Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents

Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents
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Remarks by Everyme

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

No good will come of continuing this discussion. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 08:47, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I really hate to do this. I'm pretty thick skinned, and generally detest people coming here to complain of incivility or personal attacks. But completely unprovoked remarks about me by Everyme (talk · contribs) have left me speechless. I'm not going to say more, to resist poisoning the well, but I'd very much appreciate some admins to examining this comment and then this thread, and take whatever action seems good to them.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 23:48, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

I should note that I tried to resolve this situation, unsuccessfully. See my comments here. ~ L'Aquatique[talk] 23:51, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm grateful to L'Aquatique for her attempts. Unfortunately, the user doesn't seem to get it.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 23:53, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Now that Everyme has been made aware of this discussion, can I summise the concern is that Everyme has offended Scott MacDonald's sensibilities by inferring that an good faith difference of opinion by SM has been termed "intellectual dishonesty"? If so, I agree that Everyme should apologise for the lack of good faith shown and intemperate language used - different philosophies can produce different results from the same evidence; to label a differing conclusion as "dishonest" is both arrogant and incivil. LessHeard vanU (talk) 00:33, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

First of all, apologies for not informing everyme, but I didn't want to be seen as baiting him, so I was staying off his userpage. If it had just been the accusation of intellectual dishonesty, I'd have let it pass. But he also, without any provocation, compared me to Ashley Todd (a liar and a "race baiter"), and then when I (fairly mildly) invited him to remove his comment, I was subjected to a further abusive tirade. An apology would be nice personally, but that;s not the point, it is more important from the project's point of view that we communicate that there are limits, beyond which we don't tolerate this attitude. I repeat, that I'd never interacted with him before.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 00:42, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Would Everyme been aware that use of that name (it means nothing to me) would have been particularly offensive to you, or to anyone, and is it possible that they still misunderstand that this is the case? I have to say that I missed this point when reviewing the links. LessHeard vanU (talk) 00:53, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Em, his post doesn't make sense without it. But read all his remarks and draw your own conclusions.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 00:58, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I hadn't noticed that Ashley Todd is the name of the hoaxer... On repeat review I don't think that Everyme meant what you have taken it to mean (IMO, regarding concerns over the BLP considerations of someone who themselves are admitted liars coupled with the "intellectual dishonesty" language), but they have not made any effort to explain themselves better and certainly not taken the route of apologising for any misunderstanding - but rather simply requested you to review the past content and draw different conclusions. I would prefer that Everyme made some comment here before seeing if any admin action is required. LessHeard vanU (talk) 01:21, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, maybe he meant something else? Maybe when he called me dumb, and stupid or dishonest, he was actually trying to say something nice as well?--Scott MacDonald (talk) 01:26, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Of course the real issue here is that this is ultimately about McCain-Obama. In a couple of weeks, Everye will lose interest in this, and probably Scott as well. Looie496 (talk) 02:14, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Personally I'm not American, and have no partisan allegiances. I'm not sure that political stress excuses Everyme's behaviour.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 03:18, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

What then excuses your behaviour? Concern about BLP? Hardly so. And for anyone who doesn't know: Yes, I'm for Obama and I despise vicious racebaiting, whether it comes from a confused young woman or from anybody else. More importantly however, I'm worried about encyclopedic accuracy and quality of discussion. Consider that the entire dispute began when Scott actually tried to argue against "Ashley Todd's mugging hoax" as the article title thusly. I responded to that by bitchslapping his comment, and I maintain that I was not only right, but doing the right thing. Everyme 07:04, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

• First off, Scott, thank you for your honesty in not informing me about this ANI thread. Thank you so much. I'm not entirely sure where I gave you the impression that I might possibly prefer not being notified over being "harassed" (a favourite buzzword of BLP-policy-fans btw, oh the irony). Well, for the record: I would have preferred it had you notified me, which I personally regard as a matter of basic politeness. Maybe you, Scott, would interpret a simple notification of an ANI thread about yourself as "harassment", but, just to kindly inform you about it, not everyone would and certainly not myself. Thank you very much for being so very considering and honest there. Wonderful.
  
  As to the merits of the thread itself: I've explained my position and my reasoning over and over, without getting any reply as to the merit of my reasoning. For Scott to say that "[...] he also, without any provocation, compared me to Ashley Todd (a liar and a "race baiter"), and then when I (fairly mildly) invited him to remove his comment, I was subjected to a further abusive tirade" is yet another comment I can only ... marvel at. I made it clear, both in my initial comment, then again at my user talk, that what I meant was the perception of some extent of intellectual dishonesty (for the record: my according reasoning has not been responded to by anyone so far). Deliberately mixing it up with Todd's racebaiting (an entirely different point in my initial comment, mind you) is, well, a wee bit far-fetched to say the very very least. So far-fetched indeed that I yet again can hardly think of any other valid explanation for why he would do that (and Scott did it in his initial comment at my talk page already).
  
  Scott refused to respond to my explanations, instead chose to be "just rather stunned". Well, again, I ask you, and this is all I care about: Why, just why, would you, at that article talk page, produce an arbitrary definition of "hoax" which you must know is entirely made up by yourself and wrong on top of that — and, most ironically, serves your stance in the article? Why would you do that? There are not so many possible explanations I can conjure up for that. Please respond to my reasoning for once. You, or anybody else who feels up to the task. Consider that I also made it very clear that in saying that I perceived his comment there as intellectually dishonest, my intention was obviously (or so I think) not to personally attack Scott. It was merely something I arrived at as the imho most likely conclusion of my reasoning. I did not comment on Scott, I commented on his comment, and told him in no unclear terms what I think of his comment, and, more importantly, why I do. Everyme 07:04, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
• Just a footnote here, but I'd like to note that Scott's memory appears to fail him when he claims above that "I repeat, that I'd never interacted with him before." Everyme 07:38, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

This kind of comment about another editor is completely unacceptable: "I didn't assume for a second that you, Scott, might actually be dumb enough to believe your own bullshit, like your definition of what a hoax is. But ok, I'll leave the choice to you: Either you are intellectually dishonest, or you're stupid." The fact that you refuse to admit it was wrong or strike it is concerning as this is clearly a personal attack. (Full disclosure, I've had previous disagreements with Everyme) Oren0 (talk) 08:41, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

What is your explanation for his awkward definition of "hoax" at that article talk page? I merely summarised all the possible alternative explanations I could think of. Since I believe Scott is intelligent, that leaves intellectual dishonesty as the most likely explanation for why he would give an arbitrary definition that just so happens to play to his stance on the article. Again, and for hopefully the last time: It's not a personal attack, it's applied logic. Also, again: Prove me wrong and I'll happily retract. But right now it's just not in my hands, I feel like I've done my homework. Please respond to my reasoning, which concluded with me seeing some degree of intellectual dishonesty as the most likely explanation for Scott's initial comment. It's the most charming of the possible explanations I could think of: I was actually being polite and carefully weighed my limited knowledge of Scott. Everyme 09:13, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't currently have the time to get involved with this, so I can't give an opinion either way, but I have previously had to negotiate with Everyme over gross incivility after Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2008 South Carolina Learjet 60 crash and I got the impression that was not the first time, either. Maybe, if we decide this was unsuitable (again, remember I haven't actually gone over this in detail), it's time somene dished out a block. How long are we going to leave this? Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 09:04, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

That's a truly hilarious situation. I can either renounce, against my better current knowledge, what I assume to be flawless reasoning on my part, or face a block. Well, I'll have to go with the block then because I am unable to discover a flaw in my reasoning and nobody bothered to even respond to my reasoning. Nevermind that I felt insulted by Scott's way of POV pushing there, and how he insulted his fellow editors' intelligence. But at least he did it civilly, didn't he. And that's what counts. Fuck my reasoning, fuck encyclopedic accuracy. Right on. Everyme 09:19, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

• Also, I'd appreciate it if the section could be renamed from the imho quite misleading "remarks" name to "Reasoning by Everyme", or alternatively "Flawed reasoning by Everyme", depending on a response by anyone who actually bothers to look at the situation at hand and doesn't merely respond on their own grudge. I am as civil as the situation allows me to be. No more, no less. And it's once again fantastic to see for how little valid reasoning counts on Wikipedia, and how zero effort to provide a valid reasoning is being constantly indulged if only the user follows the hivemind definition of "civility". Everyme 10:29, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

"...what I assume to be flawless reasoning..." is beyond hilarious; it goes a long way to evidence Scott MacDonald's complaint. No matter how "flawless" you might consider your reasoning, you have a duty to explain yourself in civil terms to a query (and you are required to AGF as regards such queries); your responses are uncivil, and arrogant, and unconducive to engendering a consensual editing atmosphere - being right isn't enough. Speaking of being right, are we not supposed to use reliable sources when ascribing motive or characterisations to a living person? Verifiability, not truth, is the basis of complying with BLP concerns, so ultimately "flawless reasoning" or lack of is unimportant. I strongly suggest that the discussion is directed to how the reliable sources describe the individual, and take it from there. LHvU (talk) 10:39, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

You do of course realise that Scott's reasoning there was based on his definition of "hoax" as "implying a deception over time, not claims made then quickly retracted." — To which, taking your edit summary cue re: WP:V, I responded e.g. by linking to the Merriam-Webster definition of the term. Now, why would an intelligent person like Scott make up that exact erroneous definition, on an article talk page where to me personally, he appears to be concerned more about the BLP policy than about encyclopedic accuracy? Why would he do such a thing? Why? What exactly is your alternative explanation, if you so decidedly disagree that it's intellectual dishonesty? At any rate, his wasn't valid reasoning, according to Merriam-Webster. He also displayed a less than neutral approach in inaccurately portray the situation as "Someone who may be unstable said some untrue things." — Which, come to think of it (and on top of Scott's downplaying the situation, i.e. Todd's lying to the police, the racebaiting and the self-inflicted injuries to make her story more believable), contains an actual BLP violation, namely his labelling a living person as [mentally, I presume] "unstable" without presenting a reliable source for that extraordinary and potentially libellous claim. As to "unconducive to engendering a consensual editing atmosphere" : Are you trying to make me laugh or cry with that? Everybody else disagreed with him, I just took issue at the way he insult his fellow editors' intelligence in making up that definition right out of the blue. I felt insulted, and I reacted by carefully pointing it out to him. Obviously, he didn't like that. But I'm pretty sure he knows deep down that my criticism of his comment was spot-on. That's why he didn't react to any of my reasoning. He didn't comment on that at all, not even reiterating his definition of a hoax. He knows I'm right, he's just pissed off that someone called him on it to the fuller extent to which his comment was unacceptable. Everyme 10:54, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

You do not, of course, realise that the question over the correct interpretation is irrelevant; we should use the term only if it is applied by the reliable source. Whether they are using the term in the correct sense is unimportant. Deliberating what constitutes the correct use is therefore original research, a point which Scott MacDonald also misses. The matter of the "consensual editing atmosphere" is in relation to your continuing incivil manner, and not to who is wrong or right. You earlier commented that you were frustrated by the fact SM was - in your view - incorrect yet their civil manner meant that they were not being castigated for their error. You seem blissfully unaware that ANI is not a venue for dispute resolution but for questions on violation of WP policies. You were and continue to be in violation of WP:Civil, and are displaying a lack of appreciation of WP:V. SM has also not understood the application of WP:V, but he has conducted himself in an appropriate manner in this instance. I am uncertain if sanctioning you is going to improve your understanding on how editors are supposed to conduct themselves, so I see no further purpose in continuing this discussing this with you here. LHvU (talk) 12:13, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Google says hoax, not incident. Great dispute resolution, everybody. Let's move on. Everyme 12:55, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

This is not about the suitability of the term hoax. I made a case, and two people quite civilly told me I was wrong. That's fine and needs no dispute resolution. However, you then came in with gratuitous personal attacks, and when asked refused to remove them and engaged in more. Since that reflects on your weaknesses rather than mine, I've removed them myself and consider the matter closed. You, perhaps should reflect on your aggression, because if you continue in this manner I predict your future with this project will be short. I grant you the last word, and just hope it will not compound your incivility.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 14:28, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

For the record: Last word was here. 78.34.141.200 (talk) 17:57, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Everyme: Why don't you tone it down about 5 rhetorical notches? Your excuse that you "felt insulted" doesn't hold much water, I have to say. Your own response, on the other hand, was remarkably insulting. Just like Scott MacDonald can be wrong and civil, you should strive to be both right and civil. A conclusion of "intellectual dishonesty" is not supported by what Scott wrote, and certainly your further evaluation of him as either stupid or dishonest is also unsupported by any evidence. The flaw in your logic is this: You assume that in order to be wrong in this instance he must be stupid, deduce that he is not stupid, and conclude that he must be lying. Your first assumption is incorrect - you can be wrong without being stupid. Therefore your conclusion is not as flawlessly logical as you believed. Avruch ^T 16:06, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

It's not logical at all. It's simply rude, and ad hominems are a logical fallacy. If someone does something wrong, there are other ways to react than arrogant and accusative speech. -- Logical Premise ^Ergo? 20:16, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Calling someone stupid is a personal attack, even if it's true. You can't logic away the fact that your comment was insulting and that's why you should retract it IMO. Oren0 (talk) 05:07, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Scott feels rightly insulted here. The comments by Everyme were highly insulting and should be withdrawn. Hobartimus (talk) 06:29, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Despite an outstandig example of wiki lawyering by Everyme, an apology is in order to insure that he understands that such insults wont be tolerated. Failiure to do so would most likly warrant a block as the user is well aware of our policies on civilty.   «l| Ψrometheăn ™|l»  (talk) 00:50, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikilawyering? I suppose you simply don't understand that term. Anyway, you forgot to mention that you yourself have been featured at the noticeboards for egregious incivility, and also that we have had some conflict in the past (was admittedly too lazy to dig through the AN/I archives, should be in there somewhere). I suppose you just forgot to mention that. You certainly did not omit it so as to appear more uninvolved. 78.34.141.200 (talk) (Everyme logged out) 17:49, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't know either person, it just happened that I was reported above this discussion and my eyes wandered down. Does the guy go about insulting people all the time? If he does he should be warned, the discussions should be about articles, not about the editors, but insisting in getting "apologies" and "retractions" looks to me a bit like kids having a fight, let's behave like grownups, the guy should be warned not to voice again his opinion about fellow editors because it's against the rules (even if he considers he's right) and that should be it, insisting in getting apologies is a bit silly (oh my, will I be banned from Wikipedia because I said "silly"?) And by the way, I don't really get this. How can we ask (and actually force) somebody to be dishonest by apologizing for something that he obviously believes in? (this is a bit scarry, you know like 1984 and thought control...) At most the admins could say: "delete that sentence because is against the rules or you'll be punished for breaking the rules and don't continue to discuss editors", simple as that. BTW, shouldn't things that deal with incivility be reported in another part of Wikipedia? Isn't there a process, you need to warn the person and if the person continues with incivilities then you report them to WP:WQA. Has this noticeboard become a place where "justice" is dispensed summarily? Why are people reported here instead of where they should be reported? man with one red shoe (talk) 02:06, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

As much as I dislike posting in these threads, it is probably relevant to mention User:Wizardman's conclusion at Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Dorftrottel#Conclusion. Also, an IP claims to be the individual under discussion as seen in this edit. --A Nobody^{My talk} 23:43, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

A Nobody, I believe you posted in the wrong thread. ~ L'Aquatique[talk] 05:15, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Why? It looks like Everyme was Dorftrottel. man with one red shoe (talk) 05:23, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Ah yes, I see that now. My apologies, I wasn't reading carefully enough.

So, the question now: Everyme has not responded to this thread, has apparently not retracted his remarks. Do we want to let this fly or take action? I don't have a preference. ~ L'Aquatique[talk] 18:51, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Everyme has been clearly shown to be unwilling to avoid completely unacceptable remarks in disputes, or incapable of doing so. This needs to be changed. Action. --Kizor 00:14, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

You're yet another editor who rightly thinks their life would be easier without me around. Maybe my memory is just better than yours, but when I saw your comment here, I immediately remembered having challenged some minor bullshit from you in the past. I suppose you simply forgot to mention that. You certainly did not omit it so as to appear more uninvolved. 78.34.141.200 (talk) (Everyme logged out) 17:45, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I recalled that we'd had some kind of unpleasant encounter in the past. It looks like we met once, briefly, six months ago. Less time than that passed between me being blocked and me being granted adminship. Your presence here has little bearing on my life and my time on Wikipedia, so I don't consider exchanging thirteen to fifteen inconsequential lines last spring to constitute involvement or a taint on my judgement. Others are welcome to weigh in on this. --Kizor 12:15, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

This search indicates that I also comment on your nomination here, last February. We are both present on a few talk pages, but not in the same sections. And no, I don't think that this counts as involvement, either. --Kizor 12:42, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Just saying, I've had some tiny minor doubts regarding your judgement ever since you accused me of "throwing streams of insults against articles" for this comment of mine. 78.34.128.69 (talk) (Everyme logged out) 16:11, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, yes, those words are clearly linked to as well as apparent in your previous link. Given the habits of discourse you have demonstrated, I stand by them. Would it be possible to convince you that I did not - and do not - lie to boost my standing in WP discussions? --Kizor 20:48, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry Elisabeth, I was rolling on the floor at "As much as I dislike posting in these threads." 78.34.141.200 (talk) (Everyme logged out) 18:00, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) A bit of a strong attack considering that scott mcdonald made a single two line posting on the subject. One would, I presume, need a lot more rhetoric for a charge of intellectual dishonesty. But, insulting? I wouldn't really call it that. We all spend a good part of our day being intellectually dishonest (come on, admit it!) and it should be no big deal if one is labeled that in a debate (read, for example Intellectual dishonesty). It is certainly not the same as being called 'stupid' and is not properly an Ad hominem argument since it is the argument that is being attacked rather than the speaker. But, I agree that it is probably not productive to throw labels around especially when an editor has made a single objection, that objection has been addressed by others, and the editor has not yet had the opportunity to comment on the logic of the responses. I see that scottmcdonald has deleted the remarks that he/she found offensive, so it probably makes sense to close this report and let the matter rest. --Regents Park (sink with my stocks) 15:55, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

but it would be reasonable to suppose that this sort of absolutely inexcusable abuse will be continued, here or somewhere else--judging by the edit history of even the last few weeks. At some point this has to stop. I suggest a 24 hour block, with the understanding it will be increased upon repeats. People who edit here need protection against this, and the appropriate time to have stopped tolerating it was a good while ago. (If we hadn't disagreed about various things at various times i'd do the block myself.) DGG (talk) 03:11, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

What purpose would that block serve, iyo? What do you think the value of blocking me is? Give me a warning? Seriously? The "incident" was several days ago, the former admin now known as "Scott MacDonald" has unilaterally done what none of the morally outraged people here cared to do, which was to refactor the (logically deduced, no less) "personal attack" against his comment him. Please also consider that I'm not hellbent on editing via a registered account either. The adding of references and formatting I mainly do is entirely possible via IP. If the community decides to indef block/ban me, I'd just continue doing such largely uncontroversial edits via IP, with a non-editing sock account to maintain a watchlist, and maybe do very minor edits on semiprotected articles. In other words: Do your worst. You will not keep me from working on the encyclopedia. Also, David and anyone else reading this, if you honestly believe that people like e.g. Promethean and "A Nobody" are more valuable and --in contrast to myself-- worth having around, I suppose nothing short of a long-term electroshock regimen could possibly be done to change your mind anyway. Not that I propose such a thing, but it's getting too ridiculous and I'm tired of defending myself against the torrent of people commenting here against me in a dishonest or at least mindless way, many of them omitting mention of prior encounters they've had with me -- possibly because I have been right in most those encounters, and they were wrong. It wouldn't help their vested goal against me one bit if they mentioned those run-ins. Anyway, I honestly don't care either way. I just wonder, with some of those editors who are defended at every turn here and elsewhere, who needs vandals and trolls? But calling one of them on their bullshit, that's a big no-no. Especially when it's a former admin, like "Scott MacDonald". Right. And nobody bothered to refactor my "unacceptable personal attack" on the article talk page. Nobody but Scott himself. Best practice? Hardly so. 78.34.128.69 (talk) 10:31, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

DGG, I am not fully aware of Everyme's past history on the project but, looking purely at this incident, I do not think it warrants serious action and, to me anyway, this whole exercise seems a perfect way to inflame passions on a small offense, which it has successfully done. Calling someone intellectually dishonest hardly warrants censure, it is an accepted form of attack in debate. Whatever the history of an editor, the best thing to do when a particular infraction is minor, is to move on quickly. Which is why I suggest this 'incident report' be closed as soon as possible. --Regents Park (sink with my stocks) 13:30, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Let's us step back a bit and not judge if the guy is unpleasant or not (I have my own opinion about this), but let's judge if he really broke a rule. So if you debate with somebody and you tell him "I think it's intellectually dishonest to claim that ... ... " is it a personal attack or is it actually an attack on what the person said? I think it's borderline incident and as Regents Park I don't think it warrants serious action. Yeah, it's probably not the best example of behavior, but banning offence? And let me quote from WP:DR "Turn to Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts for problems with uncivil editors. First, however, consider ignoring it – you can often get much more accomplished by rising above uncivil comments, and staying focussed on the task at hand." Which didn't seem to have happened in this case. man with one red shoe (talk) 13:50, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• I'm not going to apologise for anything. And David, come to think of it, it's hilarious that you are arguing a block after I called you out on intimidating one hardworking editor for the hard work their doing. The least you could have done would be to abstain from commenting here. See here and here and judge for yourselves on the appropriateness of DGG commenting here the way he did. Funny. 78.34.128.69 (talk) (Everyme logged out) 16:04, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I stand by my comments at both places there (not that this is the place to discuss them) ; I have had many useful discussions with wiki opponents off wiki--I don;t consider suggesting such to be very intimidating. What I do find intimidating is when people overuse Bold, or B&R, and aren't willing to proceed to the D. Given that none of the discussion above is about either that issue, that general topic, or that user, I don't the se relevance of this--especially in response to a comment that I was deliberatly *not* using admin tools. Were I to use them on you, then you would indeed have a complaint.

as for my comments here, I think the repetitive use of deirect insults to fellow editors is cause for a block. It is normally followed by repeats, and in your case it has frequently been. If the consensus here is that the language compalined of is not sanctionable, the wiki will continue as a relatively unfriendly place. Myself, I can cope with that--I've known worse. But i don';t see why others should tolerate it. DGG (talk) 16:55, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

You must have overlooked the response I gave immediately below your initial comment above. Oh, and I laugh into your face for the last comment. You threatened another editor with a topic ban, for his doing good work on the encyclopedia. Nothing is more uncivil and unacceptable than that. And you show no insight as well. You, David, should be desysopped and banned for that. 78.34.146.26 (talk) (Everyme logged out) 22:01, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

You don't seem to help yourself much... man with one red shoe (talk) 22:33, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Neither does DGG. 78.34.145.215 (talk) (Everyme logged out) 08:40, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

• Are we done here? This circus act is turning into a traffic accident. HalfShadow 22:36, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• Let's archive this. It's clear we're not going to get any reconciliations, apologies, resolutions etc. out of this, and I don't think there's a need for sanctions (yet?) Heimstern Läufer (talk) 08:24, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

• Ok. But I'm not going to say sorry. Sorry, I'm just messing with you guys. I was hoping that someone would take the bait and block me for saying that I'm not going to apologise. 78.34.145.215 (talk) (Everyme logged out) 08:40, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

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

User:Ariobarza

Resolved

 – Ariobarza blocked for one week by Alvestrand. --Elonka 03:00, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Unresolved

 – I see no resolution here. Aunt Entropy (talk) 03:22, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Resolved

 – Ariobarza blocked "for a time period of infinite" by Jehochman.--Alvestrand (talk) 14:56, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I've recently been working on articles relating to ancient Babylonian history, but I'm getting increasingly concerned by the behaviour of Ariobarza (talk · contribs). While he is an enthusiastic contributor, he appears to reject the prohibition of original research. He constantly promotes original research and regularly makes edits, or even writes articles, on the basis of his own personal interpretations of sources. His additions are rarely if ever accompanied by citations. He treats Wikipedia as a battlefield, is aggressive, confrontional and accuses other editors of pursuing an anti-Iranian or even "neo-conservative" agenda (it's news to me that there's a neocon viewpoint on ancient history!). When his edits are questioned or criticised, he gets angry and posts long, rambling and often angry rants to article and user talk pages to justify his edits and views. He responds dismissively or with hostility to advice given in good faith and assumes bad faith of others who do not share his POV or question his use of original research. Key diffs:

• Promotion of original research. Numerous examples of articles created on the basis of uncited OR and personal interpretations: Battle of the Tigris (ongoing AfD - Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Battle of the Tigris); Siege of Ecbatana (repeatedly created and deleted via AfD - Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Siege of Ecbatana); Siege of Halicarnassus (repeatedly created and deleted); Battle of Media (deleted); Battle of Mylasa, Battle of Pedasa, Siege of Pasargadae Hill, Battle of Pasargadae, Mitradates, Persian Revolt etc (all will need to be cleaned up as appropriate). Repeated unsourced additions to articles, which other editors have reverted: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]. He is quite open about pursuing OR (which he calls "connecting the dots") in articles.[6]

• Treating Wikipedia as a battlefield / lack of good faith. Believes it's "up to me to stop Xerxes hordes". [7] Accuses other editors of pursing "an agenda". [8] [9] [10]. Accuses me of pursing "neo-conservative" agenda (Ariobarza apparently believes this is a westerners vs Iran situation and that he's defending Iranian honour) [11].

• Incivility. Numerous personal attacks against other editors. [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] for just a few examples. Has been warned by other editors and admins to stop this behaviour - [19] [20] [21] - but has continued regardless [22].

• Tendentious conduct on talk pages. Routinely posts long, rambling self-justifications and rants to talk pages (too many examples to list, see [23] for one example).

• Inappropriate canvassing. Canvassed Tundrabuggy (talk · contribs) to participate in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Battle of the Tigris with a characteristic angry rant against myself. [24] (See also #User:Tundrabuggy below.)

I gather that Dougweller (talk · contribs) has been trying to "reform" Ariobarza for some months, but without any success. Given Ariobarza's complete refusal to listen to any outside advice from other editors and admins, his obvious anger management problems and his ongoing use of Wikipedia to promote his personal views, I think a topic ban covering articles relating to Near Eastern and classical history would be appropriate. -- ChrisO (talk) 20:18, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I GATHER that ChrisO is wrong that Dougweller has not reformed me, because I greatly made and improved the Battle of Hryba and almost got and I am in the process of getting a GA award for it, so I have great potential, but The Wall of Pink Floyd has is trying to block me, thanks.--Ariobarza (talk) 00:47, 29 October 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk

• A NOTE ALL SHOULD READA topic ban, I'll still can edit articles you know. Now the message, ChrisO is lucky I do not have time to make a list of his faults and misconducts, which if I did, it would be longer that this page. So please do NOT remove this message, let it be a reminder to those that come here, so when they come here they get the FULL picture, not only ChrisO's side of events (unfairness is the biggest problem on Wikipedia, for lack of representation) and know that ChrisO were onced blocked, which now he is trying to get me mad, so I can get blocked. And all users will regret agreeing with ChrisO that the Battle of the Tigris did not happen, which as right now I am gathering the sources, thank you.--Ariobarza (talk) 20:32, 28 October 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk

I can confirm that Ariobarza has been incivil to ChrisO (and others; he called me "Mr. Wall" here), and that Ariobarza has engaged in WP:OR on the articles under discussion. Since I've pointed out to Ariobarza that he has no sources for his claims, I suppose I should regard myself as a participant. I'll leave it to others to take action, if warranted.--Alvestrand (talk) 20:38, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I did warn the user in question regarding the "Bratz dolls" uncivil comment made on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Battle of the Tigris after looking through that day's list of AfDs as usual. I felt that, instead of coming to ANI, that a RfC for user conduct should have been initiated, as this seems to be a blatant misconduct issue in which multiple editors have failed to resolve. However, since we are here now, I would leave the decision on the action to be taken to whomever. MuZemike (talk) 20:57, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

An RFC might be helpful. I don't think we are about to ban or block this user here and now. To me, Ariobarza's editing seems more confused than malicious. A thread on ANI does not serve much purpose. Jehochman ^Talk 21:26, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I did consider an RfC, but many different editors have offered advice to him over many weeks and months and he has consistently responded by attacking them, dismissing them or ignoring them. I don't believe that Ariobarza is willing to respond positively to feedback. An RfC can serve no useful purpose in that situation. He isn't contributing anything useful, he's creating a poisonous atmosphere by constantly attacking those with whom he disagrees, he's actively degrading articles by pushing OR all the time; why exactly are we letting him continue to edit? -- ChrisO (talk) 21:35, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I've only really been involved at the Battle of the Tigris AfD, although have been aware of issues on related articles. In my view the comments on that page, both from Ariobarza and from others, sum up the overall problems pretty clearly on the one page. When editors start here they often dive in over-eagerly into articles, perhaps excited by the possibility that their views and thoughts will actually get integrated into content here. Gradually most either drop out altogether when they realise that they can't force their personal views into articles against consensus and/or policy, or stay but become a little more cautious and take on board the limitations imposed by core policies on original research, verifiability etc. Others just continue brazenly on, demanding the right to impose their personal world views and analysis all over various pages. Those editors lose the right to fall back on the excuse that they're new, or that they don't understand. Ariobarza even appears to claim the right to conduct original research and make "discoveries", about matters that are presumably hitherto unknown to scholarship. This latest example means we have a whole article here about a supposed battle that no reliable source appears to have any record of (and even were these sources to exist, they should be found first and the article then built around them, not the other way round of course). It totally diminishes the credibility of this place as an encyclopedic resource of any sort. Maybe strictly it should have been the first step, but I can't see what an RfC would accomplish - Ariobarza is constantly subject to comments from a wide range of editors, but just shouts back at them while asserting to right to do what he wants. --Nickhh (talk) 22:13, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

That has been my experience at Talk:Battle of Opis, which has been one long tedious OR-fest from Ariobarza. He has ignored everything that has been said by other editors and created Battle of the Tigris as a POV-fork of the first article, after he couldn't persuade people to include his OR. His conduct at Talk:Battle of Opis - in particular his constant insistance that he's right and everyone else is wrong or biased - is what leads me to believe that an RfC would not be of any use. Everything's already been said that needs to be said. -- ChrisO (talk) 22:36, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Firstly I never said I HAVE THE RIGHT TO ORIGINAL RESEARCH. The original research article says if in original research I find a discovery, then I could include it in Wikipedia, IF it is supported by sources. Your making up and jumping to conclusions about what I say, is very offending to me. Shall I say, this cornering and trapping reminds me of a saying... (The few against the many). I am currently minded my own business, so please, if I am going to suffer the same fate as Caesar, better do it now when my gaurd is down, than later. (When ariobarza says stuff like this he is being sarcastic.) OR, you guys can help me find sources for the battle, and not try to hinder progress on Wikipedia by deleting me. Thanks a lot.--Ariobarza (talk) 23:32, 28 October 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk

The article you are linking to is a(nother) rather badly written and referenced Wikipedia article, not the policy. I've already pointed this out to you here, but you seem to have ignored that. Nor does it even say anything approaching what you are claiming it does in any event. And finally the whole point is that you do not anyway have any sources for claiming that there were such events as "Battle of the Tigris" or "Siege of Kapisa". Your attempts to invoke this irrelevant WP article as justification for your behaviour merely serves to highlight the nature of the problem I'm afraid. --Nickhh (talk) 23:53, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

*Ahem*, canvassing and forum shopping alert: ChrisO has been canvassing a number of involved editors ([25], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30], [31]) to post here and echo his comments. As for Ariobarza, (s)he has already been warned for her inappropriate comments which were made in an apparent moment of frustration, and this is sufficient enough for now. If ChrisO feels otherwise, he should follow due process and initiate and RfC for user conduct which would allow a broader community input. Khoikhoi 23:29, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

• Khoikhoi, don't you remember? Ariobarza's already had an RFC a few weeks ago: it just got deleted for some strange reason or other. I think. Best, Moreschi (talk) 23:46, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Khoikhoi, I notified the people who were already involved in the discussions with/about Ariobarza, so kindly keep your aspersions to yourself. As for Ariobarza, I note that you haven't addressed his continuous promotion of OR (which is the centre of the problem), and it's insufficient to blame "an apparent moment of frustration" for repeated personal attacks on various editors on many occasions recently. Judging from his contribution, he's been behaving like an angry crank for months. We don't need this kind of editor. -- ChrisO (talk) 23:49, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I believe that was for conduct that involved two other users (Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Ariobarza, CreazySuit, Larno Man). The log says that it was deleted because it was "uncertified." If that's the case, we should open a solo one as there is more of a case this time around for one. MuZemike (talk) 23:57, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually it was certified; there was a dispute over whether it had been properly certified. I didn't bother appealing the deletion at the time because I felt the RfC had served its purpose. Unfortunately I seem to have been wrong about that. If others feel that an RfC is needed, I could probably create a fresh one based on the evidence above, but it will probably end up in arbitration. To be honest, I think this is something that the community can and should deal with - we shouldn't need to ask the arbitrators to do what we should be doing anyway. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:09, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

JUst recently I been acting up because of ChrisO, AND I called 4 users Bratz dolls, GET OVER IT! Suggesting from ChrisO's tone, he is saying, OFF WITH HIS (ariobarza's) HEAD. Sure you guys do not need me, its not like it I made 3,000 valid contributions to Wikipedia. Your right ChrisO I should be Quarantined.--Ariobarza (talk) 23:55, 28 October 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk

Dear, All user involved (HMM) I have come to the conclusion that I have been acting up a whole lot. Therefore I am currently writing a Public Apology to all the users I have offended and I have been wrong on most of the things. So for the sake of good faith I declare that we please put this behind us, and not escalate things, therefore we can resume progress on Wikipedia. I am willing to fix all my faults tommorow, if you and others do this now. My problem is I am short on time and often forget to source articles in the first place (which leads most users to think I am doing original research) and this is understandable from my part, so my main and maybe only problem is time managment. With best regards, thank you all (users for contributing free knoweldge to humanity) for reading.--Ariobarza (talk) 01:07, 29 October 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk Sincerly, Ariobarza

Ariobarza's outbursts are merely the icing on the cake as it were of the problem. The bigger, more fundamental problem is that this editor is dumping extremely poor and inaccurate content into this encyclopedia, based on their own amateur guesswork and original research, and has been doing this for over 8 months, with around 2,000 mainspace edits. You only have to stop and look at what they're doing for a couple of minutes - as I did - and work this out. I really would urge others to analyse what is going on rather than simply suggesting that an RfC would be better or whatever, on a point of procedure. Other editors have had to spend hours trying to stem or rollback the more egregious errors, and counselling Ariobarza on how to edit within the rules. But it just doesn't stop. As I've said it's damaging, and ultimately embarrassing. --Nickhh (talk) 08:06, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I've gotta agree with Nickhh. I've taken the time to have a look through a fair bit of Ariobarza's editing history (in addition to the diffs provided here) and the quality of his contributions is pretty grim. It's one thing to have an editor who makes the odd spelling and grammar error but whose contributions of net benefit to the 'pedia, but this situation is something else altogether. I'm sure that Ariobazra means well, but his contributions are seriously diminishing quality of the articles he focuses on. X MarX the Spot (talk) 08:33, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I like the excuse that he's "short on time" and "forgets" to provide sources. Add that to the Pantheon of the Lame. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 10:04, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I've tried to work with this editor since June, trying my best to explain about original research, using references, advising him that he shouldn't self-assess his own articles (he just ignored the criteria and gave an unreferenced article a 'B' classification), using his sandbox (I was the third editor to suggest this, he was first asked to do this in February rather than create articles with no references), etc. I tried my best to work with him and support him for some time, then started to simply give up and ignore him - which isn't easy simply because he does things that shouldn't be ignored. For a while on Persian Revolt he was adding huge chunks of stuff straight from a mid-19th century book by Rawlinson, footnote numbers and all - which I reverted when I discovered that as old as it was, it has a current copyright - but it looked ridiculous [32]. It would be useful if people looked at his talk page to see just how many editors have commented on problems with his edits. There are still quite a few articles that he created with no references that he hasn't deal with, and as we still here he hasn't learned from past comments. I'm also unhappy with the way he adds infoboxes with information in them that is often based on his OR. I don't know what to do about him, but I think a review of all the articles he created is probably necessary, he's been given months to sort them out. Eg Siege of Pasargadae Hill where I asked him four months ago for references, Siege of Doriskos which has been waiting since February for references, etc. I think he should request adoption and if he does that, seek guidance as to which of his articles that he created he can improve and which he himself should take to AfD. He shouldn't be working on any other articles until those he created are cleared up. If he doesn't accept adoption I think more stringent action needs to be taken for the sake of Wikipedia. He has been given advice which he hasn't followed for a very long period of time, and it looks as though crunch time has finally arrived. Doug Weller (talk) 11:07, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

You people just don't stop. Despite my efforts to say I am sorry and will make wiser contributions to Wikipedia. You do three things, keep damning my efforts, making uneccessary critisims on things I am taking care of as of now, and finally taking things to the extreme. Why, I am already before God, is he showing me a list of my sins? Did you guys read the bolded message I put, or ignored it, which Dougweller has said openly? I am thinking of taking this to administrater abuse, not because you have abused your powers, but are now engaged in stalking my edits, taunting, and threatening me with uneccessary things. And I thought I could talk to you people (a small group of admin with special dreams). I have been only mean to one or two users, so why are you, 90% admin coordinating your attacks. You make it seem like I am the only one with faults here, whereas some of you have done more terrible things than I have, (it might be because this is my ANI page) I have been here for just over a year. Seeing that I am short on time, and edit fast, you could have helped me with my research (not only pointing out my wrong things) on the Battle of the Tigris, and many other articles, but you chose to accuse me of not putting sources, and blaming me for vage sources and taking it to speedily delete (A DAY AFTER IT WAS MADE). So its up to you guys if you want to escalate things, I WILL not hesitate to go the administrater abuses page. THANK YOU.--Ariobarza (talk)

Please calm down. The editing you have been doing does seem to legitimately be a big problem. Attacking administrators back only leads to getting blocked, in the end - it's not OK, it's not acceptable user behavior. Please calm down and describe what you will do to fix your prior editing problems, and make it clear that you understand what those problems were. Thank you. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 22:29, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

• Click on the links ChrisO provides for you here, and read my messages to end, and then DECIDE whether most of them are valid arguements or not.

