a paragraph designed by you to show Bosniaks are like Turks. When used by Ratko (and by you) this is an insult. This is appauling behaviour you are adding highly inflamatory material to a page on another ethnicity, this is not constructive wikipedia editing it is you continuing Balkan conflict on wikipedia and must stop. Polargeo (talk) 07:51, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I haven't reviewed Aradic-es' edits, but on a single point, you are wrong. Srebrenica was declared by the UN to be a safe haven, but was actually never made one, and units of ARBiH remained in the city armed, even exiting the city to terrorize surrounding Serbian population. Nikola (talk) 11:56, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

... and he continues to provoke me at every opportunity in various edits [56] [57] [58] PRODUCER (talk) 12:35, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Which does not change the bare facts. and according to your contributions

• You (PRODUCER) are SPA edit warrior
• You have no one single article written
• Your 90% activities in article are (mostly blind) reverting

Summa summarum :not useful at all!Añtó| Àntó (talk) 14:54, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Blocked

Forget it. I've blocked him indefinitely. This above is an inappropriate attitude, and playing this game isn't productive here. I don't care for people who want to waste everybody's time through nonsense like that. Listed at WP:ARBMAC here. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 04:53, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

AUSC October 2009 elections: Vote now!

The election, using SecurePoll, has now started. You may:

• Visit the election "home page" for an overview;
• Review the candidate's statements: Dominic • Frank • Jredmond • KillerChihuahua • MBisanz • Tznkai;
• Or go straight to your personal voting page: here to cast your votes.

The election closes at 23:59 (UTC) on 8 November 2009.

For the Arbitration Committee,  Roger Davies ^talk 07:28, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Racist message, block requested

Resolved

 – warning placed on IP's talk page Nick-D (talk) 22:43, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Hello,

The IP address 94.71.43.97 left a racist message using the word "paki", an equivalent of the N-word to describe South Asians

[[59]]

I request a block on this IP address.

Thanks

72.193.240.57 (talk) 20:58, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

The quote reads in part: "To which incidentally paki and indian contribution was nil. So...DEAL WITH IT." I don't see it as blatantly racist, although it is certainly not complimentary (and probably incorrect, too). The IP address has exactly one edit. Perhaps it can just be noted and ignored?  Frank  |  talk  21:22, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

As per Frank - best if the racist moron is ignored. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:26, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

LHvU - you're from the UK aren't you? Where I come from (Bradford) "Paki" is enough to get the sh*t kicked out of you in some places. Although I do agree that there's probably not much can be done with a one-edit drive by. Hopefully he's long gone. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 22:31, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree that the remark is clearly racist. As this seems to be a drive-by IP editor blocking them won't do much, but I've stuck a warning on their talk page in case they come back. Nick-D (talk) 22:43, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Where I come from, Heston, West London, there was a few heads kicked in up the road (Southall) a couple of decades back for racist name calling - however, it may be that the moron is just insensitive rather than being provocative. I know that in Australia that Paki is just a diminutive term for a person from that country and contains far less invective than the term "Poms". From their comments they obviously have no clue as to the contributions to world and western civilisation that has come from the sub-Continent, so I considered their remarks to be born of ignorance rather than malice. LessHeard vanU (talk) 13:39, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

It's just an IP, either block temporarily or ignore. I fail to see what possible "contributions to world and western civilisation that has come from the sub-Continent" have to do with this. I understand that the level of offensiveness of "Paki" varies depending on where you live. Eiher way, "racism" doesn't enter into it, we are at best looking at an ethnic slur. --dab (𒁳) 15:27, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

A project you might be interested in

Hi. I've recently initiated an informal WikiProject which will, in theory, help to support the Wikipedia community and its volunteers. I'm looking for a few people to help me get it off the ground, so feel free to join up! Regards, –Juliancolton | ^Talk 05:05, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Block review

I've indefinitely blocked Mister Hospodar (talk · contribs) for disruptive editing and canvassing (eg diff and diff), as well as personal attacks on other editors, in particular rather wild accusations that anybody who does not share their views on AIDS denialism are part of a conspiracy against them (see for example diff, this lengthy unblock request trying to justify their edit warring diff and this odd message to User:Nunh-huh that uses a worrying number of capital letters diff). This user does not appear to be helping the project and Wikipedia is not a form of therapy. Tim Vickers (talk) 20:58, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Good block, and for the appropriate length of time (until they agree to stop being a pov warrior and start working toward a new consensus). LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:35, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Their unblock request, "I will never again call attention to the tactics used by editors here" only reinforces my opinion that, whatever this editor promises they will do in the future, they will always be unable to comply with either our content or behavior policies. Tim Vickers (talk) 21:43, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I'll give him a shot to rewrite it. In its current form, it's a clear denial but I want to see if he's sincere about changing his ways. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 09:35, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I misread the time stamps. He's had more than enough hours or so to change it if he wanted. Instead, I think the issue isn't whether he's sincere in his beliefs (which I'm quite sure of) but whether he's sincerely changed and will act appropriately (which I'm not). -- Ricky81682 (talk) 09:47, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

proposed topic ban for User:AurangzebMarwat

So I found out about Mullazai because it was requested for protection on RFPP, and then unprotection was requested several times on Talk:Mullazai.

Well, there are three accounts, and they looked slightly fishy. User:A little insignificant found this edit which makes it really obvious AurangzebMarwat was using a second account, User:Newsfuse. I indef-blocked Newsfuse.

I propose not blocking AurangzebMarwat, as his sock was already blocked, and block!=punishment. Secondly, I propose topicbanning AurangzebMarwat on Mullazai, its talk page, and any closely related pages. I'll then unprotect the page.

