User:Billleech (see User talk:Billleech for some discussion) and an anonymous IP adress (possibly the same user: User:81.174.164.179) are continually aediting the entry of this article away from an encyclopedic version to a version they say has been approved by, variously, the "residents of Henley-in-Arden", and "Henley-in-Arden Town Improvement Committee (TIC)". He has rejected advice from a variety of people about the nature of wikipedia, and states bluntly that all entries about the town must be approved by the relevant council. He has now also stated that it is "inappropriate for someone who lives outside the town to try an impose their unapproved design on a community." and has reported me for vandalism (see User talk:81.174.164.179 for this claim.) This design has been approved by our community.As has been commented, the approved version reads like a tourist brochure and not an encyclopedic entry. He has now taken to labelling verious people's reversions back to the encyclopedic version as "vandalism". What can be done about this? I see he has now reverted it yet again. DDStretch (talk)11:03, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
He is still continuing to edit as the anonymous user (see latest posts on User talk:81.174.164.179) where he claims to have raised a ticket in some unspecified place about my supposed vandalism. What can be done about this? If he has reported me somewhere, and it is not on wikipedia, what can be done in situations like this if any repercussions happen? DDStretch (talk)11:45, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
I would recommend that you first communicate with the closing admin on his/her talk page, expressing your concerns about whether the closing accurately reflected consensus; and if that does not produce a satisfactory result, then list the article on Wikipedia:Deletion review, following the instructions on that page. --MCB20:26, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Second opinions on WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE
I know this isn't the right place to ask, but I wanted a quick second opinion on an issue being discussed at the talk page for List of victims of the Virginia Tech massacre. Could anyone reading this (not admins per se, just anyone with an understanding of WP:NOT) have a look at these sections on the talk page?
I want to know if I did the right thing here. Babalooo (talk·contribs) made a legal threat here: [1]. Now, it's obvious there's a language barrier here, but I still found it prudent to block him until such time as he explains that he is not actually threatening to go to court about this. The legal threat policy is not just about the intent used (maybe by 'law' he meant 'rules', etc), it's about the words used. Even if he didn't mean to make a legal threat, it can obviously be interpreted as such by others. I said I will release the block as soon as he makes clear he understands the legal threat policy and has no intent to take this further. So, did I do the right thing? --Golbez22:18, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
It's not clear to me whether the editor is using the words "laws" and "charges" to refer to outside law enforcement activities, or to on-wiki reporting (i.e., bringing something to ANI or filing an RfC or RfAr). I would have sought a clarification before blocking, but in any event the question can equally be asked now. Newyorkbrad22:27, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
– Blocking admin is a checkuser, that's where the evidence is from, nothing more I could do even if for some reason I still believed that there was no sockpuppetry. -Amarkovmoo!05:25, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
This user is asking for review of their block, and their contributions show (at least to me) nothing but the fact that they could have been a sockpuppet. Could someone explain what evidence of sockpuppetry there is? -Amarkovmoo!00:03, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
*Checks SSP and RFCU for existing cases on the puppeteer ((User:Cowboy Rocco))*. I got nothing. Those 2 places are the only places where I think evidence would exist (other than AIV). Perhaps I should check AIV's history for the time of the block. Funpika01:57, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
The issue I have isn't really even that, it's that the contributions show they didn't once edit the same page. I'm going to go check a few more things to see if I can show that a connection is unlikely, but either way, contributions give no reason to believe sockpuppetry. I'm gonna go cross-post this to ANI. -Amarkovmoo!05:01, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
Okay, some evidence against it. Kkrouni's editing shows a gap between 2:00 UTC and around 16:00 UTC, with no edits at all between 3:00 and 10:00; that must be nighttime for him. However, sir Cowboy has a significant number of edits around 5:00, seeming to indicate that he is not the same person. -Amarkovmoo!05:13, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
Meh, on closer inspection, it turns out that it's an anomaly. So it's definitely a possibility. And the blocking admin says that there was checkuser evidence, so this is probably moot. -Amarkovmoo!05:20, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
The IP evidence is a dead-on match, and the fact that Kkrouni uses the same colored-signature as all of Cowboy Rocco's other socks doesn't seem like a coincidence. Raul65405:22, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
I had spoken with the contributor about this a while back, but I'm interested in some different opinions. I'm glad to see some more information about phytopathology being added, but most of these lists are wikitabled copies from APSnet (e.g. List of pear diseases is more or less a copy of this APSnet page) , and APSnet is quite plain about their copyrights and conditions of use.
I asked around for opinions on IRC today, and the friendly folks there recommending bringing it up here. Here's my questions:
Are these sorts of lists copyrightable?
If they are, could we get permission from them to release this under GFDL?
If they are copyrightable, and we can't get permission, do we (well, you, really) need to delete them all?
In the meantime, should such lists not be created until permission/release is confirmed?
I guess I'm just concerned that we're going to have to delete all these things sooner or later, and that earlier article sections about pests and diseases might be getting mixed into these pages (and so will be lost if deletion needs doing). Any thoughts? --SB_Johnny|talk|books19:57, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
It seems to me that the question is this: Is there anything other than raw information? If the list is a list of all diseases which fit into specific objective conditions, in an objective order (such as alphabetically), then it seems to me that it's just raw data (just like I'm allowed to copy the scientific name of a taxon from some other place). If, however, not all of the conditions I've specified are true, then (in my opinion) there is something more than raw data, and that something more is copyrightable. OdMishehu21:38, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Permanently blocked user Gibraltarian has for the second time removed [2] the WikiProject Spain template from the Gibraltar talk page, despite the majority view on the talk page that it should stay. The talk page of the IP from which he has been known to operate (User talk:212.120.230.72) says that "If you are responding to vandalism from this IP and the IP is hitting these articles, their talk pages, or any protection or arbitration related articles (such as requests for protection and requests for arbitration), please block the IP for a short period or ask an administrator to do so." The Red Hat of Pat Ferrick12:00, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately he's using a dynamic proxy. I don't recommend blocking it for that length of time - it's the only ISP in Gibraltar (AFAIK), and blocking it causes significant collateral damage. Could you please change the block to 3 hours (long enough to discourage him without to unduly harming others). -- ChrisO13:02, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Yes - see [3]. Nonetheless, I simply recommend applying WP:RBI to him every time he surfaces. (BTW, his IP ranges are 212.120.224.0/19 and 195.244.192.0/19; he more often operates out of the former, but both ranges contain some isolated legimate edits). TML23:30, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
New kind of vandalism?
We have a young Wikipedia contributer named User:Shark kid, who has been adding a lot of material to many military articles. He seems to mean well, but he has no idea what is appropriate and what is not. I have been deleting his worst edits, but recently Wandalstouring raised the possibility that Shark kid is really undertaking a new and very troublesome form of vandalism. Here is what Wandalstouring wrote:
"Quite a lot of editors have expressed their concerns over his edits. Doing so many questionable edits (often rather obvious) on such a broad field within such a short time seems rather strange to me and is quite an unusual behaviour for a new editor. I suspect it is a new style of vandalism. The idea behind it is to add a personal expression that can easily be identified as different from the background text. The great thing in vandalism is how long does my expression survive in a highly frequented spot. The problem was that RCpatrol, and other IP editors do a rather effective cleanup, ... and creating a login that soon gets blocked is too much work. The question for a vandal was now: How can I keep my expression much longer online? Well, one solution would be writing stuff that almost makes sense in an encyclopedia... Let's hope I'm wrong because otherwise this is the beginning of a new level of attacks which are dangerous for this encyclopedia..."
Frankly, I don't have the expertise to tell whether Shark kid is just an overenthusiastic high-school-age military buff, or a new kind of vandal. It was suggested that I raise the problem here, for admins to consider —Aetheling05:00, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm still combing through Shark Kid's edits, but so far I'm not convinced this is a case of vandalism. That said, Shark Kid is violating WP:CITE and WP:NPOV, for which I've reverted his edits. Other editors can also revert Shark Kid's edits if he doesn't learn to follow WP guidelines and policies regarding these points. However, let's assume good faith and help this new editor learn how to make quality edits. Of course, if strong evidence of vandalism emerges, then that's another story. Best, --Alabamaboy19:29, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
Permanent banning of specific text from article?
As a student at Geneva College, I monitor its page frequently. Many times over the last few months, "Travis York" has been added to the notable alumni; he's the administrator for my dorm, but definitely isn't notable. His name has been added by different people (I know from talking with them), and by several different IP addresses. Today, when reverting it, I put on something saying "don't add Travis!" Is there anything that can be done to prevent this, say a tag that can be placed on talk pages saying "don't add non-notable people"? Thanks! Nyttend13:44, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
You're certainly welcome to leave the hidden message, and to put a message on the talk page. However, we have such messages on pages like March 20, and people persist in adding themselves or their girlfriends or their grandmothers. Monitoring and quick removal is probably the best way to go. Joyous! | Talk13:54, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, I was asking for anything other than the simple hidden message; I guess I'll just have to keep monitoring it :-) Nyttend21:11, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
216.186.65.143 (talk·contribs), who seems to be the same as Omniposcent (talk·contribs), has been posting urls at Talk:Afrocentrism that point to webspages with personal attacks on an editor he disagrees with. I considered this a serious personal attack and blocked him for one week. He has now come back as 128.95.102.79 (talk·contribs) and continues to post urls, this time to this page, which contains a rant against wikipedia. I'm for indef blocking the IPs (both belong to educational institutions). What do you reckon? --Ezeu00:34, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I'd say a block, probably a few weeks at least, is warranted for the second, but I don't think indefinitely blocking is good idea. Why? Because, assuming the person posting from the educational institutions is a student, as opposed to a teacher/administrator, they aren't going to be there for more than a couple more years. I'd only increase the block on the first one, meanwhile, if it starts editing again. Picaroon(Talk)00:39, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
The lead on the article about Daniel Dennett labels him as an "atheist advocate." Besides being poorly sourced (the user wanting to keep claim says that a essay lauding atheism is enough to call him an advocate), it has a pejorative ring to it (cf. the phrase "homosexual advocate" used by social conservative critics). Furthermore, this sort of written work by Dennett is a minuscule fraction of what he does: we might as well also call him a newspaper columnist because he's had one published. Simões (talk/contribs) 00:41, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I've removed the comment. Unless a credible source can be given stating that he is a "atheist advocate," that term shouldn't be used. I also find it telling that no where else in the article is this subject taken up. --Alabamaboy00:45, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Jeff replaced it with a reworded version. Incidentally, I don't know what "atheist advocate" means, exactly (doesn't make much grammatical sense), but I've met Dan (and drunk the very good cider wine he makes) and he sure as hell advocates atheism. He would be amused that there's any controversy about this here, I suspect. Chick Bowen04:52, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Hi. I moved Union Flag to Union Jack this evening, while working on the WP:RM backlog. There has been concern voiced at the talk page that my closing the discussion as a move was inappropriate, since 40% of commenters opposed the move. I am posting here to request that others have a look at Talk:Union Jack#Requested move and let me know whether I made a bad call. Thanks in advance. -GTBacchus(talk)07:41, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Yes, this was correct. The pedant in me says union flag, but the common name is undoubtedly union jack. Guy (Help!) 08:32, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
User:Roobit using his talk page as an anti-Baltics soapbox
Please take an immediate look at this: the user is establishing an Anti-Baltic 'committe' in Wikipedia and uses the site as a tool for his ugly anti-Estonia propaganda. An admin - User:Coelacan - merely asked Roobit to stop, but that was all. Please intervene, delete the revision of talk page and block user Roobit for unabashed hate speech and hate propaganda. 193.40.5.24510:41, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
The case WAS already reported but Coelacan claimed there was no problem. Note that the soapbox of Roobit contains such phrases as “Ethnonazi state of Estonia glorifies SS legionnaires”, “United States of America (...) continue to ignore resurgent official Nazi malfeasance in Estonia” etc.! How long can such blatant abuse of Wikipedia - SLANDER - continue? Roobit has done it numerous times before, see e.g. [4] How long will this shameful propaganda be allowed to continue? How many 'last warnings' is he going to be offered? 193.40.5.24511:05, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Despite the obvious overreaction of 193.40.5.245, he is basically right. Roobit is using Wikipedia to promote lies, hatred and neo-nazi views. The quotes (and more now - he added enclosures) can now be found from his user page. I sincerely hope that administrators won't allow Wikipedia to become a gathering place for neo-nazis and tool to promote their views. Apparently Coelacan is not critical of those views, so I ask another administrator (or more then one) to get involved. DLX16:30, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
This user created four bogus articles on animated films/TV programmes, Fearllax The Cat (film), The Floordoor, The TimerStoppers and Cosgrove Top Hospital. I've CSD'd the lot. They (presumably) also inserted links for them into two other articles using two separate IP addresses 59.101.60.25 [5], and 220.233.237.60 [6]. Must be worth keeping an eye on - sneaky because as they're based on existing films, they'll usually get past new page patrol. Note: the lyrics for the "Cosgrove Top Hospital" song are slightly surreal.