Ariobarza has now taken to removing links to problem articles in ChrisO's original post on WP:ANI. I am sorry but surely this is the proverbial last straw in terms of what they are doing in WP as a whole? --Nickhh (talk) 00:13, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

He's also taken to altering my comments on talk pages to make it appear as if I'm saying things I haven't said. [33]. Not a good idea. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:16, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree that those diffs are problematic. I will have a word with Ariobarza. --Elonka 00:27, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd seen that too. A preference for mentorship and a short topic ban has now turned towards support for a total block. This kind of behaviour cannot, surely, be tolerated. What is this editor contributing apart from poor content, endless obfuscation and outright fraud? --Nickhh (talk) 00:26, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Can somebody take a mentorship of Ariobarza. It looks like an enthusiastic editor that may need some help. Maybe Khoikhoi? Alex Bakharev (talk) 05:49, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Khoikhoi would not be a good choice; his behaviour is problematic in its own way. See my comments at the bottom of #User:Tundrabuggy below. -- ChrisO (talk) 09:29, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Apparently someone did not get that Siege of Kapisa does not belong here I stand by what I did. Now ChrisO because he feels he was defeated in the feud of Opis he is LITERALLY TRYING TO DELETE ALL THE ARTICLEs I HAVE MADE, IF HE CONTinues to do this I will take him ADMIN BANNING. ANd I will offend Nickhh, for is Bull**** comments, OBFUSCATION AND OUTRIGHT FRAUD? Please get a life or stay out of mine. As you all for falling for ChrisO bones in his closet, you have drived me up the wall, I already said this here, your welcomed to include this entry in my uncivil behavior section. If I go down, all on this page will be sucked into the black hole to, so do not think your GANG is going to get away with this, LACK OF REPRESENTATION is the biggest problem on Wikipedia, so do not worry, policy changes and (Admins) being removed is in the works/ pre-production. Thanks.--Ariobarza (talk) 06:12, 30 October 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk

While I don't see how he plans to implement his threats, he's definitely being threatening. Threats have no place in Wikipedia discussions. Blocked for a week. --Alvestrand (talk) 06:45, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

He's referring to my nomination of Siege of Kapisa for deletion - see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Siege of Kapisa. This is exactly what I had feared would be the case; he appears to think he WP:OWNs the articles he's created and gets abusively hostile when his edits are questioned. The message he left on my talk page is a case in point. -- ChrisO (talk) 08:47, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Editing restriction proposal

I don't recall editing any articles in common with Ariobarza, but I have interacted with another editor (Ramu50) who was recently blocked for similar behavior: repeated poor quality, albeit good faith edits, followed by unfounded accusations against those editors pointing out said problems. My position then was it is now: Ariobarza's editing privileges have to put in balance with the amount of clean-up work he generates for other editors. The articles in question seem to revolve around ancient history. I would propose the following topic restriction: Ariobarza is prohibited from making edits on ancient history article without discussing them first on the talk page of the article. Failure to comply could result in a short block (12hrs). VG ☎ 16:16, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Airobarza already generates huge blocks OF TEXT (I really wish he'd break his caps lock key) on talk pages, both user and article, and usually ignores the replies. Although I think this is a good idea, past evidence suggests it isn't enough, he really needs a mentor. Doug Weller (talk) 16:56, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

• I don't think that such a sanction will work in its current wording. Additionally, I'd like to see an RFC/U. Ncmvocalist (talk) 17:05, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

He's just reappeared, despite his block, in IP form on the Battle of Tigris AfD [34]. --Folantin (talk) 17:46, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh, well. Does anyone still think a RfC/U would achieve anything? VG ☎ 17:53, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

And now on the article itself. As for restrictions once the block expires, the above seems reasonable in principle. However it would have to be specific about covering the creation of new articles, and would probably have to relate to anything to do with Iran as a whole too. It would also leave him free to continue filling out talk pages, and to a certain extent of course it would be encouraging him to do that - not harmful per se, but mildly disruptive. --Nickhh (talk) 18:41, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Some admin should explain the concept of WP:BLOCK to him. He doesn't seem to get it. --Folantin (talk) 18:57, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

As with WP:OR, I think he understands knows well what the policy says, but he either doesn't agree with it or he doesn't think it applies to him. Look at the IP he's using - it's an open proxy in a school district in California. This is (one of) his normal logged-out IP addresses, an ISP in Texas. That is deliberate block evasion, quite clearly. Re VG's comment - what would an RfC/U achieve? He's shown time and again that he simply doesn't listen to what other people say. He was warned not to make further personal attacks by three admins and promptly got himself blocked after posting further rants. He's said several times that he'll change his ways but has promptly gone back to the same behaviour again. He ignores all the advice he gets on talk pages and his own user talk page. He's just ignored a block, deliberately evading it through an open proxy and continued editing regardless.

As for a topic restriction, part of the problem with Ariobarza's behaviour is his abuse of talk pages; he posts reams of original research and bogs everyone else down in endless circular discussions. Restricting him to talk pages will simply mean that instead of adding OR to articles some of the time and behaving tendentiously on talk pages the rest of the time, he will end up behave tendentiously on talk pages all of the time. Let's just get this over with - block him or topic-ban him and have done with it. -- ChrisO (talk) 19:24, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I'm not sure what the benefit to Wikipedia would be having him back. If we spent as much time trying to retain experts as we do trying to reform problem users this encyclopaedia might actually get somewhere. As it is, having persistent troublemakers around tends to scare most experts away. --Folantin (talk) 19:32, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I support a complete ban at this point. Given that he edits from proxies while blocked, Ariobarza's obviously going to ignore any topic ban. Enough time wasted with him. VG ☎ 20:50, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Given the now-increased veracity of the situation and the actions taken as a result of this thread, I am now not sure that an RFC/U would help. However, it can't hurt to ask for input from the broader community on what should be done, which is what that would accomplish. MuZemike (talk) 21:21, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

What more "input from the broader community" do we need and what would that accomplish? We have a perfectly straightforward situation here of a disruptive, abusive, block-evading editor who's already wasted far too much of people's time. As Vasile says, "enough time wasted with him". I agree that a complete ban would be appropriate now. He's had enough second chances. -- ChrisO (talk) 22:04, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

How is this possibly resolved? A topic ban at the very least is still on the table. Ariobarza has violated his block already. Not what I'd call resolved. Aunt Entropy (talk) 03:20, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

After looking at the very recent mess on his talk page, I think maybe we should now bring this to WP:AN for a ban discussion. I'm sorry, but I tried to assume good faith as much as I could. MuZemike (talk) 06:51, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Not really sure why we have to move this to AN when all the evidence is here. Given the monkeying around with block evasion, this looks like a pretty clear-cut case for a ban. Why should we waste any more time? --Folantin (talk) 10:08, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I concur. The block evading sock puppetry combined with the history of disruption shows that this user account should not be allowed to edit further. If somebody would like to volunteer to mentor them and take responsibility for ensuring that they do not resume disruption, I will consider undoing the indefinite block that I am placing on the account. Jehochman ^Talk 12:57, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Ugh. I've been following the AfDs and reluctantly concur. Personally, I'm less concerned with the sockpuppetry and more concerned with Ariobarza's apparent inability to learn from constructive criticism. He seems unwilling or unable to grasp why original research isn't welcome in Wikipedia articles, and I'm not sure if he ever will be willing to edit within our guidelines. As for a mentor, I'm fairly certain that wouldn't help. It would appear that the user has gotten heaps of advice and guidance from users knowledgeable in his subject area, and has refused to listen to it, so a mentor without specific knowledge would likely be ineffectual. I hate to see a good faith contributor blocked indefinitely (and I do believe he is a good faith contributor), but he seems ill suited for the project. AniMate 17:13, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

User:Tundrabuggy

Following on from #User:Ariobarza above, I am also concerned about the behaviour of Tundrabuggy (talk · contribs). I clashed with this editor earlier this year over his promotion of conspiracy theories on Muhammad al-Durrah. Since then I've disengaged from anything to do with him. Unfortunately he has chosen to do the opposite. He now appears to be wikistalking me from article to article, opposing whatever I support, supporting whatever I oppose, allying with and aiding editors with whom I have an editorial dispute. He has now done this on with least five articles relating to ancient history that he's never edited before I edited them - Cyrus cylinder, Cyrus the Great, Battle of Opis, Kaveh Farrokh and now Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Battle of the Tigris. He appears to be systematically watching my edits and involving himself in any dispute in which I'm involved. He has accused me of "pushing a particular pov" [35] and of being part of a "campaign" [36] to push a "pro-Palestinian nationalist perspective" of ancient Babylonian history [37]. (I've never heard of such a perspective and have no idea what it would look like). Other editors have expressed concern and disagreement with his tactics and comments [38], [39], [40]. Instead of responding to these concerns, he blew them off. [41] He has now turned up on the AfD mentioned above (which I didn't start), where he was specifically canvassed by Ariobarza, the editor who created the article in question. Ariobarza has presented a very hostile view of my involvement to encourage Tundrabuggy to get involved. [42] Tundrabuggy duly turned up to support Ariobarza in the AfD, in which I had !voted to delete the article. This is looking like a systematic feud on Tundrabuggy's part, and it needs to stop or be stopped. -- ChrisO (talk) 20:18, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

• Particularly since Tundrabuggy has contributed nothing useful or indeed informed. From my experience of Battle of Opis he is acting purely to harass ChrisO. It's not acceptable. Ariobarza etc at least have a genuine interest in the subject: I do not think this is the case with Tundrabuggy. Moreschi (talk) 23:45, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

• Thanks so much for your perspective Moreschi. I don't remember seeing you at the Battle of Opis lately. Were you one of the canvassed ones? Tundrabuggy (talk) 06:02, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

(to ChrisO) This is an unfounded accusation against an opposing editor, with whom you're involved in an ongoing dispute. As Tundrabuggy pointed out, "all the articles above are intimately related to each other, and thus to be involved in one is to be involved in them all." ([43]) Khoikhoi 23:51, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Ariobarza ... if you want to strike your comments on this page, then I recommend using <s> </s> rather than deleting them like you did to these Noticed they were re-added a few edits later-t BMW c- 00:00, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

It's hardly unfounded. I quoted what Tundrabuggy himself has said: he has already made it clear that he's following me around because he believes I'm pursuing some sort of political agenda and he's seeking to oppose that. That's a nonsensical line to take. It's also a completely inappropriate reason to pursue an editor. Wikipedia is not a battleground. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:04, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

For clarity, Khoikhoi, are you an uninvolved or involved party? Jehochman ^Talk 00:16, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Clearly involved, since he has been actively supporting one side - Tundrabuggy's, essentially - in four of the five pages I listed above. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:19, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, and your comment proves my point that these pages are all part of the same dispute, and I have been involved in these pages for the same reason. Tundrabuggy has not done anything out of the ordinary here. This is the same dispute which has spanned across several pages. Khoikhoi 04:40, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

A few notes:

1. I'm trying to avoid ANI's but was asked to review/participate on this post.
2. Just about everyone who commented thus far, myself included, are somehow involved. It's a bit of a shame to see the same "old faces".
3. Speaking as a person who knows what it's like to be followed and harassed by fellow Wikipedians, I'd like to try and keep things in proper perspective. i.e. I'm not sure I see much more than a somewhat 'new to wiki-policy' editor responding to a canvassing note. Has there been anything new other than the AfD within the past 10-14 days? Tundrabuggy has been active on several articles which were not mentioned, and to be frank, I considered his contribution to the Battle of Jenin talk page a bit of a relief considering some of the highly provocative statements made by fellow editors.
4. Considering my (mostly ignored) proposition to both Tundra and Chris to break off from active disputes was made a bit under a month ago and that there doesn't seem to be anything new, I would personally recommend a canvass related warning to relevant editors.
5. My apologies to everyone involved for meddling in.

Cheers, Jaakobou^{Chalk Talk} 02:26, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

p.s. I have not read the "Ariobarza" section above this subsection. Jaakobou^{Chalk Talk} 03:06, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I just want to emphasize that KhoiKhoi is absolutely right, that all of these articles are (intimately) related to each other and have spidered to one another through the talk pages. As one of ChrisO's diffs pointed out, all are related by virtue of time-period -circa 450 BCE- subject and place. The seemingly obscure article, Kaveh Farrokh, is related as an historian. The idea that ChrisO is being wiki-stalked is out in left field, frankly. As for Ariobarza, I thought (s)he had tried consciensiously to make her points on the talk page before making small edits in the article. Then when she tried to write an article herself, before it is even finished, ChrisO and friends vote to speedily delete it. A sympathetic admin might have steered her into writing on her own name-space and helped her in making a better article. What is gained by doing a speedy delete? Nothing except [more] bad feelings are generated. That is why I voted against deletion. At least give someone a chance. I didn't vote the way I did to vote against ChrisO (as part of some [imagined] "systematic feud") but to vote for Ariobarza. I hope the distinction is clear. And @ Jaakabou -- I do appreciate your input. Tundrabuggy (talk) 06:02, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Considering the heightened sensitivity between you and ChrisO, I would suggest that you try and avoid even the impression of following him to future articles - there's plenty of articles out here. Also note that responding to WP:CANVASS notes is frowned upon. Jaakobou^{Chalk Talk} 09:47, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Tundrabuggy, I've already pointed out on the articles for deletion page that this is an ordinary Articles for Deletion process, not a WP:speedy delete. And I've been telling Ariobarza since June that he needs to stop adding original research to articles and to stop creating articles with no references. He's had far more chances than most editors get. And when you take part in an articles for deletion policy, you shouldn't be 'voting' for or against an editor but stating your views based on Wikipedia policies and guidelines. Doug Weller (talk) 10:17, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Of course Tundrabuggy, you have followed Chris0 around. It stands out like dog's balls. Anyone with commonsense and good faith would raise an eyebrow to see how you followed Chris0 to the five articles after the dispute with him over the MDurrah article. The latter is an I/P article. The Cyrus articles have nothing to do with politics (though you edit there as though Chris0's putative POV on I/P issues influences his judgement on Persian battles). He has a professional background in ancient history, you apparently don't. What are the odds (wiki brims with mathematicians) that it is a mere coincidence that, after two editors had a conflict over a contemporary I/P article, on an obscure incident, the one worsted by technicalities that favour form over substance, moves on to work over several articles on Persian history that require a rather involved understanding of assessing abstruse sources, requirements he was trained in academically under a major authority in ancient history, only to find that, by pure chance, his whilom adversary shows up to edit against him over exactly the same range of articles? Almost zero. It has nothing to do with chance. To ask people seriously to believe that this is mere coincidence is a charming piece of chutzpah, nothing more. From an outside perspective, it looks as though your 'victory' in one article ran to your head, and you thought it worthwhile seeing if you could follow it up against the same antagonist. This is harassment.

You show, unlike Chris0, no technical understanding of, or informed knowledge about the historical evidence, evince no record (I stand corrected if wrong)of a long-standing intrinsic passion for the subject, but you are very strong in making 'political' assessments of the former editor's ostensible POV. That is wikistalking, and you do it by siding with, or defending, editors of little experience, nationalistic in approach, with whom Chris0 clashes on quite straightforward questions of RS. You appear in many edits, to me at least, to be a POV-headhunter, unaware of your own. That is your right. Nothing of course will be done about this, since wikistalking is quite commonplace. People enjoy niggling at others, especially when they've won one suit. Far too many editors don't contribute substantively to articles, but hang round to monitor POVs. You, at least here, are doing precisely that.Nishidani (talk) 10:29, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you! Finally some commentary with brains! Nishidani has it in one. Now could someone please do something about this? Moreschi (talk) 10:49, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I'd have no objections to topic bans on disruptive editors from articles; clarification: I'm not sure if this is the current state on the articles ChrisO and Tundrabuggy are comunicating on since last I looked was almost a month ago.

AS AN OFFTOPIC, I'd use this forum to note that I got a bit of a DE issue (myself) on Land of Israel (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) with 2 editiors strongly promoting a personal misunderstanding of the Likud charter as a must be listed in the lead. Or as one of them put it in his revert edit: "It is important for article NPOV". Could someone please do something about this?

p.s. Tundra, Doug Weller is correct that !voting is not made on personal perspective but should be based on (preferrably also linked to) existing policy. Jaakobou^{Chalk Talk} 15:05, 29 October 2008 (UTC) wikilink 15:07, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Tundrabuggy, would you voluntarily stop following Chris O, or would you like an admin (!me) to make a ruling? Jehochman ^Talk 15:10, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Re: the AfD vote, I thought the article had some merit and that it should be allowed to take shape. It was not part of any "feud" other than that that ChrisO would like to make it. Re what is called "canvassing," it appears that that complaint is only going to apply to me, and not ChrisO who has canvassed most of the contributers on this page. I have canvassed exactly zero. I am the 4th contributer to these articles (the Cyrus-related ones) that ChrisO has tried to take some kind of wiki-lawyering action against. The others have apparently been intimidated sufficiently to no longer contribute to these articles at all. I did approve of the effort to have a content issue resolved with mediation, though it is not clear where that went. Tundrabuggy (talk) 15:42, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I'd say that's a "no". Tan | 39 15:44, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

No this simply doesn't the mustard as a serious reply, Tundrabuggy. (a) Specialist qualifications are not required in Wiki for contributing to articles. At the same time, the encyclopedia is particularly happy if it can enjoy expertise, esp. in difficult fields. ChrisO has been professionally trained as an historian, in the area of antiquity. We don't know your background, but from following the edits, it does not appear that you have a formal grounding in the field of the history of antiquity. (To the contrary (need proof?), your remarks elsewhere strongly suggest you lack even an elementary understanding of historical method). That said, the rules are that you are equally entitled to edit there and anywhere else but (b) you both had a conflict of some considerable intensity over MDurrah. Chris0 left that, and, if I recall, on request, went to the Cyrus Cylinder and associated articles, as a duck returns to water, to his 'proper element'. Soon after, you turned up, and sided with editors who disagreed with him. We are not asked to assess, as you intimate, the merits of that conflict. We have been asked whether, in turning up, after your MD 'victory', to an area where he has expertise and you do not, you came there by pure coincidence, or by design? Indeed, you have, in your reply, as elsewhere, earlier, snubbed requests to clarify what appears to be a patent example of adversarial stalking. The gravaman of the charge is you have stalked ChrisO, on his natural terrain, in an area you show no particular knowledge of, immediately after the MDurrah conflict with him. He left, perhaps, to adapt an idiom from Sophocles, to browse in solitude his thoughts on quieter pastures, and finds you moseying up again to ride shotgun, herding his ideas, barely after the bulldust from your shootout with him at the OK corral had settled. So explain what you're doing there, and why your reappearance on five consecutive pages he was editing is merely random, against all mathematical odds. Nishidani (talk) 16:16, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually, Nishidani, we know nothing about ChrisO's qualifications, since "ChrisO" is an anonymous username. If ChrisO decides he wants to publicly identify himself, then we'll be able to ascertain his expertise. Lacking that, it is inappropriate to speculate about these matters, or to claim that he has an expertise that other anonymous userids lack. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:26, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I suppose 'we' will now have to open up a section, 'Who can prove Nishidani is not a liar', while studiously ignoring the point, documented in the diffs, that Tundrabuggy subscribes to what can only be called a fringe theory redolent of the hermeneutics of paranoid suspicion. He has intimated that all editing on the Middle East, from articles about Sumer to Sozomenos, is subject to suspicions of partisanship that reflect on the contemporary Israeli-Palestine conflict. It is this absolutely bizarre statement that set the bells ringing for me. Anyone who subscribes to this lunatic theory should not be editing articles on ancient near Eastern history, apart from considerations of incompetence. Nishidani (talk) 09:00, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually, Nishidani, we know nothing about ChrisO's qualifications, since "ChrisO" is an anonymous username. If ChrisO decides he wants to publicly identify himself, then we'll be able to ascertain his expertise. Lacking that, it is inappropriate to speculate about these matters, or to claim that he has an expertise that other anonymous userids lack. Jayjg ^(talk) 00:47, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

It's called Wiederholungszwang in the technical literature.Nishidani (talk) 11:34, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Again, Nishidani, I urge you to read my earlier responses as these are not "merely random" pages but all very clearly and obviously related, and it shouldn't take a formal grounding in history to realise this. It seems to me that had you been following this "dispute" closely, you would have been able to see this as well, unless of course you are one who has been recruited as support for ChrisO, in which case in a cursory look you might have missed it. Nor, as you have noted, are such formal qualifications required to contribute, to read or be able to understand the source material referenced, much of which is available either on Amazon or on Google books. Now to the point that my editing of these related pages is somehow related to my "victory" as you call it, regarding the MD conflict, I would simply say that I cannot even imagine how you would consider a victory an event that dragged my wiki reputation and others' through endless wiki accusations, taking I don't know how many hours of life to defend against, even to the point of one water-carrier trying to get another uninvolved administrator recalled... it was endless. No user would want a repeat of that kind of "victory". Tundrabuggy (talk) 23:38, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

clarification. I did not say the pages were random. I said you turning up, straight after the MaD incident, on five interconnected pages your erstwhile adversary was editing on obscure episodes in Persian history, cannot be coincidental, or random. I find misconstrual of the obvious offensive, Tundrabuggy: it is called wikilawyering.Nishidani (talk) 09:50, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Answer the question. You now have several people, not nobodies like myself, but administrators, asking you: 'why, immediately after the Mohammad al-Durrah dispute, where Chris0 was sanctioned to your editorial advantage, did you turn up on five pages where Chris0 had begun to edit, dealing with obscure events in Persian history?' Everything else is waffle. Either this is a one-off cosmic freak occurrence, warranting investigation by Pascalian mathematicians and a wiki page itself for the advent of miracles in probability theory, or you were and are wikistalking. I've asked you to explain this bizarre coincidence three times. Three times you have rambled on about other things. Not to answer it is, in my book, a tacit admission that your appearance there comes from trailing him, to a purpose. Nishidani (talk) 09:00, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Tundrabuggy has already made it clear that he sees this as an ideological conflict. Note his comments that he thinks I'm pushing a "pro-Palestinian nationalist perspective" of ancient Persian history [44]. He seems to have no interest in ancient history as such - he's not contributed anything to the articles other than sniping at my edits - but he seems to think he has to act as some sort of "watchdog" to push back against my edits where they conflict with his ideological views. This is, of course, completely inappropriate behaviour. I'm not pursuing any kind of ideological agenda, though he seems to view everything through the prism of his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - a very unhealthy approach. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:01, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Tundrabuggy doesn't seem to be addressing the central concern raised in this section, which is: did Tundrabuggy start contributing to articles on ancient Persian history because he was continuing a preexisting conflict with ChrisO? As far as I can tell, the answer is yes. Furthermore, the allegation that there's such a thing as a pro-Palestian perspective on ancient Persian history is bizarre. This kind of ideological perspective is bad enough on I/P articles, it doesn't need to be imported into ancient history articles. I think Tundrabuggy ought to just step away from this topic area. --Akhilleus (talk) 01:51, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I've suggested before that we need to crack down on this sort of politicisation of ancient history. Modern Greek/Macedonian nationalist feuding being projected into the distant past in our articles is bad enough, but this is ridiculous. It's a clear violation of WP:BATTLEFIELD. --Folantin (talk) 08:28, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I can at least understand modern Greek/Macedonian feuding over ancient history, since it's a fundamental issue of national identity for them, but as you say, it's just bizarre to project the I/P conflict onto ancient Persia and Babylonia. I have no idea what a "pro-Palestinian nationalist" POV of that period would even look like. Some of Tundrabuggy's comments on Talk:Battle of Opis (see [45]) suggest that he is being influenced by a literalist reading of the Bible/Torah, which portrays Cyrus in complimentary terms as the liberator of the Jews. He appears to believe that I'm trying to "undermine" Cyrus. Khoikhoi appears to believe the same (and perhaps for the same reasons) - see Talk:Cyrus cylinder#Tags. There may be some sort of Jewish fundamentalist undercurrent here as well. They are both currently tag-teaming to remove sourced info that apparently conflicts with their POV [46], [47]. Not helpful behaviour. -- ChrisO (talk) 09:20, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

(ec) "it's just bizarre to project the I/P conflict onto ancient Persia and Babylonia". It's ludicrous, especially since an equally valid (i.e. irrelevant) accusation of being "anti-Israeli" could be made against those promoting the opposite view. Given the current tensions between modern Israel and Iran, "pro-Persian" could be interpreted as "anti-Zionist". --Folantin (talk) 09:39, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia's rules on wikistalking, to my brief knowledge, are hardly ever the object of administrative action, since it is intrinsically hard to prove. It is also true that far too much niggling for technical advantage is one unfortunate consequence of the rule book's articles. All editors with minimal experience will have abundant anecdotal evidence of odd coincidences on pages they edit, of people wandering in to edit, not the article, but, apparently, to resume a conflict begun on some other, often unconnected page. In my own interactions with Tundrabuggy, I have nothing to complain about. He readily accepted a correction of a confused remark he made about the circumstances of Mussolini's death. Sign of a responsive editor. We exchanged views on the Nahum Goldmann page. But I'm afraid this particular matter is serious. It may be inexperience, it may be overconfidence, it may be an inner conviction that, in the I/P area, Chris0 is biased, and therefore must be watched. But I doubt whether he will ever convince anyone that it was pure happenchance that he turned up on the 5 Persian pages Chris0 was editing, after the Mohammad al-Durrah episode, simply because he too happens to have an abiding interest in Cyrus. Jehochman made a decent suggestion, and I think Tundrabuggy should take it to heart. Admit this has, at the least, the strong appearance of an impropriety, and refrain from editing historical articles on the ancient Near Eastern history for a while. That restores the conditions for renewing a bona fides that is now under a shadow. No administrative action need be made, if a simple unilateral gesture to reassure those who are troubled by this incident is taken. There is a certain honour in admitting an error. Nishidani (talk) 09:37, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Hey, there's an editor who edits only for the purpose of following me around, insulting me, and reverting me. I'll tell you what, if that other editor is blocked, then I'll take the suggestion of blocking Tundrabuggy more seriously. Jayjg ^(talk) 00:47, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

For those who are asking how I happened to get involved in the Cyrus Cylinder article, it is really quite simple. There was a discussion on Elonka's talk page sometime around Sept 8th [48] on this issue and I commented on it [49] [50] and [51]. I was actually motivated by the response of another univolved user Arcayne who made a contribution here [52] and whose point I agreed with. An administrator, (not Elonka) recognizing my interest in Jewish history, wrote me in email some days later suggesting I look at the page and its Talk page, and asking if I had any associated references. After careful reading of the article and talk page, {see: [53]} I saw what I considered WP:UNDUE and I contributed my first post on the TALK 13th Sept [54] to that effect. I did my first edits on the article on some 10 days later. [55], adding a reference [56], and generally tried to make the article better. As I have explained earlier, this subject has tentacles that stretch through numerous other articles (Cyrus the Great, Battle of Opis, Nabonidus etc) dealing with the same/similar subject matter, some of which I have edited and ChrisO has not -- ie the Nabonidus article. This really has nothing to do with any feuds with ChrisO. It is merely an area in which I have an interest. Other of the articles I work on have nothing whatever to do with him, as I am sure there are other places ChrisO edits where I do not. It is not accurate to say that I "followed" ChrisO anywhere. I know my own motives, and they are targeted to the benefit of Wikipedia, not toward antagonizing any particular editor. Tundrabuggy (talk) 04:45, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

This is called shooting oneself in the foot, or, though this is not a court of law, 'turning state's evidence'. You contradict yourself, and your explanation only underlines the point Chris0 and others raise.

You say (a) you have an 'interest in Jewish history' and then that (b)the five articles Chris was editing cover 'an area in which (you) have an interest'. The five articles deal only very marginally with Jewish history, if at all (the Battle of Opis? I've never read a mention of it in several volumes on the History of the Jews I have in my library). You then admit that your interest in this area arose from (c) Arcayne's note to Elonka, which was silly in its wildly semi-paranoid assertion that

'Some of these articles - esp. the Cyrus Cylinder article weigh heavily upon the questions of Israeli-Palestinian discussions (notably, the repatriation of the Jews to their homeland, used by some as proof of Jewish rights to populate the area).'

I.e. Arcayne made an absurd suggestion that Chris's editing on ancient Persian history was motivated by some political bias against Israel. The 'reductio ad absurdum' is obvious. If after moving on from the I/P area, I were to edit Chinese history (given my qualifications as an Orientalist), someone who tracks me on I/P articles might start reverting or controverting me on the Han historian Sima Qian because Jews are thought to have begun settlement in China in that dynastic period.

To your credit, while Arcayne's arcane suspicion gave you the 'motivation', you didn't act on it.

You then say some anonymous administrator tipped you off some days later (because you weren't sufficiently motivated?) to look at the Cyrus Cylinder article.

'An administrator, (not Elonka) recognizing my interest in Jewish history, wrote me in email some days later suggesting I look at the page and its Talk page, and asking if I had any associated references.'

Here lies a great impropriety, not ‘’directly’’ ascribable to yourself. You have unwittingly fingered an administrator for the irresponsibility at work here. The reasons are straightforward ones.

Whoever the administrator was (I don't think anyone cares), the suggestion (s)he made was improper, (a) given the well-known conflictual relationship between you and Chris0, to prod you to go to articles he was editing, in his natural area of interest and qualification, was an clear invitation to open those articles up to personal enmities or antagonism. (b) Of the hundreds if not thousands of Jewish editors around who have a natural interest in the history of their people (and it is the most natural thing in the world to be interested in own's own ethnic history), why should that administrator think that you of all people have a particular competence in ancient Persian history? There are numerous editors in here with magnificent linguistic talents, who read Hebrew and Aramaic, who are deeply familiar with the intricacies of Jewish literature, and who are engaged in writing pages on Jewish antiquities. To my knowledge, you do not have these gifts (correct me if I am mistaken). Therefore the administrator was not suggesting you go there because of some recognized expertise in ancient history, Biblical studies, and the recondite intricacies of Persian history. He or she made that private suggestion improperly, to not write 'maliciously'. There is nothing in your wiki record, and in your edits to those pages after you joined Chris0, that indicates your informed suitability to edit articles on ancient Persian history. If one looks at Arcayne's comments, and your follow-up, where you both suggest there is some obscure link of a POV kind between I/P articles and Persian history in 539BC, one twigs to the game, and it is a dangerous one. I.e., that you were emailed because of your 'expertise' in confronting pro-Palestinian POVs, which were manically suspected of polluting wiki articles on ancient history not bearing to any notable degree on Jewish history. Once there you assumed an oppositional role. This is not to say you should agree with Chris0's edits, which are challengeable, as are everybody's. It is to state the obvious. That you transferred the adversarial relationship you had over an I/P article to an article on Ancient History, independently of the merits of Chris0's many contributions to those 5 articles. That cannot be coincidental either.

So while your reply gets you slightly off the hook (you were emailed by an admin suggesting you might look at those articles), you and the administrator reattach yourselves to it. You may not, under this reconstruction you make, have followed Chris0: you followed an anonymous administrator's suggestion to follow him,(an exquisite prevarication) to go an edit pages where he certainly does have the kind of competence wiki ideals asks for (ancient history, classical languages), a competence you lack.

You did so fully aware, as also the administrator must have been, of the inherent confrontational possibilities your presence there risked creating. The administrator could not have been unaware of your conflict with Chris0, nor your expressed sympathy with the view (Arcayne's) that all wiki articles on Middle and Near Eastern history can be construed as reflecting heavily on I/P pages, and thus under suspicion for subtle POV stacking. It is, by your own implicit admission, wikistalking, though by proxy. But you went there wittingly, as though under a semi-official authorization from administration.

I/P articles are notoriously idiotic areas where only masochists or POV warriors thrive. A pity, but the nationalist obsessions are too strong to bring these pages to a mere semblance of NPOV. But that now the infection of tactical biasing seen there is to be extended to, potentially, all articles dealing with the Ancient Near East, one cannot but feel disenchanted.