Comments? Agreement/disagreement? (I've never requested a ban before, but I understand this is the way to do it) tedder (talk) 21:19, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Not an admin...but your proposal looks good to me...definitely some WP:OWN issues, and appears to be a particularly difficult editor on this particular article. Support Topic Ban... Frmatt (talk) 21:53, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Topic banning AurangzebMarwat may lead to more socking and/or IP editing. Suggest you reduce the protection to semi and tell AurangzebMarwat he is to present all proposed changes on the talk page and wait for an established editor to incorporate them into the article. Failure to do so = topic ban. --NeilN ^{talk ♦ contribs} 22:03, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Fellows...this edit is not what u think...its two diffrnt ppl talking in third person talk page in diff language...show ip address that confirm it..i my self will leav wiki.if proved... thanks AurangzebMarwat (talk) 22:56, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Why did Newfuse give your email address as the way to contact him? Will you agree to present your changes on the talk page and let other established editors make them to the article if the changes meet Wikipedia's guidelines? --NeilN ^{talk ♦ contribs} 23:01, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

we are all natives,and we met on this forum,we are introducing our selves,having conferce on msn/yahoo as asked by user ,and that so,its nothing wrong in it.this is my work,i spent my precious time on it and you people are trying to ruin my contributions..thats not fairAurangzebMarwat (talk) 23:11, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

We're not stupid. I blocked AurangzebMarwat indefinitely for abuse of multiple accounts. I suggest going to a RBPI strategy here - revert, block, protect, ignore. This isn't worth trying to construct consensus for a ban. Tan | 39 23:31, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

That (RBPI) seems a bit draconian in this case. It's clear that they have used socks abusively, but judging by their apparently limited grasp of English, may not understand our policies in this regard. Blocking is appropriate (even indefinitely), but throwing away the key is not necessary. -kotra (talk) 23:41, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I fail to see how protecting the article is akin to "throwing away the key". Maybe I need to elaborate; I meant brief protection at certain points if socking at this article continues to be a problem. Proficient users can (and will) create many accounts, all using different IPs, to circumvent blocking. Tan | 39 23:55, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for the misunderstanding, I thought you meant protecting the user's talk page, so they couldn't attempt an unblock request. I would agree with protecting the article. -kotra (talk) 00:01, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Ah, yes. I could have been more clear on that! Tan | 39 00:07, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Support the block of AurangzebMarwat for abusing multiple accounts. It may be necessary to stubbify the Mullazai article if no other sources can be located than the meager ones currently provided. We may end up with sources for the population, a postal code, a map, and not much else. EdJohnston (talk) 00:22, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Tan, I understanding blocking AurangzebMarwat, but the editor did give a possible explanation for the email address posted by newsfuse. Should I request CHU before we maintain the indefinite blocks? (I feel weird being on the AGF-heavy side..) tedder (talk) 00:31, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't see the explanation as being plausible. I think they are welcome to plead their case in an unblock request - but if you want to request that a checkuser review this case, fine by me. I think anything you find will be inconclusive - the IPs will probably be regionally related, and this user already acknowledged that "they" are both "natives" (meaning from the Mullazai area, I presume). Tan | 39 00:42, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Heads up- another new user has appeared out the blue on Talk:Mullazai. Their first edit was to request un-protection. Another sock? A little insignificant ^{Bloated on candy} 11:21, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, for some reason the site thought I used rollback. DIdn't mean to. SirFozzie (talk) 13:23, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Authority control number additions

I'm not sure about the propriety of this so thought I should ask. An editor added such numbers to some articles today, such as this one. I can't recall having seen this in articles before and question the additions. Any thoughts? Wildhartlivie (talk) 05:44, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

That seems rather unnecessary; Wikipedia articles aren't cataloged in external indexes and we have our own category structure to help with navigation. Nick-D (talk) 05:49, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

That is basically what I thought. It's only on 12 pages, I'll remove them. Wildhartlivie (talk) 06:02, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Although I don't agree with the current implementation, it's not a bad idea to add these numbers to our articles at some point. They are links to free resources that uniquely define authors. As such, linking to those resources, creates better connections in the "web of information", which should make it easier to find related information (what books did this person write). However, the current implementation of the index is not yet useful enough I think to warrant visible links. It is however useful metadata none the less. Sometimes I really wish we had better features for metadata of articles. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:46, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

This template comes from the German Wikipedia, where it is used on all author biographies. Hans Adler 15:13, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

This sort of thing sounds like an excellent idea to me; it ties in excellently with the Persondata concept. It might be best to make the templates default-invisible in the same way, though, or to contemplate adding them to persondata itself. Shimgray | talk | 22:46, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Several pages use {{PND}} in the external links, i have noticed. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:18, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

It might help if that list of unexplained numbers were actually, I don't know, explained? 99.166.95.142 (talk) 17:07, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

If you click through to the LoC authority record about Peter Sellers which is referred to above, you'll see that it contains the word 'Wikipedia'. The Library of Congress seem to be using our article on Sellers as a source of the exact dates of his birth and death, as well as the places. Such an honor! Adding a PND number, or links to authority records generally, might be useful at some time in the future if they can help with obscure authors, or those whose names are given differently by different sources. EdJohnston (talk) 17:27, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Help merging list of wars

I posted the merge tag at List of wars 1945-1989, but nobody is responding. I really want this article merged with List of wars 1900-1944 and add the 1990s (1990-1999) wars so it can be called List of wars 1900-1999, like List of wars 1800-1899. Please spread the word. B-Machine (talk) 15:19, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

You did this very recently. This is a notice board for issues affecting administrators - not for article help. Perhaps try the Military History Project discussion page? Tan | 39 15:25, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Or perhaps the Content noticeboard?--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:13, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Rollback requests

Administrative help is needed at Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Rollback‎. Thanks :) Andrea105 (talk) 17:24, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

This page really isn't the place to get impatient... Tan | 39 18:13, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Ewald Heer

An odd situation here would benefit from more eyes although not necessarily needing the tools. Unreferenced BLP article being written by an SPA IP. The IP signs every edit in mainspace and has ignored feedback at user talk and article talk about site standards for editor signatures. The article does not appear to be a BLP violation (the subject is a NASA scientist), but is largely unwikified.