While I have no intention of going anywhere near the bureaucratic tarpit that is Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration, the case involving Betacommand which is currently underway has relevance to some of my own actions while I was an administrator – specifically, my use of an unapproved, automated bot to perform thousands of controversial, out of process deletions at high speed without approval (example, full list runs to around 20,000 items). The Arbitration Committee's decision (not yet final, but already an unopposed majority) to revoke Betacommand's administrative status is mostly irrelevant as I voluntarily resigned adminship in January; however, the part that states that a user desysopped in this way must go through RfA to regain adminship is relevant, as it is generally understood that administrators who resigned voluntarily are able to request immediate re-adminship at any time.
Putting this through ArbCom would be a waste of time and effort for everyone, however it seems very likely that if that did happen, it would be decided that I must reapply for adminship through RfA if I wanted it – especially taking other issues into account; my misleading use of another account wouldn't exactly help (my insistence that it was not a sockpuppet might even have been against policy, I'm not sure), nor would my 3-hour block for disruption. In order to avoid any possible dispute in the future, I think it's best if I voluntarily give up my right to request re-instatement of adminship without RfA. In practise, all this involves is adding a little "1" next to my name on Wikipedia:Former administrators, so I have done this. This message is intended only to let people know that this has happened and explain the reason for it; if there is some rule which prevents me from making the change I made, then by all means do whatever else is required – Gurch15:41, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
As part of that general understanding, there is a requirement of uncontroversial circumstances. Given subsequent developments, I would doubt that this is satisfied anyway, so there's not really anything to give up. --bainer (talk) 16:25, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Fair enough. I figured the bureaucreats or stewards or whoever you have to ask would decide for themselves if that was the case anyway, but as that decision would presumably only come to be if I actually asked (which I don't intend to do), and the Arbitration Committee seem to be the only people who can formally specify a user must re-request adminship through RfA (or at least the only ones who have made such a specification in the past), I'd clarify the situation myself so that nobody in the future decides to try and make a dispute out of it. If the bureaucrats/stewards have in fact already made up their mind on the matter, then that's fine too. (I assume by "subsequent developments" you're referring to Betacommand's RfAr... unless there's something I've missed?) Thanks – Gurch18:13, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
One can only assume that the original rules of not needing Rfa was based upon the user acting in a way be-fitting and admin, even when they weren't officially one. It would be quite obviously rediculous to de-admin your self, run a muck, then get it back.--Dacium23:49, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
This seems to have something of a whopping great big ugly dirty backlog. Is something broken, or have all the checkusers gone on holiday? Do we need more? Cheers, MoreschiTalk06:36, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
It ebbs and flows. It's distinctly cheerless work. We've got enough people; it's just sometimes none of us wants to wade in the crap pit. I just cleaned out a mess of 'em, but I'd rather be dancing. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆16:16, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
WP:RFCU was created specifically so the checkers wouldn't be bothered with silly requests. Some checkers go through it anyway out of the goodness of their hearts. A backlog there is probably not any sort of actual problem - David Gerard16:28, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
User Subpage
I'm not sure if this is the right place, but I would like admin feedback on a subpage I created, in the wake of the CINEGroup kafuffle, especially if the admin has prior knowledge of the issue. Thanks.
I'm not an admin and I don't know the story. The page looks harmless. I don't see why you care so much about this, but I also don't see the harm in it. YechielMan07:17, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, first, thank you for the comment. I really don't care that much about the man himself. I just believe his actions are a blight on Wikipedia. I also wanted to show common patterns running through these aliases (I don't call them socks because quite a few are anon IPs.) Some of the info comes from another user,who had formulated a whole article in a sandbox entry, that was blanked by one of CINEGroup's aliases. He obviously believes Wikipedians are morons and will continue the behavior I've lined out regardless. I offer this as somewhat of a guideline to his behavior, for my self and others to mark the similarities when he returns.
Another one, Count Hindu (talk·contribs), was created afterward. This nonsense brings up the question of if there is sock-puppetry going on, due to the timing patterns and similar nature of the vandalism. I could do an investigation, but I have neither the energy or time. My main concern is Reapersss x, which I feel mocks my user-name, and I feel should be blocked for that, the unconstructive edit, and possible sock-puppetry amongst the chaos on the TVDSB articles in early December 2006. Thank you. -- Reaper X23:10, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
Why is it so hard to do checkusers? Seriously this seems to happen all the time and it always seems to be that a user gets banned, but no one ever checkusers even if there are other obvious accounts?--Dacium23:37, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
Checkuser data is preserved for a limited time. Only Speakingthetruth has edited recently enough for data to still be in the logs. Thatcher13100:59, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, I haven't learned about checkusers until now, but I will remember that for the future, maybe request checkuser data on Speakingthetruth. Nonetheless, we are straying from my main question: Would it be appropriate to block Reapersss x? -- Reaper X01:21, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I think it's not blatant enough to block without discussion, but I think you should take it to WP:RFCN or whatever replaces that page after it gets off MfD. CMummert · talk20:42, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I have indefinitely blocked Lovelight until if/when arbitration occurs. The user (on the user talk page) shows interest in having ArbCom look at the case so we will continue with the dispute resolution process. If the committee rejects the case, then I will reblock as a ban. Teke02:01, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Log in issue.
For some reason, I am unable to log on to be account here. When inputting my username and password it informs me that my password is incorrect even though I am inputting the correct password and have not changed it recently. When I click on the button to request a new password it informs me that there is no password on record, though I thought that was required for an account. The account is User:Niroht. I do recognize, however, that due to security issues I may have to start a new account, which I am willing to do if it is necessary, though I would like to avoid it. --149.152.63.10721:55, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
The password policy has recently been changed. If your password is the same as your username, you will have to request a new password. Naconkantari22:03, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I've listed this on the BLP noticeboard, but I think this might require more immediate action. The entire article is unsourced, making multiple accusations of crimes, for a person who is, at best, only marginally notable. Corvus cornix22:05, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
The AIV helperbots already note if a sensitive address is reported to AIV, but I don't see what it'd hurt to have the IP's talk page tagged too. SeraphimbladeTalk to me00:55, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
I'd only really be concerned about duplicate labels (bot labelling of pages already labelled as being sensitive IP addresses). Marking the talk pages might be wise -- would keep more editors aware of what's going on. – Luna Santin (talk)04:01, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Anon 88.110.129.24 making disruptive edits
Anon 88.110.129.24 has made disruptive edits to the FA Quatermass and the Pit by sectioning the lead section which is meant to act as a summary of the article. All the info he is sectioning is actually already in the body of the article. He also keeps reverting others edits to stop this, and taunts them with a reminder of the 3RR rule. LuciferMorgan18:44, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
Light current's edits have long since fallen off the recent changes and out of checkuser. But using a bit of black magic, I was able to dig up some of LC's IPs, and confirm that they match the anon. Raul65418:54, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
This is anon 88.109.16.63 this time and is the same person. Since Raul654's done a good job thus far handling the situation, if it keeps happening maybe it'd be worth requesting his help. LuciferMorgan13:57, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Yep, the negative penalty is way too harsh. Also something needs to be done with the incentive. Some sort of Featured admin for the week, maybe? I also feel some wikiproject would be better to implement this rather than an make it official. --soum(0_o)06:45, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Yeah... I think it would be best if any comments were left on its talk page, not here. You can be bold and change it yourself, or see what others think first. It's a work in progress. :-) Grandmasterka06:51, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Okay, this is getting more support than I thought it would. As such, I'm encouraging others to BE BOLD and help contribute to the list with your own items and ideas, because I don't touch all the admin-related areas. Grandmasterka20:33, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I have to say I am most unimpressed with the {{blatantvandal}} tag, which in its current state looks like this:
" Welcome to Wikipedia. We invite everyone to contribute constructively to our encyclopedia. Take a look at the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing. However, unconstructive edits are considered vandalism and are immediately reverted. If you continue in this manner you may be blocked from editing without further warning. Please stop, and consider improving rather than damaging the work of others. Thank you."
When I placed this tag on an offender's talk page (the Offender in question having been already slapped with a "test4", I expected the tone of the message to be far more serious, for instance:
"This user appears only to be performing bad edits, purely out of malice. It is therefore requested that an administrator block them at once, for at least 1 week."
well, something like that anyway. My point is that the current message is too weak. A template calling itself "Blatant Vandal" shouldn't be the sort of template where the good faith of the user is still to be assumed, ie one that welcomes them and kindly requests them to edit sensibly. What would be the point of sending such a message to a "Blatant Vandal"?
Incidentally, are there any warning templates I can use which send out a more harsh message than "test4" does, without actually informing the user that he/she has been blocked?--131.111.202.1712:54, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
There is no need for a more harsh message than test4. If they have continued to vandalize after test4, report them on WP:AIV. The blatant vandal template is just a way to kind of skip over test1 and test2 if the users edits have been unusually obvious vandalism. --OnoremDil12:59, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I used to work on the basis that {{bv}} is about a level-3 warning, adapted to be givable immediately in cases of obvious vandalism, and {{test4im}} is about a level-4 warning, when the vandalism's both obvious and more serious than usual. --ais523 13:12, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Yes, that is the way I use it too, ie. not to be preceeded by, but to be followed by test4, where vandalism is obvious and extreme, and where there are no prior warnings. --Ezeu13:19, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
This tag should be used for someone whose intent is clear but has only had one or two edits. Someone who, for example, replaces the entire page of Albert Einstein with "einstein is gay and wikipedia sucks lulz" is quite obviously not trying to test his or her abilities to edit. However, since it's their first edit, blatantvandal is best to make it clear that those kinds of edits are not appreciated and to give them a chance to stop, while making it clear that if they continue, they can be blocked without further warning. At least, that's how I see it. JuJube00:06, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Me too. If an editor's first couple of edits are vandalism, and I'm in a good mood, I might slap this on their talk page. On the other hand, if I don't notice it until they have a half dozen or so, I'll just block them as a vandalism-only account. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆00:30, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Warning templates aren't supposed to be "harsh," I'd say -- they're intended to fill in the gap between our general desire to assume good faith and our need to block people too intent or ignorant to stop disrupting the project. When somebody does something disruptive, we can warn them; if they do the same thing again, repeatedly, after some number of warnings, we can pretty safely assume they're not here to be helpful. That's the idea, as I take it. – Luna Santin (talk)04:18, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Ok thanks that's pretty much all I wanted to know. It's just that I'd come across quite a few vandals who'd already receive a couple of test4's, and I expected the bv tag to do more than it actually did. I'll take up your suggestion of AIV or test4im when I next come across such users.--131.111.202.1710:41, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Didn't see any of that, this was the garden-variety external link type. Still, I figured we should give him credit for effort and an indef block. SeraphimbladeTalk to me10:35, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Anon 88.110.129.24 making disruptive edits
Anon 88.110.129.24 has made disruptive edits to the FA Quatermass and the Pit by sectioning the lead section which is meant to act as a summary of the article. All the info he is sectioning is actually already in the body of the article. He also keeps reverting others edits to stop this, and taunts them with a reminder of the 3RR rule. LuciferMorgan18:44, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
Light current's edits have long since fallen off the recent changes and out of checkuser. But using a bit of black magic, I was able to dig up some of LC's IPs, and confirm that they match the anon. Raul65418:54, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
This is anon 88.109.16.63 this time and is the same person. Since Raul654's done a good job thus far handling the situation, if it keeps happening maybe it'd be worth requesting his help. LuciferMorgan13:57, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Yep, the negative penalty is way too harsh. Also something needs to be done with the incentive. Some sort of Featured admin for the week, maybe? I also feel some wikiproject would be better to implement this rather than an make it official. --soum(0_o)06:45, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Yeah... I think it would be best if any comments were left on its talk page, not here. You can be bold and change it yourself, or see what others think first. It's a work in progress. :-) Grandmasterka06:51, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Okay, this is getting more support than I thought it would. As such, I'm encouraging others to BE BOLD and help contribute to the list with your own items and ideas, because I don't touch all the admin-related areas. Grandmasterka20:33, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I have to say I am most unimpressed with the {{blatantvandal}} tag, which in its current state looks like this:
" Welcome to Wikipedia. We invite everyone to contribute constructively to our encyclopedia. Take a look at the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing. However, unconstructive edits are considered vandalism and are immediately reverted. If you continue in this manner you may be blocked from editing without further warning. Please stop, and consider improving rather than damaging the work of others. Thank you."