I have seen in the past two days several lamentable cases of extremely poor POV editing by people who know nothing of the subjects. I have mostly not intervened, precisely because to do so might have the odour of counter-stalking an I/P editor who gives a strong appearance of stalking me. (Jewish terrorism, for example (See Category:Palestinian terrorists and Category:Israeli terrorists). No mention of the Irgun there, because the article defines Jewish terrorism as 'religious' , ergo, the many books that cite the Irgun as a Jewish terrorist organization cannot be used, because the major groups were secularists. Clever gaming of the article by that strategic use in the lead definition of the qualifying adjective 'religious', but completely unencyclopedic, and wholly partisan. People who do not correct errors, but only hang round to defend a POV or prosecute what they consider someone else's should not edit encyclopedias). Attempts by other parties to make the article to wiki standards fail by immediate reversion. One watches, as so often, in silence and leaves the mess, to avoid possible charges of wikistalking. All of us must have many such experiences. One should preferably step into neglected pages to avoid this suspicion, unless invited as someone with specific, recognized ability for area knowledgeability and competence. When the bait was hung before you, you failed to avoid the obvious implication of conflict of interest with the encyclopedia’s aims, i.e. writing to the article, not writing against a known adversary who is recognized for his competence in that area (many of the primary sources on Persian history are in classical Greek, and Chris0 is a classicist). You didn't hold back, but accepted the challenge, having declared your belief that anti-Israel-POV gaming is part of all ancient history articles where a Jewish connection might be present. Blame the admin concerned, but not to recognize the risk was a failure of judgement on your part and tantamount to wikistalking. Nishidani (talk) 15:03, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

There is no contradiction here. The Battle of Opis was one of the connections from the original article the Cyrus Cylinder. That finally went under content-dispute resolution, though it is not clear how that has been resolved as yet. Regarding Arcayne's comment, it simply motivated me to comment, as I did, including finding a source to support it. It is not necessarily the case that administrator was aware of the earlier (editing) conflict between ChrisO and myself, since (s)he (I am not sure myself) was not involved in it in any way. I am not sure it was all that well-known throughout Wiki. I did not edit for some time for the very reasons that you have brought up, simply read and watched, and perhaps I should not have edited since ChrisO was involved there, but I did so for honorable reasons; these were the reasons supported by others on the TALK pages [57][58][59][60][61] (though obviously not all) and there was nothing inherently wrong with having done so. It is better for the encyclopedia that articles read in a balanced and neutral way. That was (and continues to be) my only purpose. Tundrabuggy (talk) 16:58, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, I hate to press this, and I will admit my bias. I don't edit articles I haven't read up on and (2) I have a degree in classical Greek, and can see where much of Chris0's edits are coming from, since they reflect the same training I had. I think having people with this background working on articles dealing with classical antiquity a huge boon to the project, and I dislike seeing the equanimity of a scholar troubled by piddling charges of bias, when he is on his own terrain, and the critic is a raw outsider with some generic curiosity. We are all biased. Only some are trained to be aware of it, while most are used to seeing it in other people.

You haven't shown the slightest familiarity with the historiography of antiquity, have no qualifications in the area, are taken by a risible Montypythonesque fringe theory about I/P implications in the battle of Opis, and followed Chris0 there under advice from an anonymous admin. To say now that the admin may not be aware of the earlier conflict is disingenuous. For there is absolutely not a skerrick of evidence in your editing record to suggest to any admin that you in particular would have useful indeed distinctive (compared to any of a few dozen Jewish editors here) abilities to review the complex historical evidence on the Cyrus articles. The only imaginable motivation for such administrative advice is that of gaming the system on Cyrus articles, and building numbers to engage in POV wars, where they are least appropriate. The editor who contacted you, by your own admission, must have known two things. Chris was editing Cyrus articles, (since the admin who drew your attention to them must have been following the edits there) and your record, since he hardly picked your name out of a hat. There is absolutely no trace in your prior record that you would be qualified to assess and contribute to Cyrus articles. There is an abundant amount of evidence in your immediate prior record that you had a substantial conflict with Chris0 on Mohammad al-Durrah. The conclusion is obvious, or otherwise some very weird people, with phenomenally quixotic mental associations that privilege the aleatory over rational connections, have been elected to administrative functions.

You made a naive remark on the Bible as an historical source, implying that it has a myth component and an historical component. Strip away the former, and you are left with the latter. This was a respectable view sometime from the late 1830s onwards for a good part of the 19th century. No historian of contemporary repute would say that, without very attentive qualification. For myth itself is an index of an historical mentalité, is itself subject to the stresses of historical change, while what 'historical' facts we might have are not 'objective' but traces in earlier documents, with their POVs, that have to be deconstructed hermeneutically in order to (a) ascertain the mind and cultural set of the author(s) and (b)deduce how this cast of perspective influenced their representations of events we can only know by inference from the texts (a vicious circle), or by cross-reference to independent archeological evidence of a corroborative character. Classicists are trained in these subtleties of reading, and, with regard for example, to the 'propaganda' quarrel, all ancient historians, biblical or classical, are propagandists for a particular world-view, political perspective, cultural outlook, ethnic interest, class bias, etc. etc. That is why, ideally, unless one is well-trained in how to sieve through the labyrinthine intricacies of source evaluation, generic amateurish participation carries risks. It is hard enough for scholars to sort this out, without someone with a vague interest in 'things Jewish' to rush at a series of articles and challenge systematically someone who, at least, is trained to evaluate this kind of complexity in the evidence. I've nothing personally against you. I think your behaviour in this stresses an editor who has gifts you lack. They are relatively few and far between, people who combine advanced linguistic and historical training, and Wiki needs every last one of them. POV sleuths are tuppence a dozen, and generally (not referring to yourself but the problem in I/P articles) fit David McLellan's description of an ideologist, someone who can see everybody's ideology but his own. Nishidani (talk) 17:55, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

OK, let's unpack this a bit. I got involved in this series of articles following a general request for input from Dbachmann here [62]. From Dbachmann's comments, I was expecting some backlash from Iranian nationalists who idolise Cyrus the Great. I was not expecting a Jewish nationalist/fundamentalist backlash, though of course I knew about Cyrus's reputed liberation of the Jews from their Babylonian captivity. In editing these articles, I've done nothing more than reflecting faithfully and accurately what mainstream historians say.

Tundrabuggy has acknowledged being canvassed by an unnamed administrator. I have a pretty good idea who this was and I know for a fact that the same person has canvassed other editors, who he thought would be on his side, to support him - some of those canvassed haven't been very happy about it. Tundrabuggy has never previously shown any interest in ancient Persian history. On the other hand, as his contributions show, he has been highly active on articles of interest to Israeli politics. In fact, he joined Wikipedia as a single purpose account to push a conspiracy theorist POV on Muhammad al-Durrah immediately after a French court judgment relating to that case. That's how I first came into contact/conflict with him. To be fair, he has widened his editing interests since then.

It's obvious that Tundrabuggy was canvassed off-wiki to intervene in the ancient Persian articles not because of any experience or expertise that he has in this field - he has none - but because the canvassing administrator saw him as an ideological ally. This was quite clearly an act of stealth canvassing and votestacking, both forms of disruptive and inappropriate canvassing. It's very disappointing that an administrator should be behaving this way. Unfortunately some people seem to think that having a sysop bit exempts them from the normal rules of conduct. I hope the person responsible (yes, I know who you are) takes the hint and starts behaving like a responsible admin. As for Tundrabuggy - you've been exploited by your recruiter. In future, I suggest that you avoid playing into other people's hands like that; please don't let them take advantage of you. -- ChrisO (talk) 12:39, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

User:Kuban Cossack and never ending edit wars

I have no other recourse but to ask for admins' intervention in the edit war at Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate). Over the past week I've tried everything to stop the revert war with User: Kuban kazak, unfortunately none of them worked, he rejected all attempts at compromise and continues to revert even referenced text. This is the user with multiple blocks for edit warring, the last being just in July of this year. Since then he got several warnings from users and admins for edit warring[63][64][65], and yet he continues to wage edit wars not just in that article but in others as well. I understand that admins cannot deal with every content dispute, but this has gone above that. This is a pattern that would not change and it's become a real nuisance. I would appreciate if admins could have a look at this.--Hillock65 (talk) 16:10, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Well all I can say is that Hillock65 has in the past year with the exception of interwikis and the odd article Grégoire Orlyk, has limited his participation on wikipedia to edit warring with me. Please look: here, if we filter away the interwiki edits:

• Zaporozhian Cossacks (no additions on Hillock's behalf, but nearly a year of arguing whether the term destroyed was applicable, in result by majority of users, Hillock failed to add his opinion there)
• Zaporizhian Sich (again no additions, same edit war, result Hillock gave up)
• Cossacks - A huge dispute over the lead, where Hillock attempted to first push through a WP:FRINGE theory of modern Ukrainian Cossacks, and then continued an edit war for nearly month about how the historical aspect of Ukrainian Cosascks should be given a greater portion than others.
• Mukachevo, there was a dispute on the name, yet Hillock pushed to have the official spelling added into the article, again failed.
• Kuban Cossacks, Ukrainians in Russia, Template:History of Ukraine the irony is that when I make an edit, to any such article, Hillock, always WP:STALKing me wound follow on and revert me. On the second example he got caught by 3RR by being completely careless. (Again there was a discussion in the archives about it).
• The biggest piece of evidence for the above is that during my wikibreak from 5 August 2008 to 15 September 2008 Hillock made no more than two dozens edits. Yet the moment I came back, so was he. His new victims are Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) and History of Christianity in Ukraine.

All in all he is first a WP:SOAPboxing nightmare! Second a ruthless POV warrior, with whom its impossible to have any consensus. However the biggest irony about him, is that unlike some active POV-pushers and stalkers like User:Piotrus, Hillock's contribution to main article space is minute by any measure. Again in all his time on wikipedia one can postulate about no more than 10 significant contributions to article space, and about 1000 reverts and talk page rants.

The biggest irony here, is that he accuses me of being a Russian nationalist anti-Ukrainian editor, yet out of six barnstars four were given by Ukrainian editors.

With respect to the issue above, the usual case scenario, is to ask for a WP:THIRD and follow through a normal WP:DR, but for Hillock its important to raise as much noise as possible, and its too bad for him there is no Wikipedia:Request for block page. --Kuban Cossack (По-балакаем?) 16:38, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Notwithstanding personal attacks, the issue here is not his or mine contribution to Wikipedia, but rather this user's never ending edit wars, which is easily checked by looking at his edit history and history of blocks. He has selected a patttern of stalking me and starting edit wars whenever I edit. Anyone interested can easily check him following me in articles where he never even edited before [66][67][68][69][70]. I know arguing with him over this is a waste of time. I'll just wait for someone impartial to have a look at this. Enough is enough. --Hillock65 (talk) 16:49, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Let's see adding Russian language to Nuclear power plants is not a revert, and in particular South_Ukraine_Nuclear_Power_Plant Hillock's attempt to remove the passage was reverted by a third party. Ivan Bohun, was not a revert, unlike Hillock's but a correction of facts, I then went on and edited all the other Hetmans of Ukraine, and nowhere did I add Russian language, but copyedited many of them. History_of_Christianity_in_Ukraine and Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church contrary to his statements of he never even edited before were partially written by me, I can't claim all the credit by the fact that others have added before and after me, but both articles have been in my to do list and on my watchlist since autumn 2005! Anyone can check the history. Given the above statement, apart from a POV-pusher and an edit warrior, Hillock is also a liar! Spreading disinformation is a usual trait more examples of which I can easily provide. --Kuban Cossack (По-балакаем?) 16:56, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

The original complaint "I have no other recourse but to ask for admins' intervention in the edit war" points to where the problem lies. I see no attempt to file an article RfC, asking for a third opinion or do any other thing normally expected in a regular content dispute. Hillock and Kuban are both useful content writers who frequently disagree in article disputes. Nothing unusual in that. However, I am troubled but what seems like Hillock's obsession with Kuban and persistent attempts to resort to block-shopping to "win" his content disputes with this editor. Hillock follows Kuban's contributions and seems to look for every occasion to block-shop against Kuban (last time he has done it about two weeks ago.) This thread could be just as well named "User:Hillock65 and never ending edit wars" as Hillock's actions is at least no better than Kuban's. I checked the talk pages of the articles in question and Kuban seems willing to discuss. So, I don't see as an ANI matter, users should be advised to seek consensus and compromise, and if unable to reach it, they should ask for more input rather than shop for blocks. --Irpen 20:03, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Even a cursory confirmation of the diffs posted confirms that, despite how Irpen attempts to frame this issue above, this is not a content dispute as Wikipedians understand the term. There's evidence of an interpersonal conflict; there's evidence of WP:STALKing; there's evidence of WP:OWN, and there's evidence of assumption of bad faith. For an example, let's consider this edit made by Kuban kazak. First thing to be noticed about it is that it is a partial revert of an edit by Hillock65 about 18 hours earlier. The second thing to be noticed is that in the whole Wikipedia edit history of this article, this is the only edit by Kuban kazak. What do these two facts give us? I submit that by Occam's razor, this gives us a clear episode of wikistalking.

But there's more. Consider Kuban kazak's edit summary in this partial revert: Nothing wrong with this... Such an edit summary attached to an user's sole edit so soon after Hillock65's exercise of editorial judgment -- one could debate it, but that's what the talk page is for -- smacks, to me, of deliberately searching for things that are wrong with Hillock65's edits. In order words, it's not just wikistalking; it's also a clear case of assuming bad faith, if not battleground creation. Διγουρεν_{Εμπρος!} 22:23, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Request for intervention

"However the biggest irony about him, is that unlike some active POV-pushers and stalkers like User:Piotrus..." - this is a clear violation of WP:NPA/WP:SLANDER and such, and I assume the community will address this.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 20:34, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Piotrus, I sort of wondered who will pop up here immediately after my post. I guessed right. --Irpen 21:01, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually, Piotrus was advised to come here by an admin, having already filed a complaint on AE hours ago [71]. --Folantin (talk) 21:06, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Irpen, will you please apologise for your assumption of bad faith that has turned out factually incorrect? Διγουρεν_{Εμπρος!} 22:03, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

What "assumptions"? Kuban kazak states that some users (Piotrus among them) is following the contributions of the target editors all around Wikipedia. I don't think bringing up any names here was useful. It may have been unhelpful in sense of bloating the discussion on the narrow issue but as far as facts are concerned, my own experience with Piotrus is that he is one of the users who regularly does that sort of thing (see here, for example. So, how is stating what seems obvious from the Wikipedia actions becomes a "slander"? I wonder who else will follow me into this discussion now but this is all beside the point. The original complaint was that the content disputed between Kuban and Hillock needs an admin intervention skipping any usual steps used to resolve content disputes. Then people totally unrelated to this start magically popping up blowing and expanding this simple and narrow issue to use them for their own agendas. This is a text-book example of WP:BATTLE conduct. --Irpen 22:36, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

From the context, it is clear that you accused Piotrus of stalking you, and even smugly take credit for the assumption. From Folantin's post, it's clear that you were incorrect in raising such an accusation. As the primary promoter of the so-called 'sophisticated incivility' doctrine, you know as well as anybody that an insult needs not to be spelt out to be uncivil. Διγουρεν_{Εμπρος!} 22:45, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Natalia Korolevska

I never edit with most of you (not interested in Ukrainian politics?, strange it so much fun and a lot of female Ukrainian politicians are very good looking!) but still I think the last edits here are not helping, if not making things worse... This seems only a problem between Kuban Cossack & Hillock65. I don't see a need to drag all wikipedians in it especialy if the suggest nothing to fix the problems between Kuban Cossack & Hillock65. Mariah-Yulia (talk) 23:31, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

The behavior of Kuban Cossack is nothing new. I think he should be warned for incivility and placed to this "Digwuren" list. Biophys (talk) 02:23, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Endorse - this is what the discretionary sanctions for EE are for.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 06:41, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

This is not completely on-topic, but I can't believe that Kuban Cossack is being threteaned with sanctions while for months nothing is ever done about, say, Jo0doe (talk), whose behavior in terms of never ending edit wars, disruptions of articles, etc. is 100 times more egregious than what Kuban Cossack is accused of. Kuban Cossack and I often - indeed usually - take different sides on issues but despite some instances when things have gotten "hot" in general we have been able to collaborate very effectively on articles such asUkrainian Russophiles or Danubian Sich. This is so much the case that when I recently created the article Conversion of Chelm Eparchy one of the first things I did was invite Kuban Cossack to make contributions to that article. I am frankly floored that Kuban Cossack has been sanctioned and may be here when a truly disruptive editor such as Jo0doe is allowed to do his thing with impunity. Faustian (talk) 13:52, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I completely agree with Faustian and would like to ad that I got the idea that Kuban Cossack is getting targeted because of his controversial userpage, don't judge a man on his looks, but on his behaviour. When dealing with Kuban Cossack I found him being very collaborative while I (also) often - indeed usually - take different sides on issues then him. Mariah-Yulia (talk) 16:09, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

• Actually, I agree with both you of. Sanctions against Mr Cossack and Mr Jo0doe are probably warranted. Moreschi (talk) 22:01, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I have placed this elsewhere, and will repost it word-for-word here....

Whilst I am reasonably new to this area of WP editing, I have obviously taken the time to familiarise myself with others who edit in this area, their interests, their style, etc; and I can say I am familiar with KK's edits on mainspace. I am not completely familiar with Hillock65. I have gone thru the previous "attempts" at mediation also, and have come to the conclusion that this is not warranted for Arbcom.

Hillock refers to an RFC and Medcab above. If we look at the article in question, Podilsko-Voskresenska Line, it appears that KK and Akhristov worked on this together (with some edit warring), and the dispute that arose was whether Russian language names are suitable for "Ukrainian" topics. Hillock prior to that dispute doesn't appear to have edited any articles relating to Metro topics before this, and it appears that his intervention was due to this message left for Hillock65 on the uk:wiki (in which he calls KK a rabid Russian nationalist), so it appears that Hillock65 had no place in that dispute, except for his being canvassed by another editor to get himself involved; the dispute being hijacked as a result. Before Hillock initiated the medcom request, he filed an RFC against KK, which appears not to have been anything but an attempt to corner and get rid of an opponent.

The AN/I comment by KK may demonstrate that Hillock's editing pattern on en:wiki is somewhat limited to interwiki links and perhaps stalking of KK's edits; for example: [72], [73], [74]....the list goes on, but a pattern has emerged; KK would make an edit to an article, which he would be familiar with. Hillock would immediately revert, provoking an edit war, and takes an uncompromising stance; for example Talk:Ukrainians in Russia#Kuban section and neutrality when KK presented sourced material to Hillock, he removed it completely, not even bothering to check it; when User:Faustian re-presented it to Hillock, he accepted KKs version. It appears the only way Hillock can compromise with KK is when a third party (often an Ukrainian editor) repeats what KK has said. Thus, are we to say that it is KKs additions that are not justified and warranted?

KK has a huge number of contributions, has written countless articles from scratch, and for that, despite sometimes holding opposite viewpoints on history and politics to many Ukrainian editors, he has been able to get on perfectly with the majority of them. Indeed, as KK pointed out on AN/I out of the six barnstars, four were given by Ukrainians, that is at a time that Hillock was unable to get on with any editor (including non-Russian ones) that opposed him. At the same time, KK has been a somewhat stabilising force in the Ukraine-Russia area over the edits of his that I have familiarised myself with.

In regards to the edits picked out by Hillock above, using Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant as an example, I have reverted Hillock's removal of the Russian name out of the lead; this appears to be a major thing with Hillock, in that perfectly legitimate insertions of Russian language names are removed, in what appears to me to be a desire to rid legitimate entries of Russian from Ukrainian-related articles. So I think, that this arbitration request should be looking at some severe issues that Hillock has, instead of simply being an attack on and an attempt to get rid of an opponent that is clearly what he is trying to do. --Russavia ^{Dialogue Stalk me} 03:27, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I did advice Hillock65 this summer (see:[75]) to be more cooperative with Russian editors (Kuban in particular). I gave 2 of the 6 barnstars to Kuban and despite my deep affection for Ukraine and my dear friends there (and 1 from there). I'm not a Ukrainian. See section "languages" on my userpage. But I consider it a compliment you see me as one ;) -- Mariah-Yulia (talk) 21:28, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I tried to referee between Hillock and Kuban at Talk:Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) but soon lost a clue what they argued about, in my view (although I know little about any Orthodox Church) I didn't see an attemp by Kuban to "Russification" it, quite the oppisite, he could have (according to wikipedia infobox rules) removed "Moscow Patriarchate" from the infobox (making the "other" Ukrainian Orthodox Church look illegal) but didn't. Mariah-Yulia (talk) 21:44, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

User:ScienceApologist

This thread was started by banned user:Iantresman, is there anything here that needs actual admin attention? Thatcher 12:11, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Grburster

Resolved

 – Borderline call that turned out in the end to be correct Tim Vickers (talk) 19:34, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Could people reading this thread review what I've written at Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Grburster? I'm rather unhappy that a checkuser request was filed purely on the basis of this ANI thread and the name similarity. It looks like fishing to me, pure and simple. It also looks like an attempt to deflect from the criticisms being made by Grburster of ScienceApologist. As someone said above, please don't shoot the messenger. Have a look at Special:Contributions/Grburster - I see nothing wrong there. It looks to me like someone who has admitted (without disclosing) a prior account (that's fine) and who came to ANI to make a criticism of another editor, is now being 'investigated' on spurious grounds. Carcharoth (talk) 08:39, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Recheck your assumptions please. Thatcher 12:11, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

The checkuser was fully justified. As far as I can tell, an editor noticed what appeared to be a sock of a very disruptive user he was familiar with, and called for a check user. You should spend more time examining the situation before you call 'checkuser abuse'. Its exactly this kind of feel-good huggy enforcing of the rules without any knowledge of the actual situation that the disruptive users will take full advantage of of. Guyonthesubway (talk) 14:00, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Carcharoth, you are one of my favorite admins. I wish you would come over to WP:SSP or WP:RFCU and help us with the backlogs. Before criticizing, walk a mile in the other editor's shoes. Jehochman ^Talk 14:08, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I think Carcharoth does has a good point, the justification for the checkuser I requested was arguably borderline, but I did have a gut feeling I couldn't ignore. If that suspicion had been wrong it would have been me people would be criticising, rather than him. As a note, I've unblocked User:GammaRayBurst and apologised for my mistake in linking him to a banned user. Mark as resolved? Tim Vickers (talk) 15:23, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Tim, even if GammaRayBurst (talk · contribs) wasn't socking, it still looks like a vandal-only account. If you don't mind, I'll leave an unambiguous final warning for the account. — Scientizzle 15:32, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

OK, fine with me. Tim Vickers (talk) 15:39, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for the late response (was out last night). It seems things have moved on a lot since I posted yesterday morning. As I started the thread, I would have liked the opportunity to respond before things were marked resolved or collapsed, but sometimes things do happen quickly round here. I've reviewed what my thoughts and actions were here and the points I want to make before moving on are as follows:

• (1) I'm not in any way defending socking by User:Iantresman to evade his ban.
• (2) However, I stand by my opinion that before the checkuser was run, there was no way to tell who User:Grburster was. Did ScienceApologist recognise the style? Did Tim Vickers? Did MastCell? Did anyone else in that thread above (now collapsed by Thatcher)? There were some concerns, but those were focused on the new nature of the (self-admitted) experienced account, not on the connection TimVickers made with another account (which turned out to be unrelated, as Thatcher said, justifying the point I made at the checkuser request, though Thatcher failed to note that when asking me to recheck my assumptions).
• (3) I'd like to thank User:Crossmr and User:TimVickers, who understood the point I was making about the checkuser request. See here and here.
• (4) I would like to note for the record that I object to what was said in the posts by User:ScienceApologist (here - saying that those who accepted Grburster at face value at the checkuser request, and didn't know at the time that he was Iantresman, were "defending the indefensible" - a most unfair accusation to make: Thatcher "saved the day" because he had checkuser, while others (including me) only had the contributions history to go by) and User:Guyonthesubway (here - incorrectly stating the reason TimVickers filed the checkuser request and saying that I hadn't taken the time to examine the situation - obviously I feel I had taken the time to examine the situation, by reviewing every single contribution by User:Grburster and the other account named at the checkuser request). I don't want to go into more detail here (it would distract from the other points I'm making), but if those editors want to discuss this further, we can take it to talk pages.
• (5) I'm still concerned that User:Thatcher (who asked me to "recheck my assumptions") seemed to miss the point I was making about checkuser. Yes, I know Thatcher does huge amounts of checkuser work, but that is a reason for more scrutiny, not less. I would like to ask Thatcher directly what his reason was for running the checkuser (e.g. what was the reason given in the checkuser log?). Was it because of the request made by User:TimVickers (which didn't mention this ANI thread at all)? Or was it because he (Thatcher) saw a new account (self-admitted as an experienced editor), editing physics articles, who had made an ANI post criticising User:ScienceApologist, and alarm bells began to ring?
• (6) The final point, leading on from the previous one, is where do the boundaries of checkuser lie?

• (a) Is it acceptable to routinely run a checkuser over banned users (such as User:Iantresman) to catch sockpuppets?
• (b) Is it acceptable to routinely run a checkuser over people who criticise User:ScienceApologist?
• (c) Is it acceptable to routinely run a checkuser over new accounts who criticise ScienceApologist?
• (d) Is it acceptable to run a checkuser in a particular case (even if not technically justified) because you think it might reveal something else unrelated, and how much of that is left to the discretion of the checkuser?

My answers would be: Yes, No, Maybe, Yes (according to discretion). Could Thatcher or another checkuser (but preferably Thatcher, as it relates to the checkuser he carried out) confirm this is how things are done, or correct me if I'm missing things here? Thanks.

Apologies for the length of that response. As I said, I was out last night, but wanted to respond here and (hopefully) get some answers to the questions I posed above, and then move on. Carcharoth (talk) 09:08, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I didn't call for the check simply because an account criticised ScienceApologist, I called for a check partly because an account that was a self-admitted alternate account was showing a strong antipathy to ScienceApologist and the first edits this account made were to Talk:Non-standard cosmology. This raised the immediate suspicion in my mind that this was a sock (which I noted in my checkuser request) and Iantresman was the user that I suspected most strongly of being the sockmaster. However, I freely admit that these general suspicions were not actionable, and if there hadn't been the additional link to the GammaRayBurst account, I'd probably not have said anything. As it was, my instinct did turn out to be right, but the level of evidence at the time was weak - so I would not criticise anybody who disagreed with my decision - I wasn't completely sure myself. Tim Vickers (talk) 15:40, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Broadly speaking, the answers to your questions are yes, yes, yes and yes, although it depends on the specific circumstances and the discretion of the checkuser. Checkuser may be used to "prevent disruption", and this is interpreted to give checkusers great latitude. In this case, I'd say that the potential of a banned user or disruptive SPA filing ANI complaints against other editors falls under the broad mandate, and since Ian has emailed me to say he did nothing wrong, I'd say parking on his IP for a while would also be justified. Certainly there are a number of editors, not just SA, who attract unwanted attention and harassment, so checking new accounts who target specific people is sometimes justified as well. And there are some editors who have proven to have a good track record of sniffing out sockpuppets, whose requests I might honor with less supporting data than an editor whom I did not know well. It really depends on many factors. Thatcher 17:36, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Thatcher. It looks like the only point we disagree on is the extent of the "broad latitude" and my point (b). I should have been clearer about point (b) - it was meant to be in contrast to point (c) (which covers new users). My point (b) was meant to cover established users. i.e. Is it acceptable to checkuser established users who criticise ScienceApologist (some examples are in the collapsed thread). I don't think I even need to ask whether that is acceptable or not - without compelling additional reasons, valid criticism by an established account is clearly not disruption and should never be a reason to run a checkuser - there may be broad latitude, but it can't be without limit. But then I don't think you are suggesting that - I think there has just been a misunderstanding about what I meant under point (b). About the e-mail you received from Ian Tresman, I also received an e-mail from him. When I tried to look further into the background, it seems that not all the relevant threads are linked from the block log or the Arbitration case. Do you think it would be possible for someone who knows the background to all this better than me to tidy up the paperwork so that people coming fresh to this are better able to read up on the history? That doesn't need to be covered here, though, so I agree this thread is done now (i.e. I agree with the resolved tag placed earlier by Tim Vickers). Carcharoth (talk) 22:04, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Certainly established users should expect that the bar is set much higher with respect to checkuser, but even established editors are not immune if the evidence is strong enough. Thatcher 22:40, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Sure. I guess if I peruse the checkuser request archives, I'll see where the bar is set. And the discretion of the checkusers covers the rest, with the checks and balances for the non-visible checkusers (the ones without requests) provided by the other checkusers and the checkuser mailing list. One thing I think it is helpful to remember here is that while checkusers can help to identify and clear up areas of disruption, there is a price paid in the "misses" - the checkuser runs that don't get any usable results (whether the checkuser was justified or not). No matter how much you try and tell people that the checkuser was needed (or, in the case of a speculative checkuser, that an experienced and trusted checkuser was following their instinct, even if the instinct was wrong in that case), if a check comes back as "not related", there will always be some people who get upset at having been checkusered (whether privately at the discretion of the checkusers, or by a public request). In my view, the balance to the "wide latitude" granted checkusers is the temperament for a checkuser to apologise in cases where they get it wrong, and not to always put it down to "experience" or "well, you can't get it right every time". In other words, where a checkuser gets it wrong and upsets someone, there should be a way to handle things. Is there any such system at the moment to handle "misses"? Actually, I've gone way off topic here. This should be continued at somewhere like WT:CHECKUSER, not here. Sorry about that. Carcharoth (talk) 00:11, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

As an additional comment, I think it is very unfair to judge Carcharoth's careful analysis of the evidence available at the time with the advantage of hindsight. Judgment calls like this are areas where two different people can carefully examine the same evidence and come to two opposite and entirely justifiable decisions. I think Carcharoth probably examined the same evidence and thought about what it meant just as carefully as as I did. Indeed, although my general suspicions were justified, my interpretation of the evidence was wrong and as Carcharoth pointed out, the two accounts I requested a check on were unrelated. Tim Vickers (talk) 18:08, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Tim, for explaining things from your perspective a bit further, and for the kind words. It's appreciated. Carcharoth (talk) 22:04, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Back to ScienceApologist

ScienceApologist has got right back to edit-warring, refusing to engaging discussions, and making personal attacks. Please see the recent edit history for WP:FRINGE with particular attention to his skirting of 3RR and NPA: [94] [95] [96]. -- Levine2112 ^discuss 17:57, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. To quote what was being said there, I don't like the look of those edit summaries:

• Undid revision 248598756 by SamuelTheGhost (talk) looks like wikistalking, smells like wikistalking... - 13:17, 30 October 2008
• Undid revision 248709611 by Jossi (talk) Revert heavy-handed Jossi again. Sigh. - 05:43, 31 October 2008
• Undid revision 248767182 by Martinphi (talk) the POVPUSHERS are back! - 05:49, 31 October 2008

I'll drop ScienceApologist a note and ask him if he can explain why he is using inflammatory edit summaries like that. That is also a lot of reverting. More generally, it seems that the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Fringe theories#Mass edits sans discussion started after the edits by ScienceApologist. There is also Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard#Edit warring at Wikipedia:Fringe theories. Elonka has done some (maybe all) of the warnings needed: [97], [98], [99], [100], [101], [102], [103], [104]. I endorse the actions taken by Elonka so far. Will drop her a note about this, and at the various discussions, but this might be better discussed at one of those other discussions. Carcharoth (talk) 05:32, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Also, it looks like the edit-warring at WP:FRINGE was an overflow from a dispute at WP:ENC. I posted a note on the talkpage there as well. --Elonka 05:52, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Disruption on Obama talk page

Resolved

 – 2wk block Toddst1 (talk) 23:22, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Please review Thegoodlocust (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - just back from 1-week ban, immediately engages in old behavior: edit warring, incivility, 3RR vios, fringe theories, disruption.

• 5-6 fringe theories posted and repeatedly posted (after community deleted, closed, archived, etc) in 2 days on Obama talk page - see his edit history
• 3RR report here fore re-opening closed discussions: [[Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RR#
• Now wikistalking / harassing other editors: disrupts an editor's editor review by accusing him of being in cahoots with "friends";[105] trolls my talk page[106][107] (last one was re-posting accusations on my talk page after I deleted them)

In a more general sense there are several editors returning or joining the page who have been causing disruption. We could use some no-nonsense help on the page, probably for the next few days until the election. Wikidemon (talk) 22:42, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Note - Thegoodlocust is blocked for 2 weeks based on the 3RR report.[108] The broader issue about what to do about Barack Obama and Sarah Palin remains (John McCain and Joe Biden too, I suppose, but they are much quieter). Wikidemon (talk) 23:09, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

More Obama-Drama

the post above was written apparently while I was writing this. Great minds think alike, doncha know! First of all, let me just say, I'm sorry to put this on you guys- I know all the election related edit and flame warring got old about three years eleven months ago, but as a sort of semi-involved admin watching from the sidelines, there's a situation that's going to spiral out of control pretty fast if we don't put a cap on it somehow and I'm sort of unsure exactly what the right course of action is.
On Talk:Barack Obama, Thegoodlocust (talk · contribs), who was blocked earlier in the month by me for edit warring and incivility, has returned from his block and is continually adding posts to the discussion attempting to connect Obama with ACORN. He is being repeatedly reverted by Wikidemon (talk · contribs). No, here's where it gets sticky. Wikidemon is warning Locust for edit warring by recreating his posts, while others are warning Wikidemon for edit warring by repeatedly deleting said posts. Wikidemon claims that his edits don't count as edit warring because he's removing blp material. I'm inclined to agree with him, but I'd like some outside opinions. ~ L'Aquatique[talk] 22:51, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

One more thing. This might be totally wrong and against everything we believe in, but wouldn't it be nice if someone just happened to full protect Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, John McCain and Joe Biden for, oh, say... six days? ~ L'Aquatique[talk] 22:54, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm 100% in favor of that. Forcing consensus by making everything go thru {{editprotected}} isn't a bad way to handle articles like that. --barneca (talk) 23:04, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Hi, this may just be my own bias, but I don't think consensus is the problem, rather signal to noise/disruption. Folks at the Obama and related pages are burning a ton of resources in re-explaining BLP, NPOV, RS, NOTNEWS, UNDUE, etc. very frequently as each new talking point appears (or in many cases, re-appears.) regards, --guyzero | talk 23:34, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Hi L'Aquatique, the further background is edits from Thegoodlocust (talk · contribs) on the talkpage yesterday as seen here and here. He was warned just yesterday to not disrupt the talkpage by inserting fringe theories and BLP-violations. --guyzero | talk 22:57, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I would support full protection as a very last resort if there is no other way. I cannot think of any change to the major candidate pages that is so burning that it cannot wait until after the election. However, locking down articles in anticipation of future vandalism may create an unwise precedent. Please note a few things - the "warning" on my page is incorrect - I am at 0RR or 2RR depending on whether you count my BLP revert and re-closing a disruptive discussion. I am on article patrol along with 6-12 other editors at a time. We close, archive, and delete many discussions per day on the Obama talk page. If not it would be mayhem, as you can see by looking at the page as it stands or the edit history. As far as I know (correct me if I am wrong) marking a discusison closed, consolidating discussions, or changing headings to be more descriptive, are not reverts. Disruption has increased several-fold in the past few days and I don't know if we can hold this back. We are, as I note on the talk page, up to 3-5 blocks per day on that page, mostly for vandals - I try to keep up with them and put them on the log at Talk:Barack Obama/Article probation, but I'm sure I miss quite a few. Wikidemon (talk) 23:05, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I assume that you'll be constantly watching these pages and reverting the vandalism floods? Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 23:10, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I do my best at Barack Obama, but one non-admin isn't enough, and even six are not enough. Even on article patrol we try to be on best behavior and not to violate 3RR or article probation terms. It's like being a policeman who has to wear white gloves and a tophat all the time. It's harder for me on Sarah Palin, the other big problem article, because unless you follow it minute by minute it is sometimes hard to tell who the troll is, or what is a legitimate question / proposal versus what is a fringe theory that has already been dismissed ten times. Some problem editors have a way of mimicking the accusations of the regular editors.Wikidemon (talk) 23:43, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

At least there's no risk of any of those articles appearing as a Featured Article on November 5th. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 23:48, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

(undent)Unfortunately, there has been so much vandalism like these gems[109][110][111][112], and so many people reading the article, that some readers have been rightfully appalled and left messages on the talk page asking what is going on. You can't revert fast enough to avoid some people being hurt. And then there is the constant trolling on the talk page. It's sure to get worse. At the very least, more admins watching these pages through the election would be very helpful. Thanks, ~ priyanath ^talk 23:49, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Wow, I'm not hearing all the opposition I thought I would get to that little proposal of mine. We could even narrow it down to just Barack Obama and Sarah Palin, the two major problem articles. The real question: would it solve more problems than it would cause? I don't know the answer. ~ L'Aquatique[talk] 03:45, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid that extremely high profile BLPs (US presidential candidates days from election obviously qualify) lend themselves poorly to the Wiki Way. It wouldn't take much bad luck to end up with a PR catastrophe on our hands. I would support a week-long protection for all four, personally; having to use {{editprotected}} for a few days is not that onerous a price to pay to protect the encyclopedia and the foundation. — Coren ^(talk) 04:05, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Unless something dramatic and unexpected happens, I don't see what new information warrants adding until after the election. Protection is a good idea. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 04:27, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Don't have to tell me twice. I'm going to go make sure there are no problems with current revisions and protect them, I guess. Of course, it will invariably be the wrong version, but I'm only human after all. ~ L'Aquatique[talk] 04:39, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

(e/c) If, as it seems, the level of vandalism is so high that it's impractical to keep up with it by reverts, then protection for a short time will be needed. It's unfortunate. I would recommend protecting all 4 of the candidate pages, if any 1 of them is protected. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:40, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I also think that a full "this page is protected due to vandalism" template (not a small icon) is worthwhile for these. They are protected for a short time, and only because of heavy vandalism. So we should be up front about this, so that editors who wonder why they can't edit have some clear explanation. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:59, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I completely agree. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:01, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I completely agree with both your sentiments, my dear MzM. Moving on, however, I have fully protected Joe Biden, Sarah Palin, and Barack Obama (John McCain was already fully protected) with an expiry time of 6 days (which may need to be tweaked so that it doesn't expire until after the election depending on time zones) and left notes of explanations on all the talk pages. Next, I will add the protection tags.