Would a few more people watchlist this please? It'll probably come out all right, but I seem to be the only editor watching the page. In case things take an odd turn it would help to have more eyes on the matter. Durova³⁵⁵ 18:44, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Funny. I put the artice on my watchlist, too.. SPLETTE :] ^{How's my driving?} 18:54, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

CAT:RFU super backlogged

Resolved

Blocks need reviewing, please. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 22:58, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, most of the ones left we're waiting on the user to respond. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 23:18, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Will you end my blockade, please?

I am Shustov [60]. My Wiki account is deleted by TenOfAllTrades. Please, find below my last talk-communication which, apparently, made him sick:

Looks like Hypocrisy

In my talk page request for unblocking dated (UTC) 23:53, 11 August 2009 and addressed to TenOfAllTrades, I wrote: “While you’ve been hunting spooks of a self-promotion in my articles, on 05:06, 24 July 2009, an evidently promotional link [61] was inserted in the Earthquake engineering, the main article of the cluster, and kept successfully living there until now. At the same time, vandalism by User:Gruznov inflicted a noticeable damage to another article, Earthquake engineering structures, while I was unable to fix it.”

Where you’ve been since that? Haven’t you seen those indisputable violations? Why you, TenOfAllTrades, have not made fixing the articles right away while keeping thinking whether to unblock me or not?

Strictly speaking, I supposed you either did not care of Earthquake engineering or/and just provoked me. Therefore, I decided to help you and undid the bad edits mentioned above.

To my surprise, you dashed out in a matter of minutes and without any hesitation restored the bold commercial [62] in the Earthquake engineering and destroyed three unique images from the Earthquake engineering structures which had nothing to do with my own research. Due to foregoing, I request the following:

1. Please, back up with you last edit.

2. If you really found any spooks of my alleged self-promotion, explain what bothered you there. I may help!

3. Anyway, will you stop your hostile blockade and give me a break, please? Let's act intelligently. 69.227.176.187 (talk) 19:31, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

I hope you can restore my Wiki account and, further, will hold TenOfAllTrades in leash.

Thanks, 69.227.178.100 (talk) 19:45, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring

I've just closed eight reports at this noticeboard. They stretched back to the start of 31 October, and thus most of them were stale (although many weren't actionable anyway). In fact, apart from one report it looks as though the board hasn't been updated since I closed another report on the evening of 30 October. Would be useful if more admins could watchlist the page - most reports are easy to close and this isn't the first time this has happened since the most active admin on this board had his admin bit removed. Black Kite 21:34, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, well, the last time I closed a 3RR report there and blocked the edit warrior, another admin undid it without consulting me because he believed the user had been goaded to do it, as though that were an excuse for 3RR. This has not motivated me to keep watching the board, much like WP:AE. I don't think I'll do much 3RR or AE patrol until ArbCom begins treating unblocks without consultation as desysop-worthy wheelwarring.  Sandstein  05:55, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Well that's not going to happen, and with good reason. This illustrates a point I (and others) made in the Admin Recall RFC: we need to permit smaller sanctions for errors and misdemeanours to be discussed as well. Good faith small errors might lead to Community Service (I still like that idea), larger errors to suspension of privileges for a few days, for instance (implemented as a sort of temporary ban on using admin tools). Desysopping should be for bad faith bad apples, or those unwilling or unable to learn how to have a sufficiently low good faith error rate. Rd232 ^talk 10:24, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I encourage Sandstein to continue handling 3RR cases. He might be talking about this example, where another admin undid his 24-hour block when only 8 hours had elapsed. Consultation is always desirable. Personally I would not undo another admin's 3RR block unless there seemed to be an error and the admin was unreachable for comment. In general, blocks are not lifted very often: if you check the system block log you may notice only 3 unblocks out of the last 500 entries. EdJohnston (talk) 15:36, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, Sandstein, I would not have unblocked Ryulong if I thought there was any chance of a return to the edit-warring. I looked at the conduct of both editors and was not really able to establish that one was worse than the other; rather than blocking the other, and given that the block had already run for several hours, I felt that natural justice was probably best served by unblocking Ryulong. I freely admit that I could have been wrong about this on a number of levels, and I certainly don't think Sandstein was wrong to block Ryulong, I am just very cynical these days and as inclined to investigate the reporter as the reportee - quite often bilateral blocking is indicated, in my view. Guy (Help!) 18:14, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

There's been a backlog at that page ever since William M. Connolley was desysopped in a very poorly conducted arbitration. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:54, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

William had been looking after that board diligently for a couple of years. It was a great loss to have him desysopped, and it's now much more difficult to have 3RR enforced. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 16:24, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, we could all mourn the loss of an admin, true. Or we could dig in and work on them ourselves. Granted, I understand this isn't everyone's strong suit (I did that once in 2007 and it defined me for a while). Still, if you really think the WMC desysop was that bad, you never know what'll happen at RFA. Though let's keep in mind two things: Undoing a block without discussion, especially when there was discussion on the block, is wheel warring, and unacceptable. Conversely, it's not the end of the world when someone overturns your block, justified or not. As for the backlog at EW, if I were to start attacking it, I'd probably have to recuse a lot in 2010 if any of them were to come to arbitration, otherwise I'd try to help. Wizardman 21:20, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

There are two reasons admins (including myself, I'll admit) stay away from AN3:

1. The drama-level there can go from 0 to 100 like a flash in a pan as well as the wholly adversarial nature of the board.
2. The increased possibility of admins to misinterpret a revert and, hence, the increased possibility of pissing people off bigtime (even if they have engaged in edit-warring or have broken 3RR).

