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Current issues

[50px-W] lacks alt text, affects all disambiguation pages

This graphic is missing an alt text. Affects all disambiguation pages.

$ w3m -dump http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free |head
Jump to: navigation, search
[50px-W]
Look up Free in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Jidanni 20:57, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Pardon me, but where are you getting this from?—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 21:08, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

(ec) You seem to be referring to the Wiktionary logo image in {{Wiktionary}}. However, that image does have an alt="" attribute, which should hide it from non-graphical browsers. If this does not work in w3m, I'd suggest that's their bug, not ours. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 21:10, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I believe the user is referring not to the Wiktionary logo, but to Image:Disambig gray.svg (thus "all disambiguation pages are affected"). The source code has an empty alt tag for that image (in addition to the wiktionary logo). I do not believe this is w3m's fault because it shows up in our source code. If this was my personal site, this would be an easy fix, but since I don't know the process of editing the source here (contact the developers?), I can't be of much more help. Whatever the fix, I'd be curious to see the process and results so I can enhance my knowledge. -Andrew c ^[talk] 00:48, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

OK, the code is

 <span><a href="/wiki/Image:Wiktionary-logo-en.png" class= "image"
 title="Wiktionary-logo-en.png"><img alt="" src=
 "/media/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b4/Wiktionary-logo-en.png/50px-Wiktionary-logo-en.png"
 width="50" height="54" border="0" /></a></span>

and I'll ask a w3m person take a look. (<span> wasted). Jidanni 00:32, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually - he asked me - I maintain lynx. Lynx does not show the "50px-" (it shows an unnamed link, e.g., "[LINK]") which can be suppressed Tedickey 20:27, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Filed bug as it must be a lack of alt text. P.S., only 1/10000 of users would like to see the image page instead of the link that the image is all about, even though that is the next link. Jidanni 16:01, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Green a's behind Wikipedia Logo

I noticed this problem when I was here, and I need some feedback quickly, especially if someone is vandalizing. Thanks, Laleena 12:40, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

It is coming from User:Kornfan71/AAAAAAHeader. What is the problem? Are you seeing it somewhere else? It looks like it is just that user's decoration. -Wknight94 (talk) 12:42, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

The offending page is User:Kornfan71/AAAAAAHeader. The user has used CSS absolute positioning to place an image, Image:AAAAAA.png behind the logo. As long as it isn't used outside of the userspace, I personally don't have a problem with it (see the history of bouncy ball for an example of someone doing something similar in the main namespace).-Andrew c ^[talk] 12:44, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

That said, looking into the source of the image, I'm not comfortable with the part of the copydown license at unencyclopedia that says "the individual pixels may be a copyright violation", and would be curious to see if their license was compatible here.-Andrew c ^[talk] 12:46, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Could someone please explain what all those AAAAAA strings mean? --Aarktica 13:09, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

AAAAAAAAA!. --Vary | Talk 13:13, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

In other words, more or less nothing. -- Vary | Talk 13:13, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Is there a point here? Perhaps an inside joke that is considered inappropriate? --Aarktica 14:52, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

It is a bad joke about the same level as the spam song. Just a cultural meme that is indeed an inside joke. I think it is harmless. ((1 == 2) ? (('Stop') : ('Go')) 14:54, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, why is this even being discussed? Am I missing the part of the joke that makes it controversial? —Wknight94 (talk) 15:25, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

The image may be under the default NC license that all of uncyclopedia is under.... however, I'm not sure. The license tag makes it exceptionally unclear. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 15:42, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

But then again, I think that this is a bad joke and should result in a block of the user. I have no prejudice against him, however, other than this bad joke. Laleena 17:23, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Eh it is a harmless userspace edit. Not a problem.Geni 17:35, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, really, there are numerous users with similar overrides on their user space. Why would we block them? Metros 17:36, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

AAAAA AAAA AAAAAAA. AAAAAAA (AAAA) 13:25, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

My Observations

As most of you are well aware, I recently revoked my sysop permission. Today I asked for it back. Why so soon you ask? It was all part of a test, an experiment if you will. I wanted to view Wikipedia as an established contributor who was a non-admin. I must say that the English Wikipedia is doing a tremendously shitty job.

1. People Fight Alot: Do you really realize how many hours of people's time is wasted daily by the petty in-fighting? There are dozens upon dozens of complaints across the various noticeboards daily, which are fought, argued and debated. However, everyone is a complete jerk. They say and cite policies such as WP:AGF, WP:CIVIL, WP:NPA, WP:NLT and yet they do not abide by those same policies they're so willing to chuck at others. Administrators are especially bad at this, consistently telling a non-administrator to please not use personal attacks, and yet subtly attacking the person back at them.
2. Administrators are Elitist Bastards: I don't care what anyone says, the vast majority of administrators are pompous overbearing control freaks. They run around with this attitude that having +sysop is some sort of right, priviledge, or a permission to bully, harras and generally act like a dick, thinking they can get away with it. There IS a cabal, and it makes sneaky back-door decisions such as deletions, vote stacking, blocks, trying to force editors into 3RR, page protections, et cetera almost daily.
3. Copyright IS a problem: Dear lord, dear lord...the English Wikipedia as a whole should be admonished for their lack of effort in fixing copyright problems. This attitude that "We'll fix it later" absolutely must stop, post-haste. The general public is sheltered from this stuff, but OTRS gets constant requests saying "You guys stole my content." In addition, the overuse of Fairuse images is absolutely astonishing. Almost every article with images has at least one fairuse image. The endless justifications for putting screenshots from every anime, TV show, movie ever is a terribly misguided idea which must also be rectified.
4. Quality IS a problem: If nothing else, OTRS has shown me what a bad job we do at sourcing our BLPs and removing the libelous statements. People assume that unless is shows up on the noticeboard, or someone visibly complains on-wiki, the issues must be ok. I mean, we have the BLP policy, and it's clearly noted on each talkpage, things must be ok. Wrong. You couldn't be more wrong. Out of the 98 e-mails sitting in the info-en queue on OTRS, 77 of them are due to quality issues. Assuming those complaints are all legitimate (and from personal experience, most are), that means 78.5% of the issues we face are due to quality.

I realize at least one person is going to reply with {{sofixit}}. That's just it, I'm going to. I realize I'm guilty of the first two items just as much as most of the people who will reply to this thread, but that's beside the point. I am now making it my mission to fix these problems, as the Board and general editing populace has shown no interest in doing so. Please help me.

All the best, ^demon^{[omg plz]} 14:39, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I think it's a shame that you've undermined your passionate message by using lashings of hyperbole. So, the "majority of administrators are pompous overbearing control freaks"? That's untrue and unfair. So, instead of me discussing the worthy sentiments of your message, I've already started picking it apart for accuracy, which is exactly what you don't want as a response. Sigh. --Dweller 14:46, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it is entirely accurate to paint so many with the same brush. That being said, yes these problems do exist. The reason for the first 2 is just the human condition. The second 2 are due to lazyness, especially the copyright issues. But worse, I have seen admins return unverified information after it was challenged, and stop users from enforcing copyrights due to their own insistence on their correctness. ((1 == 2) ? (('Stop') : ('Go')) 14:52, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Comment to Dweller I think there may be more truth to the observer's analyses than many would care to admit. Somehow, he managed to tap into the frustruations of many regular editors. Does it seem hostile? Yes. Is it real? Well, it is perception — make of that what you will. That said, I do believe that he truly cares about the matter, and means no disrespect.