In other news, I just recieved a rather angry note from User:Thegoodlocust claiming that I'm a cabalist and an all around evil person. Whoops... I just accidentally deleted it. Oh well. ~ L'Aquatique[talk] 05:06, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

(e/c)Thank you for protecting those articles through the election, L'Aquatique. People should note that these are the candidate's biographies, and nothing significant is likely to change in the next week regarding their lives. If it does, then {{editprotected}} works just fine. Some of the trolling and vandalism is so appalling that this is for the best - for the articles and for Wikipedia. Note that the articles about the election have not been protected, for example United States presidential election, 2008, Barack Obama presidential campaign, 2008‎, John McCain presidential campaign, 2008‎, and others. They can continue to be updated with current events. The bios seem to be the worst hate and vandalism magnets, unfortunately. ~ priyanath ^talk 05:06, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I have gone through all 4 articles alphabetically and changed the template to pp-vandalism, not small. This should make it clear why the articles are protected - because of heavy ongoing vandalism - and it also tells editors how to request changes using editprotected. — Carl (CBM · talk) 05:10, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

This is undoubtably the best thing to do. J.delanoy^gabs_adds 05:35, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree that full protection seems wise, given the circumstances. I also think Coren is correct with the comment that wide open editing on these incredibly heavily trafficked articles could open us up to a last minute public relations disaster. I wonder how many people are out there would potentially allow Wikipedia content to influence whether they would or would not vote for a particular candidate? I bet there's more than a few... In any event, again, full protection, I believe is best, especially given what we've seen on the Palin and Obama articles thus far.   user:j    (aka justen)   05:44, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. It's not worth the endless BLPvios that will surely be happening at an even faster pace as E-Day approaches. Good job, LAQ. [ roux ] [x] 05:45, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

To prevent needless drama, accusations of elitism, and/or a shit-storm like around the time Sarah Palin's VP candidacy was announced, I would like to request that administrators as a body pledge not to make any non-trivial edits to those pages without gaining consensus on the talk page. (IMHO, noting on the pages who won the election, as well as updating the infoboxes, would be trivial, since all or most of the details should be placed in the article about the election). J.delanoy^gabs_adds 06:00, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

CBM: You slapped full protection on John McCain and claimed it was because of "heavy ongoing vandalism". That's totally bogus. There isn't any "heavy ongoing vandalism" to this article. Kindly revert to the semi-protection that was operating satisfactorily before you needlessly interfered. Thank you. Writegeist (talk) 06:57, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I support locking up all four articles through November 5. However, the huge tag is hideous. The small padlock symbol would work just as well. We have been through this before.Ferrylodge (talk) 07:09, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Uh, Sarcasticidealist fully protected the John McCain article over 2 days ago. CBM just modified the tag.

Cheers,  This flag once was red  07:15, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Again, the lockdown is totally bogus. There is NO "heavy vandalism". But it stands to reason that our pet McCain campaign worker would support a tactic that echoes his own efforts to obstruct further additions regardless of the fact that this stated reason for the lockdown is a lie. — Writegeist (talk)

I have no connection to the McCain campaign, and I have the same stance toward all 4 articles in question. Perhaps Writegeist is projecting.Ferrylodge (talk) 07:38, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

The tag states "This page is currently protected from editing to deal with vandalism"; it doesn't mention that there has been heavy vandalism, the inference I draw that is that it seeks to prevent future vandalism.

(Also no connection with the McCain campaign; if you want to know what my politics are you can check this edit)

Cheers,  This flag once was red  07:43, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Red Flag: I did not, as you imply, say that the tag cited "heavy vandalism". I simply pointed out that CBM invented "heavy ongoing vandalism" as justification for the lockdown. (See CBM's unequivocal statements above: (1) [The tag] should make it clear why the articles are protected - because of heavy ongoing vandalism and (2) They are protected...because of heavy vandalism.) Certainly where the McCain and Palin BLPs are concerned that's a figment of CBM's imagination. See also the tag at the top of John McCain talk: John McCain is temporarily protected from editing until November 5, 2008 because it has been subject to heavy vandalism. There was no "heavy vandalism", "ongoing" or otherwise. Ergo the tag was applied for bogus reasons and should revert to semi-protection. — Writegeist (talk) 21:26, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

You're quite correct; I hadn't seen the talk page tag when I made that comment. I retract my comment re: the tag not mentioning heavy vandalism.

Cheers,  This flag once was red  07:15, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Preserving thread

I'm preserving this thread linked from the protection log with a fake timestamp for transparency's sake. The bot will automatically archive it after the election is over.--chaser - t 05:39, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Protection notices

The huge protection notices are absolutely hideous, and a huge disservice to our readers. For every person with an account who wonders why they can't edit the article (nevermind that it says why when clicking the "view source" link) we have hundreds, if not thousands, of readers who will have to scroll down a maintainance templace with absolutely no relevance to the content they're interested in. Folks, we need to grow up and recognize that wikipedia is just not for the active editors. There is a silent majority of readers that outnumber the editors a hundred times and we shouldn't needlessly force them to start with scrolling down or reading irrelevant internal nonsense on some of our most visible pages. The large notices have a place for articles locked down due to a content dispute, to warn that the content is in dispute, but that is not the case here! A small padlock icon is definitely sufficient. henrik•talk 07:56, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

As mentioned above, I agree 100%. The huge tag at the top of each of the articles is hideous. The small padlock symbol would work just as well, and anyone would understand what's happening from reading the tag at the top of each of the talk pages. The McCain article has already been locked up for a couple days without using the huge tag at the top of the article. This issue arose previously, and it was decided to keep the Palin article frozen but get rid of the huge tag at the top.Ferrylodge (talk) 08:00, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually with respect to the previous actions on Palin, the banner was removed in the absence of consensus by an admin that ignored the discussion on the issue and ultimately ended up in Arbitration over their reckless behavior with respect to Palin's article. It is no way a precedent that I would follow for only using padlocks. Dragons flight (talk) 08:13, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

It was still an excellent suggestion by New York Brad, and in fact the suggestion was fully implemented without subsequent reversion.Ferrylodge (talk) 08:17, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Because only a fool will edit war on an article already in arbitration, in my opinion it was a bad decision and many people preferred the large tag. Dragons flight (talk) 08:26, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Nope, the article was locked up for many days, while changes were made by consensus, and there was never consensus to reinstall the huge tag.[113]Ferrylodge (talk) 08:34, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

That discussion didn't affect the big tag. It wasn't until later that Jossi removed it (without participating in or even being aware of the discussion about the tag). In my opinion there was never consensus to remove the tag. I might concede that there was "no consensus" on the issue, but I don't believe your side had consensus. Dragons flight (talk) 08:43, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, it's water under the bridge. We've provided links to the relevant discussion. I think Henrik makes some excellent points below; e.g., unregistered users have been unable to edit these articles for months so why would they suddenly find a huge tag useful? I'm telling you, the huge tags will reduce the number of people who read these articles by at least a factor of ten, which would be a huge shame given all the work that's gone into writing these articles.Ferrylodge (talk) 08:46, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, a factor of 10 is probably an exaggeration. But they're still ugly :-) henrik•talk 08:59, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Using the large tag to point out that these articles are being subjected to unusual treatment is a benefit to our readers. We want our readers to be aware that these articles are being subjected to different standards than normal articles. Dragons flight (talk) 08:13, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

The vast majority of readers will see the tag, and read no further. The tag is hideous, and says the article's been vandalized. We are talking about four Wikipedia articles that have typically been getting (collectively) over 250,000 hits per day, and that number will increase dramatically during the next few days. So let's get this right, please. Editors will easily figure out what's going on, from the tags at the tops of the talk pages.Ferrylodge (talk) 08:17, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Then we should use another {{pp-xxx}} tag instead. I'd put {{pp-dispute}} there, because most readers will understand that those articles are subject to dispute shortly before an election and will not be scared by those tags. But most new readers have no idea what a talk page is or why they should open it. They want to read information and maybe correct things and they should be told why they cannot do so. We have to think about thousands of anon or newbie readers that do not use WP usually. Regards SoWhy 08:23, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

These articles have been constantly semi-protected for months already, so newbie readers have never been able to correct things directly. The only difference now is that non-administrator established editors can't edit them. The only people not being able to edit now are those who have auto-confirmed accounts, and they can be expected to find their way to to talk pages. I do not understand why restricting auto-confirmed users merits a huge banner, while restricting anonymous users routinely is done with a small icon. {{pp-dispute}} is not the right answer either, because there is no significant dispute. These protections are mainly a technical measure because the regular editors can't keep up with the (expected) traffic. henrik•talk 08:36, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Why is the reader likely to be interested in that? I'd wager a significant amount that the average reader is more interested to read the biography of the candidate in question than learning about wikipedia internal debates on article protection standards. While protection policy and article standards are interesting, it is not sufficiently interesting to occupy the whole first paragraph of such high profile articles. Again, the protection is a technical measure to solve the problem of our inability to effectively deal with the vandalism, not a warning that the content is thought to be unreliable (which the current notices certainly imply by saying "[this] in not an endorsement of the current version"). henrik•talk 08:24, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Most readers have at least vague idea how Wikipedia operates to the extent that it reflects an open editing philosophy. If prominent articles are being treated differently than those expectations suggest, then I think readers ought to have those expectations corrected. I am open to discussing a different presentation to the message box though, if you have some suggestions for what would be a better way to explain this particular protection. Dragons flight (talk) 08:32, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Unregistered users have been unable to edit these articles for months so why would they suddenly find a huge tag useful?Ferrylodge (talk) 08:49, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Semi-protection is still a good approximation of the open editing process. Virtually all active editors are autoconfirmed and even new editors can quickly obtain that status. Full protection is different since it hands control to only a fraction of editors and generally changes the dynamic of how pages are edited. I'll assume that most readers will not be editors regardless of the protection status, but most readers still have an idea (in broad terms) of how articles are written and protection changes that. It is that change is process that I think should be announced. Incidentally, you assume protection is a turn off to large numbers of people. You ignore the other possible position. Some people will see that an article is protected and assume that it therefore is less likely to contain vandalism and hence more trustworthy. It isn't obvious to me that announcing a protection status is inherently a large net negative in public perception. Dragons flight (talk) 08:58, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

These protections, (as well as the Sarah Palin wheelwar) are really a new and evolving form of protection for us. We're discovering that some articles have become so high-profile that even semi-protection is insufficient, but we haven't really evolved the tools or policies needed to deal with those cases yet. I guess the best we can do is just try what seems best at the time :-)

My main problem is the size and length, plus that the standard template message isn't really suited to this particular case. As a compromise, could we craft a one-line message, with a smallish lock that explains that the articles are locked down and a link to a page with further details? henrik•talk 08:54, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm bowing out to get sleep (I'm in Connecticut). I can barely spew out one line of text.  :-)Ferrylodge (talk) 08:59, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I suspect I'll want more like 2 or 3 lines but I open to shortening the message from the 5 lines it currently displays in my browser. Dragons flight (talk) 09:01, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

What about using the small icon in conjunction with the new Mediawiki edit notices? That way, readers don't see the large template, while those who choose to edit can see a detailed explanation of what is going on. Thoughts? --Ckatz^chat_spy 09:33, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

(ec)Support Ckatz's suggestion, above. I was going to suggest alternate phrasing for the template drafts below, but edit-conflicted with what looks to be a way better idea. Sorry for being a mediawiki noob, can you point to an example? thanks, --guyzero | talk 09:38, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Edit notices are only shown to people with permission to edit. In the case of fully protected pages, that is admins only. Other people who click "view source" will never see them. Dragons flight (talk) 09:37, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately this is true, otherwise it would have been a good idea. henrik•talk 09:48, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Ah bummer =( --guyzero | talk 09:54, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, didn't realize they had that restriction. Another thought - we use the collapsed-form templates at the bottom of articles; what about using a similar technique at the top? The title line could simply state that the article is protected, with a link to expand it if readers/editors want more details. --Ckatz^chat_spy 10:04, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good to me.Ferrylodge (talk) 10:22, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Drafts

In the spirit of the above, here is my draft for custom notice. Dragons flight (talk) 09:15, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I was thinking something along this line, where the full policy, {{editprotected}} and other details are explained on the talk page or a subpage. I am of course open to tweaking the wording, I am sure that could be improved. henrik•talk 09:31, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

One advantage of having the details on a separate, but easily accessible link, is that it will allow us to explain everything in full without being constrained by space. It should allow us to make a more accessible introduction to wikipedia protection and editing than what could be done in the box. henrik•talk 09:35, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm back! Just for a little while. I still think ordinary people will not understand what "protected" means, and the word "vandalism" will be scary. How about....

Ferrylodge (talk) 09:44, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

If you and henrik want to do the see details "here" thing, then I would like to see what text you intend to provide at that destination as well. Dragons flight (talk) 09:48, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Maybe the "here" could just be the top of the respective article talk page? There's a huge protection tag at the top of each of the talk pages right now, which is fine with me.Ferrylodge (talk) 09:52, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough, that is of course a reasonable request. Again, feel free to edit away on this. henrik•talk 10:14, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Suggest perhaps replacing the first paragraph "While normally any Wikipedia article is open for editing by anyone, we've protected this article from editing to deal with vandalism due to the US Election", above? thanks, --guyzero | talk 10:23, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

A collapsible box was an excellent idea, how about this: henrik•talk 10:38, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, I just have seen the four-way lockdown. (I'm the leading editor at Joe Biden and co-leading editor at John McCain.) I don't like it – we made it through the long, heated Obama-Clinton primary without having to resort to this (certainly the Clinton article, where I'm also the leading editor, was never locked down), and I don't see anything that's made it necessary here. But I can see I'm in the minority and that the decision has already been made. I strongly agree with others that the current huge tag is gross and unnecessarily throws all the current content of the articles into doubt. It doesn't even make sense – how could vandalism cause us to not be able to endorse a version of the article?? We revert vandalisms to good versions all the time! It makes us sound like we have no clue about what we are doing, which is not the case. I don't care that much which of these alternative tags you pick above, but please put them into place as soon as possible. The current tags make me feel like all the work I have done here is being disrespected. Wasted Time R (talk) 11:12, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I think that if we DO protect these articles, (and I am totally WITH Wasted Time R. Premptively protecting the articles is kind of the Bush Doctrine approach to Wikipedia, and we know how well THAT has worked out...) we should ONLY semi-protect them. Semi-protection will stop the sort of "drive-by" vandalism that we expect given the election, and any other vandalism can be dealt with by swift account blocks. At worst, if a whole slew of autoconfimed accounts shows up to attack the article, it will serve as sockpuppet bait; we can cause sockfarms to reveal themselves, which may be a good thing. There doesn't seem to be any real benefit from full protection here... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 12:21, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Jayron--semi-protection would eliminate 99 percent of the problem edits (which seem to be drive-by vandalism from new accounts). I do think a tag is needed, though--something like this: Blueboy96 12:38, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I see that Henrik has put in the show/hide tag proposed above. Thanks, that's a big improvement over what had been there. And I'll never criticize Henrik, given how many times I've used the wonderful page view count tool! Wasted Time R (talk) 12:33, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. http://stats.grok.se/ is a great tool. Thanks Henrik.Ferrylodge (talk) 23:01, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

As Wasted Time R noted, I've put in the less obtrusive collapsible protection notice on all four candidate's pages for now. You can find the template at {{pp-uselection2008}} (swiftly copyedited and improved by User:Kane5187). I have no strong opinion on the issue of protection itself, but my guess is that it could probably have been handled with shorter full protections as needed. Then again, a lot of people will read these, and even vandalism for a few seconds will be seen by a lot of people. henrik•talk 12:46, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I want to register my support for this version of the tag. And also to register my full agreement with Dragons flight that the padlock icon is insufficient. Users of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, deserve to know that why these articles are being treated differently. Mike R (talk) 13:50, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

These articles should not be under full protection for any length of time. Semi-protection is clearly called for and full protection can be used for short spikes of vandalism by autoconfirmed accounts but there will be so many experienced editors watching these articles, locking them down for a week or more will stir up more harm than help to their content. Gwen Gale (talk) 12:53, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

The McCain article was already full protected until after the election, since 2008-10-27. Editors above were reporting that they were unable to keep up with the vandalism at the Obama page, which was semiprotected. It seemed very unlikely to me that the Obama article would make it to Nov. 4 without being full protected; at most, it might stay unprotected another day or two. When the people watching a page start to burn out from the effort, that's when protection becomes more viable. And I think there is a relatively clear benefit to treating all 4 of the election biographies equally in terms of protection. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:42, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Red diaper baby, MILF, Trollop and a string of other articles have also been dragged into this and some of them have been semi protected, I suspect some vandals will get more inventive in the next few days. But I do think we owe it to the IP editors to patrol and action the talk pages when we semi protect, this has worked quite well for the Russell Brand Show prank telephone calls row saga and also a few weeks ago when the LHC was switched on. ϢereSpielChequers 14:16, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

The McCain article was already full protected until after the election: Only sort of. Yes, the expiry date was after the election, but the admin who imposed it had said he intended to lift it sooner, as soon as the particular conflict he imposed it for was over. He was in fact about to lift it this morning, before noticing that this new decision had been made to protect it.

I protest this decision, especially since it was imposed with no discussion at all on the talk pages of the affected articles. I don't know what it's been like at Obama, but at Palin and McCain there's been lots of content dispute but no significant vandalism. Whatever vandalism there has been was quickly reverted by the many editors, from all sides, who are watching the pages; no need for uninvolved vandalism patrollers. Seriously, I've seen less vandalism at Sarah Palin than at Cole & Dylan Sprouse. -- Zsero (talk) 14:06, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

My response to all this is below, I just wanted to throw out some kudos to the folks working on templates above. The collapsable ones look great and definitely have my !vote. ~ L'Aquatique[talk] 17:23, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely ridiculous. While normally any wikipedia article is open for editing by anyone, we've been forced to restrict these pages until after the election. Really? There is no consensus for such a draconian measure... who is "we"? Certainly not the Wikipedia community, but a few people that have rushed this through. I am restoring the normal templates in these pages. I am removing that text from the template, as it is misleading. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 02:52, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• I have removed these new tags. Prevention of possible vandalism is not a valid reason for protecting an article: protecting is not to be used preemptively. See WP:PROTECTION ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 04:31, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't think just taking off the tags is the answer - either we accept this pre-emptive protection and leave the new tags on so this exception to normal Wikipedia practice is explained, or we go back to semi-protection and have no tag other than the lock icon which is standard policy. Full protection without explanation adds to confusion, I think. And I don't see consensus for full protection here. Tvoz/talk 07:05, 31 October 2008 (UTC) And here's a reason why removing the tag is not a good idea. Tvoz/talk 07:28, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I do think that taking off the tags is a big improvement, whether or not the articles continue to be full-protected. The new tags devised by Henrik et al. were pretty good, but I do think Jossi is correct to go with the little padlock symbols instead. The respective article talk pages can have huge tags at the top, but the articles themselves really should not, IMHO. Thank you Jossi.  :-)Ferrylodge (talk) 07:11, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I also concur with Jossi's action to remove the narrative reason on the main article, regardless of whether a decision returns these to semi-protection. The narrative, while accurate, may have conveyed an unintended "we do not trust you" WP position, and as I've mentioned elsewhere, it also understated the vast good work WP editors have done on these articles for many months. Anyone who attempts to edit the page will immediately realize they can't, and I can't imagine any previously uninvolved serious contributors will surface in the waning days prior to the election who won't be familiar with the concept of the talk page. Regardless of full-protection, should a significant event occur in the next few days, we can be certain there will be many editors ready to collaborate on its inclusion. Fcreid (talk) 10:35, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Okay, guys, I think we are giving Wikipedia a little too much influence in US politics. We may still be fodder for The Colbert Report but I don't see a mistake in an article swinging the election. Be that as it may, Jossi is right. Here is how things will play out: editors on the talk page should, as always, work to build consensus for NPOV edits. A few weeks ago I was active at the Palin article and I saw people who clearly disagreed, profoundly, reach compromises, so this is not a pipe-dream. If there is a profound division among editors as to whether the article violatres NPOV (which is the main issue now), here is how it will play out: there will be an edit war and then someone will have to protect the page for a day, or block an editor or two for violating 3RR, to give other editors time to work out a stable compromise. This is the most interference by an admin that I can imagine. We certainly have no rules that editing stops x number of days before an election. Anyone who wants to can propose a new policy and we can debate it, but in the meantime we follow the policy we got, as Jossi says. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:41, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Should the election bios stay full protected through the election

It looks like there is some divided opinion about the protection. On one hand,

• reports near the top of the thread show that editors who follow the Obama page say it is becoming too much to keep up, and the McCain page had been full protected for a couple days.
• there is a benefit to keeping the 4 pages in sync with regard to protection.
• it's a reasonable guess that vandalism rates will go up before the election.

On the other hand

• people are also reporting that the McCain/Palin pages had less vandalism than the Obama pages
• there is a benefit to not fully protecting pages that don't need it.

It would be helpful for uninvolved editors to weigh in, to get a better sense of the overall opinion about the balance between these conflicting concerns. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:27, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Semi-protect per my comments above. Blueboy96 16:32, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

All of these articles had been semi-protected for months. You seem to have missed the fact that we are talking about excessive activity that was already not stopped by semi-protection. Dragons flight (talk) 16:46, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

If only because perception is reality in politics, protecting uniformly is the only reasonable method of avoiding appearance of bias. Spending a few days without being able to directly edit four articles is far from onerous, and a reasonable method of protecting Wikipedia's reputation. — Coren ^(talk) 16:35, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

• Full-protect. Anything that should or need to be inserted during this time can be done through the usual method. BLP policy needs to be respected, the likely surge in vandalism is utterly avoidable, as is another ArbCom case. Additionally, the article probation that we pulled through isn't going to be effective on its own during this time. Ncmvocalist (talk) 16:41, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

  I concur with Ncmvocalist and Coren. Tomer^talk 16:49, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I think it's overoptimistic to expect that the vandalism is going to decrease immediately after the election. If anything, I'd expect it to ramp up for at least a few days afterward. —KCinDC (talk) 16:58, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm under the impression that it would be protected during the election and for a few days following it - seems sensible for the exact reasons you've noted. Ncmvocalist (talk) 17:17, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

• Honestly, I think this is probably unnecessary at the moment. Barack Obama has been getting 30-40 edits per day, while John McCain was seeing about a 10-20 per day. In my opinion, those levels are manageable with the conventional level of watchlist attention that high profile articles get. For comparison, when Sarah Palin was initially locked it was getting 500-700 edits per day! That's more than an order of magnitude higher. I agreed with locking Palin at that time, but I don't think there is a crisis here that requires locking these now. Maybe such a problem will develop as the election comes closer, but I think that this protection is overly preemptive at the moment. Dragons flight (talk) 17:04, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
• Support full protection firstly, what seems to be missed is the fact that semiprotection will not help- these articles have been semi-ed for a long time which apparently did not fix the situation. When I decided to protect my decision was based on a wide variety of things- firstly common sense that these articles would be under incredible dispute considering the current climate in the US and indeed the world. I also had reports from vandal fighters on the page that it was getting overwhelming, they couldn't handle it, and that was in many ways the straw that broke the camels back. Wikipedia is a big deal, I think sometimes people forget that we have a ton load of presence in the greater world and it's important that we show a good face. We're the third hit on google for search string "Barack Obama" and the first that is not run by him. I'm sure the situation is similar for the other three. People are coming here for information about the candidates, information that they may use to make an extremely important decision in a few days and it's up to us to make sure that they get the best quality information they can get. If that means restricting editing on these pages, so be it. There's so much more at stake here than editing priveledges. ~ L'Aquatique[talk] 17:15, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

  these articles have been semi-ed for a long time which apparently did not fix the situation. What situation? There was no significant vandalism problem on Sarah Palin or John McCain. Lots of content dispute, but not vandalism. Semiprotection clearly was working, and there was no "situation". John McCain had been fully protected for a short time over an content dispute, but that was about to be lifted when you came along and slapped your blanket protection, because of nonexistent vandalism. -- Zsero (talk) 18:59, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

• John McCain is also the third google hit. VP candidates' articles are both the first google hits for their names.--chaser - t 18:40, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

• Thank you, chaser. Zsero, even though there was less of a problem on John McCain, the decision was made [not by me] to protect all of them in order to avoid the appearance of bias. ~ L'Aquatique[talk] 19:02, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

• Not yet I understand the desire for pre-emptive protection, but aside from the wiki way issues, there was a previous thread that concluded with a number of non U.S. admins keeping an eye on things, I believe.--Tznkai (talk) 17:18, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
• support full protection, even though I would rather not - I think that the onus of blp concerns out weighs the 'any one can edit' philosophy, through the election, due to the past experience on these articles. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 18:04, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
• Support full protection through the election... and it wouldn't hurt to have more eyes on the more prominently linked articles as well--If vandals can't trash the main candidate articles, they may just switch targets rather than desisting. Jclemens (talk) 18:06, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
• Comment The page view stats aren't as severe as they were for Sarah Palin, who got 3.5 million page views over two days, but that was four days before we full protected it. When that finally happened on 3 September, her article was at about 500k per day, far higher than Obama's current 80-150k per day. The other candidate articles are getting still fewer page views than Obama's (McCain 40-87k, Palin 60-75k, and Biden 25k or less).--chaser - t 18:40, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
• Support full protection because of the obvious BLP concerns which are heightened in this final week up to the elections because of the increased scrutiny that the public will undoubtedly have on these articles. -MBK₀₀₄ 18:41, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
• Note, since both McCain and Obama are featured articles, there is a proposal at WP:TFA/R (WT:TFAR) to run them side-by-side on the main page on Nov 4 or 5. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:43, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose - These articles are being closely watched by many many Wikipedians. I think the articles are manageable, and it goes against the wiki spirit. Also, the articles may be put on the main page, and not sure fully protection is good in that situation. Semi-protection is fine. If anything, I think we should think about limited use of Wikipedia:Flagged revisions for very high profile articles prone to vandalism and BLP violations, and possibly for featured articles, which the McCain and Obama articles are. --Aude (talk) 19:53, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
• No, there's no need for full protection. These types of situations are exactly why semi-protection was created. These articles are very closely watched which limits the BLP concerns. It's the BLP's that are not watch very closely that are the big problem. RxS (talk) 20:23, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
• Protect - Last thing we need on the even of the US election is someone, somehow sneaking in "Candidate X was caught propositioning a male prostitute on Monday" and for even 1 novice user to read/believe it and spread it through R/L -t BMW c- 20:25, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
• I brought this exact topic up on AN just two days ago at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Planning ahead for U.S. elections on Nov. 4; the consensus there seemed to be that protection above and beyond what is already in place was unnecessary. Further, User:Risker is planning a special watchlist for concerned editors that will contain the pages most likely to be hit by vandalism and over-eager result announcers. As the initiator of the protection idea, I obviously will not complain; as many have said above, I do not see what vastly important information will surface right then that cannot wait until the next day, or be handled by an editprotected request. However, many others disagreed, and the slippery slope argument has some weight (see particularly Pedro's response in the AN thread); I will bow to any larger consensus that is established. GlassCobra 20:50, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

All these articles need to be unprotected (semi protection is OK). This is Wikipedia, after all. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 21:46, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I'll go with jossi: semi when needed, but otherwise unprotected. Attraction to the articles in question over the next week will be detrimental but also will probably gain us two or three good new editors for the price. Worth paying, IMHO. ➨ ❝ЯEDVERS❞ a sweet and tender hooligan 21:51, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

• Support full protection. I am convinced by L'Aquatique's argumentation above. Given the real world importance of Wikipedia for background information and the traffic they get, keeping these articles accurate for every second of the next few days outweighs the drawbacks of the lost editing opportunities. henrik•talk 21:57, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

• No I understand the good faith worries but full protection will harm content. Gwen Gale (talk) 22:06, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
• Full Protect We have enough to do with our usual vandals. Toddst1 (talk) 22:08, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

• Comment Wikipedia loses a great deal of credibility, and probably a net loss of new editors, when people looking for information about Barack Obama read on Wikipedia that he's a "half-monkey", "dumb nigger", and that his religion is "Islam". See the comments from disgusted readers on the talk page, and you'll see that this type of vandalism can't be reverted quickly enough. Keep the articles protected, please. ~ priyanath ^talk 22:12, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm with Blueboy, Dragons, Zsero, Tznkai, Aude, RxS, jossi, Redvers, Gwen Gale et al. L'Aquatique, panic-stricken by false reports of vandalism that he/she didn't bother to verify vis à vis McCain and Palin, has grossly mishandled the situation, reacting as if to a major crisis when in fact the articles were already perfectly under control and practically devoid of vandalism. His/her "vandalism" argument is totally specious. Which, if he/she had bothered to check, he/she could have learned for him/herself. Really, we must hold administrators to higher standards than this. Otherwise--as in this instance--they just waste everyone's time. — Writegeist (talk) 22:22, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Writegeist, would you mind commenting on actions, not people, and maybe trying to assume good faith? Your portrayals of me as a crooked, power-hungry alarmist are so blatantly false it makes me laugh,, and frankly it's growing tiresome. If you disagree with the protection, fine, state your opinion by all means. But attacking me doesn't solve a damn thing. ~ L'Aquatique[talk] 23:15, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

L'Aquatique: I...had reports from vandal fighters on the page that it was getting overwhelming, they couldn't handle it, and that was in many ways the straw that broke the camels back.

Writegeist: L'Aquatique, panic-stricken by false reports of vandalism that he/she didn't bother to verify vis à vis McCain and Palin, has grossly mishandled the situation, reacting as if to a major crisis when in fact the articles were already perfectly under control and practically devoid of vandalism. His/her "vandalism" argument is totally specious. Which, if he/she had bothered to check, he/she could have learned for him/herself. Really, we must hold administrators to higher standards than this. Otherwise--as in this instance--they just waste everyone's time.

So where precisely, L'Aquatique, is the falsehood in my representation of your reckless and ill-considered action? By your own admission the McCain and Palin articles were locked purely on the say-so of people whose stories you evidently did not check (otherwise you would have known that they were untrue). Whichever way you look at it, this is shamefully inept administration. Without it, we wouldn't be in this absurd situation. Thank you. — Writegeist (talk) 23:33, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Let's be collegial here. The reports of vandalism were for the Obama page, and included diffs. The McCain page was already protected. Quite a few other editors supported the protection before L'Aquatique made it. There's no reason to speak as if the protection was done with no discussion. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:38, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

• Semi-Protect There is no need to stiffle editing by logged in users. Much of what is being called vandalism are actually Good Faith edits by users who feel that the pages are too biased and don't cover every point of view. Each of the four articles have packs of editors determined to keep as much of what they call un-biased and recent content out of the articles and are attacking any and all editors who oppose their views.--Jojhutton (talk) 23:53, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

• The pages were already semi-ed, just so you know. : ) ~ L'Aquatique[talk] 00:09, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

It may become necessary to full protect them (Let's face it; a good percentage of the users here don't seem to have the brains God gave fish), but we shouldn't pre-protect them. If things go shitstorm, I'm sure there are more than enough people watching them to ensure it's a very short one. HalfShadow 00:16, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• Support full protection the articles are getting an very high level traffic (Sarah Palin has received up too 823.5k page views a day) and as the election comes even closer it will likely spike again, coinciding with a dramatic increase of POV-pushers who's edits, even if they are reverted within minutes, will still been seen by thousands of people. I know the we do not usually preemptively protect articles but as these people will be using out information for such an important purpose I think it is imperative that the article remain stable. Icewedge (talk) 00:25, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

  Agree: This is politics 101. If you can say McCain is a moron for free on Wikipedia, then you very definitely should do so until someone at Wikipedia prevents you from using their website as a political tool. That someone would be us. That said, let's leave Palin unprotected, since that is *ahem* her official position. Hiberniantears (talk) 00:30, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

  Agree: It is quite predictable that POV pushers will be coming through in the next few days, full protection should significantly stymy their efforts. Rweba (talk) 15:52, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• Strong oppose first of all, we are a wiki. The higher the profile of the article, then the GREATER the reason to maintain the wikiness as that's how we recruit users. Policy is to keep high profile articles open, that's why the articles on the main page (which receive higher vandalism) are never locked. If you want to change that policy, get a super-majority consensus. Secondly, any bad stuff put in these articles will be quickly reverted BECAUSE lots of people see them, thus there is LESS need to protect, not more. why special leading for the US elections, basically this is more US systemic bias and should be resisted. Are people sick of reverting vandalism here? Well, unwatch. At the point that no-one can be bothered reverting the vandalism, then we can consider protection.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 00:33, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I believe that protecting these articles fully would be a very bad idea. Wikipedia is going to be very closely watched by the media over the coming election, look at the media attraction Sarah Palin has had already. With the high profile of the articles in question, any vandalism would last seconds, especially if you have people who'se huggle is set to just watch those articles (I think you can do that). Wikipedia has often gotten praise in the past for being very very up-to date on major current events, and the coming week is going to be a brand new challenge for wikipedia as we know it, it was nowhere near as significant last election. This is a chance for us to show the world that wikipedia can do, and we want the media to see us at our absolute best. Who knows, if we pull this off, perhaps it'll be Barack/McCain vs Jimbo for the wikipedia party come 2012--Jac16888 (talk) 00:40, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• Strongly oppose full protection. You may as well just delete and salt the articles until after the election and force people to derive their opinions of the candidates from outside sources. More than anything, however, I fear the precedent this sets, as before long, we'll be full-protecting any candidate immediately prior to an election. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 00:45, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
• Indefinite semi-protection for editing; full protection for moving. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:10, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
• strongly OPPOSE protection.I have a BIG problem with the improper "cloak of silence" that has desceded from above over these 4 articles. These articles have been, and would have continued to be, instantaneously protected by the legion of good faith editors that have worked dillegently to create quality. This so-called protection is an afront to every editor involved and should be reverted ASAP. It is a clear case of aggressive over-reaction and censorship and calls into question the good faith qualities and abilities of those same editors. What should have happened was a conversation with everyone involved. As soon as protection ceases..that conversation can begin.--Buster7 (talk) 01:16, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose full protection. I had high hopes that John McCain could get through the election without it. The recent incident was largely due to an edit war over a peripheral biographical point that several editors who don't normally work on the article much got into a slugfest over. Vandalism on McCain has never been unmanageable. The Joe Biden article has recently gone several days without any edits to it, it certainly doesn't need full protection. Sarah Palin has edit wars more than vandalism. That leaves Barack Obama, which I believe has always been subjected to numerous incidents of gross, disturbing vandalism (the second place finisher in that category would be Hillary Rodham Clinton, but we never had to give full protection to that either during the long heat of their primary battle). The concern over WP's public image with these high-profile articles is legitimate, but I believe that concern should always be there. It bothers me when I land on one of these and some sicko has changed it, whether that happens in March or November. So we really need the "stable versions" WP scheme in place for articles like this, so the public never sees the vandalism. But with the system we have now, I don't see why these days are more sacred than any other days. Wasted Time R (talk) 01:32, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

A tally, a counting, a status report as to where we stand.....as of approx 1:45 31 OCT (UTC)...