I wished there were ways of minimizing the "flash-in-a-pan" drama, but aside from disallowing involved parties to comment (which I don't forsee happening), I don't know what can be done there. MuZemike 01:51, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Anyone know what ever happened to User:3RRBot? That was a really useful tool at User:3RRBot/bot reported disruption and 3RR violations, but it appears to have been inactive since June. --Elonka 02:03, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't know, but we do have an edit filter Special:AbuseFilter/249 that picks up on multiple reversions by non-autoconfirmed users. I mentioned something at WT:AN3, but it didn't much discussion at all. Hence, if anybody wanted to go in the direction of a "bot-reported" subsection with with WP:AIV... MuZemike 23:01, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Neat idea. But can anything be done to keep the filter from picking up new vandal fighters such as this guy? Only 83 edits when I checked, but he is legit. He is reverting so fast that he may be patrolling WP:Recent changes. Maybe let the filter screen for reverts of changes that are at least five minutes old? EdJohnston (talk) 03:04, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Serial Cut & Paste move + histmerge investigations required

Carau (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) and probably related IPs that geolocate to the Buenos Aires region

• 201.255.75.45 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
• 201.255.105.110 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
• 201.255.127.241 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

These users appear to have generated a long list of cut & paste move and double redirects pertaining to Argentinian schools and universities. I'd appreciate experienced histmerge admins to go through their recent contribs and help untying the knot of some of these, I'm losing track of what goes where after a while. Thanks, MLauba (talk) 15:32, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

How to win friends and influence people

I should probably just let it go, but I find the following sequence of events of a recent ANI post problematic. I'm less interested in fixing the problem or pointing fingers at individuals (though it will be obvious which situation I'm referring to) than engendering some reflection on the handling of relatively minor complaints.

Initial situation

1. Admin makes a content edit to an article.
2. A couple of days later an IP makes an apparently good faith edit with several parts, which includes a source for one part and an edit summary, reversing that edit.
3. The admin uses WP:rollback to revert. People make mistakes (rollback can be hit by accident, or making judgements to snappily), but there's no subsequent sign of it in this instance being recognised as a violation of the rollback guideline.
4. IP undoes edit, including "vandalism" in the edit summary, and gives the admin a Level 3 vandal warning
5. Admin undoes the edit, reverting to his original edit from step 1, but keeping part of the other change made. The edit summary is left blank. No talk page or user talk page comment is made.
6. Moments later, without any further action from the IP, the admin semi-protects the page for two weeks. There is no apparent prior history of vandalism - it seems a response to this situation. There is no edit summary, so we are left to guess.

The problems with the above hardly need explaining, but people make mistakes, fine. Communication was poor on both sides of this, and the IP's vandal warning was unhelpful, but the reaction was certainly lacking in WP:AGF and on the wrong side of WP:BITE.

Followup

1. IP complains at WP:ANI, notably about the semi-protection. The initial thread produces a variety of responses, mostly in a "let's wait and see what the admin in question has to say" mode. One admin (me) goes in to some detail (well, a paragraph) describing the situation and noting that there are issues to be addressed.
2. admin2 marks the thread "resolved, no abuse found" without explanation.
3. The original admin comments rather dismissively, without addressing the substantive concerns raised. He accuses the IP of wikilawyering, declares the IP should have used the article talk page, and implies the IP won't be taken seriously if he doesn't get an account. He admits semi-protecting in response to one IP's behaviour, which is a violation of WP:SEMI (as had been noted earlier in the thread - blocking should be applied if a single IP is the problem).
4. The IP opens another ANI thread about the original semi-protection issue, and the premature closure of the previous thread. The first response is that he should talk to them individually, ANI not being the place; and later comments are hardly more sympathetic, pointing him to the article talk page; the thread is resolved soon after as "a non-issue" by admin3.
5. The IP posts to Jimbo Wales' talk page.
6. The original admin posts to the IP page, again dismissively, accusing him of spamming talkboards with bogus complaints.
7. The IP posts at WP:RFPP, requesting semi-protection be lifted. It is declined by admin4, and the declining admin posts in the second ANI thread opining that a block may soon be necessary.

It seems to me (a) that the original action which was the issue of primary complaint (semi-protection) was against semi-protection policy in two ways; (b) the IP made a number of actions which escalated drama, but the actions, whilst not the best course of action (posting at Jimbo's talk page is a sort of Godwin's law) weren't ridiculous newbie responses to a problematic situation which was handled badly in a number of ways. (c) the original admin failed to make any effort to encourage collaboration qua editor, or to show understanding of errors made qua admin (d) a number of other editors, including 3 other admins, failed to address the substantive issues and contributed to drama and biteyness. That's my personal view, and there may be missing information.

My question is this - taking this as an example of a broader problem - if we are unable to admit even minor error and attack those affected by them when they complain (unless they behave in a flawless manner, perhaps), is it any wonder that we have difficulty retaining the trust of some parts of the community? We have to be able to do better than this. We are not perfect, and denying error, instead of admitting and fixing, makes everything much worse. Rd232 ^talk 21:46, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, I was involved in that discussion, and, really, we were telling the IP over and over again that ANI was not the place to discuss a content dispute/potential misuse of admin tools; he should go to the article talk page/user talk page of the admin. Instead, he takes it to a new ANI thread, RFPP, and Jimbo's talk page...--Unionhawk ^{Talk E-mail Review} 22:05, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

According to the instructions here, AN:I is precisely the place to discuss the abuse of admin tools, so that is perhaps understandable on his part. It's clear to me that were the IP to have presented a cogent summary such as given by Rd232 above, the response by the participants would likely have been quite different. As to the second thread on ANI, he would have been better off reopening the first thread but there is no way for a new user to realize these closures are not official. Christopher Parham (talk) 22:13, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Rd232 I don't know the specific case but the patern of behavior you describe (admin refusing to admin error, lacking in WP:AGF, the unexplained closure of thread, the dismissive comments without addressing the substantive concerns etc etc) I am very familiar with. I have to note that unfortunately it has lately become somewhat of a standard behavior for a number of admins. How to correct such things I really don't know. Loosmark (talk) 22:30, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

There is no "due process" on WP. Considering controls along that line is long overdue.  PЄTЄRS VЄСRUМВА ►talk  22:47, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, but the instructions on ANI say that before bringing an issue about a user to ANI, attempt discussion with the user on their talk page.--Unionhawk ^{Talk E-mail Review} 22:52, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps so, but the IP is the only one who had attempted communication (albeit the Level 3 vandal notice) and the response was semi-protection without any other communication. Let's have some realism here on what we can reasonably expect from the average fairly-new editor, and also not forget WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY: failure to tick boxes should absolutely not be an excuse to sweep problems under the carpet. That's one of my points: the extreme WP:BITEyness of this sequence of events. Rd232 ^talk 23:20, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