When I placed this tag on an offender's talk page (the Offender in question having been already slapped with a "test4", I expected the tone of the message to be far more serious, for instance:
"This user appears only to be performing bad edits, purely out of malice. It is therefore requested that an administrator block them at once, for at least 1 week."
well, something like that anyway. My point is that the current message is too weak. A template calling itself "Blatant Vandal" shouldn't be the sort of template where the good faith of the user is still to be assumed, ie one that welcomes them and kindly requests them to edit sensibly. What would be the point of sending such a message to a "Blatant Vandal"?
Incidentally, are there any warning templates I can use which send out a more harsh message than "test4" does, without actually informing the user that he/she has been blocked?--131.111.202.1712:54, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
There is no need for a more harsh message than test4. If they have continued to vandalize after test4, report them on WP:AIV. The blatant vandal template is just a way to kind of skip over test1 and test2 if the users edits have been unusually obvious vandalism. --OnoremDil12:59, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I used to work on the basis that {{bv}} is about a level-3 warning, adapted to be givable immediately in cases of obvious vandalism, and {{test4im}} is about a level-4 warning, when the vandalism's both obvious and more serious than usual. --ais523 13:12, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Yes, that is the way I use it too, ie. not to be preceeded by, but to be followed by test4, where vandalism is obvious and extreme, and where there are no prior warnings. --Ezeu13:19, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
This tag should be used for someone whose intent is clear but has only had one or two edits. Someone who, for example, replaces the entire page of Albert Einstein with "einstein is gay and wikipedia sucks lulz" is quite obviously not trying to test his or her abilities to edit. However, since it's their first edit, blatantvandal is best to make it clear that those kinds of edits are not appreciated and to give them a chance to stop, while making it clear that if they continue, they can be blocked without further warning. At least, that's how I see it. JuJube00:06, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Me too. If an editor's first couple of edits are vandalism, and I'm in a good mood, I might slap this on their talk page. On the other hand, if I don't notice it until they have a half dozen or so, I'll just block them as a vandalism-only account. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆00:30, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Warning templates aren't supposed to be "harsh," I'd say -- they're intended to fill in the gap between our general desire to assume good faith and our need to block people too intent or ignorant to stop disrupting the project. When somebody does something disruptive, we can warn them; if they do the same thing again, repeatedly, after some number of warnings, we can pretty safely assume they're not here to be helpful. That's the idea, as I take it. – Luna Santin (talk)04:18, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Ok thanks that's pretty much all I wanted to know. It's just that I'd come across quite a few vandals who'd already receive a couple of test4's, and I expected the bv tag to do more than it actually did. I'll take up your suggestion of AIV or test4im when I next come across such users.--131.111.202.1710:41, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Didn't see any of that, this was the garden-variety external link type. Still, I figured we should give him credit for effort and an indef block. SeraphimbladeTalk to me10:35, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
I see nothing wrong with the idea, though I really should be commenting at the talk pages, not here. Not really an admin issue. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me)14:36, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
We could rename RFA to "Featured User Candidates". We could make all sorts of, er, delightful puns with that FUCing phrase. >Radiant<16:08, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
We could have a Featured Administrators' Noticeboard Incident Thread (WP:FANIT), but I wouldn't want to suggest anything ever hits fans around here. Antandrus (talk)20:44, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Another one, Count Hindu (talk·contribs), was created afterward. This nonsense brings up the question of if there is sock-puppetry going on, due to the timing patterns and similar nature of the vandalism. I could do an investigation, but I have neither the energy or time. My main concern is Reapersss x, which I feel mocks my user-name, and I feel should be blocked for that, the unconstructive edit, and possible sock-puppetry amongst the chaos on the TVDSB articles in early December 2006. Thank you. -- Reaper X16:23, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
I blocked Reapersss x as a vandal only account when this was first posted at RFCN, not sure why it was moved here. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me)16:27, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
I was advised to take it to WP:RFCN, and they shot it back here. Nonetheless I was unaware the user was already blocked. Thank you anyway, case resolved. -- Reaper X18:40, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
The checkuser request mentions BryanFromPalatine, NeilinOz1 isn't directly related by IP but was mentioned as using open proxies. A quick glance at their contribs shows a sudden return from hiatus right around the time other users mentioned in the RfCU were active in a particualr dispute, and also a rather stunning familiarity with policy and Jimbo quotations for somebody with 0 prior edits in any projectspace... hrrm. – Luna Santin (talk)18:30, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Hi I was wondering if you could help us here. HoneyBee and Myself have some difficulties with a new user Joe Dick. He has removed a large amount of content from the Methos and Duncan MacLeod articles and each time the content is reverted back he claims vandalism on our parts and refuses to discuss his reasons on the talk pages. Not only that he has been reverting the warnings placed on his talk page leaving a message on our talk page stating Please do not post any further invalid warnings to my talk page, or I will report you. Please can you help resolve this as he will not listen to any regular users, Thanks -- UKPhoenix7922:14, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
If you read the talk pages, you will find that I have in fact stated my reasons and have attempted to discuss things, to no avail. Joe Dick22:25, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Hi there. About two weeks ago, I requested protection for the article Ronald Reagan, which was granted, but they said for only two weeks. Than this box {{pp-semi-protected}} was on the top, like with every semi-protection. The problem is that it says it was to expire after two weeks, and two weeks have one by, but the date in the box changes every day, for some reason, resluting in an unofficial permanent protection. Now, personally, I like it like this, because it is sooooo much better without the constant vandalsim, but to not say anything would be wrong, so I was wondering what to do. If there's any way to permanently protect this page, im interested, because this 2-week potection has been great. Happyme2203:31, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Someone put the expiry date in the template as "2 weeks," hence making the apparent expiry date change every day. —210physicq (c) 03:36, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
The box, or template, doesn't actually protect the article, it's just a notice. To see actual protections and unprotections, check the logs. John Reaves(talk)03:43, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Has there been discussion already about the doubleblue.info site? I just came across it, and the content seemed very relevant to WP, but when I tried to post a link it was refused, so maybe I just missed the discussion? Anchoress05:23, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
It's on the spam blacklist [10] under "#Essjay's list" but the only place I've seen it mentioned on the discussion page is here [11] so I'm not entirely certain why it was added. Is this familiar to anyone?
Right, sorry, I had to scrap my old post because of the blacklist, and when I re-wrote my post I didn't do a very good job of explaining what I was after. I'm not interested in posting the link anywhere (except on AN), because my interest in the site is due to the content (discussion about WP editors and alleged cabalism/POV pushing). The fact that it's a blacklisted site leads me to believe, though, that I'm not the first person to bring it to admin attention. Sorry for being unclear before. Anchoress05:40, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Ah, I found it. Look in this diff from April 2006: [12] -- it inserts a line comment "Site contains personal information about Wikipedians, and is being used to stalk and harass them." Antandrus (talk)05:41, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
We finally have a conclusion to the Essjay situation
The Essjay situation resulted in Jimbo calling for a credential policy which resulted in this straw poll which resulted in the community rejecting every policy proposal except "This is a proposal to ask the Foundation to make it a formal policy that checkusers' identities are known to the OFFICE. It is said that they are but it is not formal policy." titled "meta:Talk:CheckUser policy#Real name policy". Which up to now has only resulted in the change of Jimbo's proposal into an essay. We now we have an actual policy change in that its contents match the policy approved by the community. Kat Walsh announced May 1 that the board approved a Resolution:Access to nonpublic data on April 11 that requires "all users with access to non-public data covered by the site's Privacy Policy to provide identification to the Foundation. This includes checkusers, oversights, stewards, and volunteers on OTRS. In addition, all users holding these positions must be 18 or older, and also of the age of majority in whichever jurisdiction they live in." People with existing access have 60 days to get their ID data to the foundation. WAS 4.25001:47, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
That's terrible. It could increase systemic bias — according to UNICEF, one third of all births in the world are not registered. [13] That's one third of the world's population that has no ID. — Armed Blowfish (mail) 02:45, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Who knows? A third of the world's population means over 2 billion chances to overcome the odds. Such people are already underrepresented without discriminating against the few who manage to become Wikipedians. — Armed Blowfish (mail) 12:01, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
The overwhelming majority of those don't have regular access to the Internet, much less holding trusted positions in Wikipedia. I am quite sure that alternate forms of ID will be found and accepted should such a far fetched hypothetical case arise. --AnonEMouse(squeak)17:34, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
The overwhelming majority of the world does not have regular access to the internet. If undocumented people were proportionately represented on Wikipedia, one third of Wikipedians would have no birth certificate. Obviously, they aren't proportionately represented, contributing to systemic bias. However, it is still reasonable to assume that even if each undocumented person's chance of becoming a Wikipedian is less than one's chance of winning the lottery, a few of them still made it. (We are talking about over 2 billion people, after all.) Someone without a birth certificate is unlikely to have any other form of official ID. So, unless alternate ID can include another stranger who might not have an ID or speak English testifying that the person is in fact known by a particular name, I doubt that alternate forms of ID would be found and accepted in the majority of situations. — Armed Blowfish (mail) 00:32, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm not entirely sure how that is a conclusion to the "Essjay controversy", but it is news warranting note on this noticeboard. --Iamunknown02:48, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Right, it doesn't have much to do with Essjay at all. This has been under discussion since the last steward elections at least. In fact, the decision to head in this direction is what prevented Essjay from running in the last steward elections... I understand that pissed him off greatly :). --Gmaxwell03:00, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Brad Patrick, former Wikimedia Foundation lawyer and interim executive director, says in the foundation mailing list thread WMF resolution on access to non-public data passedThe point is that the Foundation cannot risk letting people no Foundation person has shaken hands with, spoken to on the phone, etc., from having the capacity to expose confidential information. One word: Essjay.[14] - WAS 4.25022:58, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
People are still mad at Essjay, after all these months, even after he apologised and stepped down? I wonder why anyone would still want to be an admin, beauracrat, checkuser, or anything like that knowing that after years of hard work serving the community, that same community may jump down one's throat over one mistake. — Armed Blowfish (mail) 00:37, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
And that is a conclusion how, exactly? Mr Patrick's comment sounds more like Essjay pummelling to me. Oh, whatever, the issue is irrelevant. Thank you for bringing the news to WP:AN --Iamunknown01:14, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I see nothing wrong with the idea, though I really should be commenting at the talk pages, not here. Not really an admin issue. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me)14:36, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
We could rename RFA to "Featured User Candidates". We could make all sorts of, er, delightful puns with that FUCing phrase. >Radiant<16:08, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
We could have a Featured Administrators' Noticeboard Incident Thread (WP:FANIT), but I wouldn't want to suggest anything ever hits fans around here. Antandrus (talk)20:44, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Another one, Count Hindu (talk·contribs), was created afterward. This nonsense brings up the question of if there is sock-puppetry going on, due to the timing patterns and similar nature of the vandalism. I could do an investigation, but I have neither the energy or time. My main concern is Reapersss x, which I feel mocks my user-name, and I feel should be blocked for that, the unconstructive edit, and possible sock-puppetry amongst the chaos on the TVDSB articles in early December 2006. Thank you. -- Reaper X16:23, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
I blocked Reapersss x as a vandal only account when this was first posted at RFCN, not sure why it was moved here. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me)16:27, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
I was advised to take it to WP:RFCN, and they shot it back here. Nonetheless I was unaware the user was already blocked. Thank you anyway, case resolved. -- Reaper X18:40, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
The checkuser request mentions BryanFromPalatine, NeilinOz1 isn't directly related by IP but was mentioned as using open proxies. A quick glance at their contribs shows a sudden return from hiatus right around the time other users mentioned in the RfCU were active in a particualr dispute, and also a rather stunning familiarity with policy and Jimbo quotations for somebody with 0 prior edits in any projectspace... hrrm. – Luna Santin (talk)18:30, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Hi I was wondering if you could help us here. HoneyBee and Myself have some difficulties with a new user Joe Dick. He has removed a large amount of content from the Methos and Duncan MacLeod articles and each time the content is reverted back he claims vandalism on our parts and refuses to discuss his reasons on the talk pages. Not only that he has been reverting the warnings placed on his talk page leaving a message on our talk page stating Please do not post any further invalid warnings to my talk page, or I will report you. Please can you help resolve this as he will not listen to any regular users, Thanks -- UKPhoenix7922:14, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
If you read the talk pages, you will find that I have in fact stated my reasons and have attempted to discuss things, to no avail. Joe Dick22:25, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Hi there. About two weeks ago, I requested protection for the article Ronald Reagan, which was granted, but they said for only two weeks. Than this box {{pp-semi-protected}} was on the top, like with every semi-protection. The problem is that it says it was to expire after two weeks, and two weeks have one by, but the date in the box changes every day, for some reason, resluting in an unofficial permanent protection. Now, personally, I like it like this, because it is sooooo much better without the constant vandalsim, but to not say anything would be wrong, so I was wondering what to do. If there's any way to permanently protect this page, im interested, because this 2-week potection has been great. Happyme2203:31, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Someone put the expiry date in the template as "2 weeks," hence making the apparent expiry date change every day. —210physicq (c) 03:36, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
The box, or template, doesn't actually protect the article, it's just a notice. To see actual protections and unprotections, check the logs. John Reaves(talk)03:43, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Has there been discussion already about the doubleblue.info site? I just came across it, and the content seemed very relevant to WP, but when I tried to post a link it was refused, so maybe I just missed the discussion? Anchoress05:23, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
It's on the spam blacklist [16] under "#Essjay's list" but the only place I've seen it mentioned on the discussion page is here [17] so I'm not entirely certain why it was added. Is this familiar to anyone?