• 14 EDITORS OPPOSSED
• 11 EDITORS SUPPORT
• 2 EDITORS FOR SEMI-PROTECT
• 1 EDITOR STILL ON THE FENCE>>>Glass Cobra...--Buster7 (talk) 01:43, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, but that's not the count I got. Assuming that users who support semi-protection don't support full protection, here is what I got:

• Users who support full protection: L'Aquatique, Barneca, Wikidemon, Coren, BaseballBugs, Carl, priyanath, J.delanoy, J, Ferrylodge, Roux, Ncmvocalist, Tomer, Rocksanddirt, Jclemens, MBK004, BMW, Toddst1, Icewedge, Hiberniantears (20)
• Users who don't support full protection: Writegeist, WastedtimeR, Jayron32, Gwen Gale, Zsero, Blueboy96, Dragons flight, Tznkai, RxS, jossi, Redevers, Jojhutton, HalfShadow, ScottMacDonald, Jac16888, Mendaliv, MZMcBride, Buster7 (18)
• That said, we do not determine consensus by straw polls. ~ L'Aquatique[talk] 02:11, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
  • This is ludicrous, L'Aquatique. You protected these articles not in accordance of WP:PROTECTION. Where is the vandalism that you claim? I see no evidence of that. Please explain why did you protect these articles, and why are not you unprotecting given the lack of consensus for your actions? Protection of articles cannot be applied preemptively.≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 04:27, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I suggest not fully protecting, but rather semi-protecting. I don't know if any of you were here in 2004, but the election then was a horrible time for vandalism and POV-pushing. The history of John Kerry from the period is interesting -- we didn't have semi-protection then, so had to resort to full protection on that article on October 28 (the election was on November 2). With semiprotection we can stave off the drive-by rock-throwers. It's times like this that I wish we had another level of protection -- three months of account history and two hundred edits, or something -- but full protection I think sends the wrong message. We avoid full-protecting the featured article as well, and I think a similar concept applies. If it is a very high profile article, you may still edit, -- but perhaps with some additional guarding in the form of needing to have an established account. Antandrus (talk) 02:02, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Let me take this opportunity to make a point. A very important point. A point that is abused time and time again. When is consensus met and who decides?. I only counted from where Carl established a starting point: a point where carl, wisely, said "Let's see where we stand"...and he asked....Should the election bios stay protected thru the election. It was at this point where editors started to make a defintive, declarative statement about their stand on the issue in question. In bold they said what they thought...or they replied within this section. My "straw poll" does not attempt to judge what an editor MAY mean in his/her comments prior to carl asking his question. THAT is when consensus evaluation should begin. Not before. Not during the discussion. Those editors that hinted at support or non-support should have made a definitive, definite, no-doubt-about-it statement in THIS section. If they did not respond to carl's question, I did not include them in my tally. In my experience unless a clear, decisive BOLDED statement is done consensus is elusive because it is never clear and visible to all. --Buster7 (talk) 05:06, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose full protection I also oppose full protection on these articles. I'm one of the high-count editors on Barack Obama (#2), Hillary Rodham Clinton (#3), and John Edwards (#1), and have done some work on John McCain, Sarah Palin, Joe Biden , Ron Paul, Fred Thompson, etc., as well as many of the related subarticles, and like Wasted Time R object to the characterization that vandalism has made it impossible to leave the articles with semi=protection alone. Content disputes do abound, but vandalism is kept in check by the many editors watching these articles and their integrity is fairly promptly kept intact. I have long advocated semi-protection for these articles - I think it is essential and should be permanent - but I think full-protection is overkill and frustrating, especially to long-time editors who don't want to have to wait for edits to be effected by admins. If we have full protection, I think we should accompany it with an "established" account scheme that would allow experienced editors to continue editing, as Antandrus describes. I also support the concept of a "stable article" version for high profile pieces. Tvoz/talk 05:15, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Support Indefinite semi-protection for editing; full protection for moving per MZMcBride. Tvoz/talk 08:06, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose any sort of preemptive full protection, per Mendaliv, Buster7, and WP:AGF. That well-meaning editors would be automatically censored during an election strikes me as just...scary. Cosmic Latte (talk) 05:28, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
• Comment No strong opinion here on whether the page is fully protected or not (and I patrol Obama related articles, though less-so than many others.) At the Obama-Drama-top of this thread, the original complaint was that the folks patrolling Obama-related pages are barely able to keep up with addressing the escalating frequency of poorly sourced smears, despite a ton of effort, good faith, a FAQ on the talkpage, etc. The issue isn't really article vandalism, but talkpage disruption (and now daily BLP-violations on the talkpage) that invariably bring us daily to SSP, ANI and other noticeboards. I agree that this is how it is supposed to work per wikiprocess, but I'm also seeing the same few volunteers spending what appears to be 8+ hours a day in getting this done. What would be really helpful is if a few more admins would watchlist the Obama-related pages and help with implementing daily-needed WP:RS and WP:NPOV explanations and greasing WP:DR. thanks and regards, --guyzero | talk 06:17, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose preemptive protection per the basic premises of a wiki. If semi-protection fails to stop torrents of vandalism, then upgrade to full. But don't do it preemptively. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 09:07, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
• Strongly oppose preemptive full protection - I am one of the many editors that contribute to and watch Sarah Palin and other related articles. There is no evidence of "excessive vandalism" or BLP violations on the candidate's bios. This was anecdotal and a misrepresentation of the current status of the articles. Proper procedure should have been followed including a complete review of the four articles in addition to further discussion prior to full protection being applied. IP75 (talk) 10:17, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
• STRONGLY OPPOSE full protection. Wikipedia policy clearly prohibits full protection and labels such action as unjustified when used as a preemptive measure. Anyone using the argument, "oh, but it's Obama or Mccain or whatever" has no basis for their favor of protection, and their !vote shouldn't be considered by the admin making the ultimate decision. Digital^Ninja 13:37, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
• Strongly oppose preemptive full protection - Protection as a preemptive measure is not supported by policy. See WP:PROTECTION ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:14, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Didn't you already say that at 21:46, 30 October 2008 (UTC)? Also, this protection was not purely pre-emptive, it was in response to actual complaints about the Obama article. Personally, I don't like the protected either, but I find it very unlikely the articles will stay semiprotected all the way until Nov 4, or that there will be that much new biographical info between now and then. So, thinking pragmatically, I see both sides here and don't have as strong of an opinion about the need for unprotection as I usually do. (For example, I was adamantly against the earlier protection of the Palin article). — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:22, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• However "unlikely" you find biographical info to become available, It's the principle of the matter, and the spirit of the project being violated here, and has nothing to do with how logical it might seem to just establish a blanket of admin-only-censorship. Digital^Ninja 15:48, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• Semi Protect only. There isn't enough established user vandalism to warrant full protection. Plus, there are enough people with all 4 pages on their watchlist that any vandalism will only last a few minutes, if not a few seconds. CTJF83Talk 15:33, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
• Comment Speaking only for the Barack Obama article: it's now receiving 168,000 visits per day,[114] and rising quickly. That's about 115 views per minute. Based on some of the 'vandalism' recently, that means that approx. 115 users read that Barack Obama is a 'nigger'...'piece of shit' based on the minute it took to rever this edit[115]. 345 users read that he is a "an unexperienced, piece of shit who will drive this country to HELL!" based on this one.[116] Another 115 read that Barack Obama's religion is "Islam" here[117]. And 215 readers have read Wikipedia and seen that "Barack Hussein (lol) Obama" is a "nigger-shit".[118] This is just a sample, and it's only going to get worse. To call this 'vandalism' is the same as calling burning crosses on the lawn of a black family as simply 'vandalism', and 'oh, we'll just put the fire out and take the cross away'. This is a BLP, and every one of those readers is likely to: 1) lose all faith in WP. 2) believe these things. or 3) think that wikipedia is a racist, bigot website. Think of a 12 year old black girl coming to read about her possible next president and finding these things. WP:BLP should trump all. Keep at least the Barack Obama article protected through the election, please. ~ priyanath ^talk 15:49, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• According to your math, tens of thousands of people were confused by this wording, [119]. Another few thousand people were confused if Obama was even in the country, [120]. And yet countless others lost interest in the article all together do to a lack of notable pictures before this edit. Editing goes both ways, and this isn’t even counting the consensus building through healthy reverts and talk page suggestions has improved the article in the true Wiki spirit as it should be. Digital^Ninja 16:18, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• Semiprotect and if any registered editors decide to play silly buggers by inserting BLP issues, vandalism, etc., block them until after the election. Tony Fox (arf!) 16:17, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Agree wholeheartedly with Tony's suggestion: to put teeth into semiprotection for these articles, immediate block for any vile vandalism and BLP violations on these articles. That should reduce the number of established accounts out for no good on semi-protected articles. Can we have agreement on this so editors can ask for it when needed? Tvoz/talk 00:06, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Version control using subpages

Here's the idea. Each of the four figures will have an unprotected subpage in the talk namespace, for example Talk:Barack Obama/Draft. We will link to the subpage draft from the main (fully-protected) article with an explanation and people will be able to edit the draft freely. Admins will sync the page throughout the election day (obviously first using the "Show changes" button and linking to the /Draft subpage in the edit summary). Edits will only be allowed to the /Draft subpage until things calm down. Thoughts? --MZMcBride (talk) 01:19, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I like it, sounds like a good idea. MBisanz ^talk 01:20, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• Nope, just treat these articles like any other on the mainpage. No to special treatment.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 01:22, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
• Also a No...special treratment not required--Buster7 (talk) 01:36, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Support. ~ L'Aquatique[talk] 01:48, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• Too overly complicated; finding a solution for a problem that doesn't exist in this severity. seicer | talk | contribs 03:53, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
• Unnecessary. — Writegeist (talk) 04:03, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

The default state of Wikipedia articles

... is that articles are editable. There is absolutely no reason for having these articles protected any longer than necessary, and that means a day or two. These articles need to be all put back in their default state, that is articles in an Encyclopedia that anyone can edit. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 02:42, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

There is no consensus for protecting these articles and the protecting admin is not addressing the concerns presented in the talk pages and the clearly lack of consensus for having these articles protected when there is no evidence of vandalism that could not be taken care by the many eyeballs watching these articles. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 04:25, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

As an uninvolved editor I have to agree with Jossi. There's clearly no consensus for protection here. JoshuaZ (talk) 04:32, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, there is clearly no consensus for anything here, with opinions on whether the article should be protected or not split pretty evenly. Whether or not that should result in unprotection as a default state, or status quo as default state isn't a judgment I'd want to do unilaterally, given the disaster the Sarah Palin wheel-was was. I would urge careful deliberation before any actions though. henrik•talk 06:36, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, there is clearly no consensus for anything here' Exactly and that means restoring the default state which is for these articles to be unprotected. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:12, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

(additional comment) These discussions reflect Wikipedia's evolving role in the world, something our current policies don't do a good job of taking into account how influential Wikipedia has become. I would suggest it might not be a bad idea to put together a coherent set of guidelines to handle very high profile articles, such as these, including what to do if the administrator on call feels that semi-protection is insufficient. We can't handle these cases in an ad hoc manner forever. henrik•talk 06:45, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

The users who want the articles kept unprotected should put their money where their mouths are, and devote the next 5 days or so doing nothing here but dealing with vandalism and POV-pushing on those articles. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 11:27, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• Fair enough. I'll unable alerts on my blackberry, and I'll monitor any changes to the article. Additionally, I'm almost always online. Any vandalism that comes through I'm sure I can handle it, not to mention other excellent editors who have been watching this page, User:Wikidemon, User:GoodDamon, User:Grsz11, User:Ferrylodge, etc... —Preceding unsigned comment added by DigitalNinja (talk • contribs) 14:31, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Twinkle, twinkle, little star. And either way, I doubt vandalism is going to fall to normal levels immediately after the election, especially if there's the same sort of drama there had been in the last two. Too bad we can't selectively use sighted revisions; this is the sort of situation where it'd be perfect. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 13:03, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

(undent) I'm also a little concerned that Admins are supporting full protection in a ratio of 3:1. The thing to remember here is Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit IMO. Digital^Ninja 14:08, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

The fact that articles can be protected and that users can be blocked, inherently undermines that idealistic goal. Yet it has to be done from time to time. And those who say the candidates' articles shouldn't be protected because it's against the rules, are saying that the rules are more important than reliable article content. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 15:22, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

What does "unreliable" content has to do with this discussion? Wikipedia is extremely good at removing vandalism within seconds, and preemption is not just against "the rules", it is against the spirit of this project. Maybe that is not important for you, but surely it is important for many others, including me.≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:53, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

(EC)That argument is blatantly flawed as vandalism would be reverted within seconds with the amount of people who have these article on their watch pages. And seriously, how could you suggest that anyone supports policy over content? In fact, that is exactly what we're debating against! The policy of full protect being used to inhibit page content growth through use of a scare tactic that if we don't build it, vandalism will come. In fact, this has less to do with vandalism and unfortunately more to do with unjust censorship IMO. Digital^Ninja 15:54, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I encourage everyone here to read Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Sarah_Palin_protection_wheel_war if you are not familiar with the ongoing discussion about BLP articles. The arguments for and against protection of the Sarah Palin article then were, to a great extent, the same as the arguments for and against protection now. Arbcom essentially rejected the argument that full protection cannot be used to limit vandalism, and accepted the full protection of that article (which did not have a basis in the protection policy) as an acceptable use of admin discretion. This is one reason why I don't expect the candidate articles would stay semiprotected all the way to the election. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:35, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

At the time Palin's article was seeing ~20 times as many edits per day as the candidate articles are now. I agree that Palin's protection made sense at the time, but I don't think the problem level demonstrated right now is high enough to justify protection. Dragons flight (talk) 16:43, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm sure that the traffic levels for viewers (which were the key issue in the previous incident) are quite high here as well. My real point is that arbcom has had a recent opportunity to consider the argument that "full protection for vandalism is against policy and against the spirit of wikipedia" (see MZMcBride's comments in the case). Their overall decision did not go in that direction, but was instead very permissive of full protection in situations such as this. Personally, I took the decision as a sign that I needed to modify my opinion about full protection of BLPs. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:49, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

So does this simply amount now to an "Arbcom said it is sometimes ok so we'll do it in this case also?" The Palin case was different as pointed out earlier. And frankly, if views see crap about famous people it will hurt us not the. The argumentum ad Arbcom is tiring. The bottom line is that the editing level here isn't nearly as high as it was with Palin and we have a heck of a lot more people watching these articles. JoshuaZ (talk) 16:57, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm saying that arguments based on the protection policy that ignore the BLP issues have already been rejected by arbcom this fall. We can't simply ignore that case as if it had never occurred. I'm looking for a more moderate way forward, for these exceptional articles, rather than waiting for some random admin to invoke the BLP enforcement provision again. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:30, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Eh. I don't have a strong opinion on this but the most logical moderate way forward seems to be semiprotection. There doesn't seem to be anyone strongly against that and if that actually doesn't work then we can reasonably talk about full protection. JoshuaZ (talk) 17:34, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I have nothing against semiprotection, but I doubt it will last until Tuesday. Maybe my opinion about the inevitability of full protection will turn out to be wrong. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:38, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Carl is correct that this is a WP:BLP issue, and an egregious case at that. To the users that believe that vandalism is reverted in "seconds", my post above shows that the very worst vandalism remains for 1 to 3 minutes, in which time 100-400 readers discover that Barack Obama is a "Muslim" or "nigger-shit", etc. In the best case scenario, someone refreshing their watch list could theoretically see a new edit, check the dif, and rollback in about 30 seconds. In which case only 100-200 readers would be introduced to Wikipedia for the first time by reading all kinds of amazing things about Barack Obama. ~ priyanath ^talk 18:09, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

As Doc Glasgow pointed out after the Palin wheel war (and it is even more true in these cases) this vandalism makes Wikipedia looks bad. However it has absolutely no impact on the reputations of the people in question. Let's not kid ourselves. Wikipedia is influential. But nasty comments about Obama or McCain will simply make us look bad. So the real BLP risk is minimal. JoshuaZ (talk) 19:00, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. A relevant portion of the hundreds of people reading that Obama is a Muslim, or seeing the awful photo of him that was being repeatedly put in the infobox, would have their views of Obama influenced by Wikipedia. Let's not delude ourselves, Wikipedia has real life consequences for living people. ~ priyanath ^talk 19:34, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Tally - Stance on consensus and edit point

So far, the !vote is as follows:

• Full Protection: 9
• Oppose Protection: 13
• Semi Protection: 4

I think it's safe to assume that those who oppose protection also endorse semi-protection only (and most likely full protection on page move).

Please remember, this isn't a straw poll decision. Digital^Ninja 17:01, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Additionally, if no consensus for page protection is reached, the protection should be removed by default since the consensus wasn't there to add said protection in the first place. Digital^Ninja 17:05, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Just a comment, there was a consensus for protection at #More Obama-Drama. Now is a different issue, but accusations that there was no consensus are wrong. Grsz^{11 →Review!} 17:10, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• I would argue that if a consensus was reached there, we wouldn't be here. Digital^Ninja 18:25, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Also, how did you get counts lower than the counts two other people made before? Most likely you haven't counted everyone. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:22, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I counted votes in the appropriate section Digital^Ninja 18:25, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

If you list the people you counted on each side, you can compare them with the previous lists, to see who you missed. Remember that one doesn't have to type in bold to express an opinion. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:38, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Corrected tally:

Oppose/semi - 30 editors

Support full - 20 editors

IP75 (talk) 20:52, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Compromise

Hi everyone. I've been thinking (haven't had a lot of time to do that lately but oh wellz) and I wonder if, since the tally seems just about dead even (there's no clear conensus) if we could attempt to compromise. I will return the pages to semi today, and re-full protect them on the morning of election day thru to announcements of results, after which I will semi-protect them again. Is this something we can agree on? ~ L'Aquatique[talk] 18:11, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I would support that, pending election day vandal activity on the article(s). Chances are they may need full protect, however if for some strange reason it's eerily quite, I would just leave the semi-protect IMO. Digital^Ninja 18:27, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Additionally, I'm not opposed to full protect right now if activity justified it. I just don't see it. Either way, congrats for being bold and having the interest of the project at heart in keeping these articles safe; regardless of outcome. Digital^Ninja 18:29, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like a reasonable compromise. JoshuaZ (talk) 18:58, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Per Digital, Unprotect (keep semi) and we watch the article on election day. If there is *any* vandalism or other shenanigans on election day, any such articles can be protected. I continue to disagree on preemptive protections, which are not permitted by policy; I am sure that during election day, there will be many of us carefully watching these articles, so there is nothing to fear. We can manage. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 19:05, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I should also say that this proposal assumes we'll have election results late on the evening of the 4th or the morning of the 5th. Obviously, if the election pulls a 2000 I'm not going to leave the page protected for weeks pending a supreme court decision... ~ L'Aquatique[talk] 19:08, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

That seems reasonable. My only comment is that we may want to wait as long as possible before full protection on election day. JoshuaZ (talk) 19:30, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

As said above, we monitor carefully and if there are any attempts to vandalize these pages, we will be already covered by the semi protection, and we can remove any vandalism from dormant accounts or other vandals. We will be OK. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 21:40, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I would also support that compromise , L'A...Thank you...--Buster7 (talk) 19:57, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Joshua: yeah, that seems fine. I think vandalism is inevitable but it should not start up in earnest until people are waking up. I would agree that the pages should stay semied as long as is reasonable. ~ L'Aquatique[talk] 20:04, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Support compromise IP75 (talk) 21:13, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

[unindent] Well, everyone so far has supported the compromise so I'm off to make good my end of the bargain. I would say that if, as I heard rumored earlier, there is a way of setting huggle to only patrol the election related articles, we post instructions of how to do that here so that we can get people doing it. ~ L'Aquatique[talk] 23:29, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, L'Aquatique, for all of your efforts on this. Although I still think that the Obama page should be protected because of the BLP issues, the community has clearly spoken. All of this attention should minimize the harm, hopefully. ~ priyanath ^talk 23:45, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, do we want to keep Barack Obama full protected? I already unprotected, but there is definitely more vandalism and blp pushing there, and the argument for keeping it protected is valid. What does everyone else think? ~ L'Aquatique[talk] 23:51, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

←I can live with the compromise. Can we also agree that vandalism/BLP violators will be immediately blocked without the usual warning routine? Undoubtedly there are established accounts that can slip by sprot, and we should close them down immediately, at least for a week or two if not more. Tvoz/talk 00:29, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Great idea. A few days of "zero tolerance" on a BLP probation article by shutting down SPA's on first contact would be a welcome relief. However, I have to stress only on gross vandalism (e.g. fuck this N-word). Lets just use some common sense and good judgment, and we'll set the standard for how to handle this type of thing in the future. 75.33.218.39 (talk) 01:34, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Bravo L'Aquatique. — Writegeist (talk) 05:41, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Problem user: 65.254.165.214

Anonymous user 65.254.165.214 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) has periodically vandalized the Negima!? article by blanking for several days now. What can be done against this user? This guy has to be stopped ASAP. - 上村七美 (Nanami-chan) | talkback | contribs 02:58, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

WP:AIV? John Reaves 07:22, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I tried that moments before this message, but they only deal with recent vandals, not those who have done so hours after the report. And check out the recent edit history of the article. It seems that those in the 92.8.*.* and 92.10.*.* are backing him up as well. The article now currently on semi-protection, but I feel that its protection should be longer. - 上村七美 (Nanami-chan) | talkback | contribs 08:38, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

You are probably right. If a few days protection doesn't stop them, come back here after it expires and ask for a longer one. Theresa Knott | token threats 09:19, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

You can also check out the protection log and the edit history. The blanking phenomenon has been going on for almost a year and a half now, possibly by the same person across a lot of IP addresses. I was hoping for a longer protection than the three month semi-protection imposed on the article last year. Is it possible for this article to be semi-protected indefinitely? - 上村七美 (Nanami-chan) | talkback | contribs 11:45, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

It is technically possible but not something I'd be willing to do with this level of vandalism. Theresa Knott | token threats 19:16, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Just seeking insight, Theresa...may I ask why that's not a good idea? Tide rolls (talk) 03:34, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Semiprotection prevents unregistered and newly registered editors from editing an article. That's all of them not just the ones who are vandalising. Now most people edit as IP addresses at first and everyone is newly registered at one time. Preventing these people from editing articles does two things. 1) It makes their editing experience less than satisfactory and may therefore fail to encourage them from becoming regular editors and 2) deprives the article of the edit that they would have made and who knows if they'll bother to come back to it when they become autoconfirmed? For this reason semiprotection should, in my view, be used sparingly when other antivandalism efforts fail. It's a temporary solution used to deal with a situation. Now unfortunately some articles, (politicians, some sexual articles etc) are vandalised so frequently and by so many different people, that permanent semiprotection is the only option. It's not ideal, but it is better than an article being vandalised 20 times a day. This article does not fall into that category IMO. Theresa Knott | token threats 19:45, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Problem is that in previous times after protection on the article expired, vandalism started again within less than 24 hours. I know there was surely hate against this anime (I know one), but stating this by blanking the article or vandalizing it is really an unacceptable action. But hunting down the instigators by the forums in which they gather is really a difficult task as well.

In addition, only this article in the English Wikipedia is the only one targetted. Its counterpart articles in the German, French, Polish, Japanese, and Thai Wikipedias are virtually untouched by vandals.

In a related note, in about eight hours or so from now, the protection on the article is about to expire. I won't be online by then to report anything to you and so will Skier Dude, the admin who imposed the protection, to do the necessary action (he said he will be out "Friday PM - Sunday AM"; not sure if that's US EST or GMT). The question is: Will anyone be kind enough to protect the article (for a period of time longer than a week) once the vandalism starts again, or at least list it in WP:RFPP? - 上村七美 (Nanami-chan) | talkback | contribs 13:26, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

More problems with Libro0

After I tried intervening with several baseball card articles, Libro0 has on more than one occasion branded me a sockpuppet of Baseball Card Guy (see: Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Baseball Card Guy) and has engaged in several passive aggressive attacks on me. His latest attack [121] where he says: "facade account(YRE) conveniently comes to the rescue of a contributor(BCG) whose edits are all reverts of my edits whenever he is in a bit of trouble". I have had it with these two who have wasted people's time with this nonsense (for example see: Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2008-09-04 1950s Topps). I have to constantly check up on these two to see if they are slandering me again instead of doing things that are constructive. Can we just ban these two and get on with making an encyclopedia? Your Radio Enemy (talk) 15:10, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

As an observer of this WP:EDITWAR on various articles notably 1950s Topps and 1960s Topps I've seen vicious verbal attacks on Libro0 (talk · contribs) by Baseball Card Guy (talk · contribs) here:[122] and I filed a WP:3RR report the other day to no avail here:[123] Frankly administrators need to take action and stop these two from continuing to tie up every article they touch. Abuse, calling names, political slurs, you name it and this guy does it:Baseball Card Guy (talk · contribs) - why hasn't he been blocked or even warned by an administrator about his abusive and appalling behavior? Modernist (talk) 23:22, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

My god, I remember making my comments at the SSP reports however long ago that was... it seems like an eternity! Anyway, I would be totally shocked if YRE were a sock. On the other hand, the SSP is probably worthy of a second look... I have not looked at it exhaustively, but there is some suggestive evidence that makes me think Baseball Card Guy has done some socking in the past. I do not believe YRE is one of those socks, but the SSP could use a second look, maybe even a CU. --Jaysweet (talk) 19:24, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

User:Firefly322

Resolved

 – Firefly322 blocked for personal attacks, YColonel Warden given 4im warning about personal attacks Toddst1 (talk) 22:55, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

This user was discussed at WP:WQA here. My initial attempt with the WQA was to induce Firefly to refrain from calling me a troll and other uncivil comments. He was warned about his commentary here, here, and here. Of course, there are all the attempts at calming down Firefly within the WQA. Yet he continues here and here. Please assume some good faith on my part. I ran across one of Firefly's articles this week, which was going through an AfD here. Then I noticed several articles that were just not notable (in my opinion) which coincided with my desire to be more involved with the AfD process. In fact, Firefly has started several articles that I did not AfD, and thought were pretty useful (though poorly written, but that's an opinion). Since it would have seemed patronizing to make a remark on his better articles, I didn't. I believe his personal attacks against me should stop, and he should be blocked. I am most certainly not a troll. I'm lots of things, but continue to not assume good faith and calling me a troll is uncivil. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 17:52, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Warned. Gwen Gale (talk) 18:00, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Not to be picky Gwen, but how many times does Firefly need to be warned? I see at least 3, possibly many more warnings, yet he/she continues with the personal attacks. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 18:18, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I understand. Let me know on my talk page if it happens again, ok? Gwen Gale (talk) 18:44, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Eh, you missed one... because he removed it here. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 18:55, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Since you're an admin, and you've given him a warning, I've got to ask--how many warnings does he get? OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 19:59, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Ooops. His attacks continue. So, he continues to call me a troll, pretty soon, I'm going to have to sit under a bridge. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 20:19, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Once upon a time I pleaded with my parents, à dancer sur le pont d'Avignon. They cringed, way, but did it for me anyway. Argh, I may never get over the shame of it. Blocked for 31 hours, personal attacks. Gwen Gale (talk) 20:39, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Gwen beat me to it, but not by much. How many angels can dance on a pinhead? No wait, that's not right. Anyway, I hope this answers your questions, OM. Regards, SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 21:13, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I think this is a reasonable block, since there's a whole submerged iceberg of poor behavior of which this is the tip. It's possible that the situation could be remedied with a bit of education - Firefly322 is quicker to cite acronyms than he is to understand their meaning, and he's abrasive ([124], [125]). He seems to think that anyone making a value judgement is a "troll", when in fact the page says that calling someone else a troll constitutes a value judgement (ten points for spotting the faulty leap here - it involves [erroneous] use of [bracket substitution]). Anyone more "ingenuous" than me interested in working on this? MastCell ^Talk 21:16, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Did he actually compare your comments to Mbeki? I'm so flummoxed, not a witty remark comes to my mind. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 21:21, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps I should have blocked for 72 hours. Ok, I know, I'm flawed. Gwen Gale (talk) 21:24, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm shocked that this is his first block, so a one day block is probably appropriate. But the list of his personal attacks far exceeds anyone I've seen on here. I've been going through his contributions over the past 2 or 3 months, and the number of personal attacks couched in his links to various wiki-policy is amazing. Hopefully, he gets this. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 21:28, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Reply to MC. The faulty leap would be that I have friends? LOL. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 21:30, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) I just have to say that I tried to settle things peacefully both in WQA and even on their Talk page, but being told to "drop it" rather rather ... rude, shall I say. -t BMW c- 21:34, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I recently pointed out that Firefly seemed to be making sport of harassing admins. Fully support this block as I feel it's long overdue. Toddst1 (talk) 21:41, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

• What I've yet to see here or elsewhere, is an explanation of why OrangeMarlin keeps nominating articles started by Firefly for deletion, when these nominations are constantly found to be lacking in merit. Maybe I'm missing something but this seems to be a prima facie case of WP:STALK and WP:HARASS. Why is OM not being sanctioned for this behaviour? Colonel Warden (talk) 23:07, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Please immediately retract your personal attack. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 23:11, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Another possible answer: because those AfD nominations are not constantly found to be lacking in merit. Yet another alternative: because the nominations are being made in good faith (i.e. when the nominator states that the article subjects are not notable, he means it). SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 23:15, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Doesn't matter, personal attacks aren't allowed. Gwen Gale (talk) 23:18, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

In response to Colonel Warden's uncivil personal attacks, please see WP:NPA, this was not found to be lacking in merit. Oh, yes, this one seems to be under discussion. And of course, this one is still under discussion too. Oh, and Firefly has started a number of articles that I haven't touched. Because of this AfD did I choose to review his other new articles. So, you may apologize here, or how about leaving your personal and inappropriate comments precisely where they belong...in your head. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 23:19, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I note that Colonel Warden and Firefly322 have quite a history of helping and supporting one another (for examples, see their respective Talk pages and the many AfDs that are linked from them), so I suppose it's not surprising that Colonel Warden would want to offer help to Firefly322 in this situation, but I agree with the other editors here that the above post is a personal attack and should be withdrawn. The root cause seems to be a failure by Colonel Warden to assume good faith on the part of OM. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 23:44, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, this pretty much proves that I'm not a stalker. I had no clue who Warden was/is. Now I have to look, of course.OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 08:16, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Since Colonel Warden doesn't appear to be interested in retracting his personal attack above, I have issued a formal warning. Toddst1 (talk) 22:54, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

The purpose of 3RR

Yesterday, I was blocked for edit warring. I can't deny I made more than 3 reverts on 2008 Weliveriya bombing, though the blocking admin failed to look into the talk page of the article. I had rationally discussed the matter with User:Watchdogb on that page. Isn't the purpose of 3RR to be if someone doesn't do that??? We had come to a concensus that the categories in question should stay, and the "revert war" had ended minutes before admin User:Alex Bakharev blocked both of us. Now, I was blocked for 12 hrs, which really isn't that bad considering I was watching the Phillies win the World Series (yay!) and was sleeping, but Watchdogb received 72 hrs (originally shortened from 168). My point is that 3rr blocks need to be overhauled, as clearly this was a punitive action instead of preventative. I would like something like a 1 second block confirming that this was of no fault of mine and he to be unblocked.

I requested to be unblocked, but that wasn't even responded to until after my block expired. Clearly this also needs to change. And no, I'm not some newbie who is pissed off about a rule I don't like. I've been here for 10 months and am pissed off about the enforcement of a rule that can be (but is helpful in some cases) both arbitrary and ridiculous. ~one of many editorofthewikis ^{(talk/contribs/editor review)}~ 20:17, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

The timing of the response to your request for unblock is odd, but it doesn't matter if you tried to discuss on the Talk page, 3RR is almost always 3RR, unless it was purely vandalism. When it gets close to 3RR, you need to bring in some admins on the 3RR noticeboard. -t BMW c- 20:29, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. In looking at the article talk page, I don't see a consensus there at all. Sometimes if a block is not reviewed quickly you could email the unblock list. JodyB _talk 20:33, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

(ec)Actually on my first revert I thought it was vandalism. I really didn't need to bring in any admins into the issue, as Watchdogb and myself were perfectly able to work the problem out ourselves. My point is, no disruption was being caused, as we both thought we were right and discussed the matter, and no block was needed.