In my experience, admitting to your mistakes and apologising is always the best course of action. Doing this has two advantages: firstly it quickly defuses any dispute. Secondly, apologising for mistakes is in your long-term advantage, since in the future when you are convinced that what you did was right argue your case, people will be less inclined to dismiss your arguments as self-justification. Tim Vickers (talk) 22:56, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

This is all too familiar, admins. behaving like a pack when one of them is threatened. I counted 6 on the 2nd ANI I think, 5 adding no value whatsoever. I would like the number of admins. allowed to be involved in a particular incident strictly limited, to avoid this piling on by those otherwise uninvolved. The comments made on that discussion just smack of gang warfare against a largely innocent target. A little bit of friendly sensible advice and guidance would have resolved this up front.Leaky Caldron 23:10, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. I don't think admins should gang up like you are suggesting but that is not a good solution. James086^{Talk | Email} 08:31, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

In this case, I feel that the first admin was incorrect to semi-protect the page in question (as I said at ANI, "[it] seems disproportionate to what was happening on the page") - I feel that if another editor had taken the page in question to RFPP to request protection, it would have been declined very quickly with a message that there was insufficient vandalism or edit-warring on the page. I got the impression that admins were ganging up on the relatively new IP editor (they've had an account for about 3 weeks, with just over 70 edits to their name). No one seems to take it seriously - yes, the editor was wrong to plonk a level 3 vandalism warning on the admin's page, but they are a new editor. Whatever happened to WP:BITE? The editor in question was making what seem to me to be GF edits, and their complaint was not taken seriously. I held off commenting until I had seen what the admin in question had to say, but if I was the OP, I would be pissed off too. I think LeakyCauldron's idea of limiting the number of admins who can join in - obviously, all involved editors have a clear right to comment, but as LC said, in this case most of the admins who got involved had no connection, and it did look like none of them had any intention of paying attention to the OPs complaint. -- PhantomSteve (Contact Me, My Contribs) 10:29, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

When you say you "held off commenting" - you commented 8 times in the initial thread (far more than anyone else), and twice in the follow up on AN/I. If you didn't comment on the substance of the complaint at all until the follow up thread, then what was the purpose of your first 8 posts? Part of the problem people have with AN/I is that every substantial problem is sidetracked by other issues of minor significance, especially bureaucratic niceties like "is this the right board" "should this part go to this board, this other part to this board" "I can't comment on what he did, but you did this wrong, this wrong, this wrong." After ten tangents, someone says "This thread isn't going anywhere, resolved." and closes the discussion.

The problem here is that the IPs conduct wasn't absolutely perfect, the administrators action (semi-protecting in a content dispute, essentially) was clearly wrong, but the situation didn't receive a clear hearing. It's not obvious why that is; there were tangents, there were unhelpful comments, and perhaps there was also some hesitance to take a conclusion based on the facts without first hearing from Dbachmann. A common dynamic on Wikipedia holds criticism of administrator actions to be tantamount to an accusation of immorality or stupidity; there isn't much room for allowing, and acknowledging, human error. It's unfortunate - in just this case, it worsened what should have been a minor issue into an acrimonious discussion that probably resulted in the loss of an IP editor with some apparent expertise to contribute. Nathan ^T 16:17, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I never said that the OP was wrong or right - and gave advice as I felt was necessary. I'm not going to go over them (they're in the ANI archive), but that's all I feel I need to say. I agree with you that human error wasn't acknowledged here - and that's what I think it was. I do not think either the OP or Dbachmann were at fault - it's just part of life's rich tapestry! -- PhantomSteve (Contact Me, My Contribs) 16:36, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I tracked the original thread at ANI briefly but didn't participate. I think saying we were waiting for the admin to comment before most others would say anything was completely unnecessary. The admin's actions were blatantly wrong. Waiting for the admin to say something before doing anything might have been appropriate but lambasting the IP's poor wiki etiquette, for which he or she could easily be excused, while saying "but I refuse to comment on Dbachmann's behavior until he shows up, really presented the wrong image. Page protection for actions by a single editor is or should be clearly incorrect to anyone who is an admin and taking admin action on a page one has made content edits to where the admin action affects the edits is simply abuse of tools, no questions. Early closing of the thread was a bad idea. The IP came asking for help and got told off. This was just plain wrong and verges on a violation of core principles ("you can edit this page"). --Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 23:19, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Return from Retirement Help

Resolved

 – Done. Welcome back. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:04, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, after a few months the loving embrace of Wikipedia has been nagging me (mostly can't get away from it because it's number one on Google Searches) and I've made the decision that I would like to come back, however I had enforced my retirement with Wikibreak Enforcer, setting it to the year 3000 on my way out and now I have no way of getting into my account. So, I'd like to request some one remove that bit so I can get in, this would be my Monobook.js, the code is on top and if you need any proof as to who this really is, well my contributions on this IP show activity that directs me to the IP, the IP is also static and to further the point my this accounts talk page and user page should have a history showing me editing it and stating it is indeed static. I also have further proof that this is me, but that will require some one to email me so I can reply back to them, thanks for your help! 72.224.127.117 (talk) 08:00, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Rgoodermote  08:08, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Urgent! Last call for votes: AUSC October 2009 elections

There's only one day to go! The Audit Subcommittee election, using SecurePoll, closes at 23:59 (UTC) 8 November. Three community members will be appointed to supervise use of the CheckUser and OverSight tools. If you wish to vote you must do so urgently. Here's how:

• Visit the election "home page" for an overview;
• Review the candidate's statements: Dominic • Frank • Jredmond • KillerChihuahua • MBisanz • Tznkai;
• Or go straight to your personal voting page: here.