Right, sorry, I had to scrap my old post because of the blacklist, and when I re-wrote my post I didn't do a very good job of explaining what I was after. I'm not interested in posting the link anywhere (except on AN), because my interest in the site is due to the content (discussion about WP editors and alleged cabalism/POV pushing). The fact that it's a blacklisted site leads me to believe, though, that I'm not the first person to bring it to admin attention. Sorry for being unclear before. Anchoress05:40, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Ah, I found it. Look in this diff from April 2006: [18] -- it inserts a line comment "Site contains personal information about Wikipedians, and is being used to stalk and harass them." Antandrus (talk)05:41, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
This arbitration case has closed and the final decision is available at the link above. Mudaliar and User:Venki123 are each banned from editing Wikipedia for a period of one year. This notice is posted by a Clerk on behalf of the Arbitration Committee. Newyorkbrad15:29, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
This category's CfD was closed as delete back on April 18, but it's still around. Perhaps the problem is, as User:After Midnight explained, that "technically, this category can not be deleted without editing the template so that it will no longer attempt to populate the category"? (Or one of the other comments...) I'm not confident enough in my template-editin' skillz to fix this...maybe someone with a higher degree of wikitechnosavvy would be willing to check this out? Thanks, — Scientizzle15:50, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I've edited the template so that it no longer categorizes into the category in question. All the pages in the cat at the moment will need to be null-edited or deleted to finally clear the category (unless this is another of the jobs the job queue does). There aren't very many, so it shouldn't take long, and then a simple {{db-xfd}} on the cat should finally finish the CfD up. --ais523 16:11, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I believe that everything will disappear eventually from the category as a consequence of every article currently prod'ed being either deleted or edited to remove the prod. --After Midnight000116:17, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I've deleted all the non-musical ones in the cat, but there's three musical ones left prodded for notability/spam reasons which I don't feel qualified to deal with. --ais523 16:32, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I've now null-edited those as well and deleted the (empty) cat. It shouldn't fill up again now. --ais523 16:57, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Jeff is a controversial figure, can be an odd fellow and can rub people up the wrong way. But he's shown himself over the past year or so to be a basically good guy and utterly sincere in wanting to play nice with the Wikimedia projects, and hasn't caused anywhere near the fuss he did on en:wp since working on stuff elsewhere (notably a lot of hard work on Cherokee and other native American language wikis and MediaWiki work). And notably, he's not making any of the legal threats he did last time around, and has stated he plans to avoid the article about him.
So if he does come back to en:wp, I (speaking just for me) hope admins will not react reflexively but will work with him in a productive manner for all.
(And I know the last person I said this about was Jason Gastrich, and that didn't work out well at all. But this is not IMO a comparable case.) - David Gerard21:44, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
I think it's a given that he's not allowed to edit his own article? WP:AUTO is one thing, but add in history, and that's a no-brainer. --Cyde Weys23:37, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
I am curious how he would express his opinion on how WP:COI would apply to his edits on subjects he is deeply emotional about and how he would interpret our rules on civility. WAS 4.25000:34, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I'd be happy to allow Jeff back on the site, assuming that he refrains from editing his own article (civil talk page comments are fine), and follows basic policy. Perhaps that should be a condition of his return, but I don't personally see it being a problem. Ral315»00:36, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
If he comes back, the history of his talk page should be undeleted (and he should know this in advance, lest he demur). I think if he follows policy, then he should be welcome, but no start-over. Chick Bowen01:35, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
He considers himself an authority on Native Americans. It may be not all his knowledge is published in reliable sources. Fred Bauder03:21, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Should he be required to address some of his past actions? I don't really expect anyone to care about his silly threats to have me and others arrested, but I would expect some concern about his claim (made as Waya sahoni) to have deliberately seeded Wikipedia with copyright violations. I would also hope for an explanation of the threats made to Jimbo. --MediaMangler08:03, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
It is very unlikely that allowing Merkey to edit again is going to lead to a good place. (Well, there is a group off-wiki that is rooting for him to start editting again, just for their amusement at the resulting wiki-drama, so I guess it will have value for some people.) If he does return, I will do my level best to avoid him. --MediaMangler14:24, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Is wikipedia really ready to deal with an obviously vexatious person who posts web pages like [[19]] this when frustrated in his endeavor to own certain articles, most notably his own biography?
Hrm. I blocked User:Jeffrey Vernon Merkey that was just created, not realizing this thread exists. Since there doesn't seem to be consensus to allow him, and some people want to allow with conditions that have also not been decided on, I'm leaving it blocked until such time the community decides what's going on. He could have just picked another username in the meantime though, I don't know. pschemp | talk16:33, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
The thing to understand about Jeff Merkey is that he's a really intelligent guy and he would be a great resource to English Wikipedia, if only he can be kept contributing productively. He's done some utterly amazing work with language translation software. He's not a "banned troll"; he is the kind of person we would very much like to have around. --Cyde Weys17:50, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Cyde. I think the only issues we've had related to Jeff we related to the article about him back when he hardly understood our project. I don't think there are any urgent problems in that space anymore. Jeff contributes effectively to many Wikimedia things without causing trouble. --Gmaxwell18:04, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Isn't Merk the dude who actively constructively posts to the mailing lists just fine. No trolling or civility issues, and has a lot of free content experience to boot? He asked nicely, why wouldn't we give him another chance? Mahalo. --Ali'i18:09, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Are any of you in private contact with Jeff? Does he want to edit under User:Gadugi, or did he want the new account, User:Jeffrey Vernon Merkey (was it him)? I believe in his good intentions. A note, private or otherwise, indicating he'll try not to do anything listed in his indefinite block would be helpful[20]. Given that, I'm willing to unblock. --Duk18:29, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I received an email from Duk, here is the content and my response.
Puddl Duk wrote:
> Hi Jeff,
>
> Per:
> * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard#Jeff_Merkey_wishes_to_return_to_en:wp
> and
> * http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-May/029852.html
>
> Which account do you want to edit under, User:Gadugi? Someone recently
> created User:Jeffrey Vernon Merkey, not sure if that was you.
>
> Will you abstain from doing things listed as reasons for your indefinite
> block ? http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=block&page=User:Gadugi
>
>
> If so, I will unblock immediately.
I do not think I will ever make the same mistakes again.
Yes, that was me. The Gourd Dance article has some serious vandalism
and had been that way for some time. I just did not want that bad
information about our culture there without correcting it. JohnTex
had done a great job on that content, but he is not native, and a
native person has a lot more credibility and background in fixing it.
It has been vandalized for months, and I just returned from the
Gathering of Nation in New Mexico where I led our Gourd Society
from Utah at the dances. Our leaders had seen the article,
and since the tribal leaders are the same people who are also the Gourd
Dance society leaders, it really harmed Wikipedia's credibility in
their eyes. It had to be fixed -- and immediately.
To date, I have invested over $500,000.00 of my own funds in The
Foundation and Wolf Mountain Group Wikipedia projects. Given the
level of investment and commitment, I do not believe I intend to
ever repeat the mistakes of the past, nor is it in anyone's interest
for me to do so.
Unfortunately, in blocking the account without consulting with me,
this new account already has a block log record and a black mark
out of the gate. Unblocking it is fine, but I will not use that
account because you folks failed to simply ask me before creating a log entries
of the account being blocked. If you can remove the log entries from
the database, I will be happy to use that account.
Jeff
>
> ----
>
> I'm sure you know the following, but it bears repeating:
>
> Things have changed somewhat since you last edited, including a greater
> reliance on citing reliable sources. In a hypothetical content dispute,
> where your personal knowledge of Native American topics might exceed
> published sources, the published sources are more important. See
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RS
>
> You shouldn't edit the article about yourself. Doing so will likely get you
> re-banned as it would inevitably cause disruption. See
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Autobiography and
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wp:blp#Dealing_with_articles_about_yourself.
>
> As a well known person, you will likely be picked on and baited by jerks.
> I'll try to keep an eye out for you.
>
> Regards,
> User:Duk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Duk
>
In response to the specific issues raised:
1. Jimbo Wales has assumed oversight on my biography and issues which arise with it I email him directly based upon my promises to him. To date, his methods of dealing with these trolls have been incredible. I have no issues with or desire to edit that article. It appears to be in the best hands possible -- Jimbo's. If folks want to troll that article with Jimbo reviewing every edit, then they do so with full knowledge their activities may be subjected to his scrutiny.
2. I have a lot of content on Native Issues to fix. I keep getting dumps from the English Wikipedia for our projects which have a lot of errors and bad materials. I am happy to fix most of it.
3. I did not understand the project well enough when I was "thrust" into the Wikipedia scene by a group of trolls who were bent on misusing the project for improper purposes and as a platform for as Jimbo eloquently stated -- "libeling others". Since that time, I have learned a lot, made a lot of friends, and come to love many of you.
4. After Reviewing Chick Bowen's comments, I feel obligated to respond as well. The word "Gadugi" is honorific in our language. It was a serious judgement error on my part to use this sacred word as a user name, given the level of disrepsect given to the account. As such, I cannot use this word, and Jimbo deleted the pages as a courtesy to me. I am 47 years old and a highly respected Native American Elder. In our culture, older people are afforded respect from those who have less gray hair. I also agree that respect must go both ways. Most Cherokee people (and most native people for that matter) do not fare well on the English Wikipedia because the culture here is apposite to ours -- they get frustrated at being disrespected by others and leave or get blocked. I have worked for over a year at learning how to adapt to this culture. In the business world, I have learned these lessons well and have ammassed more wealth than most of you will see in your lifetime. My IQ is over 190 so I am also not stupid. But I am not perfect. I am human and I am smart enough to realize I do not know everything. The best elder is one who is willing to learn from others. I have learned that we are students all our lives.