Reply to JodyB: On Watchdogb's talk page, you can see that he agreed with my reversions. ~one of many editorofthewikis ^{(talk/contribs/editor review)}~ 20:37, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Sigh... Ed, you miss the point. Revert warring on an article is harmful, regardless of how many reverts you did, or whether you agreed to it or not. The way to solve this? Don't edit war – ever. That way you won't even give the impression to an admin that you're violating 3RR (which you did). – How do you turn this on (talk) 20:54, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Let me simply note that the edit war had come to a peaceful conclusion before Bakharev blocked, and that blocks are to be preventative, not punitive. Nousernamesleft (talk) 20:55, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Still, the two were edit warring, and violated 3RR. Edit warring is never productive. – How do you turn this on (talk) 21:01, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) Sorry Nousernamesleft, that's not quite so clear. The last dit was at 23:32, the block at 23:55 and the agreement on the users talk page at 00:04. From the perspective of the admin, the block was appropriate and the edit war was still ongoing. JodyB _talk 21:04, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but I still don't see why his request for unblock was declined. Nousernamesleft (talk) 21:05, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Then why block at all? Someone is vandalising, they say they'll stop on their talk page, does it then become punitive? – How do you turn this on (talk) 21:08, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes. Without commenting on the subject of this thread, if somebody indicates they will stop whatever disruptive behavior they've been warned about, and they stop, a block would be punitive. But most cases aren't so clear, and judgment is used to weight whether or not the disruption will actually stop long term. - auburnpilot talk 21:14, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I've notified the blocking admin of this discussion as should have been done when bringing this here. Toddst1 (talk) 21:20, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

(ec)So in this case, was there any reason to believe it would continue? – How do you turn this on (talk) 21:21, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I think this was all due to a huge misunderstanding. I originally reverted Watchdogb for removing cats from an article, thinkinking he was vandalising. I soon realised that there was a huge controversy going on categorising these as terrorist attacks. So, Watchdog rightfully reverted me. It had been referred to as a suicide bombing, which for all intents and purposes is a terrorist attack but may not be technically one, as per his comment on the talk page. It had to be cited as a "terrorist attack" itself. I reverted Watchdogb again supplying a source. All the time I thought these were uncontyrovercial on Watchdog's part, otherwise I would have never reverted at all. Apparently that source was considered unreliable, so I found another that was. The problem was solved, but we both were blocked. No disruption intended on either side, and the block was obviously punitive. ~one of many editorofthewikis ^{(talk/contribs/editor review)}~ 21:34, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

• You have an excellent point there, EditorOfTheWiki. In fact I would venture to say that you are absolutely correct- an edit based upon consensus of formerly warring parties cannot and is not (by definition) an edit war. 3RR makes a lot of sense and it's very important to hold to, but with anything there is the rule and then there is the exception to the rule. The exception here is the conflicting parties chatted about it on the article talk page, came to a consensus and in the end an edit was made reflecting consensus. This may very well exceed three reverts but it is not a violation of WP:3RR. Lastly, your frustrating at no one responding to your unblock request within the time of your block is horrifying. ArbCom has clearly stated that administrators must explain their actions within a prompt period of time and if the blocking admin- or another admin- did not even respond to your unblock request then it seems to me to be a clear violation of that ruling. Bstone (talk) 22:12, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I saw four reverts made both parties of the dispute. Watchdogb has long history of edit warring and just 3 days off a 1-year old 1RR restrictions. Editofthewiki is an experienced editor but without previous history of 1RR blocks. Deletion and reinsertion of terrorism-related categories is rarely a simple vandalism, everybody knows that one person's terrorism is very often another person's freedom fighting. The edit war was a sterile one - no attempts to compromise, no attempts to look for a second opinion, etc., all reverts (except the first deletion of categories made by Watchdogb) were complete reverts made by semi-automatic tools. Taking all this into account I gave 72h to Watchdogb and 12h Editofthewiki. I think it was fair. The 12h for Editofthewiki has already expired if anybody think that Watchdogb should be unblocked earlier please go ahead. Alex Bakharev (talk) 00:27, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

First off, I only pressed the undo button. Second, no attempts to compromise eh? I stongly suggest you to look into the history of the edit war before giving out blocks (and Watchdogb should be unblocked - he was not at fault either). I could care less if hes edit warred in the past - the fact of the matter is, he is currently blocked punitively. Look, I'm working on several FAs right now and do not have time for this ANI drama. Something has to be done - I suggest we allow blocked users to edit the talk page of their blocker? This edit war (if it can be described as such) diid not need admin intervention, but the whole enforcement of 3RR does. ~one of many editorofthewikis ^{(talk/contribs/editor review)}~ 00:43, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

It's really a matter of Alex Bakharev giving a knee-jerk block for a seeming 3RR violation without actually looking into the fact of the situation. Alex Bakharev, if you cannot issue appropriate blocks then please allow another admin to step in. ArbCom has recently ruled that admins are required to place notes on the appropriate notice boards if they are unable to objectively deal with a situation. Please respect this ArbCom ruling. Bstone (talk) 01:07, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Those are some pretty heavy allegations, Bstone. If you have any evidence that Alex was in some way less than objective or was careless, please present them. Otherwise, let's tone down the rhetoric. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 08:39, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) I would again suggest that everyone look at the time line. The so-called agreement was reached until after the block was implemented, at least that's the way the numbers show here. And the discussion was not fully held on the talk page of the article but on the talk page of one of the users. There's nothing wrong with that but given the immediate circumstances as the admin saw them the block was appropriate. Please remember that we have the benefit of hindsight here. JodyB _talk 02:07, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Listen, all: just don't put yourself in this position. Don't even rack up three reverts. Discuss, discuss, discuss. Was this an unfortunate block? Possibly, but the way to prevent it is not some overhaul of the 3RR eforcement system; it's to stop reverting, start discussing. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 08:34, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't see why people can't see how this was a punitive block. If , as an experianced editor, thought it necessary for an admin to intervene, I would have asked one. But I didn't, and I was perfectly content for Watchdogb to revert me if he was prepared to explain himself. I don't want Wikipedia to mindlessly count the number of reverts someone does, if they had discussed the matter with their fellow reverter. That is the purpose of 3RR, if I we been uncooperative. But we hadn't, and Watchdogb is still blocked. ~one of many editorofthewikis ^{(talk/contribs/editor review)}~ 19:48, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it was a punitive block, as there seems to be some difference of opinion as to whether the edit war had really been resolved (or, at least that a reasonable outside observer would conclude that it had been resolved) at the time of the block. I do, however, think the manner in which the block was issued was maybe a mite perfunctory, with no offense meant to Bakharev. Enforcement of 3RR is so fundamental to the way the project functions that I think there is sometimes a tendency to just rubber stamp a 3RR block if the criteria are met, without digging deeper.

I don't have a problem with the blocks, as 3RR was violated after all. I also would not have had a problem if Bakharev had chosen not to block, based on the circumstances. I think there are two lessons to be learned:

1. Even with something as simple as 3RR, not everything is always as it seems, and there may be rare cases where even a simple 3RR like this one might be unnecessary.
2. As many others have already said, if you don't want to be hit with a perfunctory 3RR block, then don't edit war.

Those are my two cents... Could Bakharev have shown leniency, given the circumstances? Perhaps. Should he be compelled to show leniency? No way. It was a fairly-made judgment call. --Jaysweet (talk) 20:00, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Annoying User

A user called DyingxToxLivexAgain wrote annoying messages on my talk page, he did this twice in the past couple of weeks. So is there a way that's wiki-legal to get this guy under control? By the way, I've deleted his first message already.

Eisenhower 23:50, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Warn the user, and if he persists, report the user to the vandalism noticeboard. Erik the Red 2 ~~~~ 23:53, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Have warned him. He's got one chance to stop it, although this, [126], suggests he won't.--Jac16888 (talk) 23:58, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks guys, I appreciate it. Eisenhower 00:20, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I've blocked that account, because there's a real editor on the receiving end of this, and since we routinely block confirmed vandalism-only accounts, I see no reason not to block a self-confessed harassment-only account. I'm happy for an admin to accept any unblock request that seems reasonable. Of course, if consensus here is that I'm being draconian, please go ahead and reverse the block. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 00:28, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Clearly a vandalism-only account. If it were me that had cross paths with him, I would have taken him straight to WP:AIV. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 11:16, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Abuse of AFD

I am not sure what to do here. There is a user, RMHED, who is nominating a lot of BLP's for AFD. (Please note, I am talking about BLP's where there is NO controversy about the content, not speedy material either). I don't think he is doing this in bad faith, but I think he is seriously misapplying policy and causing problems because of it. The issue is that he seems to simply take every bio that doesn't have sources, and put them to AFD without searching. This means everyone else is forced to go dig up sources, add them, vote, OR the article will get deleted. This seems to violate WP:DEADLINE. It would seem that nominating an article where there are obvious sources available, but not in the article, would be an abuse. In otherwords, if you nom an article, you are at least morally required to make a good faith effort to see if sources are available, particularly if you are flooding AFD. The reasoning we are hearing is "If you wish the unsourced BLP content to stay then please source it, I'm certainly not inclined to do so" which violates WP:V as well. I am not sure what to do, but I don't want to keep following an editor down just to "fix" his AFD's. I have tried to politely explain this to him, but he seems to not care. If we are going to nominate every article that is unsourced (but sourceable), then why do we have tags? PHARMBOY ( moo ) ( plop ) 01:18, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• All BLP's should be adequately sourced or deleted, any part of a BLP that is unsourced should be removed per policy. RMHED (talk) 01:55, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• • RMHED, let me make sure I totally understand you: Are you saying that every BLP that has no sources at all should be deleted in whole, as well? PHARMBOY ( moo ) ( plop ) 01:59, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
    • Yes Pharmboy reasonable time should be given say 5 days at AfD for interested parties to source it if they so wish. If after that time the article remains unsourced then it should be deleted. If it is partially sourced then that portion should be kept and the unsourced parts removed. RMHED (talk) 02:08, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
      • If that is the case, then a blp/source tag should automatically start an AFD discussion, no? There would be absolutely never a reason to use that tag. Why does it even exist? This flies in the face of wp:deadline, and even wp:v, which doesn't say everything must be perfect on day one, it just must be possible to verify. PHARMBOY ( moo ) ( plop ) 02:17, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Uh, yes, isn't that the way Wikipedia works? Tan | 39 02:02, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

didn't we have this conversation, about this editor, a couple of weeks ago? Let me ask the same question as I did then. What percentage of the articles he is sending to AFD are being deleted? if it's 90%, then I say we have no problem. If it's 10% and he persists in sending articles to afd, we have a problem. _{obviously I don't expect the numbers to be like that but you get the idea.} --Cameron Scott (talk) 01:27, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

He has 20 up currently in the past couple days, two have been snowball keeps, and one closed as no consensus. The other 17 we'll have to see what happens, though none currently have a delete consensus. Wizardman 01:32, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I've looked at them and I've noticed that a lot are easily sourceable. I've fallen into this trap a couple times — nominating something for AfD without sufficiently checking for souces. I know he's trying to act in good faith, but I agree that this is of concern. I'll wait to see how the rest turn out before commenting, but it's not a good sign when he's 0 for 20 in getting a consensus. (Unless he just has that same curse that User:Synergy does.) Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • ^{(Broken clamshells • Otter chirps • HELP)} 01:36, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• Where the problem with an article is a lack of references, I think an editor should make a good-faith effort to find references before nominating an article for deletion. It doesn't take much time to copy-and-paste the title of an article into the search box at http://news.google.com/archivesearch , and refusing to do so shows a lack of respect for other editors. -- Eastmain (talk) 01:37, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• On that point I agree. While it's true that some of us aren't that good at finding sources (you seem to be really good at it, Eastmain), I haven't really seen any proof that RHMED is even looking for sources. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • ^{(Broken clamshells • Otter chirps • HELP)} 01:39, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Before the last few days, he hasn't nominated anything for deletion that I can see from looking. I am trying to gentley get across to him that he may be radically misunderstanding his responsibility as the nom of an AFD, and his actual words seem to indicate that he thinks "well, if it isn't sourced, it should be deleted", period. It isn't about faith, and I don't want anyone blocked. I think he just grossly misunderstands the process and was hoping someone could convince him of this fact. As another editor pointed out, he almost seems to be making a WP:POINT in the way he is doing it. Some of these articles literally took 30 seconds to find sources for. PHARMBOY ( moo ) ( plop ) 01:43, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• Point In Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Erkin_Alptekin he is basically saying that he is challenging any BLP that is unsourced, thus, that makes it contentious, thus, that makes it an AFD candidate or subject to the content being deleted. Please tell me I am reading that wrong. If that is what he is saying, then WP:POINT does apply and my faith would be getting a little stretched. PHARMBOY ( moo ) ( plop ) 01:53, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• That is what he is saying but is isn't strictly a WP:POINT form of disruption. "wikt:Contentious" doesn't just mean what wiktionary says it does. It means (for our purposes) anything liable to cause debate. We don't need to source that the world is round. We need to source that Person X is notable for act Y. We need to source that Joe Schmoe is an elected official from Winnipeg. These are things that require sources if we are to say them. They are contentious. Protonk (talk) 02:01, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• RHMED is no stranger to skirting the border of WP:POINT, and these seem to be following down that path. The logic goes: WP:BLP says that in no uncertain terms, contentious, unsourced material can and should be deleted without comment. However, RHMED sees that attempts to delete, blank or nominate unsourced BLP's results in strong pushback. So he nominated (I assume) a bunch to force the point that BLP requires one thing but commong practice results in another. I don't think it is actually WP:POINT, because he seems to believe that BLP would dictate that these articles be deleted (in other words, POINT requires that we show intent to disrupt for the sake of making a statement, here he may be disrupting because he feels a certain way about BLP), but honestly it is tiresome. I don't want to roundly repudiate him because he's basically right: we have a community practice about new articles that stands in obvious contrast to the supposedly widely accepted BLP policy. RHMED's actions aren't going to help close that schism, though. Protonk (talk) 01:57, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Forget WP:BLP (and this is the only time you'll catch me saying that): per WP:V, "The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material." Somebody has inserted this material; RHMED is trying to remove it. The burden then falls to the people wishing to retain the article to verify the information in the articles. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 02:03, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
    • The policy says "If no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic". That isn't the case here. wp:v says an article must be verifiable, not verified. WP:DEADLINE says it doesn't have to done today. WP:BLP says if there is any controversy, remove that part of the content post haste. Nominating articles without even searching for sources is not in policy. PHARMBOY ( moo ) ( plop ) 02:06, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
      • That's a separate clause from the one that deals removal of material. As for WP:DEADLINE, I think a more appropriate read is that we don't need an article today; we can afford to wait until the sourcing's in place. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 02:14, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
      • That is fine logic to use when creating an article (and I use it personally), but when the article already exists, are we not just biting other editors for getting the facts right but not putting the sources in on day one? PHARMBOY ( moo ) ( plop ) 02:37, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
        • Frankly, no. Biting the newbies doesn't mean ignoring policies because someone is new. Likewise, WP:DEADLINE is not very helpful in this discussion. BLP doesn't apply to the hypothetical end state of an article. It applies to every revision. We can't just say "well, eventually this will have sources" and ignore the issue. I don't think RHMED's actions are very helpful, but we can't appeal to BITE and DEADLINE in condemning them. Protonk (talk) 03:46, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
          • I didn't say to say that. I am saying that an experienced editor (expecially one who is trying to RfA) should first LOOK for sources briefly before going to AFD. If they are found, the energy should be spent adding a couple of sources instead of going to AFD. This is what a good contributor should do. Otherwise, it is making a point. If the sources are easy to find, yes, IMO, an experience editor and RfA candidate should be expected to exercise better judgement and fix instead of delete. To simply AFD a bunch of aritcles without a good faith attempt to source or fix (or at least look at google, then walk away), where the subject matter is not controversial and sources are easy to find, *is* abusing the process, in my opinion. Even if it isn't breaking a particular rule specifically, it is abusing the process. At first I thought he was misunderstanding the policy, but his comments seem to indicate another issue. PHARMBOY ( moo ) ( plop ) 10:46, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
            • I wholeheartedly agree with what a good editor should do. See User:Uncle G/Wikipedia triage#What to do. I haven't looked at RMHED's nominations, but I recommend this to you RMHED: If you follow that triage process, and User:Uncle G/On notability#Giving rationales at AFD you'll experience comparatively few diffculties with your AFD nominations. I follow it, and I rarely encounter difficulties. (I've been wrong on occasion, but that's not the same as making a bad nomination.) Uncle G (talk) 11:36, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
• If he's only nominating ten articles per day, then he's showing remarkable restraint given the magnitude of the problem that Wikipedia has in this area. At ten articles fixed per day, we'll have cleared out Category:BLP articles lacking sources in just over two years. (Forget about doing the likely thousands articles that aren't even tagged, or the thousands of unsourced BLPs that will be created in the meantime.) Editors saying that he should just go and look for sources for those ten articles each day are missing the point — if we slap him on the wrist and tell him to sit quietly in the corner, we're effectively saying that we don't care that there's a massive backlog of BLPs without sources. (It's okay; RHMED will get to it eventually.)

  Frankly, if we don't get off our asses and start to be more proactive about requiring sources for biographies, we're going to get another Seigenthaler incident. When that happens, we'll probably end up with a duplicate of the 'non-free images' solution. A policy will be imposed from above, setting a hard deadline for all BLPs to be sourced, and permitting the deletion of all unsourced bios within seven days of their creation.

  Sure, we can shoot the messenger here, but what we should be doing is getting our house in order. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 02:09, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

  • I appreciate where you're coming from, but I think you and RHMED are both misidentifying the problem. The problem isn't that there aren't citations - articles can have plenty of citations and still do things like falsely allege connections to the Kennedy assassination. The problem is that anybody can put whatever information they like into any BLP, and in the vast majority of those cases nobody's likely to notice. All the citations in the world aren't going to fix that. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 02:18, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
    • Fair enough, but I think that having sources does have (at least) two major benefits. First, it gives our readers a fighting chance — they can check on the cited source, to see if our articles actually reflect those sources. Second, it at least helps to protect our reputation – it shows that we're at least trying. I agree that articles which misrepresent the contents of cited sources (accidentally or deliberately) are quite worrying, and that many articles which do contain sources don't have nearly enough of them. Nevertheless, if we aren't prepared to go after even the lowest-hanging fruit – articles which have no sources whatsoever – where will we start? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 02:26, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
    • Well you know I'm in agreement with you there Sarcasticidealist, the sooner all BLP's are permanently semi-protected the better. RMHED (talk) 02:30, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

It's different to putting BLP up for deletion. The bits to remove are anything that is contentious if it's unsourced, if you wish. You could always stub it and rewrite it without needing to much time to do it. There's no need to send articles which do not violate, or could be made to not violate, BLP to AfD. RHMED has had problems at AfD before, with dodgy non-admin closes. They were one reason he didn't pass RfA. Sticky Parkin 02:10, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• Now let me recall how many of my dozens of dodgy non-admin AfD closes were overturned by an administrator...Just one I think. RMHED (talk) 02:27, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
  • To everyone, the RFA and "dodgy NACs" aren't the issue. The issue is, do you AFD an article that takes 30 seconds to source? It literally takes longer to start an AFD than source many of these. Can we call information "contentious" simple because we don't have a source for it? That someone "is a professor", this is contentions because there isn't a ref for it. Is THAT what the policy says. That is what is at issue. PHARMBOY ( moo ) ( plop ) 02:32, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
    • I've yet to see a BLP that takes only 30 seconds to adequately source, even a one line stub would take longer than that. If it's that quick and easy then the ten BLP's I AfD should only take approximately 5 minutes to source by your estimate. RMHED (talk) 02:55, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
    • Pharmboy, I'm not saying the NACs are the issue- I'm just saying RHMED has a history at AfD of overly 'keen' actions. What does it matter if finding a source takes a bit longer- WP:TIND. That's better than losing valuable articles. Contentious bits are all we need to/should remove from most BLPs if they're unsourced. Of course feel free to nominate a BLP for deletion if you think it has borderline notability and may be doing damage to the individual. Otherwise, it's just getting rid of potentially useful content for fun and pleasure. If I were nominating for deletion I'd first look at google news etc and see if there's WP:RS- to do otherwise is laissez-faire. Sticky Parkin 03:20, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
      • Do you mean "lazy", rather than "laissez-faire"? That's not the best description. (See Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Don't be lazy.) I characterize not looking for sources onesself as unhelpful. It doesn't help to achieve the goal of writing an encyclopaedia. It doesn't help in the collaborative process of making bad articles better. See User:Uncle G/On sources and content#How to deal with unsourced content. Uncle G (talk) 11:36, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
• For those who (rightly) believe that these must be sourced, the obvious thing to do upon seeing an unsourced one is to try and source it. One person won't be able to source all they find that could be sourced, but it would help a little in a positive sense. Articles that cannot be sourced after an effort appropriate to the subject must be deleted, but while doing that probably 90% of the existing unsourced ones that could easily be sourced. Here's my test of someone who in good faith and not POINT wants to help--they select some articles which are particularly potentially harmful or dubious, and nominate them for deletion--not pick at random.If we are to effectively delete the junk, the people who select what we want to discuss deleting must make a good faith effort to start with what there is some reason to think is actual junk. I have elsewhere supported a requirement that anyone taking anything to AfD for deletion for lack of sourcing of existence or notability or verifiability be required to do at least a preliminary search-- if it convincingly shows lack of sourceability, the deletion will be all the smoother. it's afds like these which support what i proposed. DGG (talk) 03:35, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
  • I thought there existed an unwritten policy (good faith) that anyone taking an article to AFD must do at least a basic search to see if it passes. Not searching first clogs up AFD with articles that don't need to be there. That is the big point, to me. PHARMBOY ( moo ) ( plop ) 10:38, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
    • It's not unwritten. This approach to verifiability has been written down since 2003. See Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion#Policy has said to look for sources first for a long time for details. Uncle G (talk) 11:36, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

It's appropriate to nominate a completely unsourced BLP for deletion. If nominating the article serves as a forcing function to encourage editors who want to keep it to source it adequately, well, so much the better. I concur with TenOfAllTrades here: it's not reasonable to say that the new standard for nominating an article for AfD is "First, fix it yourself!" Getting on RHMED's case for this is shooting the messenger. Nandesuka (talk) 03:43, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• When the guideline was written, I would assume the intention was not to have all non-sourced BLP's be nominated for AfD, and I don't think there's consensus on wikipedia to do this. We have to be careful that we don't wikilawyer all the guidelines, and work towards building an encyclopedia. In my view, there is a significant difference between nominating a slanderous or libelious article, and nominating a un-sourced BLP that isn't negative. We should be very careful with BLP's, but let's not delete most of them on wikipedia. Fraud ^{talk to me} 03:48, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
• Again: This is not a new standard. This approach to verifiability has existed since 2003. See Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion#Policy has said to look for sources first for a long time for details.

  What a lot of people miss (including the administrators who were involved in a high profile arbitration case a while back) is that deletion isn't the only tool in the toolbox. One can, quite legitimately, zap an entire biography back to a properly sourced stub and demand, with support from editors at the BLP noticeboard if necessary, that all expansion be sourced. Jimbo has done it. Other people have done it. RMHED xyrself did it here, and with the help of User:Scott MacDonald and Sam Korn that content was kept out of the article. I myself helped to expand that article properly, like this. "Kerrrzappp!" is a good tool, too. Uncle G (talk) 11:36, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• The AFD process requires editors to follow some steps before nominating an article and emphatically states that If the article can be fixed through normal editing, then it is not a good candidate for AfD. If this process is not followed in good faith then nominations should be speedily closed as premature and disruptive. Colonel Warden (talk) 11:51, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion

Why don't we create a BLP-ProD? Instead of 5 days, every 'completely unsourced BLP that has been tagged with this template can be freely deleted after e.g. three months. This gives authors plenty of chances to source the articles, while still in the end tackling the issues of all the unsourced BLP's hanging around Wikipedia. Fram (talk) 07:56, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• See User:Uncle G/Proposal to expand WP:CSD/Unsourced biographies and Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/2 (and their talk pages, of course) for prior discussion on this. Uncle G (talk) 11:36, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• I was about to suggest PROD here as well. I have suggested before that any biography tagged as unsourced and not remediated after a suitable period should be nuked. Unsourced biographies are Bad, battles are Bad, PROD is good because it deals with crap but in a way that anyone who cares to fix the problem can uncontroversially fix.

• Other issue A new PROD may be a good idea, but still, this wouldn't address the issue that even before a PROD, an editor (particularly an editor feels experienced enought to RfA) should first try to source the article before any delete, CSD/PROD/AFD. Imo, if you are going to participate in deleting any article, using any method, you have the responsibility to try to conduct a brief search first, in order for WP:AGF to apply. Another issue is his interpretation of the policies. He is saying that any BLP is automatically contentious if not sourced, and should automatically go to AFD. Combine the two, "delete all unsourced BLPs" and "I won't try to source an article" and you might as well change {{BLPsources}} to become an autodelete template. This is enforcing a self-created policy that doesn't exist, instead of creating/fixing the existing policies. At some point, editors participating in wholesale deletions have to be held to a higher standard than they currently are. PHARMBOY ( moo ) ( plop ) 12:53, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• I'm still concerned that you're putting the onus in the wrong place. Saying that editors who see a problem need to try to fix it by themselves is, frankly, letting the commmunity off the hook for its own bad practices. Just like with non-free images, all BLPs need to be sourced, and sourced correctly. It's a problem for all of us, not just for the few editors like RHMED who are trying to bring the issue to our attention. At some point, editors participating in biography creation have to be held to a higher standard than they currently are. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:13, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

  Yes, it is a problem for all of us. And I agree that BLP creation should have a higher standard. The question is, what do we do with the ones we have today? Good faith demands that we attempt to source ANY article (BLP or otherwise) before we AFD it. Even if it takes twice as long to stubify and cite an article with *obvious* and easy to obtain notability, an experienced editor should be expected to do this instead of wholesale delete, when fixing is as easy as deleting. Again, none of these are controversial BLPs with negative or defaming info. Both sides of the problem should be addressed, and yes, I would hold a higher standard for an editor that has been here a couple of years than I would for a newb creating his first article on Wikipedia. Or at least the same standard. PHARMBOY ^{(moo) (plop)} 13:51, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Remove any unsourced contentious material, and often stub is what they usually seem to do at WP:BLPN, rather than send an article to AfD, unless it's unfixably problematic. And as some people work in that area often, I think they would know.:) Sticky Parkin 14:15, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

"Saying that editors who see a problem need to try to fix it by themselves is, frankly, letting the community off the hook for its own bad practices" -- but those very editors are part of the community, and saying they need not try to fix could be seen as letting them off the hook as well. It's not a question of blame--articles were originally written here to very low standards, and many continue to be. We need to upgrade them--which will in the process mean removing quite a few that cannot be upgraded--but the real need is to upgrade. The practical problem is that its much easier to nominate for deletion than to fix. Anyone with HG or the like can nominate 10 or 20 articles a day with no effort at all in perhaps 5 minutes, especially if they don't bother to investigate the article enough to use an individual rationale. I find that, working in a good library, it takes me between half an hour and half a day to properly source an article. I try to fix one a day. Sure, minimal sourcing can be done quicker, but there remains an asymmetry--articles can be nominated for deletion much more rapidly than they can be fixed. The way to cope with it is for people to nominate for deletion only those articles they've checked enough to feel confident that they should be deleted or think it unclear enough that a group discussion is needed. We're concerned, after all, with building an encyclopedia.DGG (talk) 17:09, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Attempt to conclude this

• Comment I think Uncle G and others have pretty much cleared up the main issue by demonstrating that there IS a policy that says an editor is obligated to try to source an article before he nominates it for AFD. I thought it was an unwritten rule, he proves it is a real policy. As Sticky Parkin points out, we have always been able to stubify an article when needed. We all agree that BLP's should be sourced (maybe even requiring it at creation), and the standard is higher than in a regular article. No doubt. The only question would then be, did RMHED try to source the article before he went to AFD, or did he flood AFD wholesale without trying? Even if well meaning, is this conduct acceptable? Uncle G's research only strengthens my original claim that it is not, and this isn't normally allowed here. The other additions to the conversation have demonstrated that yes, we need some work to fix BLP as well and can't do "nothing" either, and we should move it to the proper forum to further the discussion. Am I reading this wrong? PHARMBOY ^{(moo) (plop)} 15:41, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, arguably unless a BLP is of borderline notability and the subject says they want it gone.:) Why is this not the right forum to discuss it? Or are you saying we should all find all the AfD'ed articles by RHMED to which it applies, and !vote? Sticky Parkin 17:14, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Do you want to know what I am really asking for here? A concensus to say "RMHED, you acted in good faith but this is the wrong way to deal with these BLPs. You must make at least a good faith effort to see if they are notable first, and if you find something, put it in the article instead. Please don't do AFDs in this way in the future." I am asking nothing more, nothing less.

I agree with the goal of getting all BLPs sourced, I just don't approve of these methods. I made it clear I wasn't trying to block him or cause him administrative headaches. To be honest, I had thought this would have only been 5 to 10 paragraphs worth of issue when I initiated it. My goal is to simply stop people, anyone, from posting any article without first making SOME kind of effort to source it. Accidental or not, it is disruptive and when most of the AFD's are kept or lean that way (see history), then it isn't helping Wikipedia. I genuinely had no idea I was stirring up a giant hornets nest, and to be honest, I came here to AVOID controversy, hoping that the fact that "an editor is obligated to try to source before deleting" was an obvious policy. That BLP is borked isn't the issue at hand, and should be handled in THAT forum, as it doesn't justify not trying to source a series of articles first. PHARMBOY ^{(moo) (plop)} 18:24, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• Where is the policy that says "you shall search for sources or seek to improve an article before deleting it" or words to that effect? Because I know proposals to mandate WP:BEFORE have failed pretty spectacularly. Protonk (talk) 17:16, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• See Uncle G's comments above. PHARMBOY ^{(moo) (plop)} 18:24, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• I read his comments below the Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_deletion#WP:BEFORE thread, but I also read (and participated in) that thread. Pointing to past revisions of policy where at present a consensus does not exist to force WP:BEFORE doesn't resolve the issue. Right now the community doesn't have consensus to dictate that attempts be made to source an article prior to nominating it for deletion. We can find this in discussions or in practice. We do, however, have a robust practice of rejecting nominations of easily sourceable articles. So I don't see the debate as solidified on either side. I'll ask again. What exact wording in a current revision of policy says that we "must" or "shall" search for sources or seek to source an article before nominating it? Protonk (talk) 18:43, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• WP:AFD at a minimum, strongly implies it: If the page can be improved, this should be solved through regular editing, rather than deletion. I truly, completely fail to understand why this singular concept is so controversial when it seems so obvious: you should briefly try to source before going to AFD. PHARMBOY ^{(moo) (plop)} 19:02, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• It's not controversial at all. I agree with it. It is good as a normative statement. It does not work as a policy proscription. In other words, WP:BEFORE says "you should do these things before nominating an article" for good reason. It does not say "you must do these things or else". My point is that people are misinterpreting the former to mean the latter. Protonk (talk) 19:09, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

This is sad. Wikipedia is a work in progress, that is why many years after its creation it is still open to new editors. We should all expect to encounter articles that are missing things, even lots of things. It used to be that when someone came upon an article that had a mistake or was incomplete, they would do research and fix or add to the article. Now people just delete? I know that is an easy way to up your edit count, but that is not how anyone builds an encyclopedia. This is just obvious common sense: we come here to research and write an encyclopedia. If an article is missing a citation, instead of taking up lots of time with a long AfD process, why not use that time to find good sources? If everyone who would vote to delete instead used the time to find sources, we would have those sources pretty quickly, or we could confidently delete that part of the article. Isn't this exactly the work one expects to do in writing an encyclopedia? Slrubenstein | Talk 17:53, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• I'll be frank. This isn't that simple. It isn't a case of "building an encyclopedia vs. deleting for the lulz". Some balance must be struck between allowing articles to grow into a great references and meeting community expectations for what an article must be at minimum (and what it must not be). That such a balance must be struck doesn't mean that RHMED is right. I don't think he is. But it most certainly doesn't mean that we can announce that deletion of content is always adversarial toward building an appropriate reference. Protonk (talk) 18:11, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
• Well, first, RMHED (talk · contribs) isn't violating policy, so there's no need for administrator action. WP:DEADLINE is an essay, it can't really be "violated". Sending ten unsourced articles a day to AfD seems to be about the right level of activity. The articles proposed for deletion seem to be about people of marginal notability; there's no great loss to Wikipedia here. I'd suggest using PROD first; if nobody cares enough to add a reference or two and delete the PROD, the article can be flushed without the overhead of an AfD. --John Nagle (talk) 18:34, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree completely with Protonk. I am commenting on a drift I have seen over the past couple of years. It is true that there is nothing here calling for administrative action, so it is a moot point, but I do think it is important periodically to remind ourselves, encouragingly, about the value of research and writing as a way to improve flawed articles ... Slrubenstein | Talk 19:33, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Reply

I've noted all the comments above and in future will mostly avoid AfD, I'll just remove any unsourced BLP content per policy. Wikipedia needs to face up to its BLP responsibilities, the number of unsourced or poorly sourced BLP's is staggering. Saying that these problems should be fixed by those who come across them is nonsensical, there are thousands of them and more being created by the hour. The Wikimedia Foundation I'm quite sure doesn't want its long term survival put in jeopardy from a libel lawsuit. I imagine the last thing they would want is their assertion that they aren't a publisher tested in a court of law. If such a verdict went against them, then there would undoubtedly be an almighty BLP purge on Wikipedia. Now the best way to prevent such an eventuality is to exercise due dilligence, Wikipedia most certainly isn't currently doing this. The Foundation may survive one libel lawsuit it most certainly wouldn't survive two, so for all those who care about Wikipedia's long term survival I urge you to remove all unsourced BLP content. RMHED (talk) 18:50, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• I should say here that libel law in the united states is pretty forgiving and that the DMCA safe harbor exemption protects wikipedia pretty well. IANAL, but focus on BLP should be more justified on the basis that unsourced biographies have a grave potential to distort the de facto public record for private figures rather than some worries about legal status of BLP violations. Protonk (talk) 18:59, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Any biographical material that is sensationalist or prurient must be sourced, I would take a hard line on that, and delete any such content that is not sourced. However, this does not mean that all biographical material has to be sourced right away. BLP simply emphasizes the importance of sourcing controversial or sensationalist material. It does not say that any article with biographical material without sources must be deleted. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:36, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I suggest you re-read WP:BLP. The word you're looking for is contentious, all unsourced BLP content is IMO contentious and thus should be removed. RMHED (talk) 19:40, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I think that willfully ignoring the intended meaning of "contentious" in WP:BLP is not a constructive thing to do. We should not require citations for every sentence of a biography. It lacks common sense. Pete.Hurd (talk) 21:14, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, RHMED, I am glad to stand corrected, the word is "contentious." And thanks Pete for making the obvious point. If BLP says that contentious material has to be sourced, it goes without saying that there can be uncontentious material. You cannot define "contentious" as unsourced, that would violate the English language as well as our BLP policy. What makes something contentious is not the fact that an encyclopedia article is missing a source. What makes something contentious is the fact that people outside of the encyclopedia argue over its merit, validity, or significance. RHMED, are you being deliberately disingenuous? If BLP meant that ALL material must be sourced, it would not use the modifier "contentious," it would use the word "all." Since it uses the word contentious, it obviously cannot mean all. Slrubenstein | Talk 21:39, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• RMHED, I don't want you to avoid AFD, I want you to exercise a little bit of caution, source a few that are easy, avoid them if you aren't sure. Nothing would make me happier than if I could see your AFD's, and say "That is very likely a valid AFD, lemme go google it a bit, then add my !vote". Seriously. There are many editors here that I will automatically go and google their AFD's because I know they have done their homework first, so I can do a basic search and offer a valid !vote. Believe it or not, you and I likely agree on 90% of BLP, even if we disagree on methods of fixing it. I just don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater by deleting everything, particularly when the content isn't controversial. I didn't come here to "get you in trouble", and I damn sure didn't expect it to turn into this slugfest (maybe I'm dumb, but I thought it could be cleared up with 2 or 3 admins telling me I was either wrong or right in my interpretation). In the end, I would rather work *with* you than against you, and hopefully we can find a way to do that in the future. PHARMBOY ^{(moo) (plop)} 22:48, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