For the Arbitration Committee, — Rlevse • Talk • 16:55, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Ban on 23prootie

Resolved

 – De facto ban. Block on sight. Tan | 39 19:07, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

23prootie (talk · contribs) has been blocked indefinitely for block evasion. Over the past month, 23prootie has continued to block evade, even using open proxies such as these, to try and evade their block

• 202.108.50.6 (talk · contribs)
• 194.213.52.82 (talk · contribs)
• 121.28.34.69 (talk · contribs)

The IPs 23prootie has been using have blocked for a month for persistent block evasion. 23prootie has a long history of edit warring and disruptive editing. See their block log. They have been blocked numerous times. He/she seems to be continuing their agenda. 23prootie admitted that although he knew we was banned (although not formally) with their edit summaries on user 202.108.50.6 and in return used the reasoning WP:Ignore all rules and "being banned does not mean that edits with merit have to be reverted", he may still be able to edit.

If blocking their main IP range wasn't enough, see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/23prootie/Archive 23prootie has decided to use open proxies and seems intent to keep using open proxies to try and circumvent their blocks. I am requesting a ban for their persistent block evasion and edit warring/going against consensus. Elockid ^(Talk·_Contribs) 18:52, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

This isn't needed. Nobody in their right mind would unblock this user. — Jake Wartenberg 19:01, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

So technically they are de facto banned? Elockid ^(Talk·_Contribs) 19:02, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Basically since any admin who unblocks 23prootie might as well go to WP:BN and ask for their admin tools to be taken away.--Giants27(Contribs|WP:CFL) 19:03, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks guys for the quick responses. This should probably be closed then. Elockid ^(Talk·_Contribs) 19:04, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Blocked IP violating WP:CIVIL on talk page

User talk:122.108.202.45 - Clearly upset about his block and edits being reverted, in severe violation of WP:CIVIL. Thewtfchronicles (talk) 12:24, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Seems like pretty standard troll stuff. I myself would advocate for RBI here. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:53, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Question

Is it acceptable to close (almost every) discussion topic that comes up on a page and place it in a collapsed box and label it with "NOT A FORUM"? This is currently what is going on at Talk:Barack Obama (scroll down to see the rest). To me, if the discussion does seem forum-related it should be removed completely. However, on this page, most of the discussion that is being hidden is about the article's content. --William S. Saturn (talk) 00:08, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

When I encounter forumish talk page comments, or similar noise, I tend to delete such things outright if they're a problem. In my opinion leaving them visible results in more noise because the talk page looks like you can post things there, and using collapsed sections just invites tendentious editors to complain about how some asshole won't let people contribute. Removing such comments is usually better. Having said that, Talk:Barack Obama gets a lot of noise posts, and so it does need to be managed a bit more than most pages, and the /Arguments pages that are used for noise reduction on some math and science pages won't work for political topics. Actually discouraging followups to certain posts is a practical necessity there; it's just a question of what method to use. — Gavia immer (talk) 02:05, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Currently closed discussions at Talk:Barack Obama include

1. Discussion about Obama declaring H1N1 emergency (true and valid information for a different article, but not related to that article)
2. Discussion about the deadliest month in the Iraq war (again, true and valid, but irrelevent to Obama article)
3. An answered question about a redirect; which was resolved.
4. Discussion about something called "preventative detention", again probably worthwhile to be at Wikipedia somewhere, little relevence to Obama article
5. A discussion over Obama's ethnicity, specifically his Irish background. The issue over the minutae of his ethnic background has been argued ad infinitum and this thread doesn't bring up anything which has not already been exactly discussed before, and which is also answered in the extensive FAQ.
6. Discussion about whether or not Obama is a socialist. CLearly inappropriate.
7. A discussion about unemployment figures. Again, true and belongs somewhere at Wikipedia, not relevent to a biography of Obama.

Many of these discussions are closed because they are irrelevent to improving the article in question, IMHO. There is a misconception that every single thing that happens in the United States of America during Obama's presidency must be part of his biographical article. Most of these discussions could happen at relevent articles, but the main biography of Obama isn't really it. Usually, most of the closed discussions are wacky conspiracy theories, like the standard Birther nonsense, or demands that we include info about Obama being a socialist-nazi-secretmuslimist or something like that. --Jayron32 02:28, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

CfD to be closed soon

Resolved

 – Discussion closed.  Skomorokh, barbarian  22:44, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

When time expires, would an experienced administrator who does not regularly frequent categories for discussion consider closing this discussion? It isn't time to close quite yet, but the debate is detailed and contentious. I think that someone without involvement in CfD politicking will be most likely to be viewed as an unbiased closer. IronGargoyle (talk) 00:49, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Should no other uninvolved administrator step forward, I'd be happy to close once 19:07 UTC comes round.  Skomorokh, barbarian  02:11, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

WP:UAA is backlogged

Resolved

Exactly what is says on the section header. Cheers, BlazerKnight (talk) 08:17, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Not now. Majorly talk 10:42, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Block 173.166.211.9 for vandalism

Requesting a block of 173.166.211.9 (talk · contribs) for excessive vadalism of WordGirl and List of characters in WordGirl by continuing adding fancruft from Rocko's Modern Life. Thanks. NoseNuggets (talk) 9:46 AM US EST Nov 8 2009.

I don't see any contributions (deleted or otherwise) from this IP address. If there is an IP vandalizing an article, the best place to report them is at AIV. TNXMan 16:09, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Should have been 173.168.211.9 (talk · contribs), and this is clearly not suitable for AIV -- since the articles are hardly more than fancruft in the first place, it would be difficult for an admin to decide whether additional fancruft is improper. In short, this needs to be settled by talk page consensus before any admin action can be taken. (In my opinion; I am not an admin.) Looie496 (talk) 20:04, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, I'm very glad to hear you're NOT an admin, then, because admins are expected to read what's actually being said. In your haste to denigrate two reasonably well-written articles as "fancruft", you missed the critical piece of info in this report: the info that is being added to the WordGirl article is (possibly fabricated) information about a SEPARATE, UNRELATED show. So it is indeed inappropriate, and it is indeed suitable for AIV. I would appreciate it if another admin would do the necessaries here, however, to avoid the appearance of a COI. Thanks...GJC 22:40, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Reduction AE block length of Jacurek

Apologies for not having done this sooner. This is simply a notice to allow scrutiny of a reduction in block length of User:Jacurek. The block was originally done by User:Future_Perfect_at_Sunrise at one month in length.