As you noted, the knives might come out soon; he dared to offer a rather biting criticism of the class he seeks to rejoin. --Aarktica 15:05, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

It's a shame, but to respond, he states things as fact, rather than perception. I don't disagree that we can do more in many of the areas he highlights. But I thoroughly disagree with the overstatements. A toned down version of this, made into an essay might help move things forward. --Dweller 15:28, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, saying we're "pompous overbearing control freaks" then telling us to fix all the problems associated with Wikipedia is pretty silly. I've deleted probably thousands of copyright violations (check my logs if you doubt that). A lot of people do their parts but there are 2 million articles and we're a ragtag band of volunteers trying to run the... 8th or whatever, most popular website in the world. Expecting perfection is a recipe for frustration. --W.marsh 15:08, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

• Demon, you can't think about your point #2 without your point #3; it is the resistance to copyright responsibility, in large part, that has created the perceived gap between admins and non-admins. Chick Bowen 15:29, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

"I am now making it my mission to fix these problems"

^demon, I respect your mission, and would like to say "join the club", but let's be realistic and rational here - it'll take a lot of work to whip the non-human problems into shape. As for the human ones, no level of complaints will completely deflate an average human's ego, for Wikipedia at least - the best we can do is to take action as needed for each situation as it comes, and respect the five pillars. Of course there's a lot of complete shit going on, but we can't magically become perfect one day. Let's work towards these things like we always have: kill copyvio on sight, work out the little legal bits inherent to our operation as best as possible, and most of all just try to be friendly and keep morale up. I know I've done things which assume a position of authority through my adminship, but I try to use that authority, when called upon, to push towards what's best for the encyclopedia in the end run. If we're going to aim for the lofty goal which the Foundation attempts to achieve, we need to be optimistic. Perhaps, to shove a square peg into a round hole, we are also pushing in some ways for a Wiki-Community 1.0 as well as for a Wikipedia 1.0 . Let's get to solving the problem, rather than glorifying it. Nihiltres^(t.l) 16:08, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

From my experience, ^demon, you, from time to time, go too far in making it your mission to fix the problems. I've experienced you deleting images without warrant... which is understandable if you are an image patroller. Everyone makes mistakes from time to time. However, I've also seen you archive many comments without responding. If one wants people to know more about copyright, I think one should educate them. If a user asks, "Why was my image deleted?" Tell them why! =) They probably want to learn, as they just don't know any better. And, if you go through the comments, you might actually realize that you could have made a mistake or two, as no one is perfect. =)  hmwith  talk 16:28, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree with 1 & 2 but not necessarily 3 & 4. But yeah, many (or most, or nearly all) admins are hypocrites (and a lot of worse things) - including me probably... ugen64 01:33, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

"Administrators are Elitist Bastards" — yeah, what a stupid, pointless conversation this is. No point in even bothering to refute you, you've discredited yourself. It's incredibly hypocritical to lament all of the fighting we have, then go on to take an extremely cheap shot that certainly isn't helpful. --Cyde Weys 02:29, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Interesting essay. I think it's strange how admins are treated and behave anymore. In personal or content disputes, admins are almost always given a longer chain. I don't think it used to be this way. There used to be a higher proportion of admins; I think that kept elitism in check. Cool Hand Luke 02:51, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Glad to have you back, demon. El_C 06:21, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

And yet abuse directed toward admins seems to be widely tolerated. If I went around calling any other group of editors "pompous overbearing control freaks", I would get peppered with reminders not to make personal attacks, threats to "take it to AN/I", etc. But call an admin that and no one minds. --W.marsh 22:11, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I Agree with the first comment from Demon. And can visualize or discuss flagrant examples to which I've experienced. Sadly, the sacrifices appear to come more often from non-admin users than administators. The perception of a click is easy to assume, specially when there's a discussion board just for "Administrators" but none really "just for users"! --FR Soliloquy 23:37, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

This isn't a board "just for administrators"; anyone can post here. It's for issues requiring administrator attention, since we have the ability to block, protect, and delete, and sometimes we need to intervene using those tools. Thanks, Antandrus (talk) 01:59, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah. There are pages for regular user attention requests, e.g. WP:RFC and WP:3O. This page is just for notifications useful to admins (this thread is not such a notification, but whatever). It's not just an "admin lounge" - such a page would never fly. So there are pages to request admin attention, and pages to request attention from editors in general. --W.marsh 02:18, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm on board with the copyright thing. Fair use is not-that-fair in most instances, and our image patrollers get way, way more flak than they deserve. --Haemo 02:21, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I think the main problem here is that people who do cleanup get attacked. Editors who remove illegal images get attacked by people who like those images. Editors who NPOV'ize BLP violations get attacked by people who wrote those pages. And so forth and so forth. >Radiant< 14:17, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

You're oversimplifying the situation. First, policy is never black-and-white: gather any 10 Admins & ask them for their interpretation of policy on a given point, & I bet you money that you'll get anywhere from 8 to 12 opinions. Some people think logos (which are & almost always will be under copyrights) are unneeded decoration; some think they are justifably fair use when they appear in the appropriate article. I'd venture that almost everyone thinks that they should be deleted on sight when they appear on a user page -- which will get some hostile reaction, no matter how it's handled. And I can actually think of a case where a non-free image may appear on a user page -- when it is of the user her/himself, & that person doesn't want it to appear on the side of a busshelter as part of an advertising campaign in Australia. Second, people get attacked because someone in the exchange is being unreasonable; it's not always because of an Admin's attitude -- as I noted above, some people are unreasonably sensitive about other folks editting their user pages. But an Admin who insists on her/his own literal interpretation of policy when that interpretation conflicts with other policies is being unreasonable. -- llywrch 18:21, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Valid points. Part of being an admin is closing XfD/RfC/etc. discussions. And as we allow for Admin discernment, this can often lead to disagreement (to say the least). Also, all too often the discussions get framed as who "won or lost", rather "resolved through determining consensus". And creating such an atmosphere means that we all lose, including specifically Wikipedia itself. And I want a penny for every time someone counts "votes" and tells the closer that they were wrong in the closure. I think I'd become quite wealthy : ) - jc37 02:12, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Nationalist edit warring and noticeboards

Please review these edits of mine: [1] and [2]. As far as I'm concerned, having sections on noticeboards for editors of nationality X inviting editors of this nationality to join in with nationalist edit war Y is a spectacularly bad idea. The nationalist cancer is quite bad enough on Wikipedia without this sort of shit making it worse. Moreschi ^Talk 15:19, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Ouch. WP:MfD, anyone? These noticeboards seem to have been around for awhile (the Serbian one, anyway) with very few participants, and their main use seems to be to provide us with canonical violations of WP:BATTLE and WP:CANVASS... At most, there should be a "Balkans noticeboard" or something which would transcend specific nationalistic identities. Of course, even that would probably be a disaster. MastCell ^Talk 15:32, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