... so I just fully-protected it yet again as folks are insisting on publishing the codes there even though it was semi'd and WJBScribe already went in once and scrubbed the file history. Right now, that protect could be construed as pre-emptive, which is not covered in WP:PROT but I'm sufficiently concerned at this point. Can one or two folks review what I've done here and endorse / reduce accordingly? - Alison☺09:59, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I've had an email back from Anthere confirming that the Foundation is aware of the matter and hopefully we will have guidance from them soon. I don't see this a pre-emptive protection, we tried s-protect and it didn't work- the info was still added (that being said we can't protect every single article). I see nothing wrong with an article being fully protected for a while pending our finding out how far the Foundation wants us to go in preventing this encryption key being hosted on Wikipedia. WjBscribe10:13, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
It is pre-emptive. You can only use such protection for cleaning up vandalism or in matters of dispute. — BRIANtalk • 2007-05-02 15:23Z
Well all protection is by definition preventative but I would disagree that it was pre-emptive in this case as a lower level had been tried and had failed. I note the following comment by Jimbo about this matter from WP:RFPP: [21]. In any event full protection is due to wear off in a few hours, semi-protection should hopefully suffice from then... WjBscribe01:27, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Hi all. I don't have time to attend to this right now, so I'm noting it here. User Willie Work (talk·contribs) has been moving pages whose title contains humour to read humor instead. This is a new user who seems to have made these changes without discussion. I know these US/UK spelling issues annoy a lot of people, so I figured this should be investigated. Mindmatrix16:08, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Sometimes I get tired of ordinary page edit histories being cluttered with edits which are merely UK/USA spelling corrections. Anthony Appleyard21:21, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Oops.. was about to complain about the block reason then realised the username, if I was awake I might have spotted this (Willie... in case you hadn't noticed) GDonato (talk)
I think it would be more accurate to say that Kelly Martin rejected WP:OFFICE. Her reasoning isn't sound- Anthere edited the page on Apr 22 (and Cary Bass did so on the 23rd). The foundation clearly still believe there are circumstances where Office actions might apply- its just being underused while Danny hasn't been replaced. I've reverted her edit. WjBscribe16:26, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I agree that there is no basis for tagging this policy, which has a unique status, as "rejected." It is clear that there have been issues with how WP:OFFICE has been used and how administrators are to deal with articles that have intersected with the Office. These issues should continue to be discussed, especially when new Counsel is in place. But a user's simply tagging the WP:OFFICE page as "rejected by the community" was properly reverted. Newyorkbrad16:29, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
OFFICE is not subject to community consensus. It is true that it is not used much any more, as tagging something "office" often drew more unwanted attention to delicate situations. But still, if the Foundation wants to throw its weight around, it can, and Kelly's action was particularly silly. Thatcher13117:05, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
"OFFICE" is dead policy, even though some people refuse to acknowledge that (including, sadly, people who work for the Foundation). There was a recent discussion on this matter in which Jimmy basically said as much, but since it was a private email discussion, I cannot quote it. In any case, WP:OFFICE *is* dead policy. This also has nothing to do with Danny not being with the Foundation any longer; it was dead long before Danny left. I know; I did a great many things that would have been done as "office actions" but were not tagged as such precisely because WP:OFFICE is a troll magnet. Doing so burnt me out. Perhaps the policy should be left around as a troll magnet, but you can rest assured that it will not be used for any real purpose in the future. Kelly Martin (talk) 17:07, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I should add that the Foundation can throw its weight around whether or not this policy exists or is considered "policy" or "rejected" or even "banana pudding". They own the servers, they call the shots. Kelly Martin (talk) 17:08, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Is there some other tag like "historical" that would more accurately reflect the situation than "rejected by the community"? Or maybe (gasp) write a custom message instead of a one size fits no one template? That last not directed exclusively at Kelly, of course. Thatcher13117:13, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
The whole Office situation seems to be in a state of flux. The best solution might be to leave the policy as is for now, and comment on the talkpage. Input at the Foundation level wouldn't hurt either, although I suspect they might suggest that the subject be tabled until the new General Counsel is in place. Newyorkbrad17:21, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Indeed, Mr. Bass used the page today. Alive and kicking, and of no need for community decisions of any sort. As you said, Kelly, they own the servers and they can determine the status of the pages as they please. Let's not go tossing "I know more than you do but I can't tell you because it's sekret" into these discussions. If it's not onwiki <edit> or on publicly available official mailing lists </edit>, I consider it bust when it comes to these decisions. Teke01:45, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Considering the recent discussion on Foundation-l to expand the scope of WP:OFFICE (or at least translate it) to other languages, this seems rather inexplicable. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff)02:13, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
In any case, if the Foundation ever decides to replace Office with a different system or some such thing, the approprate tag would be {{historical}}, not {{rejected}}, wouldn't it? Although even that has mentions of consensious and discussion which probably wouldn't be approprate. --Aquillion02:23, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
But make sure that you've done the copying properly first. In several instances, such as Image:Redazalea.jpg, you have not. You are required to copy all free-content versions of the image, before it is a candidate for deletion, not just the current one. Uncle G22:30, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I have deleted all of this images on Wikipedia. I did not copy over all of the free-content versions of the images (Redazalea.jpg and Febpurpleflower.jpg if you are interested) because they were not particularly useful, however I did make sure the other editor was credited for their edits. I think that if an editor wants to post here (well I thought /Incidents might be more appropriate) to get a batch of deletions done it is preferable to making them tag 20 images to add to a massive backlog (ie by adding {{Subst:Ncd}} to the relevant image pages).--Commander Keane04:25, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Those speedy deletions were improper. Please read Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#I8, in particular the restriction in the first bullet point. That you personally think that the different sized versions of the images are "not particularly useful" is not a reason for deleting them so that no-one can use them. I encourage you to undelete the images and transfer them properly. Uncle G06:23, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Moved to board]. --04:53, 3 May 2007 (UTC) (needs a timestamp to be archived, so timestamped)
HD-DVD decryption key
Someone might want to go through and remove the decryption key from HD-DVD's history. Something like that could get Wikimedia sued into oblivion. Luigi30 (Taλk) 16:57, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
OK, I've removed all the versions since the key was added this morning- no content worth keeping had been added (and actually some had been lost) so no GDFL issues. But it may still occur futher back in the history. Thoughts on whether we need to remove all mention? WjBscribe17:31, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
I think that's OK- it shouldn't come up on any searches or anything. There's not much can we do about it really. It has to be listed somewhere for cascading protection to work. At least we can say we've taken all steps we can to remove the info if there are further complaints. WjBscribe18:41, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
As I have just noticed an anon pointed out on the talk page, another key remains at the bottom of the HD_DVD#Muslix64.27s_exploit section. I'm not really too sure about the meaning of such keys, but should this be removed as well as it clearly isn't necessary to the article? Will(aka Wimt)19:30, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
DMCA-wise, I think the key is only a major issue if there's some context as to how to use it to circumvent copyright. I'm no law-talking-person though. Without that context, the number is completely useless and would need deletion (WP:CSD A1 and such) anyways. I like how they're crying censorship on Slashdot and Digg, though. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 21:55, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Although, it is building up a considerable amount of e-notability. Wired has an article on it, among notable sites. We may need the actual foundation law people to comment on this... -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 22:04, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
We can have an article on "X" without the article being "X". We can write about the leaked key without including the leaked key. WP:NOT a circumvention tool. :) --Gmaxwell23:14, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Well, just to let everyone know, this is out of control. I suggest keeping watch on what links to Digg: since that article is fully protected, people are trying to insert the key everywhere (like in Hexadecimal). This will be a long night. -- ReyBrujo04:08, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I sprotected the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray articles (HD-DVD already protected, HD DVD-R, HD DVD-RAM, Blu-ray Disc, Blu-ray Disc recordable sprotected). Also, I am handing out indef blocks to registered users who disclose the key either in posts or username and 1 week blocks to IPs - without regard for warnings. Feel free to revert them if you think thats wrong (and please lemme know). --soum(0_o)04:47, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't think you should hand out indefinite blocks to established users without a warning under any circumstance. It's one thing if it's an obvious single purpose account, but please check to be sure. —ptk✰fgs05:56, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Not establised users. Only SPAs. Registered within a day and almost all of their edits are to hand out the keys. --soum(0_o)06:04, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. Long-term account that post the codes are getting 48 hours right now. SPAs are getting indefblocked - Alison☺06:11, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
And a bunch of others. I've lost count. Can someone monitor newpages?? I'm about burnt out here & need to do some (increasingly misnamed) day-job work .. - Alison☺05:53, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
We have to be prepared for more attacks!!! I just went to digg and all items on the first 5 pages hand out the key, with more than a handful being a call for help to get in into wikipedia. !!! --soum(0_o)06:21, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Are there really this many people trying to get it in. It seems like they would have been taken care of by the autoblocker by now. --SelketTalk06:26, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
(reset ind) Um, FYI... WP:RFCN has had two names listed that appear to be the keys in question (I know they look familiar, and when I tried to comment as such, I recieved a spam blacklist note). Would an admin kindly remove these and block the usernames if they aren't blocked. Thanks. CASCADIAHowl/Trail06:30, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
The history of that page is now unfortunate (TWINKLE grrr). I don't think we're going to be able to effectively stop the spread of the key without semi protecting every article. Its getting to be too many pages with edits that should be deleted. I dunno if the oversight list is willing to handle things? WjBscribe06:34, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
BTW, shall we run a CheckUser on the SPAs to see if we can stop the sock parade? 06:45, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
For the record: 17 U.S.C. 512(c)(1)(A)(2 a.k.a. the DMCA Title II (OCILLA) safe harbor clause. Which states, in summary: Wikipedia is granted safe harbor immunity from DMCA litigation, if we do not allow the HD-DVD key if we have reason to suspect it might be a violation.