BAD FAITH / ACTION REQUESTED

Ok, now I'm tired of getting slapped in the face, and just saw what breaks the straw after I tried everything to offer an olive branch. RHMED, I have tried to be as open minded and fair handed as I can, but your edit here [127] which was explained in your talk [128] go beyond good faith, and taken with what you said here, clearly demonstrate you are trying to prove a WP:POINT. You deleted a football players entire page because you find it "unsourced". A complete blank page. Nothing controversial was on the page. At this stage, you leave me no choice but to ask for administrative action. You are basically saying "fuck you guys, I will delete the articles one way or another", even while you try to "get along" in this discussion. PHARMBOY ^{(moo) (plop)} 23:31, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• Please note, this is not the only page he has blanked, which conveniently makes them db-blank targets as well. PHARMBOY ^{(moo) (plop)} 23:37, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
  • It's completely inappropriate. I've reverted and warned him. fish&karate 00:01, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
    • At this point, I have to ask for strong administrative action. Everything in this heated discussion up to now has been in good faith (even when spirited), and everyone assumed good faith. His actions show a complete disrespect for the policies, but more importantly, it shows disdain for the process of building concensus itself. This isn't a misunderstanding, this is vandalism to prove a point. Otherwise, we are endorsing his actions. PHARMBOY ^{(moo) (plop)} 00:11, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
    • He started reverting to re-blank pages, so has been blocked for 24 hours. fish&karate 00:19, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
      • (ec)Everything mentioned in RHMED's RfA still applies it seems- his actions at AfD are still random in various ways, and he is not the politest of people. This is a new development though as far as I know. But I don't expect much to be done about it (though it would be nice.) Good block:) Sticky Parkin 00:26, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
  • Just because they are tagged {{db-blank}} doesn't mean that they will be deleted. Administrators are supposed be diligent when it comes to speedy deletions. That includes checking the article history. Uncle G (talk) 11:56, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
• I was actually thinking we might have a loose concensus before this (agree to disagree on some issues, BLP is borked and needs work, contentious != controversial, at least try to source easy ones before deleting, new bios should be sourced). Now we are back to square one, and the primary question that drove me to seek help here still isn't answered. Why is it that every time I stumble into a BLP issue, I end up with a sore jaw and the taste of blood in my mouth? PHARMBOY ^{(moo) (plop)} 00:27, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
  • What do you propose? Slrubenstein | Talk 04:25, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Probably resolved

Fish and karate's appropriate 24 hr block for continued disruption in the face of at the very best of a lack of consensus has probably resolved this. He's placed a "retired" stamp on his talk page. Don't know if that is a protest over this or he actually intends to leave, but my guess is that this issue is at least resolved. I don't think that we will solve the underlying issues here (what is contentious? What can be removed from an unsourced BLP? Should we have them? Is our BLP policy written to really reflect community consensus? etc.) will be solved from this conversation or at AN/I at all. I'll wait a few hours before marking the whole thread as resolved. It people feel otherwise, please yell at me here. :) Protonk (talk) 01:23, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons — whether the material is negative, positive, or just questionable — should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion, from Wikipedia articles, talk pages, user pages, and project space. This appears to be the policy and it is quite clear that unsourced material should be removed immediately (the bold is from the policy page). Without commenting on the block itself (the policy speaks for itself), we do have a serious problem of unsourced material sitting around on BLP pages. How am I, as a wikipedia user, supposed to know if any of that material (for example, in the Aaron Brown article that triggered the block [129]) real or not? --Regents Park (sink with my stocks) 03:02, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, which part of the Aaron Brown bio was contentious? and what happened to the word "contentious" that was in the quote in your first sentence, but wasn't in your second sentence (the one that has the words "This appears to be the policy and it is quite clear")? Pete.Hurd (talk) 03:46, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I also want to know what part was contentious...looking at the article history, it doesn't look like there were ever any arguments over his draft status, birthdate, etc. --Smashville^talk 04:01, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Hopefully final note Only time will show if this is really over. I think that if we used the word "controversial" instead of "contentious", it would make more sense or at least cause less confusion. (or not, who knows) Every AFD/BLP that we have discussed in this long, drawn out process had zero controversy. Football players, professors, musicians, etc. If there was, I would have been the first to agree to remove the material or delete the article if it couldn't be sourced reasonably quick. That isn't the way I had hoped this would work out. I am beginning to think that it is impossible to enter a BLP discussion at Wikiepedia without losing a few teeth, or some blood, or some faith. PHARMBOY ^{(moo) (plop)} 10:30, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Arbcom Elections

Resolved

 – Yet another Wiki_brah (talk · contribs) sock - Alison ^❤ 04:54, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I am all caught up in electoral fervor, watching fox news about 7 hours a day. I was told about Wikipedia; the upcoming Arb Com elections already have my interest. This is my first edit: 30 October 2008 -- I am looking for a few mentors and a team to get me prepped to run for Arb Com by December. Please point me in the right direction so I can help lead Wikipedia into 2009! Morris Battle (talk) 02:14, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

...And blocked. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 02:20, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

...And bitten. Was that really necessary? Even vandals get warnings, and this guy appears to have good intentions, if unrealistic goals. Mangojuice^talk 02:27, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Mangojuice, why was a block appropriate here? I am not seeing any imminent danger to the project. --Elonka 02:32, 31 October 2008 (UTC) amended post below

Unless there is some other information we are not privy to, I echo Mangojuice (talk · contribs)'s confusion as to why this user was blocked. Cirt (talk) 02:33, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

(multiple edit conflicts) I think he should use his original account if he's interested in running for ArbCom. (Does anyone really find it plausible that I bit a new user here? His very first edit was the above post to AN/I. His three subsequent edits were tag-bombing an obscure science article. It took him less than three minutes to discover that he was blocked and figure out how to write a disingenuous {unblock} on his talk page.) I will resign my adminship right here and now if a consensus develops that I actually bit a newbie in this instance. Y'all were trolled. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 02:36, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The user’s first edit was the one above followed by three edits adding tags to an obscure article. I agree with TenOfAllTrades’s assessment of this user being a troll. —Travis^talk 02:39, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I think this user wants power and I don't trust that. I think his tag-bombing was probably designed to give the account the appearance of legitimacy. So yes, I agree, this behavior isn't good. But I do think it's too early to conclude that this user will never do anything but troll. Mangojuice^talk 02:40, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Very bad block if ever I saw one. And by golly have I seen some. Sarah777 (talk) 02:42, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Okay, though on first glance I was scratching my head here, I'm starting to come around to Tenofalltrades' view. This new account does seem to have extensive knowledge of wiki-procedures, and this edit[130] is highly suspect as he tagged the Cytomere article as a hoax. Granted the stub could use more sources, but to put in an edit summary "can't find any references", when even a simple Google search shows it's a valid term, is not reasonable. Though I think it would been better to warn first and block second, I do support the block at this point. --Elonka 02:44, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

OK - I'd bet real money he's a troll (apologies Morris, if you're not) - but where isWP:AGF? Sarah777 (talk) 02:47, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) To Sarah777: Perhaps you don’t speak Morris’s language, but to someone fluent in it, their first edit is, to say the least, disingenuous. —Travis^talk 02:51, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Travis declined the unblock request, and I've left a note explaining the block just in case. I expect that if the user comes back with a good answer they'll be given a second chance, since this was a stronger reaction than truly necessary. Mangojuice^talk 02:53, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Elona- rubbish AfDs because people haven't even bothered to google to see if there are sources happen all the time, so I bet tagging things as a hoax without googling happens sometimes too.:) Mind you, most new users perhaps wouldn't know or care what arbcom is, let alone run for it. Sticky Parkin 03:14, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• Support the deserved block. There have been a rash of new accounts crop up lately, make strange AN/ANI postings, and then post some obscure crap elsewhere. I'm sure it's some teenager jacking around or a serial troll. Nothing new. seicer | talk | contribs 03:40, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Eh, block wasn't necessary. Highly likely to be a troll but blocking simply created more drama than anything else. The post would have been ignored or we would have given the user a polite explanation. And in the unlikely case this was a real user it would have been a very bad bite. JoshuaZ (talk) 03:59, 31 October 2008 (UTC) Thinking about this more, I'm not sure I want blocks like this in general, but there does seem to be a major DUCK element to this block which is reasonable. I doubt any real user would run right over to ANI to post this sort of thing as the very first edit. JoshuaZ (talk) 20:26, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• What an absolutely horrible block. I think Ten need a short block to remind him of wiki policy. Bstone (talk) 04:40, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
• I consider it possible that Morris Battle lives under a bridge, is a "smallish giant" , possibly akin to ogres , and inclined to eat up any goats who attempt to cross the bridge. Edison (talk) 04:50, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

de-lurk (I'm retired, dammit :) ) - this is a  Confirmed Wiki_brah/Jeanlatore sock, yet again. Here for the lulz and the trolling. Nothing to see here, folks, move along now - Alison ^❤ 04:53, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you Alison -- either you read my post or read my mind.  :) Antandrus (talk) 05:00, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Someone contacted me off-wiki. Good guess, though :) - Alison ^❤ 05:05, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Next time I won't say anything here, I'll just block the troll and be done with it. Sorry for letting all of you get sucked into feeding the troll. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 05:33, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I would prefer if you did say something, because the alternative would be just as bad, as the no-explanation block would also raise questions. A better way to handle this, would have been to post a reply here at ANI with a bit more information as to why you blocked. I have to admit, when I first saw this thread, I saw what looked like an overeager newbie posting something, and then your immediate block made it look like you had blocked him for saying he wanted to run for ArbCom. It appeared (on first glance) to be an over-reaction bite of a newbie. Many established editors and admins here are already on pins and needles as we await both the on-wiki (ArbCom) and off-wiki (US) elections, and the concept that someone was blocked just for saying that they wanted to run for ArbCom, understandably got some hackles up. So if you would have posted something such as, "Based on this user's other contributions, this appears to be a troll, so I am blocking," that would have de-escalated the situation. Or, you could have simply chosen to not block, but post a warning to the user's talkpage, and a message here that you felt it was a troll (and why). But just saying "blocked" without any reason, was what increased the confusion. --Elonka 16:42, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

The thing is, even after the detailed explanation from multiple users, we still had people chiming in to tell me what a terrible admin I was for making the block, right up until a couple of minutes before Alison ran a checkuser to confirm what was patently obvious from the user's contributions. People are telling me not to bite and to WP:AGF. Well, AGF is a two-way street. Why can't people be willing to assume that in four years of Wikipedia experience (most with the admin buttons), I might have a bit of a clue? Why is the automatic assumption made that the Big Bad Admin^TM must be oppressing the innocent newcomer?

Elonka, you've been editing Wikipedia almost as long as I have. Instead of immediately agreeing with Mangojuice, why didn't you look at the guy's contributions? Anyone with some experience on Wikipedia's high-traffic noticeboards should know what a troll looks like by now. While you're right that I should have been more descriptive in my first message, I honestly thought that the block would be both obvious and uncontroversial. I will also note that even after my explanation was posted we still got at least four editors (Cirt, Mangojuice, Sarah777, Bstone) insisting I was wrong (with varying amounts of invective). If we're genuinely at the point where we can't block obvious, returning, block-evading socks without needing a Checkuser every time, we're very deep in the shit indeed. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:15, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I think the point is that an experienced user should also know that this sort of misunderstanding and thread is common (you have seen threads like this before in your time on Wikipedia, right?) so an extension of the "experienced user" argument is that a warning, followed by a block if there were subsequent edits, would have been slightly more effort, but would have avoided the possibility of this thread. I suppose you might not have had time to hang around and see if the troll carried on editing after the warning, or you might have been worried that another admin might have wasted time with another warning, when you had correctly assessed that this was a troll, but in these mental calculations and cost-benefit analysis, did you consider the cost of this ANI thread? I suppose the benefit of this ANI thread is that those reading it are now less likely to react like this in future. Maybe you, Elonka, Cirt, Mangojuice, Sarah777, and Bstone could clarify how they would react to a similar situation in future, and we can try and avoid ANI threads like this in future (or at least work out how to close them efficiently and sensibly). Carcharoth (talk) 05:55, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

There are a large number of admins who have been round long enough, shown good faith and care often enough, that when they do summarily block an account, they are unlikely to be doing so on a completely unreasonable basis. Perhaps mistaken in good faith, but usually well within reasonable judgement and with forethought. Users who develop enough cluefulness to spot disruptive users early should obviously still take care, but it's more in line with assuming good faith to ask them for more explanation, rather than just diving in to declare it a bad block or whatever. Those who have complained about this thread being on ANI should note that the blocked sock-user himself started the ANI thread, and should expect a competent admin to spot the trolling and quickly deal with it. That said, Elonka's point is a reasonable one too. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 08:31, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Closures by involved editors

• WP:AN#Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal/straw poll 2008-10-18
• User_talk:ChyranandChloe#Closure

Please see these discussions. - jc37 05:26, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Is it just me, or are we getting a lot of these lately?? I count four questions regarding these types of closures just within the rest of this page (as of 6AM CDT 10/31/08), which leads me to believe that either a)policy needs to be clarified and/or reiterated; or b)current policy is perfectly acceptable but is being widely ignored. Either way, it seems something needs to be done/clarified/rewritten...is this one for the Village Pump, or should we keep it here??? Gladys J Cortez 10:47, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree with your concerns. I started a new discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Discussion closures. Flatscan (talk) 04:24, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Please block this WP:SPA who is POV-pushing

Twoggle (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is a WP:SPA designed solely to POV-push in defiance of almost every single policy we have. The vast consensus on Talk:Aspartame controversy is that the edits were improvements, but this particular editor is simply interested in maintaining prose that had to be removed due to WP:FRINGE, WP:RS, WP:V, WP:UNDUE, WP:SOAP, etc., etc., etc.

A block is in order.

ScienceApologist (talk) 05:32, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Twoggle has opened a MedCab case here. As part of the ground rules for hearing the case, I ask all participants to refrain from any editing of the article until the case is concluded one way or the other. Assuming that Twoggle agrees to those terms, can s/he be kept unblocked while the case is worked through? [ roux ] [x] 07:22, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't think mediation cases usually require that, do they? That way, sometimes if the editors keep editing, they may even reach an agreement before the mediation starts/ends for which they've applied, or some more uncontroversial parts of the article are improved. Sticky Parkin 15:37, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

My view is that there's not much point in trying to mediate if they're both still able to make the edits that antagonize the other party/parties in the mediation. [ roux ] [x] 16:42, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Given that in another place you are asking for special consideration because of your limited Wikipedia experience, and are imposing unusual conditions here, I think it would be entirely appropriate for any party to this dispute to decline your offer to mediate, without prejudice. Looie496 (talk) 01:21, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Non-admin closing requested move discussion he participated in

Would someone care to have a word with User:ww2censor regarding his (early, although it was a WP:SNOW situation) closure of the requested move on Talk:Counties of Ireland, a discussion which he participated in? I'd usually do it myself, but as I've just been involved in a contentious debate with some fairly unpleasant Irish nationalists, I'd rather not. пﮟოьεԻ 57 09:54, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Hell no! Why? You said yourself it was a snow situation. Theresa Knott | token threats 09:56, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Tendentious debates like that need closed, since the result is crystal clear, it matters not by whom. Slapping people for perceived procedural irregularities when eh result is good and uncontroversial is not the wiki-way.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 10:01, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I just thought it was an obvious no-no, regardless of the way the debate is heading (this is certainly what WP:DPR#NAC and Wikipedia:Non-admin closure#Inappropriate closures seem to suggest). If it's acceptable, I stand corrected. пﮟოьεԻ 57 10:48, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Those guidelines are there to stop contention, but if the close result is not going to be contentious, they can be ignored. Results (particularly if uncontentious) are always more important than process. But, it is fine that you asked, and I'm sorry if the reply sounded like a slap-down. Asking is good, it is how we learn.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 10:52, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

And getting a sneaky dig in about "unpleasant Irish nationalists" is petty spite too, and also not the wiki way. It seems anyone who disagrees with you is therefore unpleasant, and an Irish nationalist. 207.181.210.6 (talk) 14:31, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Kinobe

Resolved

 – All is well. People are allowed to improve Wikipedia without fear of being sanctioned for violating obscure procedures

I'm visiting here to bring my actions up for a broader look. I supported a delete in this AFD. I looked at the people that wanted to save it, so I basically rewrote the entire thing, and changed my vote. The AFD is here. I closed it because the nom withdrew. Nothing has transpired, but I feel like I might have had a conflict of interest because I not only voted, but changed my position and turned this into this. I may have saved this, and learned that it is possible to change a stance, but I still feel like my closure may have been bad. If someone who puts an article up for deletion retracts it, should I have asked an admin to close it? Any and all criticism would be welcome. Is it wrong to add closure when the person putting it up retracts it? If so, my bad. I just felt that anyone, admin or not, would have done the same. Ideas? ^Law _shoot! 09:58, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

See the above thread. (No, really do!) If the nominator withdraws, AND no one else is currently making a case for delete, speedy closure (by whomever performed) is the right answer. We don't keep debates running for no good reason.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 10:04, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I had to turn myself in. I am the Law. :P ^Law _shoot! 10:06, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

We ignore the Law here. ;). --Scott MacDonald (talk) 10:09, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Related question: Would it have been OK for me (being the nominator) to close the AfD after I'd withdrawn the nomination? I was vacillating about it, but Law (who did an excellent job fixing the article) did it before I'd done vacillatin' :-) --Bonadea (talk) 12:44, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Basically, unless someone else has argued for delete, you can withdraw it. If no-one is currently asking for deletion, the thing is moot.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 12:54, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Concur with other editors. This close is fine. You, the nom, and Jeremiah were the only editors moving to delete; you were all happy; any complaints are likely based on wonkery. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 16:14, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Ditto from me too. You did nothing wrong, the AFD resulted in a better article, and Wikipedia is improved for the whole incident. As such, there is no reason to feel uncomfortable or ashamed. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 17:27, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

The teamwork done here is an example of why I can put aside my pride and save an article which I wanted deleted. People provided good sources and I felt compelled to rewrite, as the nom was compelled to retract it. I don't often run into this, as I stick to more content-based editing, but it is very refreshing and I think the end result is all around a good thing. Thanks for not yelling at me! ^Law _shoot! 07:12, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

YOU DID EXACTLY THE RIGHT THING - THIS IS WHY WP:AIV EXISTS!! (If someone has acted to the betterment of WP, why not yell it from the rooftops?) LHvU (talk) 13:16, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

The template police strike again

Resolved

In my previous incarnation as "Doc glasgow", I created a well-used template {blatantvandal} [131]. (No, I realise that gives me no rights over it). Now, that template was subsequently moved to {{Uw-bv}} - which is fine. (It seems to have been a cut and paste job without proper GFDL attribution, but we'll let that pass.) On looking at the template page yesterday, I noticed documentation stating "This template has been carefully designed based on guidelines by the user warnings project". That's simply not true (and difficult since the template pre-dates the wikiproject in question). Now, it might be pedantic, but the documentation is not good because it 1) is factually incorrect 2) more importantly, it gives the false impression that to create a useful template you need to follow someone's guidelines - you don't, you create it, and others edit it. No "rules".

I removed the erroneous documentation wholesale (it too was on a template), and when someone reverted me, I tried to "subst" the documentation to excise only the error. I left clear explanations on the talk page for my actions.[132]. Now, apparently I am breaking more "template project rules", since not only were my changes reverted, but comments on the talk page have been repeatedly removed (I am apparently not allowed to post to the talk page of the template to discuss/record the dispute - the wikiproject doesn't like that), and I've been threatened with the 3RR.

Now, I am probably a silly pedant, and I do appreciate the work other people do on templates, but the fixation with standardisation, and the insistence that the whole project must comply with guidelines drawn up by a few, and the impression that a wikiproject is some sort of "governing authority", is totally opposed to how I've always understood this project to work. I'm bringing this here because I obviously can't use the talk page of the template (and I really don't want to go to a place where my deleted comments were copied by someone under a hostile heading).

If I'm out on a limb here, I'll shut up and kowtow to the wikiproject. --Scott MacDonald (talk) 11:41, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Fuck the wikiproject. Wikiproects can't just make up "rules" and expect people to do anything but laugh at them. John Reaves 11:44, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Just a note here, the current {{uw-bv}} was created by Gracenotes [133], the template Doc created was redirected at a TFD [134], so yes, the current bv template is based off of the discussion at WT:UTM and no, anyone can create a UTM template using any wording they want, there are no "rules" to create a template. Some people, myself included, do like to go around and tweak templates created by other people to try and make them easier to use. MBisanz ^talk 11:47, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Pedantic me, but Gracenotes cut and paste blatantvandal, (s)he didn't create anything. Compare [135] and [136]. They are identical. I tried to point that out, but my comments were removed somewhere.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 11:51, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Erm, I just noticed an active discussion at Wikipedia_talk:UTM#Edit_warring_at_Template:uw-bv, what sort of administrative action is required for a discussion in progress? MBisanz ^talk 11:55, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

What discussion. Someone removed my explanations from the template talk page, and took it to some wikiproject per their "rules" and then placed it under an accusatory heading. That's not a discussion.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 12:01, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Wonderful. Anomie (talk · contribs) has just labelled me "disruptive" [137] and placed a big (guess what) template on the talk page, telling people that they shouldnot discuss things there, but at the wikiproject proscribed page. See Template talk:Uw-bv. Sigh.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 11:57, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

There are 1,409 warning templates on Wikipedia, having a central place to discuss them seems like a reasonable idea... MBisanz ^talk 12:01, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Sure perhaps for general discusison, but it is no reason to remove comments that relate to one particular template from it's talk page. Besides which comment on a particular template which is placed on a general wikiproject, will be impossible to find later. I wished to point out errors on the template in a way that would be seen in future by those interested in the template. I watchlist various templates I use for changes, I don't watch general discussion on 1,409. Not everything is best centralised.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 12:07, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Scott, your issue though was with the documentation, which is used on several dozen pages, the community at large could benefit from a change the the basic documentation. Its not a rules situation or a stopping change, just trying to have a central discussion among lots of people about what is the best way to move forward with the system. Its been down that way since at least 2006, pre-dating the Wikiproject. MBisanz ^talk 12:14, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you are being pedantic and disruptive. Few people watch all 482 individual templates in the uw-* system; we redirect all those talk pages to one centralized location so people with comments have half a chance of those comments actually being seen. I tried to tell you that twice, but you insisted on ignoring my advice. It's not a "rule", it's just common sense to post where people are actually watching. As for the rest, you are welcome to join in the discussion at WT:UTM. Anomie⚔ 12:09, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I made a change, it was reverted. I tried again with a different version, it was reverted. I went to the talk page, and gave reasons. How is that disruptive? Instead of suggesting another venue, threatened me with 3RR and repeatedly moved my comments to another place under a hostile heading. I was (and am) willing to have a civil discussion about this. But you sort of made that difficult.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 12:14, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not really seeing the pedantic and disruptive bit - however, {{Uw-bv}} was created with the edit summary "(create uw-version of the uber-cool {{bv}})". In my books, this satisfies the GFDL concerns (under the Title Page section or something) and properly leads back to the original creator. The content has now been adapted to new purposes under new claims, but the traceback to the original author is there. Doc/Scott, I think you're out on a bit of a limb. Franamax (talk) 12:17, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

This Wikiproject is marvellous. I've repeatedly seen that members own the UW-series templates. Changes to templates seem verboten, as are new ones, unless the Wikiproject has approved in advance. I made {{uw-welcometest}}, a combination of two UW-permitted templates. The Wikiproject was horrified, insisting that it be moved to {{welcometest}} because it wasn't approved or endorsed by them and - get this - that the redirect so created also had to be deleted. Dawkins help us if their blocks are not all lined up in a neat row.

This type of thing is typical of several Wikiprojects, particularly the ones to do with Wikipedia's arcane internal functions: they are the Wikiproject that controls the implementation of x-function, so what is done in Wikipedia that uses x-function is therefore under their control (down even as far as where stuff is discussed, how stuff is approved for use by Wikipedia by the project and what sanctions are applied to people who knock over the blocks).

This isn't how Wikiprojects were designed to operate, but the only solution is to join them and be very active and thus be assimilated or expelled for not conforming. Meh. Not worth the trouble. Better to let them control their stuff, then at least they're being kept centralised somewhere. ➨ ❝ЯEDVERS❞ a sweet and tender hooligan 12:19, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I believe I understand Scott's objection and have fixed the base documentation at [138] to better reflect template authorship. MBisanz ^talk 12:23, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

If a WikiProject becomes a cabal with its own little set of rules, then the obvious thing to do is MfD the project. "This project should be deleted because it violates the spirit of Wikipedia and has turned into a cabal that seeks to subvert community consensus." Hopefully, the project participants will get a clue before this becomes necessary. On the other hand, I created {{uw-coi}} and could care less what other people might want to do with it. Scott, you might try harder to be apathetic. Jehochman ^Talk 12:25, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I can agree with that. However given the massive numbers of people and tools that use the uw-series of templates, someone should probably take the lead and try to keep things organized and consistent. While the WP:UW project has made some group decisions that I did not personally agree with, I do however recognize that Churchill was right when he said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried. --Kralizec! (talk) 13:19, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Templates are on the list of items (including date formatting and categorization) that are on constantly shifting sand, and thus not worth messing around with. Content is what matters, not this cutesie stuff. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 12:28, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

"Content"? What an odd word... "content". Please, sir, what is this "content"? Ed Fitzgerald _{t / c} 06:26, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Honestly, thank goodness we have people looking after this stuff rather pedantically. They look good; they work well; we have tools and scripts that are built on top of these, so naturally people get a bit worried when others start hacking away with a sickle on one of them - if every template "author" started re-asserting rights over their "artist" works, we would have mayhem, ugliness, and moar tool breakages. Nothing to see here, move along, per Jehochman. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 12:40, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I only dream of the day when my little templates User:Bwilkins/didnotnotify and User:Bwilkins/welcomecivil became "standard" and "improved" by the masses. -t BMW c- 12:53, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I suppose that it may be because the discussion was quite heated, but Anomie (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) seems to have difficulty in reaching for good faith in discussions with others. Outside of the obvious poor comments made on the template talk page, I noticed this bit in reply to a civil comment posed above. I hope that people really aren't that obsessed over the template, and I guess I'll go and echo John Reaves's comment here -- they have no real method of enforcing a set standard or how a template should be displayed, and if a project devolves to a cabal, then it can be fair game to wipe it through a MFD. seicer | talk | contribs 12:54, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I haven't read WP:UTM in a long time, but I don't think painting then as an overpossessive cabal is doing them justice. While it might seem obscure, the goal behind the UW project was to standardize the templates a certain way. Due to the reticence of other users, we decided at that point not to replace (or redirect) the existing templates but to fork from them. If a template doesn't look like the other uw templates, it's best not to name it that way in order to keep things a bit clean. There might be a lack of fresh blood at UTM (that's the reason why I no longer contribute there, I spent too much time on that page already ;) ) so by all mean come and help them. Seriously, they are reasonable people! Or just fork, it's how open source works anyway :P -- lucasbfr ^talk 13:09, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Responding to Seicer above, I agree that Anomie`s comment is a bit over the top ... but no more so than the message he was responding to: "the very next time I see someone unjustifiably slinging around the word "vandal" or "disruption" to describe this content dispute, I'm going to block them so fast their eyes spin" [139]. --Kralizec! (talk) 13:23, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

In fact, I don't consider my reply at all inappropriate considering what I was replying to (that Kralizec quoted), although I could perhaps have phrased it less sarcastically. If an admin did issue such a punitive and unconstructive block in violation of the WP:BLOCK policy, I would hope that he would have his sysop bit removed. We don't need people who can't use them appropriately to have those tools. Anomie⚔ 13:51, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Blocking s a perfectly appropriate response to someone who interferes with good-faith discussion on a talk page and makes incivil accusations of disruption in a content dispute. You've had several admins now tell you that they think your reaction was inappropriate. Perhaps you should consider internalizing that criticism and changing your behavior rather than looking for someone else to blame. If my warning shocked you -- good. That was its intended purpose: to get people to stop worrying about their fellow editors' behavior, and focus on their own. Nandesuka (talk) 14:48, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Does that excuse your own apparently punitive threats to block people who have the audacity call a spade a spade and describe "edit warring" as "disruptive"? The only truly shocking thing about this entire dispute is how over the top people`s outrage has been. Well, that and the fact that it has not made WP:LAME yet. --Kralizec! (talk) 15:04, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

If by "punitive threat" you mean "warning", then yes. Yes, it does. Nandesuka (talk) 15:49, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

You're apparently one of those people who give admins a bad name, if you feel that issuing such threats is proper behavior. I suggest you go review WP:ADMIN#Administrator conduct, and I hope I never cross paths with you again. I've had enough of this wikidrama. Good day. Anomie⚔ 17:29, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

No you haven't! It's Friday, it's international Wikidrama day. Please return to your previous dramas ASAP. -t BMW c- 18:38, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Requesting ban or at least a stern final warning

Resolved

 – The matter was deescalated. No further admin intervention required. VG ☎ 17:10, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Bosniak Atheist (talk · contribs) is an account created only yesterday. He immediately declared to the world that he is on Wikipedia with a specific agenda. He then posted a few inflammatory and racially directed comments ([140], [141], [142]). He then set out to leave messages for some established editors calling them "fascist" ([143], [144]). He then created a section on his talk page titled "Creating the Bosniak Lobbyist group" which, as of this writing, currently reads as follows:

This is where Bosniaks and those who want to help Bosniaks will gather to create a Lobby group for Wikipedia to promote Bosniak perspective. Please sign in below, and gather as many people as possible, when there is more than 10 people, we will start putting forward our perspectives on Wikipedia pages, until then we shall comment only on non-XYU subjects. Please note that only competent English language speakers may apply. We are also compatible with non-Bosniaks such as Albanians and Croatians, who are victims of Serbian favouring aggressive Wikipedia editors. I propose to unite us all, to defeat Genocide denier's and minimizers.

He then proceeded to canvass for potential members of his "lobby" ([145], [146], [147], [148], [149] even though he was advised by an administrator not to do so.

Since he actually requested guidance by creating a section on his talk page titled "I am a totally new user to Wikipedia" and saying "Please post here anything useful such as regulations etc. I will read them carefully", I acutally did post a welcome template and left a few polite messages until he deleted them all with this edit calling my remarks "not very useful attacks" and calling me a "Genocide denier" in the edit summary. User:Ckatz also left some links for him to read but those were ignored as well.

I would like second and third opinions on whether this person has anything good to contribute at this point that would make it worthwhile to put up with his inflammatory rhetoric and his lobbying to "get enough users to run a viable consensus".

Thanks! SWik78 (talk • contribs) 14:00, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I've read the regulations on canvassing, and theres nothing secret about what I'm doing therefore it fails the test for canvassing. Reason for what I'm doing is, Wikipedia editors are sick of wild/aggressive Serb editors getting away with Genocide appologist/denial agenda's unchallenged where NPOW is almost extinct in XYU articles. By the way, it is not NPOW that the Kosovo is not even highlighted in the country map of Serbia article. Somebody needs to put a stop to Serbian only POW on Wikipedia. By the way did you know that most Wikipedia users come from nations that recognised Kosovo? So why is Kosovo non-existent in the map of Serbia? NPOW is my agenda quite obviously. Bosniak Atheist (talk) 14:16, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I ask administrators to please not get distracted to think that this is a content dispute. It has to do with calling editors "fascist" and canvassing for a lobby to promote an agenda.

Thank you! SWik78 (talk • contribs) 14:27, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I've obviously withdrawn that since I am new to Wikipedia, and I have things to learn, but I wish the admins would do something about Serbian bullying of non-Serb editors and total dominance of Serb POW. Then we would all make a huge step toward more order in Wikipeda XYU articles. Bosniak Atheist (talk) 14:33, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I have left a lengthy message on Bosniak Atheist's talk page with some advice. BA admits to being a newbie, so let's show a little patience and give him/her a chance to learn our policies. Obviously civility is important on any article page (even civility directed towards someone we believe to be promoting or exculpating some awful things). But promoting a diverse community of editors is also important and if we do not have any or many editors from Bosnia, we should try toi welcome more. Everyone needs to comply with NPOV. I hope BA learns that the effective way to deal with a POV pusher is not to make personal attacks on the talk page, or simply push a different POV, but patiently to insist that any article comply with NPOV and follow our dispute resolution process if there are conflicts in complying with NPOV. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:47, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I saw your message on his talk page and it was well crafted and informative. Thank you and I sincerely hope that the point gets across but forgive me if I have my reservations. I fear that the issue of Bosnian editors not being welcomed is a red herring in this particular case. The Wikipedia corps of editors has plenty of Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats and the only issue is how to get them all to get along. Promoting agendas and calling people fascist and bullies is not the way to do so, without excuse. Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Wikilobby campaign was a recent case of Wikilobbying and it was dealt with harshly but fairly due to the recognized potential of damage from a co-ordinated attempt to influence the content of Wikipedia.

Anyways, thanks for your input. It's what I was looking for and I appreciate the time and the effort.

Regards, SWik78 (talk • contribs) 15:00, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

User:Essesac

Hi. It looks like User:Essesac has been recreating more or less the same version of Antoine Cassese, Inventor or Antoine Cassese since December 2007. It's problematic for a number of reasons, not the least of which are copyright issues (verbatim from here), COI and notability. The user has been warned a number of times but so far hasn't responded to any. I wasn't sure what the procedure was for this kind of thing, so I thought I would mention it here. Maethordaer (talk) 16:16, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Article baleeted, yet again, and a stern "don't do it again" left on the user's talk page. If it's recreated, a block is probably warranted - at this point, it doesn't appear the editor in question is Getting It. Tony Fox (arf!) 16:24, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

FWIW, my gut tells me the user is probably also the owner of the website in question and probably also the copyright holder of the lifted text (I'm sure everyone noticed what happens when you spell "Cassese" backwards). But in any case, the account is clearly a promotional SPA and nobody will shed a tear if the account is indef blocked. --Jaysweet (talk) 17:28, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Greek Macedonia/Macedonia/FYROM userboxes

I've just come across the following userbox, which, if I'm honest, I think should be immediately deleted due to the rather divisive message inside:

This user supports Greece and real Macedonia on Macedonia's naming dispute with Fyrom, because he knows history and he is aware of justice.