In my thinking it is better to leave this in today situation. Why ?? If you block or delete this notice boards nothing will change because they are living important (example:article for deletion) messages on local community portals. For example I will show this: "Трг/Архива Serbophobia" . If you take this words with copy/paste and put it in google you will recieve 2 hits on serbian wiki community portal ..Rjecina 15:48, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Moreschi -> well said, this labelling of people by their nationality (both subject of articles and editors) is a poison that is much too prevalent. Anyone would think we were operating in South Africa, where your worth depended entirely on which community you came from. PalestineRemembered 20:19, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

What complete and utter crap. Edit-warring along nationalist lines across Wikipedia is blatantly apparent to anyone with half and brain and open eyes. Unlike the South Africans, I have made no judgments as to the merits of different communities: I have simply said that editors of different nationalities spend far too much time fighting over nationalist disputes. Check through arbitration cases, both historical and present, to see the truth of this! Moreschi ^Talk 09:10, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm with Moreschi here. Anyone may check the ongoing request for deletion of Template:POV Russia to make sure than, when the issue concerns several conflicting nations, people tend to opine along a pre-established pattern and it's rather easy to predict their opinions. Something needs to be done with ethnic cliques that ruin the project by turning so many areas into battlegrounds. --Ghirla^-трёп- 13:10, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Please review my deletion of Urban blight

I speedily deleted Urban blight as a copyright violation. It was also little more than a dictionary definition. I know that this is an important topic that can lead to a government seizing affected properties due to eminent domain, so we need an article here. Unfortunately, I tried to paraprase the definition and could not come up with something satisfactory. Could someone please review this speedy deletion? Jesse Viviano 02:20, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

• Seems fine, that site is unlikely to be plagiarizing us, so it seems this was a copyvio. I'm not 100% sure we need an article here, Urban decay could and does define this under the "Examples of decay" section, so I've redirected to that article, pending further discussion. --W.marsh 13:19, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Two millionth article

On the basis of dialog at Talk:Main Page, I have linked the 2,000,000th article, El Hormiguero from the main page. I suggest that editors watchlist it and administrators judiciously employ semi-protection as appropriate. I have already preemptively move-protected it. Vandalism was, of course, a problem previously, but we have oversight for the really bad stuff. Of course, if the community thinks I was totally off-base in linking it, then I'd welcome review, too.--Chaser - T 09:36, 9 September 2007 (UTC) Too soon to call it.--Chaser - T 15:52, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, everyone be on guard. This article is in for a bomb-shelling. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 09:39, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Sigh...2 million == 2 many. We should put a cap on article creation with an upper limit of 3 million. Watchlisted anyway. Moreschi ^Talk 09:45, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

There are plenty of articles that are short, will never reach FA status, and have limited references, but are still very useful regardless; in a sense these articles make up the long tail of Wikipedia, and the idea of limited the number of articles ignores this concept, I think. —Dark•Shikari^[T] 09:52, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

It also ignores that Wikipedia currently has great coverage of Western stuff, but not-so-great coverage of the rest of the world. Expanding the "Human group habitation"-type articles to the whole world would probably push us past 3mil all by itself. Let's not forget that new things are created constantly in the real world. --tjstrf talk 09:58, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Even our coverage of western topics could use improving. I created three new articles tonight - the most I've done in a while: Violin Sonata No. 21 (Mozart), Piano Sonata No. 10 (Mozart), and Jerusalem bus 26 bombing Raul654 09:59, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Why in the world would we put an article cap up? We get more users all the time, which means more patrollers. Heck, we could do much more to even encourage more regular users, but an article cap? That sounds like a joke. Voice-of-All 10:02, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Now, why exactly should there be a cap? Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 10:06, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

We have a way to keep the crap out. We just need more patrollers.--Chaser - T 10:08, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Maybe we need an El_cap! El_C 10:09, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

An article cap would ruin the whole point of the encyclopedia. It is what we are here for; people who want to write new articles should not be discouraged, but rather thanked and encouraged. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 10:14, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Another issue are technical topics that are somewhat known in popular culture but not accurately or well, and such knowledge (or lack thereof) spreads to Wikipedia. Video compression I've found is one of these, leading to a complete lack of coverage of important technical topics such as reference frames (note the only substantial contributor to the page...) while having relatively incomplete and often dubious information in more well-known topics. —Dark•Shikari^[T] 10:19, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

To determine the real 2,000,000th article, I have logs of the wikimedia IRC channel (which can probably be taken as scripture) and information saying that the article about 50 beforehand was Castronuevo de Esgueva - the log, part of it, is at User:ST47/2E6, if someone wants to look through to figure it out. Remember that the article count only looks at articles with links. --ST47Talk·Desk 12:51, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I've looked at it, and due to the uncertainty in my method, it most likely is:

04:21 <@rc> Japan's Imperial Conspiracy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan%27s_Imperial_Conspiracy) N http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan%27s_Imperial_Conspiracy * Gwern * (+7595) ←Created (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:AES) page with '{{Infobox Book | name = Japan's Imperial Conspiracy | title_orig = | translator = | image = | image_caption = | author = David Bergamini | illustrator = | cover_art...'

Or not too far after that one - best that someone else have a look, of course. --ST47Talk·Desk 13:04, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

How could El Hormiguero be the 2 millionth article? It was created in february. In other news, who cares? It's so complicated to determine which exact article is the 2 millionth, and we really shouldn't be focused on that as much as the other 2 million that are already created, the many of which need to be substantially improved. Cowman109^Talk 14:49, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Okay folks, lets delete the 250,000 worst articles now! Then we can have the 2 million celebration again in a few months!(kidding) ((1 == 2) ? (('Stop') : ('Go')) 14:53, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

El Hormiguero was created in February and then deleted; upon being recreated the old revisions were restored. —Dark•Shikari^[T] 16:50, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, I submitted the Wikinews article to Digg and Slashdot. Let's see if anyone cares. I guess we will have The Guardian, The Inquirer, CNET News and eWeek covering it this week. -- ReyBrujo 17:37, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Really? How many of those bothered covering the 1,000,000th article? Also, I'm surprised there hasn't been more opposition to the Main Page banner. Discussions a few weeks ago seemed to indicate that a sizeable number were saying "don't do anything at all". Carcharoth 20:32, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

As a practical manner, we'll have an article cap anyway as page creation rates begin to level out. However, I am worried about our ability to properly maintain 3 million articles, if and when we get that far. We get new users all the time, sure, but the number of regular editors (once a week, once a day) does not appear to be drastically increasing (unsurprising, given all teh drama): certainly the number of admins has only just barely kept place with increased demands from our menial backlogs, which leaves no time to deal with anything more sophisticated. I fear for our ability to properly maintain Wikipedia if article creation is allowed to grow completely unchecked. Moreschi ^Talk 21:57, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I do support a cap of 3 million articles, Moreschi is completely right, wikipedia is rather becoming unmaintanable, and there isn't many new editors out there who could help (unless you want to recruit them, like teachers, etc) Jaranda ^{wat's sup Sports!} 01:52, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I can't believe people would seriously suggest such a thing... why not cap FAs at 2,000 and revert people from improving any non-FAs to FA status? We might not be able to maintain them at FA status if we had too many... --W.marsh 01:57, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I've never understood this... What matters is our completeness, and our reliability. If that means we have 3 million stub articles a couple years down the road, then so be it. They can be improved later and many of them will be useful to someone. The less viewed/edited an article is, the less likely it will need to be "maintained" as well. Let's not set an arbitrary limit to the ways people can contribute. Grandmasterka 02:57, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh, come come, let's not be naive. We can't maintain our popular FAs (The Simpsons (actually, this got farced and then re-featured, hadn't noticed: the point about stability still stands, though) and Christianity both got farced - isn't that a wonderful phrase? - and Islam is doubtless heading that way) as it is, and even on the unpopular ones shit still creeps in over time. While I agree with an FA cap with stable versions would be stupid, without stable versions a FA cap is not as silly as it sounds. Most often the best articles haven't been FA'd anyway. Too often "completeness" and "reliability" contradict rather than complement.