There was a second AE discussion here to review the block but it was closed by Jehochman and the block remained in force and unchanged. There was a second unblock request by Jacurek which I subsequently reviewed.

After reading the second AE discussion and the history behind this block it was my belief that the block should not be removed but should be lowered in length. The reasoning behind this can be found in my review here. I just want to ensure that my reasoning was sound for this alteration of a block. Seddon ^talk|^WikimediaUK 23:12, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that seems reasonable enough, and more or less accords with what I posted at AE. Moreschi (talk) 23:54, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Seddon and I talked about this off-wiki, and I have no objection either. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:08, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

That looks reasonable to me as well. Nick-D (talk) 21:32, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Main Page Selected anniversaries lacks Fall of Berlin Wall recognition

I think it should be added ASAP--T1980 (talk) 01:00, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Today's featured article was intended as a nod to the anniversary; the usual policy is not to feature the same topic in multiple sections on the main page. -- Vary | (Talk) 01:06, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) If you read Wikipedia talk:Selected anniversaries/November 9 it says "to maintain some variety of topics on the Main Page as a whole, an event is not posted if it is also the subject of this year's scheduled featured article or featured picture". So, because the fall of the wall is mentioned in today's FA it won't also be mentioned in SA. Hope that helps. Also Talk:Main Page is probably the right place for this discussion - Dumelow (talk) 01:08, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Requesting help in closing merger

I'm looking at help in closing (or continuing) the proposed merger of Daniel Greenberg to Sudbury school discussion at Talk:Sudbury school#Merger proposal. I'm concerned that the prime proponent of the merger has insisted several times in closing the debate and completing the merge, without much opinion being expressed. I'm also concerned about numerous WP:CIVIL, WP:NPA, and possibly even WP:AGF violations by the proponent. Nfitz (talk) 15:26, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

• Hello? Anyone? This is where to come as directed by WP:MM. Nfitz (talk) 01:44, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm looking now. Hamster Sandwich (talk) 01:49, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

• Posted remarks to involved parties on their talk pages. I see it as a debate that was transcluded a bit early. Also, the rhetoric was getting a bit "pointy." I suggest the article be reposted, and taken to WP:AFD for broader debate. Hamster Sandwich (talk) 02:41, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Motion to amend ADHD: Scuro topic banned

In an amendment motion filed concerning the ADHD case, the Arbitration Committee has passed the following:

• Scuro (talk · contribs) is topic banned from all pages, topics, and discussions related to attention-deficit hyperactivity, broadly defined, for twelve months.

Passed 6 to 1, with 1 abstention, 8 November 2009

For the Arbitration Committee, Manning (talk) 01:34, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Discuss this

Nominations now open for the Arbitration Committee elections, December 2009

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Proposal: "Cry BLP" blocks

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

Clearly this proposal isn't carrying, I would advise the original poster to refine his concerns and perhaps bring an RFC on the matter. –xeno^talk 13:28, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

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After a couple of recent discussions wherein a large number of Wikipedians who should have known better advocated one outcome on spurious BLP grounds, I am proposing a remedy:

Any uninvolved administrator may warn or block (for up to 24 hours, upon repeated violations) any Wikipedian who makes a baseless assertion that a specific issue is affected by Wikipedia's Biography of Living Persons policy.

My reasoning is simple: BLP is important. It's VERY important; that's why it is given such a broad latitude for enforcement. However, with those increased powers must come increased responsibility--an argument that something is "BLP" material is a de facto end to debate, often signalling an unwillingness to further discuss the issue. If such assertions are made erroneously, this has a chilling and disruptive effect upon the issue. Thus, each user who cares to invoke BLP must be prepared to articulate specific words, phrases, or assertions which violate our BLP policy AND demonstrate that any lesser remedy to resolve the issue (e.g., by simple removal of offending material) has failed.

Gentlemen and ladies, the pendulum has swung too far. It is time to rein it in, and the most effective way to do that is by first warning, then sanctioning those who "Cry BLP" when there is no applicable BLP issue. Jclemens (talk) 05:10, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Discussion

No. We assume good faith 'round these parts, or at least we don't institute policies assuming the opposite. Also, there is such thing as reasonable disagreement.--Tznkai (talk) 05:14, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Nothing about the proposal necessarily abrogates AGF. Rather, it's implied inasmuch as it's a core principle of everything we do. Jclemens (talk) 05:52, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