in whole: "A service provider shall not be liable for monetary relief, or, except as provided in subsection (j), for injunctive or other equitable relief, for infringement of copyright by reason of the storage at the direction of a user of material that resides on a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider, if the service provider—" ...does not have actual knowledge that the material or an activity using the material on the system or network is infringing;"...in the absence of such actual knowledge, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent; or "upon obtaining such knowledge or awareness, acts expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material;" ⇒SWATJesterDenny Crane.08:29, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Deleted. Note also that Wired completely misses the point re. 'best effort' to remove. Plus ca changes ... - Alison☺09:21, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
OK, it appears it will be several more hours before the Foundation is able to respond on the matter (due to time zones etc.). In the meantime I propose we continue as we have been- revert all additions of the key and delete where possible. Its easier if we hold back the spread of the key now and relax our grip later than to do it the other way round. Things seem to be quietening anyway. We can then rejudge the matter based on the Community response (especially the WP:DRV discussion) and any Foundation response (including potential Office action). WjBscribe11:00, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
The talk pages of Digg and HD DVD currently list the key ([22] and [23], with one more listing at the Digg talk page with one digit changed). I am not sure what to do with them, as it is not put up there to disclose them, rather to have a discussion around it. --soum(0_o)11:08, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
FYI, the key has now appeared on Lurker (talk·contribs)'s userpage and signature, and he claims that removing it is "censorship". Can someone do something about this? 13:58, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
How about putting it on the spam blacklist? Unforunately this involves listing it somewhere, but listing it once of the Spam blacklist is nice if it stops it from being all over Wikipedia. --Deskana(fry that thing!)14:09, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm afraid the Wired article above is correct: it is hopeless. Perhaps we should seek some higher guidance on this. I would be really surprised if hosting this number (as opposed to the software that uses it to duplicate DVDs as in the Reimerdes case) would actually be considered a violation. The problem with the spam lists is that they will always find a new way to post it. When we block hex, they'll use base 64, base 2, base 10, hex with dashes, hex with spaces, hex with dots, spelling out the numbers, Morse code, whatever. Can someone request comment by General Council on how aggressively we should be suppressing this? I'm worried that we have also been censoring articles talking about the controversy. There were also a lot of no warning blocks early this morning (UTC). Someone should go back and look for collateral damage. --SelketTalk14:27, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Okay guys, this is the internet. Pandora's box, if you will. Regardless of whether we need an article on That Number, it is absolutely not viable to prevent people from spreading it around, either here or any place else. Let's not get into an arms race of stopping those people. Radiant!14:38, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Per Radiant!, this is something that will go away (or at least merge back into the dull roar of other vandalism and POV-pushing) in a few days after the story disappears from Digg and Slashdot. We just keep deleting it where it crops up – not because we're 'censors' or tools of 'The Man', but because it's not really encyclopedic – and not worry too much about it. I wouldn't even be bothered if it appears in rolled back page revisions. The Number is on too many places all over the internet (including a bunch of places well out of reach of U.S. law enforcement) for anyone to worry about something lurking in one of our page histories. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:42, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I see a lot of admin misuse of powers here. No warning blocks? Protecting talk pages? Indefinite blocks for usernames containing 16 characters (without any context that could possibly relate it back to HD-DVD)? Rolling back other users' comments as vandalism? Deleting other 16 character strings (not the same, but similar - but how would you know they're similar unless you had the true number to begin with). This is highly absurd and unnecessary. WP:OFFICE hasn't gotten involved, so how is it that we're so certain we're doing the right thing? There should really be an RFC against such hasty, improper admin actions. Brian0918 2007-05-02 15:10Z
Er, and an RFC is also absurd and unnecessary at this time too. OFFICE may still be sleeping. Why not hold off on a witch hunt? pschemp | talk15:21, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Bollocks to that. What a pathetic response to reasonable steps to stop the abuse of Wikipedia. You should be bloody well ashamed of yourselves, both Radiant and Brian. --Tony Sidaway15:24, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Ashamed for what? It's not reasonable to assume the worst. — BRIAN0918 • 2007-05-02 15:33Z
The worst isn't going to happen, because some administrators did their job. The worst, in case you were wondering, would have been a deliberate decision by the admins to do nothing and knowingly permit Wikimedia resources to be abused for the publication of that value. --Tony Sidaway15:59, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Uh, none of what you just pointed out strikes me as admin abuse; there are times to abide by the regular processes, and times to ignore them. I've blocked users without warning them before, I've rolled back comments... it's called "doing the job". EVula// talk // ☯ //15:37, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Talk about hasty blocks: I was just blocked for adding a 16 character string to my signature to replace my normal 4 character string (0918). Note: the string was not the HD-DVD key, of course; I wouldn't post that. How many 16 character strings are no longer allowed to be used on Wikipedia because they are too similar to the one in question, and how would someone know how similar such a string is to the true one unless they already possessed the true one? — BRIAN0918 • 2007-05-02 15:39Z
You're missing the point. Read your block log; the block wasn't for including any specific number, it was for being intentionally disruptive. --Cyde Weys15:42, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
You're just covering your tracks. Your original post on my talk page said I was "putting the HD-DVD key in [my] sig", obviously incorrect. The actual disruption occurred when you assumed the worst and used your powers without thinking. I didn't cause disruption, and so didn't violate WP:POINT. — BRIAN0918 • 2007-05-02 15:49Z
I would like to point out that even if wikipedia receives a Cease and Desist (which so far they have not), they are very unlikely to be sued, and if sued, very unlikely to be convicted. The AACS can do what they want, but judges will side with Wikipedia, Google and Digg on this, regardless of the DMCA. It's just a costly operation none of these companies/organizations want to get involved with. This is also the biggest problem of the DMCA. The problem for wikipedia is the SPAM affect that we are seeing now, and that is the only way in which this issue should be treated. Stop the panic indeed. --TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 15:43, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
A top ten website that had made a deliberate decision to permit abuse of its resources to disseminate something of great commercial value...now what are the chances a lawyer would say "nah, let's not sue"? And our most valuable resource: the Wikipedia trademark, would be the prize. They'd be crazy to pass up the chance, and who says a judge would not find for them? --Tony Sidaway16:02, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
As Tony says, we have absolutely nothing to gain, and possibly everything to lose. The HD-DVD key is already out there on hundreds of thousands of websites (including one of my own). None of us has the right to risk Wikipedia over it. Do your anti-copyright social activism on your own time with your own resources. --Cyde Weys16:04, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
None of us has the right to hastily misuse admin powers and assume the worst without actually getting an opinion from WP:OFFICE or following some policy. Going wild with blocks/deleted/rollbacks is not proper. — BRIAN0918 • 2007-05-02 16:18Z
It's not illegal until you use the string to copy movies. — BRIAN0918 • 2007-05-02 16:05Z
Without making any comment on the use of the HD-DVD key, I think I should correct this misrepresentation that it is a string. It really isn't. It can most accurately be described as a cryptographic key, which makes it a number. In this case it is expressed in hexadecimal, which is base-16 rather than base-10. It's still a number though. Just because it has letters A through F in it doesn't make it a string. --Cyde Weys16:17, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Without any context, it's just a string. How do you know what base is being used by a string of characters without any context? This is the problem here; you're applying context where there isn't any. Blocking users for having a string in their username, without any context??? How is someone going to even find that string, without already knowing what it is? — BRIAN0918 • 2007-05-02 16:24Z
"You're applying context where there isn't any" — Now you're just being ludicrous. I wonder what in the world the context of this could be. Geez, it must take a detective to figure that one out. You really need to read What Colour are your bits? This should clear up some of your confusion. The context from the HD-DVD key number cannot be removed. It has never ever meant anything else. If you could go back in time from before the processing key was broken and do a Google search on it, you wouldn't see a single hit. It's a flat-out lie to say that the number means nothing; its bits are colored. --Cyde Weys16:33, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I really can't figure out what you're talking about. I've noticed people who created accounts with the string, or similar strings, in their names, and who were immediately blocked indefinitely. Those numbers lack any context, and cannot possibly be linked to the proper context by their very existence. Someone wanting to find the key would need to know the key already before they could find those usernames. Those are clear examples of admin abuse. — BRIAN0918 • 2007-05-02 16:39Z
If the encryption key had been 0918, would I be immediately permbanned? — BRIAN0918 • 2007-05-02 16:45Z
If you really think it's admin abuse, go file a WP:RFAR and see what the ArbCom thinks. I'm pretty confident the vast majority of us do not consider it admin abuse. And your constant wikilawyering that this is "just a number" is tiring. Go read the article I've been linking you to. The law does not see it that way. Wikipedia can get in trouble for hosting this number, despite your meritless claims to the contrary. This justifies any actions taken to remove it and block people posting it. --Cyde Weys16:52, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't see the need to escalate matters. Everyone slips up. As long as the abuse doesn't continue, there's no reason to take it to RFAR. I argue it's just a number. You argue it's a key. We can debate all we want, but once one of us uses admin powers to back up our belief (unsupported by WP:OFFICE or previous policy), then we are crossing the line. — BRIAN0918 • 2007-05-02 16:59Z
"I argue it's just a number." — I wonder if you can even say that with a straight face, because it's damn obvious to everyone that you wouldn't even be making an issue of this number if it also didn't "happen" to also be an HD-DVD processing key. You really need to read that article I've linked you to twice already. You still don't get it. Bits aren't just bits. To the law, it matters where those bits come from (hence bits have "color"). And it's obvious to anyone where these bits come from. --Cyde Weys17:12, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Just wanted to throw my two cents in and reiterate what others are saying. The key itself has only trivial encyclopedic value and is unfortunately a piece of trivia that could realistically attract the ire of an organization with a lot of legal clout and a history of using it readily. Those who would put involvement in this "fight against the Man" crusade above the best interests of Wikipedia are, in my opinion, highly irresponsible. There is no reason that the key itself should be on Wikipedia. We cannot haphazardly make decisions based on our own unprofessional and, more importantly, untested interpretation of the law. It's totally moot whether we are within our legal right to allow this information to be published. The legal precedent has not been tested, and the WMF doesn't have the resources to test it. The notion of waiting around for a C&D order to come is even more dangerous. That shows that we have knowingly allowed the content to be published on the assumption that we'd slip under the radar, which puts us in an even worse position.
Wikipedia isn't for waging a quixotic fight against the evil media moguls of the world. Stop trying to drag it into a quagmire where it has no business. -- mattb17:30, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
This isn't about a fight against the Man. It's about identifying and counteracting admin abuse so it won't happen again. — BRIAN0918 • 2007-05-02 17:40Z
Strange, I lost that point in all your arguments for allowing the key to be published here. I haven't yet seen any administrative behavior that I don't agree with. Assuming good faith doesn't mean we have to be artificially naive. -- mattb17:45, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Which arguments were those? I only argued for the absurdity of all the blocks/deletes/rollbacks without any statement from WP:OFFICE or proper policy. Who cited AGF? — BRIAN0918 • 2007-05-02 18:07Z
Are you aware that WP:OFFICE no longer exists? It's foolish to say we must wait for word from the Foundation which will never come. WMF doesn't have any lawyers at the moment. We're on our own. --Cyde Weys22:00, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
restarting indent
Way to paint the situation as overly dire as possible. Obviously the Foundation still exists, and if anyone with inside knowledge comes out with a statement, we'll follow it. — BRIAN0918 • 2007-05-02 23:21Z
Okay, here's the breakdown. Hosting the HD DVD key is risky. Not hosting the HD DVD key is safe. We have nothing to gain and a lot to lose by hosting it. I'm wondering how you think the default position while we wait for word from on high is to take the risky option rather than the safe option. Your argument boils down to "X is risky, but we should keep doing X until we hear otherwise" rather than the much more sensical "X is risky, so we won't do X unless we hear otherwise." It's commonsense. --Cyde Weys23:29, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
More absurdity. Anyone can send a cease & desist letter to anyone else. Should we go running for the hills every time we hear that someone somewhere has received one? Unless told so by those in charge, we cannot self-censor or pre-emptively decide what should be considered potentially illegal content. — BRIAN0918 • 2007-05-03 16:21Z
Cyde, it also matters what the bits are used for. The ironic part of this whole thing is that as "the number" becomes the subject of all of these censorship allegations, it takes on a life of its own. Now, they aren't just the DVD bits, they are also the bits the MPAA tried to hide. They have considerable encyclopedic value in the second context, and when used in that context, it would be much harder for the MPAA to win. Remember the Reimerdes case was about software, not the number itself. The second circuit was very clear on that point in its opinion. That said, I think it unwise to increase the foundation's legal exposure unnecessarily. We really need some formal policy on this, preferably from above. --SelketTalk17:46, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I think we just ought to cool off, take a few steps back, wait to see what Office has to say, and implement it then. They have the resources to judge legal threats; we don't. I think all the admins involved have acted in what they believe to be Wikipedia's best interests, but having people leaping out and start issuing 48-hour bans on a first offense (or protecting pages without listing them, presumably indefinitely, or semi-protecting talk pages, or mass-pruning comments, or taking any number of other unusual actions, or simply saying that we must do X or Y) based entirely on their own unprofessional legal advice seems like a bad precedent to set. The Foundation has, you know, actual lawyers, people who helped determine all our policies with regards to the law, people who can set overall policy. Let them decide how we'll handle it. If they tell us to start fixing something, we can fix it then... Nothing is going to explode in the time it takes them to respond. --Aquillion20:52, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Okay I can understand that it is completely undesirable to have the processing key being spread all over wikipedia.org but I really can't see a reason from an encyclopedic view point, why we should not have an article with the name as redirect and to mention it in articles where it is appropriate. All the buzz around it alone makes it in my opinion worth mentioning. Concerning the legal side of it, I think as long as the wikimedia foundation has not issued an official policy/statement, we should treat it as if it were just another number out of a random number generator. Just my 2 cents. --LN215:37, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
The significance of the value can be discussed without any reference to the value itself. We wouldn't have a leg to stand on if we deliberately published it. --Tony Sidaway15:56, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Not fully true. AACS may claim that the key is part of their protection technology, but in it's current state, it's highly dubious that a judge would ever side with AACS on that claim, and the websites involved with this "revolt" to be ever convicted. The only way digg was gonna hold this back was by shutting down their website, and any judge would say that the viability of the company would supersede it's responsability of abiding with the DMCA law in such a case. They are safe under the "best effort" clause of the DMCA now. Please stop making claims about the strictness of the DMCA. Much has never been tested in court, and in cases like these the DMCA will simply fail to protect the DRM companies. It shows all to clearly that other companies should not be responsable for protecting someone else's secret, in the way it's currently defined in the DMCA law, once the secret has reached a certain level of no longer being secret. --TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 16:16, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
and any judge would say that the viability of the company would supersede it's responsability of abiding with the DMCA law in such a case.
Are you kidding? Or was that sentence just badly constructed? I'll also point out that the law is often read in such a fashion as to favor those who can litigate the longest (because they have the deepest pockets). Is litigation how you actually want to see the Wikimedia Foundation spending its limited resources?