"The less viewed/edited an article is, the less likely it will need to be "maintained" as well" - this is simply false. Siegenthaler, anyone? Boris Johnson's mistress (the name escapes me)? Even on non-BLPs, the most outrageously noxious nonsense can so easily be introduced by fringecruft-pushing cranks on obscure articles; far more easily than on popular ones. Perfect example is this, which was there for over 2 days! No better than vandalism, but missed by RCP. It's stuff like this I worry about.

Producing an article takes 5 minutes semi-illiterate hacking around at the keyboard. Producing a decent writer often takes several weeks of careful sculpting, and even experts need a bit of help and breaking in (that's not to mention the constant drama that drives people out!). The number of articles we are producing is increasing at a rate far greater than the rate at which we produce contributors able to maintain and improve. 3 million stubs out of 5 million sounds nice, doesn't it? 3 million badly-written unintelligible libellous coatracks full of fringy original research doesn't sound quite so attractive. That is the way we are heading unless we are careful. Moreschi ^Talk 16:07, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

You've convinced me. Something is needed to cope with the scale problems, and urgently. Carcharoth 16:26, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Seigenthaler happened before we even had 1 million articles, let alone 3 million... the media generally seems to think we've improved since then. I don't buy that we're producing articles faster than we can maintain them... we tend to see the past through rose-colored classes, I can tell you that when we hit 500k articles there was probably a higher percentage of awful, horrible, libelous articles than there were the other day when we hit 2m articles. The average editor is savvier now, knows about libel, knows about sourcing... in 2005, when I cleaned up a few thousand orphan articles (not hyperbole), we had admins who'd copy and paste new articles in from random websites with no attribution, who'd balk at the idea of using an inline citation in a BLP under any circumstance (ironically one of them is a real captain of BLP policy now). Things have changed a lot... and more or less for the better. If you want things to improve more, don't try to restrict growth... devote your time to cleaning things up, or finding ways to educate those people who do create bad articles. Requiring incoming links and a category would be a great way to help reduce libel, since an orphan, uncategorized article (like Seigenthaler's) is very tough to find for experienced editors. --W.marsh 17:18, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Agree strongly with W.marsh. And, Moreschi, "less likely" does not equal "less potentially catastrophic". Grandmasterka 08:40, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

For Admins' Notice

User:Angelofdeath275 and User:Angelofdeath275/Policies_and_Guidelines#I_will_blow_off. 24.148.66.96 14:48, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Did you try talking to the user? ((1 == 2) ? (('Stop') : ('Go')) 14:55, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I did not think talkin to me would be hard. So I'll blow off a few rules. Its the blatent truth; there are some rule a I not like. Its better than making up some fancy lie as to why I would not follow some as I cannot stand lies. Or, maybe because your an IP-user that you feel this concerns you. Seriously, you could have left a message on my talk page at least first.... THROUGH FIRE JUSTICE IS SERVED! 15:27, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Regardless of whether you like them or not, you'll be expected to follow them. android79 15:34, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

And for heaven's sake tone down your signature. Mackensen (talk) 15:48, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Agreeed... in any case, you can ignore the rules, but don't be surprised if there are consequences. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 16:01, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

And this really has no point being in the administrator's noticeboard.. but yeah that signature hurts my eyes. Cowman109^Talk 16:12, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

It has something to do w/ blood and death! Shocking! -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 12:50, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Deleted Article Archival

I've noticed that a popular page has been deleted Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_Webkinz_pets. I see all the communication back and forth as to why people have decided it should be deleted, my question is can you get access to the content other than through Google Cache which will soon be deleted ? w3ace 17:18, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

If you set up and authenticate your email address in your preferences, I can email you the page contents. Though I'm not sure why you would want it, consensus to delete was quite strong. Mr.Z-man 18:48, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm interested in whether or not the information is publicly available more than I'm interested in that Article. I'm just trying to get a better understanding of the delete process. Are these pages forever available to Administrators? w3ace 19:03, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, unless they are oversighted (which is only done if it contains personal info or libel and even then it can be restored by a developer) all revisions of deleted pages are available to admins forever (barring some sort of massive loss of data from a server crash or something). Mr.Z-man 19:13, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Editors can still get copies via this page or by asking an admin in this category. Cheers!--Chaser - T 19:14, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

"all revisions of deleted pages are available to admins forever" - umm, no. This is a common misconception. See here:

Deletion means deletion. The deleted page archives ARE TEMPORARY TO FACILITATE UNDELETION OF PAGES WHICH SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN DELETED and are subject to being cleared or removed AT ANY TIME WITHOUT WARNING. --brion 00:50, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

In practice, deletions are available going back a long time, and should be available for a long time as well, as deleted text revisions don't take up much room, but Brion made it clear that this should not be relied upon. On the other hand, this was nearly eight months ago. Maybe wait a year and ask and see if anything has changed. Carcharoth 20:36, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

They are current kept forever, but that does not mean that they will remain so in the future. Prodego ^talk 02:15, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

The idea is to focus people's minds when discussing deletions, and not to think "if we want to look at it next year, we can just get an admin to get a copy". Deletion is not archiving. If you want to be sure of getting a copy of something, get hold of a copy before deletion. Carcharoth 09:15, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you everyone for this enlightening discussion I just wanted to make sure I got my facts straight.w3ace 17:11, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Copyright misunderstandings

How depressing. Could someone else add their voice over there to say that the Wikipedia logo is not a toy to be modified at will? Carcharoth 20:26, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Sure thing ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 20:33, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

LOL! Nice toy... Carcharoth 20:38, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I love playing with logos that are good at retaining kinetic energy. As for the actual issue, I think the responsible way to proceed would be to create a draft version and ask for permission from someone in the foundation. The logo's not a toy, but I don't think we're volunteering for a draconian bureaucracy that's unwilling to consider a good faith attempt to modify it for semi-promotional purposes. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 20:50, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, nobody is suggesting to replace the logo :) And its quite amusing :) Should be added to WP:BJAODN... or some new version of it. -- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  20:42, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Parody of often protected by fair-use... :P ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 16:34, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Just some random data

User:Betacommand/Edit count β^_command 03:00, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Do you have access to deleted edits? I just checked Interiot's tool, and it says I only have 12,293 while your count says 12,692. It's probable that I do ahve 400 deleted edits, but it's been quite awhile and I don't remember the count when I last used Kate's tool to see how many deleted edits I had. hbdragon88 03:08, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I dont have access to them, per se but I do have access to the toolserver's copy of the database which has the MW edit count. β^_command 03:21, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Yep, it includes deleted edits, of which I have approximately 15000. MER-C 08:40, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Nice. Do you want to update Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits, or is that done by a different process? Maybe that list is not meant to include deleted edits? Shall we throw a surprise party for Cydebot when it gets to 1,000,000 edits? Oops. That's torn the surprise. Carcharoth 09:12, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

WP:WBE does not include deleted edits. MER-C 12:25, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Mass renaming of bilateral relation articles, contd.