• I see a large number of people disagreeing with your (Jclemens') interpretation of WP:BLP. Why don't you articulate your arguments and try to convince those people, rather than making it a sanctionable offense to disagree with you? MastCell ^Talk 05:47, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
  • The problem is that people simply aren't doing that. If you look at the issues in detail, there's little dialogue, because "BLP" is assumed to be a sufficient rationale, even without specific support. Engaging simply isn't productive in the toxic climate that has been created surrounding allegations of BLP violations. Jclemens (talk) 05:52, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
• I'm with you that BLP has gone too far, and that's certainly one chilling effect it's had. I'm not sure this is the solution, though. I would like to state unambiguously that an assertion of BLP is not a carte blanche to do whatever one likes, but I'd hate to see good faith enforcement of it stopped either. I think the best idea is a return to the original idea of BLP—that it is intended to prevent, primarily, the use of unsourced or badly sourced negative information about a living person. It's rather grown some tentacles since then, to some rather bizarre proportions. I've seen the "privacy" provisions asserted to protect the "privacy" of something that dozens of highly reliable sources reported. I've even seen a suggestion that any "no consensus" BLP deletion discussion should default to delete, and that implemented in practice (and though that practice clearly did not enjoy consensus when widely discussed, the deletion under it stood). BLP needs to be very narrow in scope to prevent its use as a bludgeon in good faith content disputes. There's certainly misuse, but I think a narrowing of scope may be more beneficial than handing out blocks. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 05:48, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Oh, no doubt the intial proposal as I articulated it is too extreme to garner consensus. It is offered as a good faith starting point, from which the discussion can proceed. Jclemens (talk) 05:53, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
    • I'm not sure that the modest proposal approach is the best idea to this. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 06:46, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
      • Swift argued something that every moral person should have been horrified by. Just because I don't think it stands any chance of garnering consensus, that doesn't mean I'm not seriously proposing it. I'm a pragmatist; I know full well it won't be enacted, but that shouldn't preclude a meaningful and reasoned discussion of the perceived problem underlying it. Jclemens (talk) 07:50, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
• Quite simply, hell no, respectfully of course. The big problem is that, at the fundemental level, there is a good faith debate going on over the responsibility that Wikipedia has towards marginally notable people. It comes down to what is sometimes called the Sullivan test for what constitutes a "public figure." The debate is over whether there is a reason to treat "very notable" people (those who the Sullivan test would call "public figures", i.e. people who actively seek the public sphere themselves) vs. "marginally notable" people (those whose name has appeared in public media through no intent of their own, whom the the Sullivan test would call "private individuals"). There are those who in good faith argue that all material in reliable sources is fair game; and there are those who in good faith argue that people who are private individuals (under the Sullivan definition) have a right to remain so, even if their name has appeared in a few newspapers. Such a proposal to block people who are arguing in good faith, a position that differs from your own, is a bad idea. The crying of "the crying of BLP" is just as troubling, and we should WP:AGF all good faith concerns, even if the person making the concerns is coming from a different set of first principles than we ourselves are. --Jayron32 06:10, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Nowhere do I propose, nor would I ever propose, that good faith BLP assertions should be blockable offenses. Spurious or baseless assertions would be, after sufficient warnings such that it was clear that an editor was no longer acting in good faith. Jclemens (talk) 07:50, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
• Strong NO!!! A much greater problem, and one that threatens WP's very existence, is way, way too many editors using WP articles as an weapon to attack people they don't like, or more often regard as political foes. (A number of enemies list type articles have recently been mentioned on the BLP board.) BLP needs to be stronger, not weaker. Steve Dufour (talk) 06:34, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Do you disagree that false assertions of BLP (assuming for the sake of argument that such exist, even if you don't like my examples) weaken the overall effectiveness of our BLP countermeasures? Contra your statement, I would argue that BLP needs to be more precise, not less. Jclemens (talk) 07:50, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
    • I agree that false claims of BLP problems are a bad thing. However real attacks on people using WP as a weapon are far worse, and much more dangerous for WP's reputation. Steve Dufour (talk) 12:22, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

• While false claims of BLP problems is a problem, I would be worried that a system like this might make people afraid to bring up borderline BLP issues, or worse, have people get blocked for bringing up legitimate borderline BLP issues. Or even worse, we end up focusing on the reporter and wasting time with meta-arguments whether or not its a BLP problem, without actually dealing with the issue. Mr.Z-man 06:47, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Per above, agreed that any measure would have to have safeguards to avoid such outcomes. Jclemens (talk) 07:50, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
• Just leave it the way it is without any specification. People should be able to raise suspected issues. If someone is causing trouble by making false allegations they can already be dealt with under the disruptive editing criterion. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:15, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
• This is just part of the broader problem that some editors cite policy to support their views (on what should happen re particular editing issues) with hardly even a cursory attempt to show how that policy applies to the situation in hand. Whatever the solution to that problem, this isn't it. Rd232 ^talk 09:32, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
• I AGF that this was intended to be a constructive solution, but I agree with those above who feel it's not an appropriate solution to the actual problem. There's an issue there, but this assumes bad faith about people. Jclemens, I think I see the line you're trying to draw here, but I don't think it's possible to hold that line in real life as opposed to an academic exercise. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 09:40, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
• In what way is it a good idea to block people for being sensitive to BLP issues? That's amongst the worst ideas I've heard floated this year. The two cases listed are Janet Allison (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), a biography teased out of news stories about an event concerning a person, and Fort Hood terrorist attack (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) which is a redirect with a politically charged title where arguments for and against include a lot of irrelevance and a very great deal of posturing. As a search term it's unlikely that anyone will go beyond "Fort Hood", so it's an angels dancing on the head of a pin argument anyway. Guy (Help!) 10:08, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
• Ludicrous idea which would cause unmitigated chaos - who is to decide what is "baseless" or not? We err on the side of WP:BLP, not against it. Black Kite 10:59, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I imagine that Jclemens has a list already of those baseless claims. It's a shame they were not posted here. Kevin (talk) 11:05, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, and I strongly suspect that many others would completely disagree that they were "baseless". Making it an actual offence to take one side of an argument which is debated so furiously (and which th proposer is staunchly on the other side of) sounds very close to attempting to use admin tools to push your POV to me. Black Kite 11:07, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

• You have to be joking. Viridae^Talk 11:08, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
• If anything, BLP needs to be made stronger -- too many articles are now sourced to tabloid-type information. Too many editors enjoy adding negative information about people as a specific goal. The purpose of WP, as I understand it, is to write as though the article would last forever, even though any version is ephemeral. Collect (talk) 11:12, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
• No. Some BLP cries may have no pith, but any editor who tries this as an ongoing way of gaming the system will soon run smack into WP:Disruption. Gwen Gale (talk) 11:18, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
• While we are speaking about Draconian measures, let's block the proposer to discourage attempts to stifle necessary debate. Hans Adler 11:21, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
• This is truly ridiculous. I've been trying to think of the idea Guy heard about that was worse than this one, but I'm finding it hard to even imagine what it could have been. Kevin (talk) 11:44, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
• Um...I don't get it. This proposal comes across very confrontational really....? Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:15, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose definitely harmful proposal, seemingly made in a fit of pique over not getting his way.Bali ultimate (talk) 13:15, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.