I really wish people would stop trying to use Wikipedia for their personal anti-DMCA crusades. WMF has much, much better things to be spending their resources on, like making the world's best free content freely redistributable encyclopedia. --Cyde Weys16:53, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Agree fully with Cyde and Atlant. Peoples' unprofessional interpretation of the law is unneeded. Are you a lawyer? Are you willing to provide your legal services to the WMF? If not, stop offering your idyllic vision of how the U.S. legal system will operate in a hypothetical case. -- mattb17:39, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
No i'm not a laywer, but I don't think you need to sit and give paws to AACS either. I have read a lot of the DMCA cases, especially DeCSS related. Sure it's unwise to publish it, but I'm just saying that it probably won't be the end of Wikipedia as some people are doom predicting. 1. because digg is probably taking the blowout for this already if anyone is, 2. there is a very strong legal case about this, and it's the publication of the DeCSS code. http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/DVDCCA_case In all likely hood a similiar verdict would be reached even though this concerns even less text. I do not encourage people to publish the string of digits, because it could be a whole lot of hassle for wikipedia, I'm just not doom thinking either. So far we have removed all occurences before we even received a cease and desist/take down notice (which we are not obliged to do, only the people who publish it on our website are liable until such a thing has been received by WMF, but i'm not 100% sure about that). Don't make more of this then it is, we don't even have to use the "best effort"-clause so far. That is basically what digg said: "we did our best, we cannot stop these people without dissolving our company". You can say this is a call by digg upon the best-effort clause of the DMCA, and only a court can prove if that call will be legal.
This is where my personal speculation really starts. The company (digg) is being forced out of bussiness by DMCA requirements they need to follow, without being able to stop freedom of speach of their users. They cannot ban the posting of this string in every possible form (technically, and free-speech wise), they can only remove every case requested by AACS. A judge will rule in favor of the company because they are not the true offenders. The users are (and even that is arguable, but another case alltogether). Or to quote from the CCA case: ""The California Supreme Court last year ruled that one could apply preliminary restraint on publication of a computerprogram only in very narrow circumstances." That's the case for digg now. They have shown preliminary restraint and IF they get sued in likelyhood they will be cleared, because they are not the original offenders, just the once unable to cope with the mess. It is not the responsibility of digg.com to guard the tradesecrets of AACS, they just have to collaborate with them as long as you can reasonably still speak of a secret. AACS was not careful enough with their secret and now it's no longer a secret (removing it from 238000 sites is not realisticly gonna make this a secret again).
But let us stop talking about this. It was just a tad of information, context and ideas to counter the "Wikipedia is gonna die"-camp, and not intended to be a full essay. Regardless of the legallity, the spamming of the key is the biggest problem for wikipedia. We can always re-evaluate the legallity and necessity of the key in Wikipedia later. --TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 20:10, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
/me deleted that diff :) - for context - Hagermanbot unwittingly signed a post which had the string in it's edit summary, hence hagermanbot copied the summary. Martinp2318:18, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Speedied the userbox and will delete the questionable revisions of the userpage (not done this before so hope I work it out). Sam Blacketer23:34, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
For those with an apparently-poor understanding of the law (which may include me, but I work with this stuff a decent bit):
Wikipedia, aside from any Section 230 considerations (which apply here too), is DMCA-compliant, and has its compliance and contact notice right here. The DMCA -requires- that notice be given, and a hosting provider be given the opportunity to take down infringing content, before lawsuits can be filed.
If and only if we get a notice, we temporarily remove the material while discussion takes place, and while whoever sent it gets crucified all the hell over the place-the big bad content industry threatening to sue the free encyclopedia. (For that reason, it's unlikely we'd ever even get a notice, I imagine they're well-aware that the cat's out of the bag now.)
In the meantime, let's see what reliable sources do. If they publish the number, and we can therefore source it, we publish the number, just like we always reflect reliable sources. If they don't, well then, we can't publish something we can't reliably source or verify, can we? But let's not suppress this due to Chicken Littleism. We're DMCA-compliant, the worst that happens is that Jimbo gets a nastygram and has to do WP:OFFICE in taking the stuff down. Due to bad PR and ineffectiveness, it's unlikely it would even go that far. SeraphimbladeTalk to me23:44, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
There was a brief discussion on Talk:Main page about censorship of the number. It's now been removed by an anon, and I don't see any reason to restore it because it's not an appropriate topic for that talk page. It contained the number several times. Also people seem to be avoiding the spam filter using non breaking spaces. What next? zero-nine eff-nine one-one... James086Talk | Email00:03, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
I think Seraphimblade's suggestion is actually pretty good. This issue clearly has received notability now. So if we can cite respectable publishers, and just wait for what happens, that would be the sanest thing. It could be the only instance we'de allow publishing of the key within wikipedia and all other cases can easily be dealt with as spam. But i'd understand it if people are too scared to risk it. This would constitute as censorship btw, so we shouldn't deny that either. --TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 00:33, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Without commenting on censorship which, IMO, is used way too often and when other arguments have failed, I think that Seraphimblade has got a point (and not a WP:POINT :-)). --Iamunknown00:36, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
The Inquirer published the number: here. They're not exactly dedicated Truth-seekers (most people aren't), but... this should work for the sake of WP:RS? GracenotesT § 03:11, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Remind me again why the number itself (as opposed to coverage of the events surrounding it) should go into an article? At what point will the typical reader read a huge prime number and feel significantly enlightened? It's not Euler's number or Pi (funny enough, the former only enumerates twenty digits of precision)... -- mattb03:28, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Academic integrity and precision. We don't put that the speed of light is "really really fast", that the sun is "quite a long way away from the Earth", or that a mole is "A whole lot of atoms, I mean, really, a lot." (And that's a lot bigger number than this hex one.) Now, I doubt many users have experienced lifelong enlightenment after finding out the speed of light or the number of atoms in a mole. But as a reference work, we should be as specific and unambiguous as possible. SeraphimbladeTalk to me03:35, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
We already have illegal numbers at Illegal prime. Given reliable sources that publish the number there is little reason to not include the number at this point. Still, it would be nice to get an official ok from the Foundation. Has anyone had any success contacting Jimbo or others? (Is Jimbo still in Oz?) JoshuaZ03:36, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Only twenty digits of pi? Hey, we could use wikisource for this hex number if we wanted to :) This number is related to illegal primes, but is there a more appropriate article to put it in. It's more notable within the context of HD DVDs, and even more so of internet phenomena. GracenotesT § 03:54, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't think we need an answer on this matter. It's goes without saying that this is really obnoxious (I luckily am miles away from these articles). -- tariqabjotu07:13, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia has received a cease & desist?
I spotted this in this morning's New York Times:
Last month, lawyers for the trade group began sending out cease-and-desist letters, claiming that Web pages carrying the code violated its intellectual property rights under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Letters were sent to Google, which runs a blog network at blogspot.com, and the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.[26]
So it sounds like the nastygram has already been sent; question is, who received it? The lack of any official response on this is worrying... -- ChrisO08:00, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
The record label Repossession Records a while back created an article on their borderline notable band The Fight. However, they have posted a message on Talk:The Fight claiming copyright not just of images in the article, but of the text of the article as well. The original uploader, Repossession (talk·contribs), appears to be long gone, but what should be done about this, which is most likely now incompatible with GDFL? Laïka22:01, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
The actual copyvio content that the talk page edit referred to was indeed copied from some website which the author claimed copyright over, but it was already deleted (look at the deleted history). Because of this, the article was rewritten by the same author, and should be gfdl. - Bobet22:10, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
It sounds like they are claiming copyright over the article because they continue to edit it. No? If this is the case, I think the answer is too bad you licensed it to Wikipedia under the GFDL which is irrevocable. Am I missing something? --SelketTalk23:25, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
The comment left on the talk page was in response to the old content of the page getting tagged for copyvio (ie. the creator was claiming that the content could be used on Wikipedia, since he ostensibly owned the copyright to it). However, that content was already deleted and subsequently rewritten. The talk page comment is totally redundant in regard of the current content, so just ignore it. - Bobet00:14, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Well, claiming copyright is not in itself a GFDL violation. You hold the copyright to the last comment you posted. I hold the copyright to this comment. By posting it here, both of us have agreed to license it under the GFDL in perpetuity, but that in no way makes either of us any less the copyright holder to the material. (Indeed, you'll find a notice on my user page that I choose to release all my original work on Wikipedia to the public domain instead. Since I'm the copyright holder to it, I can do that!) Now, if someone's claiming an "all rights reserved" or "permission for Wikipedia only" copyright for material they put here, they obviously don't understand what releasing it under the GFDL would mean, so we delete it to protect both ourselves and them. SeraphimbladeTalk to me00:20, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Please take the time to read what I wrote instead of replying with something totally unrelated (and completely obvious). For the third time: 1. The article was tagged for copyright violation. 2. The author wrote that comment on the talk page, claiming he could use it here. 3. The whole content was deleted, making the whole point moot. 4. The original author, having been told about Wikipedia's rules, rewrote the content, never claimed copyright for it, and everyone was happy. - Bobet01:01, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Kind of a tangent, but Seraphimblade, most legal thinking is that you can't do that. The public Domain is not a license, but a legally defined state of information. Even the tag for PD-self notes that in the event that Public Domain'ing something isn't possible, the creator releases all rights, and thats probably the correct way to phrase it. -Mask?18:03, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
I was going to comment to the same effect until I googled around a bit. Apparently it is true that calling a Serb a Chetnik (or Cetnik) can be offensive, especially coming from a Croatian. In any case, I think MaGioZal's done makes it clear that he wasn't intending a good-humored jab.
However, I would appreciate it if Methodius would briefly explain why the term is offensive to him and perhaps provide some additional reading, just so we can better understand the issue. -- mattb03:06, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Reminds me of User:AnteStarcevic. He posted on AN/I demanding to know why chetniks can post on Wikipedia. His userpage is one big glob of anti-Serb POV, which apparantly he's been pushing onto articles, too. Luigi30 (Taλk) 12:18, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Deaniack (talk·contribs) was reported at AIV by Callmebc (talk·contribs) with "Well, it's kind of obvious: [27]. There have been some reverts but not all. Might be the same guy as this:[28] FYI". From the reporting reason, it was not clear where or how he was vandalizing Judging from his contributions, I saw only one edit which I felt was a vandalism - a wrong redirect for which he got an warning. After that, I did not see any others. As such, I declined any action against him ([29]). I was later contacted by Callmebc and this dialogue ensued, following which I left this message on Deaniack's user page. Please review the "verdict" :). --soum(0_o)05:33, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
I would agree with your verdict. The redirect may well have been vandalism, although to assume good faith I wouldn't jump to that conclusion without other evidence. As for the rest of the edits - he may be a POV warrior (and not understand {{DEFAULTSORT}}) but he hasnt' done anything that is best dealt with by a vandal block. JPD (talk) 16:02, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Please be informed that I am the office bearer of Anjuman Serfaroshan-e-Islam an international spiritual movement founded by His Holiness Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi in 1980 in Pakistan and being an office bearer I am responsible to propagate and preach activities on Internet. His Holiness Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi is an internationally renowned spiritual personality with hundred thousands of followers in Pakistan and across the world. We have several online website to serve this purpose and I am officially authorized from His Holiness Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi.
I take full responsibility of the content placed on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gohar_Shahi by me. Therefore, may I request you to kindly restore my article on His Holiness Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi?
I am surprised on such rude and biased behavior of English Wikipedia. Why such rude behavior with me? I uploaded an article on His Holiness Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi, a world renowned spiritual personality and I took the full responsibility of the contents in spite of that my article was deleted even I gave an explanation being a responsible person of representative of His Holiness Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi but no response at all!
What is this?
You claim to be world’s largest FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA THAT ANY ONE CAN EDIT but on contrary to this slogan, your policies are totally adverse to your slogan?
I am an authorized representative of His Holiness Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi and want to write an article, so that WIKIPEDIA should have at least a profile of world renowned spiritual personality who enlightened hundred thousands of Muslims and non-Muslims without any discrimination of cast, creed or sect.
I would highly appreciate, if you could kindly allow me to upload an article.
Look forward to an urgent response.