Prior thread: WP:AN#User:Koavf and mass renaming of bilateral relation

Two problems. First User:ProhibitOnions moving bilateral relations articles to the above superimposed style that was identified as, at the very least, needing further discussion; and User:R9tgokunks moving German bilateral relations articles to Teuto-. Can we not have some discussion? These mass moves appear, arguably eccentric, but above all other things, wasteful. El_C 03:29, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I can't see which moves by ProhibitOnions' were controversial, can you point them out for me? The recent moves by R9tgokunks in relation to the bilateral relations have been reverted, consensus on the talk pages need to occur before moving pages for "grammer" which is disputed terminology, should be discussed, and not thrown under blanket terminology illateraly. — Moe ε 03:57, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

German-Iranian relations to Germany-Iran relations and a few others I noticed here and there. El_C 04:08, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't see ProhibitOnions as far as diruptive as R9t's, although they require the same amount of discussion so consensus can form on the proper title should be. I'll invite them here to comment. — Moe ε 04:15, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I did not compare or imply disruptiveness, for either. No need, I've already invited them here immediately before I invited you. El_C 04:17, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

*slaps head* well, now they have two invites anyways.. And when I "compared" disruptiveness, I saw that R9t was literally moving page after page, and it appears P.O. moved here and there. I'll wait to make any other kind of judgement though. — Moe ε 04:23, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I forgot to link to this thread (but then edit conflicted with you upon updating, which is credited to you... Gah!). El_C 04:29, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Please don't confuse the two issues; I have nothing to do with "Teuto-"anything. The two moves I made (German-Iranian relations to Germany-Iran relations and Turkey-Iran relations to Iran-Turkey relations) were listed at WP:RM, where there is currently a backlog. As no reference was made to a dispute, and the moves seemed consistent with other articles in the series, moving them seemed the sensible thing to do; you will note that the two titles were originally inconsistent with each other. (I did not change, for example, two proposed article moves referring to the "People's Republic of China" as it seemed there was a dispute regarding alphabetization.) If you disagree with these moves, please relist them at WP:RM. ProhibitOnions ^(T) 09:39, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's right, I misread the dates; sorry about that. I have already admin-moved them both. Once again, sorry for wasting your time. El_C 22:14, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

As the articles are about relations in between the governments of countries and not the populations of the countries, it makes more sense to have the name of the country in the title, especially when the power of the government emanates from the nation, as is the case with Germany and Iran. It's true though that in the press and in books they often revert to the nationalities, sometimes even going as far as using Teuto-. At the moment these bilateral articles don't have consistent titles though, I think a decision should be reached to make them all use the same grammatical form. Jackaranga 14:17, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Important new article

Allegations of allegations of apartheid apartheid - please expand. Guy (Help!) 12:36, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Lizzie Grubman

I deleted the above article because of BLP issues, well Alansohn has recreated from a cached version and put sources in now so there's GFDL issues with it. Any chance someone can restore all the revisions? For some reason I can never do it on the laptop I'm on. Cheers, Ryan Postlethwaite 13:18, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

• done --W.marsh 14:09, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Cheers, Ryan Postlethwaite 14:11, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

• Needs careful watching. For example: [3] is scarcely "additional biographical details" as Alansohn states in the edit summary, and An expert hired by the plaintiffs in a civil case against her who reconstructed the accident based on data from the car's "black box" determined that her actions intentional (sic) is distinctly POV - I reworded to testified that in his view her actions were likely intentional. Sources lean strongly towards the tabloid. Guy (Help!) 14:56, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Bureaucracy Watch

It was recently pointed out to me that the FAC processes focus too much on our manual of style, treating it as hard exceptionless policy rather than commonsensical guidelines. I believe that this is a result from the capitalized and official-sounding term "Manual of Style". Therefore, I suggest we rename all these pages to better reflect their purpose. Remember how we renamed "votes for deletion" to "articles for deletion", and the good effect this had on the process? Same thing. I'd like to hear the thoughts of some experienced editors on this. >Radiant< 13:57, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

What example of a target name do you think? Navou ^banter 14:18, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Style guide? Ryan Postlethwaite 14:19, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Did whoever "pointed [this] out to [you]" provide examples? —freak(talk) 15:00, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

You could ask User:Bishonen for details; there's lots of related debate on WT:FAC, WP:FAR and WP:FARC. For instance, articles that have POV problems are "featured" because they "correctly" apply em-dashes. >Radiant< 15:26, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree with this. Infoboxes, dashes, persondata, MoS and other semi-irrelevancies occupy far too much time in our reviewal processes across the board (this is not just restricted to FAC), while glaring issues of POV and undue weight go undetected. This is largely due to review by those who know nothing of the subject matter. This is another major problem that ought to be somehow prohibited, copy-editing and copyright issues excepting. Anything that reduces that obsession with things that don't ultimately matter quite so much (ultimately MoS issues are matters of preference) is welcome. Move away! Moreschi ^Talk 15:39, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

For instance, articles that have POV problems are "featured" because they "correctly" apply em-dashes. Heh heh. I know, it's ridiculous. Main reason why: This is largely due to review by those who know nothing of the subject matter. From what I've seen of the foreign wikipedias, the people who turn up at FA review there tend to know more about the subject at hand and there's a much greater focus on content. English Wikipedia seems to have developed a small but influential bureaucracy of MoS obsessives and people who carpet bomb articles with ref tags for the most obvious facts. --Folantin 15:54, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

There are a lot of things wrong with FAC and this seems to be one of them. I dunno, it's probably just bad luck, more or less, that there don't happen to be a lot of people reviewing the content at FAC. We've seen articles sail through there with entire sections that contained original theories made up by whoever wrote the Wikipedia article, that never appeared in any other source... it's bizarre. I think a longer FAC period would help more than renaming the MOS... some stuff (particularly pop culture) is promoted after 5-7 days even with objections. That just doesn't seem to be enough anymore to get sufficient number of eyes on the article.--W.marsh 17:29, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I've said it before, I'll say it now, and I'll say it again in the future: inline citations suck, they clutter up the article, and they add an air of authority to sentence that may only be speculation with a link, which is unencyclopedic. Never in my life have I picked up a copy of Britannica, World Book, Encarta et. al. that have such citations. Ugly and reduce quality. Moving on, why is this thread here exactly? Keegan^talk 18:38, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Britannica, World Book, Encarta, etc. are not written by random anonymous internet users, but generally by people who at least hold a PhD in the subject. Natalie 20:24, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I strongly agree with this suggestion. I've essentially given up on trying to get articles through WP:FAC because of the sheer amount of utterly pedantic formatting objections, and I know several other users who have come to similar conclusions over the last few months. This rename might at least inject a bit of reality into the process. Rebecca 03:54, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

• I have to wonder if this is an experiment in futility. Renaming the Manual of Style doesn't actually solve the problem, and the AFD analogy is not accurate. VFD was not renamed into AFD; it was split into AFD and MFD. So, the benefit to a rename is minimal, if the renamed MOS is still enforced as it currently is today. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 06:02, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Is this an anonymizing proxy?