Am I the only one who can see a problem with this? FYI, I'm not Greek, or Macedonian, but that last sentence is overly insulting, I think. Opinions? Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 16:50, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Yep, that userbox should be deleted. I think userboxes with divisive messages should be deleted. Our job is to build the encyclopedia, not express our personal or political views. AdjustShift (talk) 17:00, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

That looks like a pretty clear WP:T2 deletion to me. Out of courtesy, I'm notifying the owner of the userbox of this thread now, however I strongly recommend removal of the userbox. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 17:08, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Is it transcluded from a seperate file, or is it just manually added to the userpage? If its transcluded, the original should be deleted post-haste. Regardless, it should also be removed from the userpage post-haste as a violation of WP:USERPAGE. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 17:19, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

This seems to be an issue that might be better handled at WP:MFD. SWik78 (talk • contribs) 17:23, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't know if it's a userbox template, I think it might have been copied and pasted. I can't find the template anywhere. Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 17:26, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I disagree strongly with SWik78. This is beyond MFD. I see no compelling reason to keep this sort of shit around longer than about 5 more minutes, never mind 5 days. Per WP:SNOW, there is no defensable reason to put that kind of polemic on a userpage, and it should be removed ASAP... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 17:30, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Anyways, is there a [[RL:LAME]] for the lamest real-life conflicts? Support delete. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:32, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Just a note: there's a whole host of similar boxes on a lot of userpages of Greek and Macedonian contributors. The topic has come up repeatedly; we've occasionally purged the worst excesses of POV screeds on userpages, but these smallish box things have typically been left untouched. If you delete it (no objections from me), be prepared for a boatload of OTHERCRAPEXISTS complaints. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:43, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, such overt hostility and divisiveness is blockworthy. I say (a) remove with prejudice, warn user that such declarations are completely unacceptable, and (b) block immediately and without further sommation if the box returns, especially if it has been tweaked to wikilawyer around the warning. Enough with the national disputes already! — Coren ^(talk) 18:04, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Since Cavalry didn't bother to do so, I've just removed the userbox code from User:The Cat and the Owl's page, and left an explanation for the removal and a warning not to re-add the box here. I again invited the user to comment here if they have questions. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 19:31, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I've just removed it from User:Alexikoua too. Theresa Knott | token threats 19:53, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

How are you chaps looking for it? Google and Mediawiki's searches aren't picking it up for me - hence why I'm not removing it! Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 20:03, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I clicked on the flag image and looked for the pages that linked to it. Theresa Knott | token threats 20:10, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

This is a fine tool for searching Wikipedia. SWik78 (talk • contribs) 20:13, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Special:WhatLinksHere/Fyrom is helpful. That particular spelling (vs. all-caps FYROM) is perceived as pejorative (as in "Fyromians" to refer to the people), so many of those links should be examined. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 20:23, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll check up on the FYROM links. Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 20:25, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Check this one. --Smashville^talk 03:37, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Deleted that one. Let us know if you find more... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 04:17, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Eek. I'm just not up enough on the whole Macedonia thing to know the acceptable from the unacceptable, so I didn't want to delete...but looking at the user's other ones...eek. --Smashville^talk 04:25, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

yeah, I saw those. Most seem fairly innocuous, you know of the "I support my side" without being overtly offensive towards the other side, but some probably need to go. If you see any that are questionable, try MFD for those. If there are any that seem WAY over the line, then delete on sight. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 04:39, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Don't know if anyone has removed them yet (too lazy to look), but I made a list of userpages with that stuff ages ago: user:Republic-of-Malakia (even offensive username), user:Fallacia83 (including a disgusting rant), user:Gagauz, user:Sthenel, user:The-Real-ZEUS, user:Waterfall999, user:Scott Anafas, and user:Maggas. Some of these users aren't active any more, but still. BalkanFever 04:37, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and user:DefendEurope. BalkanFever 06:49, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

And user:Hectorian. BalkanFever 08:42, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

SKO VAR VSK

This user would support a solution of the Naming Issue for FYROM in the form of: Skopje, Vardarskia, Vardar-Skopje, or any other name that does not include the (Greek) name 'Macedonia' in the title, and for a suitable flag that doesn't contain any Greek symbols.

What's the problem with this userbox ? apart from expressing an unrealistic position for the name. --Zakronian (talk) 09:31, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Still pretty political, IMHO. The whole issue is. Ethnically says "I don't care if you think you want to call yourself Macedonian, you're not". To me, that's uncivil - and I'm 100% uninvolved. -t BMW c- 11:11, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Determining if it's extreme or not depends on the weight one gives to the self-determination right "against" the protection of another nation's cultural identity. In this case reality shows these two are highly connected and cannot be jugded separately (you can deny that in theory and in lack of personal experience of course), and we're talking about a userpage, where you have the most freedom to express any opinions and to balance things your way. This userbox does not imply something that can be seen as more offensive or controversial than for example a userbox where an ethnic Macedonian editor states he has ancient Macedonian ancestry by piping "Macedonian" to "ancient Macedonian" (the worst way to say it) next to the Vergina Sun, a primarily ancient Greek symbol. It may be his right to claim something silly that cannot be really determined, but it also clearly antagonizes the Greek identity, and from an objective view it is mostly backed from the lack of information. You might find all that irrelevant, but then you'd have to be strict in general about rules and i could in turn comparatively extent that to other usepage content issues. The pro-Kosovo and pro-Serbia templates for example. Or, what really makes this issue any different from a template supporting say the unification of Romania and Moldova without solving the Transnistria problem first or calling for respect of Georgia's territorial integrity ? Anyway, i don't support the expressed position on the naming dispute, just spending my free time sharing the Greek perspective with you. :)--Zakronian (talk) 13:21, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Backlog at WP:RFPP

Resolved

 – MastCell is cleaning up the backlog. SWik78 (talk • contribs) 18:15, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Nothing urgent or anything but I don't think any admins have been active over there since midnight-ish. Anyone available?

Thanks! SWik78 (talk • contribs) 17:26, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Anthony Pollina

See also Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Maurice Doubleday

I know I could just ride that SSP discussion out, but there's no real point, and I'm just going to call duck. The article Anthony Pollina is currently being targeted by a member of his campaign (evidence provided on the SSP page), who insists on adding POV material to the article. Some of his additions are clearly copied straight off the campaign website, and other material is actually alongside citations, not that the citations actually back 100% of the claims being added. The trouble with this editor is that since his first account was warned about this, he creates a new account for every edit, so it's not feasible to communicate with him. I was hoping someone may be able to put up some hard blocks to keep him out without actually protecting the page. Someguy1221 (talk) 17:35, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Not sure about the socks, but I've semi-protected Anthony Pollina until November 5. Toddst1 (talk) 19:26, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

If the link between these accounts and the Pollina campaign can be demonstrated, I can call the campaign office directly tomorrow (I'm voting in that particular race). Avruch ^T 02:06, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

It looks like done and done, but perhaps I can follow up anyway. Avruch ^T 02:07, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

User:82.47.101.83

I'm having a bit of trouble with the aforementioned anonymous user who refuses to accept that information garnered from an unreliable source is not suitable for Wikipedia. Any chance that someone could step in and offer a second opinion? – PeeJay 20:56, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Looks to me like you are doing a pretty good job of educating our anonymous editor. The only thing I might suggest is the odd link to the policy in question. An example might look like: "Wikipedia's official policy on verifiability requires challenged content to be appropriately cited to reliable, third-party, published sources" or "self-published sources are not generally considered to be reliable." With links to our official policies and guidelines, the IP can read our documentation and perhaps feel less "picked" on. --Kralizec! (talk) 21:15, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Cheers for the vote of confidence. I'll link the anon to the pages you suggest, but I think that their perception that we hide behind rules and regulations is what this whole thing has stemmed from in the first place. On the one hand, they do have a point, as you can use rules to support any argument if you look hard enough, but I would still appreciate a little help before the anon gives me a persecution complex! :D – PeeJay 21:18, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Wavelength adding internal links to Wikipedia namespace pages

Resolved

 – conflict de-escalated, parties referred to another venue to continue their discussions in a civil manner.

This is the beginning of a discussion at User talk:Wavelength#Your recent contributions.

Wavelength, I had to revert one of your See also links, and I came over here to look at your contributions. I'm surprised. I'm really not the expert on these things, but this looks like a case of WP:POINT to me (specifically, point 6). Can we talk this out over at WP:ANI? - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 17:35, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Dank55, I am surprised by your message. I have been working through Wikipedia:List of base pages in the Wikipedia namespace, to bring more attention to as many pages as possible (especially, orphaned pages, whether or not they are tagged as such). I actually thought that my efforts would be appreciated.

I checked your contributions, and it seems that you are referring to my editing Wikipedia:Explain jargon by adding a link to Wikipedia:Federal Standard 1037C terms. I was not trying to illustrate a point. According to WP:POINT, point 6 is: "Attempting to force an untoward interpretation of policy, or impose one's own view of 'standards to apply' rather than those of the community". Maybe I have misinterpreted policy. If that is the case, please explain it to me (as clearly as you can) so that I interpret it correctly. In what way was adding that link inappropriate?

(By the way, are you an administrator? Your link to WP:ANI seems to suggest that you are, but I could find no indication of that on your user page.)

-- Wavelength (talk) 19:49, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not an admin, which is why I'm bringing up WP:ANI. You're making rapid additions to policy and guidelines pages, and as one of the guys who keeps track of these things, it's frustrating when one person creates so much work for everyone else, but I'm really not the guy to be making the call whether it's "too much". All I can tell you is, it's frustrating. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 20:02, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, if you find it frustrating, I apologize. I am guessing that "so much work for everyone else" refers to reverting my changes (or, at least, examining them). Can you see my perspective in anticipating people thinking, "Oh, I am glad that someone brought that page to my attention. I did not even know that it existed."?

On some (but not all) occasions when I have added links to these pages on article pages, they have been reverted with the explanation that the links were not to other article pages.

One reason for my proceeding rapidly from A to Z is to avoid forgetting related pages which I have already seen, when I see other related pages later in the alphabet.

In summary, I am perplexed as to how best to bring attention to those pages. Maybe I should abandon that plan.

--Wavelength (talk) 21:16, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

(end of copied text)

-- Wavelength (talk) 21:30, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Wavelength, are you prepared to accept that Dan has an objection about your changes and move into the "D" phase of WP:BRD? It seems like Wavelength was being bold and making changes to project pages and Dan wants to slow him down. Both actions are fine. Might I suggest finding some centralized place to discuss this where other people who watchlist/shepherd lots of policy pages can participate in the discussion as well? Protonk (talk) 01:36, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, Village Pump (Policy) is a much better place to carry this on rather than ANI. It seems that both parties are interested in reaching a consensus on this, and neither really wants to be blocked over this, so lets all just enjoy a nice, relaxing hot beverage and discuss this matter at VP, and not here, since it does not appear that admins need to be involved with this. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 04:11, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, Protonk, I am prepared to do both those things. Thank you, Jayron32, for referring me to Village pump (policy). -- Wavelength (talk) 05:05, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

zodiac template vandal

Resolved

 – Templates semi'd, Zodiac vandal stopped w/o his DRV of lulz. -Jéské Couriano ^{(v^_^v)} 22:57, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

just a heads up - the zodiac template vandal (who I've seen around before) is back at 65.111.181.185 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log). he's vandalized six templates so far, though none of the people who've reverted him have bothered to leave a warning on the IP talk page. --Ludwigs2 22:47, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

That's because he stopped after six edits and hasn't edited since (probably *because* nobody called him out). I'll semi those templates. -Jéské Couriano ^{(v^_^v)} 22:53, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Single-purpose account for edit warring purposes?

I don't know the protocol here, but it appears that Rtally3 (talk · contribs) is a single purpose account created specifically to edit war on William Timmons; the account was created a few days ago, and every edit relates only to one paragraph that I tried to add to the page. I have since started an RfC regarding the material as I found it strange that two users and an anon ip were all edit warring to keep the material out, and ignoring the substantive arguments for keeping the material in. It is possible there is some unlicensed sockpuppetry afoot. The Rtally3 account seems to be someone who has been around Wikipedia long enough to know our policies and how things work; that is inconsistent with the fact that the account was created less than a week ago. Again, there may be nothing suspicious here -- I acknowledge I am a party to the dispute on the page -- but it sure looks suspicious to me. csloat (talk) 22:58, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually I'm even more sure there is something suspicious afoot now -- another of the editors warring on that article is Jmcgee2 (talk · contribs), created on the same day as Rtally3, whose first edit was to blank the William Timmons page, and who also ONLY edits that page. Surely this is worth looking into. csloat (talk) 23:06, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh my, it seems a third person edit warring on the same page is the Washington DC-based anon ip 68.100.74.123 (talk · contribs), which started editing a few days earlier than the other two accounts, and has only edited the William Timmons page, and has exclusively focused on getting the one paragraph removed. Very interesting. csloat (talk) 23:10, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Update, we have confirmation that the Rtally3 account is editing from Washington DC as well, with an ip close to the anon ip. Perhaps this is all a bizarre coincidence but that seems unlikely to me. csloat (talk) 23:46, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

•  Confirmed Rtally3 and Jmcgee2}} are the same person,  Likely the same as the IP as well as Kbhickory (talk · contribs). Thatcher 00:27, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Note that this is a BLP, and the item that all these socks are edit-warring to keep out is sourced to the Huffington Post. Looie496 (talk) 01:31, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Anna Anderson

User:Bookworm857158367 is suffering from a severe case of WP:OWN - he reverted my edit that Pomerania was not in East Prussia (which is correct) and my use of "probably" instead of "possibly" given that all the Romanov remains have been found and tested. Paul Austin (talk) 01:30, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

You might be right, but it would be better to raise the issue on the talk page of the article before coming here. Looie496 (talk) 01:36, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Posts by IP about shell kinney

This post was originally made at WP:RFC/U in the admin's section. I think it is better suited here. Regards SoWhy 02:50, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm having to write this unlogged in because shell kinney (admin) has made made every effort to silence the facts i've put forward regarding his/her application of a ban I and others feel was arbitrary. His/Her original ban was not rooted in wikipedia policy or openly discussed. He/She has even removed my uninflamatory and purely fact based responses on my own talk page and protected it so I cannot even respond. I'm requesting a third uninvolved party to review the situation. The discussion can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ASgeine&diff=248923964&oldid=248923865 Shell has a long history of heavy handed tactics but I'm not here to address that or get bogged down in whatever personal matters exist. Just a review of the facts with a resolution.01:43, 1 November 2008 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.198.198.66 (talk • contribs)

This fellow has been using Wikipedia to pursue his personal agenda against Helio (the wireless carrier), by adding content attacking them and sourcing it to documents hosted on personal websites. I dealt with him before Shell. He needs to head over to wikileaks.org, as the content he is trying to add is not acceptable here. I've blocked the IP for a short period, as it's pretty clear it's being used for block evasion. --Versageek 04:01, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure why the block-evading user's rant was copied onto ANI. Surely we shouldn't be using this board to give disruptive users a place to vent after they've been properly blocked? --Akhilleus (talk) 04:06, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I've been trying to help this user (User:Sgeine) in the last few days, breaking my informal wikibreak to do it. I do not believe this is a proper block at all, and believe Shell is being way too heavy handed with this. In my talks with the user I've helped him to understand what he needs to do next, and why his current sources were considered original research. I suspect he actually listened to me because I didn't treat him like trash or assume the worst out of him.

I do not agree with Sgeine on everything he's said, but most of this is happening because he's frustrated and doesn't understand some of our policies. Shell has, on her own, given him a "topical ban", which she believes he was trying to evade by editing as an IP. However, as an IP he tells her who he is and logs in to continue a discussion with Shell, completely voluntarily on his part. Him editing as an IP was not a malicious act, and most people who edit Wikipedia every so often don't really care if they're logged in or not. The warning of a ban is shown in this edit [150], and sure enough Sgeine did violate this. However, I believe this only happened because we failed to properly explain the situation in the first place, and that an indef block on someone who's never been blocked before is an over reaction. No offense to Shell, but she does tend to be a bit too heavy handed with blocking, and when other admins review they are quick to side with the other admins.

Now he's talk page has been protected for this. I assume it was because he posted a chatlog, but if you look closely the long consists entirely of him saying (to Shell) things like "hello?" with no response (hence, only his comments were posted). Wether or not those logs have any weight on anything, that's another matter.

This is not how we should deal with people. I understand that some people are very sensitive about COI worries, but treating this guy like trash is wrong. After having talked with him, I think he better understands what he needs to do next and won't insert the disputed information anymore. Shell refuses to discuss the matter because it involves an OTRS ticket from Helio. At this point I'm probably aware of more information than Shell is, and there is still no reason to come down so hard on this guy.

How many times has this happened with users who come across Wikipedia and have a culture clash with us?

If I can get him to agree on not editing the Helio articles then can we stick out a hand of friendship and say "no hard feelings, we look forward to working with you"? He's very smart and likely has a great deal to offer us on other articles. -- Ned Scott 05:53, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

If he stays away from the Helio articles, I don't have a problem with it.. As to not explaining things.. If he had asked questions in response to my warning back in July rather than just blanking the page, I would certainly have attempted to help him understand. (Apparently Shell had dealt with him a few weeks before my first encounter, and tried to help him as well.. ) --Versageek 06:12, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I must correct myself here. Sgeine has pointed out to me that he did not re-insert the information that Shell warned him about, and I've stepped through the history of the article and this is correct. He did tag the article for deletion because he felt it should be merged/covered in another article, but then that's more newbie stuff. So at this point he has not violated any ban that Shell has given him, at least none that can be verified on-wiki. -- Ned Scott 06:24, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Versa, I don't believe that page has ever been blanked, let alone by me. And if you take a look at the edit history I actually did listen to you. You'll notice my _last_ edit with that information was two hours before yours and 9 hours before shell's... That's all I've been saying is hey, lets tone this down. I didn't readd it after you guys said that so why are we going crazy here 6 months later? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.198.198.130 (talk) 06:26, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

nm you're talking about my talk page not helio's page. I wiped my talk page because I didn't feel it was an issue any longer as I had already decided not to add that paragraph again and didn't edit wikipedia for some 4 months. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.198.198.130 (talk) 06:44, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Alright, one more time for teh win: There is considerably more information about this issue than Sgeine or Ned is giving here; other administrators have reviewed and declined to unblock (twice). Sgeine has been informed of the ability to have ArbCom review the indef block as a next step.

Sgeine has been incredibly dishonest about this entire situation and unfortunately has suckered Ned into believing that he's a poor guy trying to do right that just didn't know what he got in to. I've explained a few times now, several of those being to Ned, that what can be seen on wiki is simply the tip of the iceberg. By the way Ned, what Sgeine told you about OTRS is a complete fabrication - that's not who wrote in nor was he honest about the content. Here's the great part about that - the reason he thinks that's who wrote in is because that's who outed him and complained to other websites - that's right, this isn't the first place he's done the same thing to the company (and that's not the only tool in his "campaign" against Helio).

I know that in this case following the Foundation's privacy policy makes reviewing this inconvenient, but them's the rules. I have offered repeatedly to share this with an editor (with appropriate permissions) of Ned's choosing and I'm still happy to do that. If nothing else, perhaps then he could throw a little good faith the way of the long time admin instead of handing it all to the stranger leading him down the rabbit hole.

Contrary to what's being said here, I spent a *lot* of time with Sgeine off-wiki (his preferred method) educating him and encouraging him. Originally, even though the information supported it, I tried a topic ban instead of indef blocking the account. When he came back this month as an IP, I started a discussion to help him learn - even though this IP address had vandalized and added skewed information in the articles before and even though he kept attacking me and my motives. I even went so far as to assist him in putting one of the articles up for AfD and went and found a crapload of references when he peppered another article with fact tags (including those where he first deleted the references that were already there).

It wasn't until mid-way through the AfD that he decided to sign back in to his account. Whether or not this was intentional (i.e. logging out to avoid being caught) doesn't really matter here - what matters is that he violated a clear topic ban and has shown no remorse nor indication that he will desist. Of course now he's pretending that he's never spoken to me and had no idea that the ban was in place; Mangojuice read our correspondence and felt otherwise.

Btw, the reason I protected the talk page is twofold: One, the logs he posted were fake, intended only to make people think I hadn't talked to or answered him, notwithstanding he shouldn't be posting private information. And two, he's clearly going to keep making things up until something sticks. Frankly, had he not behaved like this, I'd be all for letting him back on to edit other things, but the blatant mis-truths and continued manipulation have me convinced that letting him edit would be a very bad idea. Shell ^babelfish 11:41, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Note: This is the 3rd IP range "Sgeine" has used to avoid his block. Shell ^babelfish 11:43, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

User:Stpuidhead

Is the way this user is treating his talk page ok? It makes it very hard to find previous warnings. They've made User talk:Stpuidhead a redirect, which also makes it harder to find the editor's contributions. Thanks. Doug Weller (talk) 06:58, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

See his rationale. He was doing it to make a WP:POINT, and I reverted it with a warning. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:02, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

And I'm watching him now. Rarely useful edits and games like this should be getting him blocked. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:08, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

IP Full O' Slurs

I was going to try and clean up IP 67.186.20.215 (talk · contribs) user's page, but after seeing edits like these [151] [152] [153] and the other messages he's left on his talk page, I just figured I should bring it here for admin attention. It seems to be an ongoing problem with racist slurs. Dayewalker (talk) 07:39, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Revert and put semi-protection for an hour. That should stop the nonsense. I'm watching in case he comes back. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:42, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Yue Chinese

Could someone take a look at Yue Chinese? User:Newzebras is rewording the article to fit the title he wants it moved to,[154] since he hasn't gotten his way with the actual move. I feel that the text should match the title, but it's now turned into an edit war.

Blanking? No. That paragraph is too long and too detailed to be placed outside the main topic. So I merged those sections into the [topic]. --Newzebras (talk) 10:02, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Maybe a month ago I started a discussion at Chinese naming conventions about how to handle the language/dialect issue, since I and several others felt the existing solution was awkward, and I moved several of the articles in accordance with the consensus we reached. The new conventions allow some leeway, and of course it will take some time for everything to settle down. Recently Newzebras suggested (actually demanded) three moves of the Cantonese articles. Two of these were agreed to, and I moved them. The third, Yue Chinese (the wording used in Ethnologue), was not agreed to. Newzebras then placed a second request, and meanwhile has been rewording the text from "Yue" to "Cantonese", which is ambiguous. ("Cantonese" generally means Guangzhou dialect, and when a distinction is made, as here in our articles, people generally try to use more precise wording.) He has started making similar edits to Guangzhou dialect, blanking large sections of the article in the process (such as the section on written Cantonese).[155] kwami (talk) 07:41, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, a few persons' "consensus", but the page-remove IS TOO imprudent. Former articles associated with Cantonese language or dialect all use commonly used English word "Cantonese", but it was you who replaced all this texts into "Yue", which is a Mandarin spelling romanization and a seldom used term in about a moth ago. (see discussion 1 and discussion 2). Since the newly replaced "Yue" by kwami is argumentative, the best way to end the controversy is to revert back to "Cantonese". ("Cantonese" generally means "廣東話(Guangdong hua)" or it's alias "粵語(Yueyu)". Guangzhou dialect is a smaller subset of Cantonese though people of Hong Kong directly call it using the bigger subset name "Cantonese" due to it's prestige and representative of the whole Cantonese language). Now we have moved Guangzhou dialect to the proper place per consensus reached on the discussion page. The article describing the whole Cantonese language certainly should be moved to a page like "Cantonese (language topic)" or "Cantonese (language/dialect)", rather than current terrible name, see move request.--Newzebras (talk) 08:44, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Newzebras, this is not the place to discuss the merits of the move, but rather your behavior. kwami (talk) 09:24, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

So you delate me here and said that I delete paragraphs? (I merged those paragraphs to the main topic since they are too long and too detailed, not blanking them as you said.) This is ordinary editing behavior, not "destruction". I think it's necessary to announce this point.--Newzebras (talk) 10:02, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Confirmed, NZ did as he says, so I struck out that complaint. Without an edit summary, I didn't see what had happened to the text. kwami (talk) 10:24, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Violation of WP:BLOCK by User:A Man In Black

A Man in Black has been in a content dispute with multiple parties over his claim of a copyvio for general information in a infobox on Gundam (mobile suit). He has threatened and followed through on blocking Jtrainor in blatant violation of our blocking policy in the following manner: You do not block those who you are involved in a content dispute with. I would suggest that Jtrainor is unblocked immediately and AMIB be reminded that you do not use the tools to gain an advantage in a content dispute and that blocking is not to be used in a purely punitive manner. There was no other dispute resolution tried other than AMIB threatening this user. Thank you. Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 09:37, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure that "this is a copyvio" constitutes a content dispute. Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy, and citing "policies" will get you nowhere. Admittedly, it might have been a better idea to ask somebody else to block, but I'm not sure that an immediate unblock is warranted.

Also, it's a long-standing practice to block people who insert copyvios – it's not necessarily punitive, but deterrent (which is, of course, a legitimate preventative purpose for a block). — Werdna • talk 09:49, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I understand that he claims it is a copyvio, however, claiming that a character has blonde hair or a spaceship has laser beams does not seem to be copyvio, but simply a ploy to hide the fact that he's attempting to camouflage his violation (which is threatening to use the mop to quell dissent and gain advantage in a simple content dispute). Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 09:54, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm having a look at this. The relevant diff seems to be here. The website in question is here. The next few edits to Gundam (mobile suit) were reverts of this information about the character. One of the reverts was by Kyaa (who started this thread and should have mentioned that she was involved in this). Kyaa was carrying out the same edit as User:Jtrainor, but Jtrainor was the only one to re-add the information more than once. Presumably that is why User:A Man In Black blocked, but I need to check the user and article talk pages and the block logs, and check they've been notified. I'll do that now, as well as consider the copyvio claim. Carcharoth (talk) 11:10, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Initial follow-up: there is another article involved: MSN-03 Jagd Doga. See this diff and this website and then step through the page history from there. Kyaa mentioned this thread on Jtrainor's talk page, but didn't link to the thread, so I've left a link there, and at AMIB's talk page. Looking at the block log and contributions now to find out if this is being discussed elsewhere. Carcharoth (talk) 11:21, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I've found another article where this dispute has erupted. See RGM-89 Jegan, where with this edit AMIB says " All of this is copyvio from mahq.net" ([156]). The root of the dispute seems to be at Template:Infobox Mobile Suit. It seems to go back as far as November 2007. See here (compare with Infobox MS Gundam, now a redirect). There was an edit war over that infobox back in November 2007. Then things started up again a few days later with this edit and this edit ("Why do we have two infoboxes for the same thing?" - from User:TheFarix), which led to this edit by AMIB ("Because I never finished converting them to dump all the in-universe nonsense"). The diffs for that infobox from here to here seem to sum up what is happening:

• AMIB - "Dumping a bunch of unencyclopedic in-universe detail; a lot of this still needs to be retooled to better emphasize RL, but hey"
• TheFarix - "rvt; given past opposition. The fields previously removed where those suggested by proponents as unnecessary"
• AMIB - "It's still highly in-universe, unencyclopedic, and wholly unsourced"
• L-Zwei - "oh, then exclude heigh as well. I think weapons are actually more important in represent mech's characteristic"
• TheFarix - "I agree, the height and weight doesn't really tell you anything about the mecha while aremaments and special equipmenet does"
• AMIB - "It's not the most important facts about the subject as an object in the real world. If a weapon or special system is important, it's in the body of the article. If it isn't, it doesn't bear mention"
• TheFarix - "rvt; You are not going to dictate what can and cannot be included in the infobox without discussion and consensus. You don't WP:OWN this template"
• AMIB - "Offer a single non-licensed source discussing the armaments in the detail that these infoboxes go into and I'll relent"
• Jtrainor - "rv vandalism by someone who has no interest or knowledge about the subject matter and insists on inserting his version anyways against consensus"
• AMIB - "Reverted edits by Jtrainor (talk) to last version by A Man In Black"

OK. That's enough for now. I think I've uncovered enough of the history for something sensible to be decided. Hopefully AMIB and Jtrainor will add more if I missed anything. Carcharoth (talk) 11:42, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Missed a few. See Template talk:Infobox Mobile Suit and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Gundam. Particularly the sections Ahem (from the November 2007 dispute), and Redesign (the October 2008 dispute). At the WikiProject, we have numerous threads showing clashes between AMIB and the WikiProject. Starting from around here (June 2007). More clashes are here, here, here, here, here, here (what is the "I believe the differing parties are engaged in a resolution process occupying their attention right now" referring to - from November 2007?), and here (the latest dispute in October 2008). So what we seem to have is a long-running dispute over in-universe and possible copyvio stuff, running from at least June 2007 through July 2007, November 2007, and now October 2008. Anyone have any ideas how to handle this? What was the resolution process back in November 2007? The first "Characters and Episodes" arbitration case? Carcharoth (talk) 12:06, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

And more to point, was the block justified? I'm not entirely convinced that the copyvio case is not debatable, but I do see a long running attempt by AMIB to clean up an in-universe area (the Gundam anime articles), along with dealing with copyright issues (non-free images and possibly character information - if that turns out to be copyrightable - see for example the note AMIB left for Kyaa [157]), and a long history of resistance at the WikiProject and poor interaction between AMIB and Jtrainor, culminating in the confrontational exchange here: Copyright warning by AMIB, "Why yes, please do block someone you are involved in a content dispute with. I am utterly underwhelmed by your threats." (Jtrainor), followed by "Well, okay. You're blocked for 24 hours. Please don't do that again." (AMIB). The block is due to expire 08:47 UTC, 2 November 2008, which is around 20 hours from now. No response yet from either side. I would hope AMIB manages to answer here before the block expires - someone should also keep an eye on Jtrainor's talk page for any response there. Carcharoth (talk) 12:22, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I've seen blocks overturned, due to the block being done by "involved admins" - overturned on far flimsier grounds than this. It looks to me like AMIB simply doesn't like that info being in the article, and is using whatever reasons he can come up with, to keep it out. It looks like blatant abuse of admin power. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 12:14, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The simple fact is that AMIB is POV pushing in template and article space. His claim that listing the armaments and other statistics of fictional elements amounts to a copyright violation is simply the latest argument he has used in order to remove these statistics. Originally, it was that the statistics overwhelm the page giving WP:UNDUE weigh to in-universe details, that they violate WP:WAF, or that no reliable third-party sources list such information. At no point has he ever sought a third opinion or any other dispute resolution procedure, instead preferring to use his administrative tools to enforce his preferred version.

If you also look at WT:GUNDAM who will see a long history of AMIB and the Gundam WikiProject bumping heads over various issues. At times, I do think that AMIB is deliberately antagonizing them. As a result, the WikiProject has lost its focus in cleaning up and improving Gundam-related articles. This is one of the reason why I've suggested that WP:ANIME absorbs WP:GUNDAM as a work group. --Farix (Talk) 12:23, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I saw that. AMIB does make some good points though. There is a point at which sourcing/copying character information from a website probably can become a copyright violation. The essential points are whether the basic elements of the information is copyrightable (probably not), and whether the information as a whole for a character, or set of characters, is copyrightable (a bit like a database copyright, but not quite the same as here we have artistic [fictional] content). If Wikipedia is presenting the information here in the same way as it is being presented on the official websites, then we are, in effect, directly competing with them for web traffic, even if some of our readers follow the links to the sources and to the official website. It is also easier to justify including such information when it is discussed and placed in a real-world context in the main text of an article (using third-party sources) rather than just repeated verbatim as in-universe information in an infobox. One final point - it is possible for different editors, working over months and years, to separately add stuff from a source, and for the final article to end up being a copy of all the information from that source - this is a problem of unintentional "piece-by-piece" copyright violation that is peculiar to the wiki-model, and that Wikipedia will have to address at some point. Carcharoth (talk) 12:38, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

You're generously making AMIB's argument for him, whereas it would be much better if he himself would comment - if he decides it's worth bothering with, since there is currently no hint of any sanction against him. While his claim of "copyright violation" is pretty lame, it would have more credibility if he hadn't been all over the map with his previous arguments against it, which simply add up to "I don't like it". Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 12:42, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Those are actually my arguments, not AMIB's arguments (though he may agree with me). I will say that I'm not impressed with AMIB's flippant "well, OK" response to Jtrainor's "this is a content dispute". As I've laid out above, AMIB does have a long history of disputing what should go in that infobox, and in the past, AMIB has started from trying to clean up in-universe stuff, to switching to copyright stuff. He may be right in both cases, but it does feel like another stage in the same long-running dispute. AMIB is clearly heavily involved here, and should have requested a second opinion, instead of allowing Jtrainor's 'block me if you dare' comment to bait him into blocking. Carcharoth (talk) 13:32, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Whether AMIB has a point does not justify him enforcing that point by edit waring, blocking one editor, and threatening to block a second editor involved in the dispute. --Farix (Talk) 12:57, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Sure. You've said that. I'm waiting to see what others say. I think there are two issues that need resolving here. The immediate issue of the block, and the wider issue of the long-running festering issues at the Gundam WikiProject. Carcharoth (talk) 13:32, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

• Update - it seems that the previous dispute resolution wasn't an arbitration case. It was a mediation. See Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/Gundam. See Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/Gundam/Archive 1. Not sure how far that got things to improve (seems to have been withdrawn when things started to improve), but it is clear that things have taken a turn for the worse again. I've also noticed that the dates of Jtrainor's other two blocks (July 2007 and November 2007) coincide with the dates of Gundam-related disputes. Unfortunately, the blocking admins did not specify the articles that were involved in the blocks. I could dig through Jtrainor's talk page history, but will drop a note off for the blocking admins as well and see what they can remember. Carcharoth (talk) 13:32, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Threat against high school

Resolved

 – User blocked, page(s) protected, police contacted. Metros (talk) 11:00, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

For two days a registered SPA user has repeatedly vandalized the Eastern Lebanon County High School article by posting an essay which was reverted by myself and others while on vandal patrol. The essay concerns the actions of an alleged student and ends with a threat of violence against the high school. (e.g. "The skies will rain with bloood and the earth will tremble at his every step. Those who speak his name in vain shall perish at by his hand.") The user has been persistent in their vandalism - registering two accounts and being reverted 7 times. Following Wikipedia:Threats of violence guidelines, I have taken the side of caution and reported this incident by e-mail to the Police Department in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. I wanted the Wikipedia administration to be aware of this. — CactusWriter | ^needles 10:06, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I have blocked the two accounts, semi-protected the article on the school for a month (if it turns out that full is needed, let me know, or go to WP:RFPP), and I have protected the article he's made a couple of times against creation. I've also contacted MySpace to make sure that he's not threatening anything on the profile to which he keeps linking. To clarify, CactusWriter, did you contact the Lebanon County police, the city of Lebanon police, or the police in Myerstown? Metros (talk) 10:36, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I contacted the Lebanon City Police Department -- and only by e-mail, with a request for them to acknowledge the receipt of my e-mail. I did not contact the Myerstown police because I didn't see an e-mail address on their website. I decided if I hadn't received acknowledgment from the Lebanon City Police by this afternoon (my time in Denmark), then I would make a phone call to Myerstown. — CactusWriter | ^needles 10:45, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I have contacted the County sheriff's office by email, as well. It is highly likely that Myerstown doesn't actually have a police force and relies on the sheriff's office, instead, for its force (this is typical in areas with smaller towns). The sheriff's office appears to not have Saturday/Sunday hours, so, I'm hoping that by a stroke of luck, someone happens to check the email this weekend. Metros (talk) 10:52, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Good idea. I agree that the sheriff probably has jurisdiction in Myerstown, but I think the Lebanon city police probably have more personnel on duty. As I said, if I don't receive word back, I'll make a phone call within the next few hours. Thanks for your attention. — CactusWriter | ^needles 10:58, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, CactusWriter. The sheriff's office contact is here should you feel you need to call them as well. I've marked this as resolved since I've blocked and protected and since we've reported. Please let me know (email, my talk page, or here) what the response is from the office, Metros (talk) 11:00, 1 November 2008 (UTC)