User:83.67.127.224 resolves to a UK company called "Freedom to Surf"/"Freedom2Surf". Their website says, Freedom2Surf believes that Internet privacy and security should be an integral part of the online experience. . Corvus cornix 18:39, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Just looks like an ISP to me (I guess you could consider that to be an anonymizing proxy, but then wikipedia would have to block almost all users). Jackaranga 20:45, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the input. Corvus cornix 15:41, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

That IP address doesn't appear to be an open proxy. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:53, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

BJAODN user subpages

Given the hoo-hah over recreated BJAODN pages, someone or someones may wish to look at these. --Calton | Talk 21:25, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I have contacted the user to ask for an explanation. Otherwise, they are deletable under G4.-Andrew c ^[talk] 21:38, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Ryulong advises that he has blocked the user and started deleting the pages. Ryulong also observes that Wikiman232 has been re-creating several deleted articles in his userspace. Posting this just as a matter of information. Newyorkbrad 21:49, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Consider Wikiman232 banned from Wikipedia. The level of recreated articles that Wikiman232 had in his subpages as well as one on a murder victim is more than enough reason to get rid of him.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 22:04, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I endorse the deletions and blocking by Ryulong. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 10:54, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Looks like a reasonable block, and good deletions. ((1 == 2) ? (('Stop') : ('Go')) 16:04, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I've just looked at Wikiman232's contributions. Less than 200 edits, starting in May 2007 September 2006. Is it not possible this is just a new user that has made a mistake? An indefinite block and ban seems a bit harsh. Having said that, I'm not entirely sure what the story is with the user's previous account at Special:Contributions/Wikiman231. I saw the pages that were deleted in Ryulong's deletion log. Maybe there are deleted edits from Wikiman232 I'm not seeing? Carcharoth 20:51, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikiman232 has been editing since last year. All pages I have deleted are either subpages or redirects to articles he made that were deleted or copied into his userspace. What is not deleted is currently what I decided should be retained. Again, this is not a new user.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 20:54, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

In my deletions (including his userpage to which only the application of {{banned}} was restored), I deleted well over 500 edits by Wikiman232, all of which were user subpages. There were maybe a dozen articles or redirects.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 20:56, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

(ec) Oops. Since September 2006. I noticed that while writing the note, and forgot to correct it. My mistake - I've corrected that now. Still, I don't see a pattern of abuse here. If there is more going on than non-admins can see, then it is best to explain that. (after edit conflict). Ah, right, so that is sustained and ongoing article recreation in userspace. That could justify the block. From when until when? Carcharoth 21:01, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

The "pattern of abuse" is a series of recreations of deleted articles in his user space, by just copy-pasting the last version of the page. My original deletions were because he was copy-pasting the BJAODN which itself is a GFDL nightmare. Then I saw actual articles, including one that we would not want to show up in a search engine.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 21:15, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. Thanks for explaining. When I looked through your deletion logs, I think I only looked at the BJAODN recreations you deleted, and didn't see the other ones you were referring to. I have a few deleted articles (3 or 4 I think) that I'm (slowly) working on my userspace, but that was excessive. Wikiman had around 100, not even including the BJAODN ones. Good catch. Carcharoth 21:24, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

(ec2) This shows the count for both existing and deleted edits, and yeah, he's been editing since September 2006. --Calton | Talk 21:03, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, I tried the get more flies with honey approach, as you can see from the talk page, right as Ryulong was leaving a block message. The user e-mailed me the explanation that I requested, and here it is: I Recreated all those BJAODN Pages because I really liked those and I was pretty sure other people liked them to. Obviously, this isn't a valid reason for recreation of deleted material. I'll reply on the user's talk page.-Andrew c ^[talk] 16:27, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Just e-mail him back and tell him he's banned. That's all that needs to be done here.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 20:37, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

This seems to be his first offence, unless you are aware of any previous offences? Digging down a bit, I see from here that you blocked a previous account for "Abusing multiple accounts", but the trail goes cold there. There is no block notice at User talk:Wikiman231. Ryulong, would you mind giving a bit more background here? Carcharoth 20:55, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

There's nothing else other than this user had been recreating deleted content for the past year. This included the BJAODN subpages, an article on a murder victim, and various articles on websites. Wikiman232 was not here to edit an encyclopedia (and Wikiman231 was obviously his first account that we should not be allowing him to edit with). There's no reason to give a block notice to someone who has not editted in a year.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 20:58, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

No, I meant putting a block notice on the Wikiman231 account back in September 2006 September 2007 when you blocked it. Carcharoth 21:01, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Oops. You blocked the alternate account this September, not last September. I need new glasses... :-) Carcharoth 21:04, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I haven't had the admin bit that long :P—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 21:14, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Banned vs Blocked?

Let me first say that I have no problem with Ryulong instituting a block of Wikiman232 (my only interaction with Wikiman232 was to take one of his user subpages to MfD). But I am getting a little confused about the terminology here. How does a block become a ban? From what I understand, bans take more than the blocking by a single admin. Could someone please clarify the difference between these two user behaviour management practices. I'm mostly after a general rule, but it might be helpful to use this specific case as an illustration. Thanks. Risker 21:04, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

WP:BAN should help. My understanding is that a ban is enforced in several ways, one of which is by a block of any length up to indefinite. Shorter blocks, with set expiry dates, can be used without any reference to a ban. A ban is more serious than a block, and is often the last stage of exhausting the community's patience, or being banned by the Arbitration Committee (WP:ARBCOM). Hope that helps. Carcharoth 21:08, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

A ban is a long block that no one sees right to lift. A user can be indefinitely blocked with the purview that they will be unblocked if they concede to something. They are not banned. A user who is never unblocked is technically banned.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 21:12, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Ryulong hasn't got it right - the difference is that a ban is given to the person. A block is a technical measure imposed on an account. Blocking is (one of) the means by which bans are enforced. Bans are not necessarily comprised of a block - they could be a ban on editing certain articles, or making more than one revert. They can be more or less serious than a block, depending on length and purpose. Ryulong should know that given the amount of accounts he has already indefinitely blocked! :) Neil ム 22:45, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Right, a ban is a block on a specific individual that is not unblocked (because most people that are indefinitely blocked usually don't come back and do the same thing)—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 22:47, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I guess the easiest way to think about it is that a ban is not a block and a block is not a ban. They are different things. Sometimes they come together, but you can have a block without a ban, a ban without a block, and a ban with a block. You can also be blocked for something unrelated to your ban, and banned for something unrelated to any earlier blocks. You can have short blocks, long blocks and indefinite blocks. You can have short bans, long bans, community bans, and indefinite bans. You can have topic bans, article bans, talk page bans (I think), other specific area bans, and sitewide bans. Admins can block and unblock, but banning can be done by a wider range of bodies (ArbCom, WMF, Jimbo, Community, and... Oh no, I'm going to fail the exam! ...oh, yes, the "delegated authority from the ArbCom" one). I think that covers it. Oh yes, and Neil's point about people and accounts is an important one, usually related to sockpuppetry. Carcharoth 23:26, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Just to throw a wrench into things here: A ban can exist without an actual block. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 22:49, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

ANON IP going crazy with redirects

Multiple warnings. Protected page. Please help. [4] Thank you 68.143.88.2 22:18, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I left him a standard vandalism warning, talk page was semi-protected. Jackaranga 22:27, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. 68.143.88.2 22:28, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

By the way, when you are reverting vandalism, there is no point in insulting the user (diff), personal attacks are forbidden also. Jackaranga 22:29, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Question about an image deletion

Hello, could an administrator please take a look at the deletion log of Image:China Japan Locator.png, log. I was wondering what the reason was specifically for deleting as I uploaded an image with the same name on the commons commons:Image:China Japan Locator.png, but it is not showing through, and I would like it to be in Japan-People's Republic of China relations. The deletion log on wikipedia says i2, does that mean the image was corrupt or blank or something ? On the commons the image existed previously also, and was deleted but no reason was given. I used the purge thumbnail function on the commons, but it didn't seem to help. Jackaranga 03:12, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Well it's showing through now, but is not visible in Japan-People's Republic of China relations ? (i refreshed the page and bypassed the cache). Jackaranga 03:14, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

It will show through to other users, don't worry. It was deleted per WP:CSD#I2 as it was a Commons image, so the local description page isn't really of much use. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 03:16, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Two million announcement

Will there be an official announcement over which article was the two millionth, or simply containing a list of articles created around the 2,000,000 point? There seems to be confusion over this at the moment: Wikipedia:Announcements says that El Hormiguero is the official two millionth article, Wikinews says that the two millionth article is most likely not El Hormiguero and is to be determined, and other pages still have conflicting information. CBS News has already picked up on this confusion here. Presumably, some sort of an official release marking the two million milestone - with or without an actual two millionth article - will need to be made. Zzxc 04:39, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

The Wikinews article already states there will be an announcement. That is just because people are being picky. I submitted the news to Slashdot, Digg also got it. And since outlets release the news once (that is, they update the story only), by the time the Foundation states anything, the news will be already old. -- ReyBrujo 04:44, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

How long will that banner stay on the main page. This is its third day there, and when I go to the main page when I sign in, it seems a little tacky (best word I can think of). I realize not everyone checks WP everday, but I was just curious about that. Perhaps the banner could be made smaller. Sasha Callahan 20:36, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Armenia-Azerbaijan 2, and the follow-up

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

A very productive start here, then along come the parties to the Armenia-Azerbaijan battle and it starts to turn into WWIII. Please all remember that the communities patiences is running out quickly in this dispute, and further edit warring and incivility is likely to lead to some fairly substantial blocks leading to bans. Ryan Postlethwaite 08:43, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

The bloodbath surrounding this arbitration case (not to mention this one) still continues: see multiple ANI threads, the log of blocks, bans, and list of users on restriction, histories of focal articles, and most of all the threads at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Arbitration enforcement. Almost every single thread there is a follow-up from the Armenia wars.

However, thanks to the ArbCom we can bring this area of the encyclopedia back under control: for further information, see this remedy. I would request more eyes on AE - El C and Thatcher131 are great, but a few admins will not keep this under control. Watchlist the relevant articles and keep eyes open. We should be liberal with handing out the restrictions, bans, and blocks. The extent of the fighting, edit-warring and incivility has got ridiculous. It's time we fought fire with fire. Nationalist "mortal combat" on Wikipedia is an insidious, omnipresent plague to be eradicated. Moreschi ^Talk 19:24, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

We should be liberal with handing out the restrictions, bans, and blocks. The extent of the fighting, edit-warring and incivility has got ridiculous. It's time we fought fire with fire. Nationalist "mortal combat" on Wikipedia is an insidious, omnipresent plague to be eradicated.

Amen to that. I'll try to help out when necessary and where possible. -- tariqabjotu 20:31, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Double amen to that. I've been dealing with it on the Macedonian v. Bulgarian articles lately. It's not quite as insidious as the Armenian/Azerbaijan ones, but it's pretty bad. This is an epidemic across Wikipedia and needs to be killed in the face, hard.⇒ SWATJester ^{Denny Crane.} 22:48, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely agree with Moreschi's sentiments. Apply the arbitration remedies liberally. I've warned two users about these today and will not stop there. As I said elsewhere, there will be some innocent casualties but even they need to realize this is better than degenerating back to chaos. El_C 22:52, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if this a right place, but I would like to ask the admins for clarification. Yesterday the admins placed 2 editors on a supervised editing (formerly revert and civility parole), [5] [6], at the same time another 2 editors received only a warning for exactly the same or maybe even more grave violation. [7][8] My question is why there’s no standardized approach to similar violations and why users are treated differently, especially considering that User:VartanM did a lot more reverting than the 2 users placed on parole (just check VartanM’s recent editing history, especially on the article Khurshidbanu Natavan). Thanks in advance for your response. Grandmaster 05:27, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I would like to ask the administrators to check the Natavan history and see that I reverted that article only once. the other difs are just my failed attempts to NPOV the article. I tried everything, requested a rewrite, added tags, requested neutral sources, tried to NPOV myselelf each and every time I was reverted. The root of the problem with the said article is the sources. And how they are being misrepresented and misquoted. The first one is a unverifiable picture which is being used as a source. Grandmaster, Atabek, Dacy69, Parishan (all were parties to AA1 and AA2 and are all established users) presented the picture as a source to claim a destruction of monuments by Armenians. Can a willing administrator take a look at the article, then the talkpage and then tell me if I did anything wrong.

• picture that is being used as a source

• Note that the monuments were not destructed as the title suggests, only damaged due to the war. they are currently in Baku, Azerbaijan in a courtyard of a museum.

• Note that this source says allegedly sold as scrap metal, while the article presents this as a fact without the word allegedly. Also its a biased partisan source but I have compromised and have no problem if its being used.

• None of the sources mentions any black markets, while its in the article.

Also can someone please compare the editing patterns of [[User:Ehud_Lesar] and User:AdilBaguirov (blocked by AA1 and has abusively used multiple socks to evade his ban). If it is him he should be blocked, if its not him I will personally apologize to Ehud.

I'd like to thank Moreschi for his initiative on brining peace to Armenia wars. Thatcher was in dire need of help. VartanM 06:39, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I wonder why User:VartanM, who barely started editing during the finishing days of ArbCom 1, when User:AdilBaguirov was blocked for a year, is assuming so much bad faith with regards to this user. Not to mention that User:Ehud Lesar and User:AdilBaguirov were found to be unrelated by checkuser - [9]. Atabek 06:18, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Atabek, you and I started contributing the same day! January 21 AA1 finished in April 4. Actually I was not contributing at all during the finishing days of AA1. I was out of town. As for Ehud He is reverting articles every time you or Grandmaster use up your revert limits. Thats the same pattern of all Adil socks. Just couple of minutes ago Grandmaster was questioning the legitimacy of the checkuser with regards to Behemod. There is nothing bad faith about asking an administrator to check something. They can decline my request if its in bad faith and I will apologize. VartanM 06:53, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

VartanM, all those edits of yours on Natavan article were reverts in a direct or indirect form. My question to the admins still remains: why users are treated differently for the same offense? (see my above post for the diffs). In my opinion they should all be either paroled or warned, but treated equally. Grandmaster 07:13, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Grandmaster,

• The first edit was a request to rewrite the article,[10]
• I was was reverted by Ehud [11]
• I removed the picture that was being used as a source and replaced it with a fact tag,
• I was reverted by Ehud [12]
• I then NPOVed the article removed the picture source and added fact tags [13]
• I was reverted by Parishan[14]
  • I reverted him [15]
• Atabek reverted me with this edit summary: "sourced text was removed - VartanM discuss your edits" [16] Note that no text was removed and I have been discussing all along. This revert by him and the misleading edit summary was just a provocation and a bait. He then left the mandatory justification in the talkpage, which was just a confirmation that he was aware of the fact that he's using a picture as a source. [17]
  • I took the bait [18]
• Ehud reverted and added another picture as a source and a biased Azeri source. [19]
• Grandmaster POVed the article [20]
• I moved the picture source to the external links [21]
• I then corrected some factual errors. The statues were not destroyed but damaged and the section was about the statue not her residence.
• I was once again reverted by Ehud [22]
• I added NPOV tag to the article and didn't touch it since [23]

You see Grandmaster there is no disruption on my part, every time I tried to work on the article I was reverted (6 times) and not a a single complain about Ehud was made to any Administrator. Grandmaster I can't believe you found yet another administrator notice board to report users. I guess AE was not good enough? Assume good faith Eh? and stop the baseless attacks. VartanM 08:13, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Grandmaster 2 reverts during the 7 day period. I believe I deserve an apology. --VartanM 08:22, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

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

WP:ACC

Hey, just dropping by to say that ACC has a bit of a backlog, and some administrator help would be very helpful :) Thanks, and happy editing, Arky ^¡Hablar! 20:49, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Miranda! Backlog cleared! Arky ^¡Hablar! 20:57, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Olivenza

Pardon me from lifting the title of this section from an admin's own words a few posts above. I came here to report some admin's behavior and just happened to stumble above these, probably too strong anyway, words.

My case involves a politically-sensitive article: Olivenza, concerning a border dispute between Portugal and Spain. The article had been stable for a long time, after having been purged from both sides' POV. Then this admin comes and makes edits which I consider to be Portugal-POV and promptly rv. I write my reasons for the rv, find that he is Portuguese and has a political stand on the issue on his own user page, and tell him that he is emotionally involved and prejudiced in the matter and should probably abstain from editing the article. He calls me uncivil, threatens to block me and then reverts to his version. Strike one, but I let go.

Then he made additional edits which are again POV IMHO. Instead of rv this time, I took the issue to the Talk page (here), where I demonstrated his edits were POV and factually wrong. His answer was: "been discussed ad nauseam", "your rhetoric", "in my view". Seeing no valid arguments there, I rv his edits. He rv back and accused me of WP:POINT. Strike two, and this time I've had enough.

I believe this admin is abusing his admin powers. Does it matter how he is? His fellow admins know how and if to take it from here. Thanks. --maf (talk-cont) 20:50, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

He reverted you. He didn't even use admin rollback the second time. This is hardly an abuse of admin privledges; its an edit war. There is nothing that says he needs to be punished or that admins are forbidden from getting into content disputes. I see no discussion to support what either of you did. Discuss it. And your section title that I changed (used in this context) is a personal attack. Mr.Z-man 21:25, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

You mean Husond? Where is the "political stand on the issue on his own user page"? I see no indication of such. --Hemlock Martinis 21:29, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I have removed the resolved template, as I would like Husond to respond here. I agree that the core of this is a content dispute, but I would express unease at comments such as "I had warned you against being uncivil, you are free and welcome to express your position as long as you do it civilly and without resorting to any snideness or personal attacks." and "Now, I want to firmly remind you of WP:CIVIL, a policy which you have bluntly violated in your comment above. The next time I witness such rudeness, you shall be blocked. Please respect WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA." . I do not see personal attacks, although the language is not a model of civility, and the threat to block does not appear to be appropriate coming from one side of a content dispute. I see no reason for any action against Husond, but would appreciate his responses. LessHeard vanU 21:41, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

It is an ordinary content dispute, where one of the parties (Mafmafmaf) is not only refusing to cooperate in a constructive manner, as is also resorting to incivility.

Basically we have an article about this town, Olivenza, which is technically located in two different countries (de jure Portugal and de facto Spain). The dispute is well known and is well documented (even described in the CIA Factbook). Olivenza has remained in this limbo for centuries, with uncertain status. For a long time, editors of this article have strived to maintain a NPOV by stating the de jure/de facto situation whenever possible, thus never letting the article declare that the town belongs solely to either Spain or Portugal. Now this editor Mafmafmaf is trying to remove references to the Portuguese de jure sovereignty over Olivenza, stating that otherwise the article would bend towards a Portuguese POV. Mafmafmaf disputes the entire de jure situation, regardless of its recognition by other countries. I contacted him a couple of weeks ago and tried to engage in a productive exchange of positions, but I was insulted like I had never been before on Wikipedia by a non-vandal [24]. The dispute restarted yesterday after I inserted an infobox to the article and Mafmafmaf threatened to revert it [25]. Once again I explained my views, but Mafmafmaf would simply rest his case with scorn [26], and acknowledge my purported lack of arguments [27]. Not to mention repeating his blatant incivility with this "Administrators are Elitist Bastards" section created right here earlier [28], an unacceptable breach of WP:CIVIL for which he had been warned recently. A block could be in order as a matter of fact.--Húsönd 22:42, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Before the civility issue - the one that properly belongs here -, I will address briefly the content issue, referring all to Olivenza#Claims of sovereignty: "Spain claims the de jure sovereignty (...) Portugal claims the de jure sovereignty" (read on for the allegations of each country). This alone invalidates any claim to attribute de jure solely to Portugal in the remainder of the article, but that is what Husond did and is insisting on.

Now to the civility issue: at no point did I intend to "insult" him nor did I use "scorn" (I had to look that one up). That is Husond's personal sensitiveness to the analysis I did, on my userpage, of his bias in the dispute, based on his political stances (on his page I also found our mutual interest for languages, though). Of course one can not see in the other one's eyes, but, had he just responded that he felt insulted, I would certainly have apologized, but he responded at once as victim, judge and sentencer. If Husond were not an admin, he would have answered differently; that means he leveraged his admin powers.

As for the original title of this section, I wrote "pardon me [for using] an admin's own words" - it's that admin's words, not mine, ironic in the fact that if one admin can presumably break WP:CIVIL, then an admin can really abuse his powers. But I apologize for creating a diversion to the main issue here. Thanks. --maf (talk-cont) 01:50, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

This looks like a case for dispute resolution not for admin action as these pages are not the place to bring disputes over content, or reports of abusive behaviour. feydey 07:35, 12 September 2007 (UTC)