Regards,
--سگِ گوھرشاہی 11:03, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
After checking through the deletion log of the above page, it seams it was deleted due to it being a copyright infringement. Copyrighted material is not allowed on wikipedia - it's against the law as we don't own the permission to use it. you should also take a look at the notabiliity guidlines for inclusion in the encyclopedia, reliable sources must be used to show how the person is notable. Regards, Ryan Postlethwaite11:17, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Allow me to correct you slightly. All the material contributed to Wikipedia is indeed copyrighted and licensed under the GFDL (see the copyrights page), so it's not accurate to say that we don't allow copyrighted material. What we do not allow is inclusion of material under terms that are incompatible with the GFDL, such as content that already has a commercial license applied to it (there are some exceptions for fair use as regards images, but we don't provide this provision for text). If you want to place content on Wikipedia that previously appeared elsewhere under a non-free license, you must release it under the terms of the GFDL or into public domain if you'd prefer simplicity. Note that you are only entitled to do this if you are or legally represent the copyright holder. -- mattb15:06, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm very familiar with this page, having tagged it (and its other permutation) for speedy deletion several times. Each time there has been a clear cut & paste of content from other sites. The deletions were valid.
Okay, so obviously no one person can clear out the admin backlogs by themselves (as it is, such a "I can do it all attitude is contrary to the wiki format anyway). However, I think I do have a realistic solution.
Something I'm trying to do every night before going to bed is to address a backlog in some way, shape, or form. Tonight, I took care of a slew of I4s; last night, I took care of some I5s.[30] If every admin were to target a backlog and take care of maybe ten items and then went back to whatever else they want to do, we could start clearing out some stuff, but nobody would get too burnt out.
I'm not suggesting we co-ordinate our deletion efforts; that'd be a nightmare to set up. I'm just suggesting that anybody with a mop start chipping away at whatever backlog strikes their fancy. Like I said, just doing a handful of items every night before going to bed is easy, not particularly time-consuming (though anybody that wants to do 70+ items at a time is welcome to do so), and would go a long ways towards eliminating some of our backlogs.
I like the idea of granting "limited adminships" for backlogs, but as the badlydrawnjeff RFA showed, people aren't keen on that idea. hbdragon8805:38, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Another benefit of my idea: we don't have to op anyone new (though I'd love to see more new admins), we can use our existing admins. Just chip chip chip... EVula// talk // ☯ //05:43, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I wonder what the activities of the newly-hired volunteer coordinator are to be? I wonder because I was about to drop Jimbo an email offering to spend a couple of hours a week trying to figure out friendly, voluntary solutions to admin backlogs (in the form of invitations via email or on talkpages), when I heard that she'd been hired. I have extensive experience as a VC and I have long held the opinion that a tiny bit of non-authoritarian organisation could create a clearing for admins who haven't been active in a while or have been inactive in the backlogged areas to contribute, especially if it's approached the right way. I think 10 invitations a week to admins, asking them to spend say 10 mins a day for a week or a month, or 1 hour a week for a month, would make a huge difference to some of the backlogs. Anchoress05:45, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I would appreciate/use an admin collaboration of the day (posted on this noticeboard). For example after reading this post I took EVula's advice and cleared 10 images from that backlog category. But I understand if it is too much effort to get a daily collaboration organised.--Commander Keane07:10, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I helped delete some images, but there sure is a huge backlog. Some admin collaboration effort would be great. MahangaTalk08:15, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
A huge collaboration would be cool, but I still think that if we all just took it upon ourselves to chip away at stuff, we make wonderful progress. EVula// talk // ☯ //15:39, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Actually I already do this, for instance with the "articles that may be unencyclopedic" cat. Note by the way that it does not follow from Jeff's recent RFA that the community is opposed to extra adminships to resolve backlogs. It merely follows that some people are opposed to him being such an admin. So please do nominate more people for adminship. >Radiant<11:27, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Sorry I missed that RFA, I would of course have supported it. I think Jeff can be trusted to use the tools safely (for values of safe that mean not deleting unless he's sure, and not udeleting "just because" when credible grounds for deletion are advanced). More evidence that RFA is broken; I hope William Pietri is successful or I will be tempted to go and do something nasty to the RFA process. Guy (Help!) 11:52, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Doing something nasty... there's a thought. The RFA process keeps getting megabytes of discussion each week. I wonder what would happen if it were nominated for deletion? For the record William is presently at 100%. >Radiant<13:01, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Why not place something on the order of User:Dragons flight/Category tracker, or its summary, on this page? It could only lists admin-specific tasks that are backlogged/over the mean (something like an admin "defcon"?), working as a tool to coordinate work against backlogs... — Scientizzle17:22, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I think an admin-specific backlog table would be good idea. I've got the summary on my admin page, which is quite handy when tracking what needs to be done. EVula// talk // ☯ //18:01, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Likewise, I check out the summary on my user page fairly often, but a template on this page (I envision it just below the archives) could help direct admin efforts...I am, however, no bot programmer & Dragons flight (talk·contribs) seems to be on vacation, so somebody cleverer than I would be necessary to produce a rough draft template. — Scientizzle18:31, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
So, anyone try my idea yet? I cleared out twocategories last night, had loads of fun (sarcasm). I'm not suggesting that everyone do 100+ deletions (although not all of my clearing out involved deleting the images), but if all our 1,195 admins did just ten deletions a night, that'd be 11,950 items. We could clear out anything in a short period of time... Maybe I'm just being idealistic, but I really do think that if we just quit bitching about the backlogs and take care of them, we'd be better off. EVula// talk // ☯ //21:51, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Hold off for now, I think. We were doing that at the start, but its now in too many articles to makes this practical. If the Foundation decides its necessary, such revisions can always be oversighted. WjBscribe17:01, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Over on the Cornish Wiktionary, where I'm the only sysop, it seems the HD-DVD encryption key postings have spread to there too and I've had to prevent multiple re-postings. Has this spread to any other Wikimedia projects??
In one of the postings, a connection to John Bambenek seems to be possible - although it could just have been someone spamming his email address.
I'd appreciate some help with people tagging them for deletion over there, just use {{delete}} (which we've got a similar version of there), and I'll delete it right away, or add it to protected titles if there are multiple re-postings.
Please stop abusing admin powers. You're not acting based on any order from WP:OFFICE or policy, just based on a misconception you have from watching other sites' overreactions. — BRIAN0918 • 2007-05-02 17:12Z
I'm not abusing admin powers, and I'm not an admin here. I was just trying to stop the spamming, as people are probably going to spam this anyway. --SunStar Nettalk17:14, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
There's somewhere on meta where you can request for Stewards to help you out on small Wikipedias - can't remember where but m:Meta:Babel seems to be a good place to start. x42bn6Talk17:26, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I love the current version of the HD DVD encryption key controversy article, which states "Resulting from this was a shortlived battle similar to the one which occurred at Digg, in which administrators of Wikipedia attempted to censor the users who were posting details of the number." Seems a bit POV to me, but I don't have the time to wade into that editing discussion. --Alabamaboy18:12, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Well i don't see why. You can call it whatever you want, but censorship seems damn close. Wikipedia IS censored all the time. Only opinions are not censored if they have a wide enough base. But this is not an opinion. It's in the section with childpornography (at least that's the community decision so far), and with spam. That's just how it works. Just give them the satisfaction of marking it as censorship, it's probably less problematic then any euphemisme we would otherwise use. --TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 00:06, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
What to do when the key is used in references
On the article Digg, the source of Kevin Rose's explanation has a censored title. Using cite web, the title field reads "Digg This: [key redacted by Wikipedia]" as I don't know what to do since Rose included the number in his original title (thankfully, the software does not include the title in permalinks).
In another article, HD DVD encryption key controversy, this Inquirer article was originally cited (which also contained the key in its title). User:JzG deleted the citation altogether in this edit (rather than redact the number) and left the edit summary "But we're not going to link to that, are we, or THE WHOLE FUCKING SHOOTING MATCH CAN GET SHUT DOWN. You'd have thought people might hev got the hint by now." I would like to know if the Foundation has made a decision about including the number within the body of an article. If they do not feel it is relevant to include in the text, I would like to know if it may be included in the references section. There is some discussion here but so far no one definitively knows what to do. Thanks in advance for your help. --LEKI (talk) 22:17, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Linking to articles that use it in the title should be fine, but we should avoid including the title in our citation for now. JoshuaZ02:39, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
As I suggested in that thread, we can use another reliable source with the same information. Thankfully, there are plenty of them. -- ReyBrujo02:42, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Shouldn't we defer to office actions on legal issues, and leave it to them for a ruling before oversighting willy-nilly? Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 04:22, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Absolutely not. That never has and never will be our policy. We always do what is safest, and then refer to the Office. For instance, we block people making death threats and then refer to the Office, we don't just ignore them until we hear back the office (which can take weeks, if ever). Similarly, we know that posting the HD DVD key is risky, so the default action is to remove it unless we hear otherwise from Office. --Cyde Weys15:32, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Has anyone read this post by the EFF? Although they note that their post is not legal advice, EFF's Fred von Lohmann writes that there is precedent set with the ruling that posting DeCSS to a website violates the DMCA (2600). He writes that The DMCA entitles "anyone injured by a violation" to bring a civil lawsuit seeking damages (including statutory damages ranging between $200 and $2500 for each "offer"). For criminal charges, the posting must have been done for commercial gain.
So while the posting of the code may be a violation, it is not as clear if knowingly linking to a site that contains it would be. He writes "Ultimately, the district court held that an injunction against linking could be issued after a final judgment if a the plaintiff could show, by clear and convincing evidence,
"that those responsible for the link (a) know at the relevant time that the offending material is on the linked-to site, (b) know that it is circumvention technology that may not lawfully be offered, and (c) create or maintain the link for the purpose of disseminating that technology."
So it appears that linking is not allowed if all three conditions are met. However, any linking from Wikipedia, particularly when included in a reference, would have a legitimate purpose (its intent is not to disseminate circumventing technology but to quote etc). Hopefully someone from Office can confirm this interpretation. --LEKI (talk) 18:36, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Doesn't Wikipedia claim some sort of exemption as a common carrier or similar? The Foundation don't publish articles, the contributors do. I'd have thought they'd have no obligation to remove any content unless a cease and desist/DCMA complaint was received. IANAL (obviously!) --kingboyk18:46, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
If it becomes an issue that blog posts have the key in the URL, I can provide a static URL redirect to the blog post, so that the key isn't used directly in a Wikipedia article. Let me know. Ral315»03:35, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
No need for that, there are already too many articles pointing to it. We just need to pick one. -- ReyBrujo04:01, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Personal attack accusations and block threats by an administrator
It is not with enthusiasm that I am here and I am unfamiliar with the process, so please forgive procedural mistakes that I may make. My post here follows an "invitation" to do so by Atlant, who is the involved administrator in the incident described below.
As you might expect, this incident originates from the global warming talk page. At some point, a new editor (A), who appeared knowledgeable in the science, wanted to make adjustments to the article which were not in line with the mainstream view held there. The usual resistance built up (nothing wrong with this) but when the said editor noticed that he could not edit due to the restrictions applicable to a new account, two editors (B and C), who are much involved in this article, made comments that irked me. B first told this editor that he was blocked from editing the article for four years, and C said that it was "sadly four days, not years". B later explained that he simply made a mistake in the time unit, but the comment nonetheless intially influenced what came after, and C did not retract.
Seeing this, I noted that I could assess that it seemed disturbing for B and C that A could be allowed to edit the article. The discussion continued, but Atlant, ingnoring the previous comments made, was quick throwing on my talk page an accusation [31] that my comment was altogether :
i- Uncivil
ii- A violation of AGF
iii- A personal attack
and without any form of courtesy whatsoever, told me not to do it again.
Intrigued that my comment was called a "personal attack", and after noticing that I was the only target of such serious accusations and that Editor C's comment had been essentially ignored, I told the administrator on his talk page that I took his accusations personally and that I felt they were not acceptable. I tried to reach a compromise, either by suggesting an apology or by suggesting that he limits his comment to an uncivility note. He stick to his guns, issued me two block threats and accused me of wikilawyering, and following a more thorough presentation of my point of view, he merely invited me to raise my complaint here, what I did not want to do.
I although decided, after a few days, to erase his unapologized for accusations on my talk page but he immediately came back, explaining me that they are still in my history for all administrators to see and that "a ghost of his warning still lives on".
All the relevant information and discussion, or so I hope, appears in the links provided.
Considering all this, I thought I should ask for some views with regard to the following :
1- Was my comment uncivil?
2- Was my comment in violation of AGF?
3- Was my comment a personal attack?
4- Was Atlant's behavior towards me legitimate?
5- Is it legitimate for me to erase those accusations from my talk page as they remain after the failed attempt at reaching compromise?
I don't think your comment was excessively incivil or a personal attack, but it was a violation of AGF. I think the warning you got was proper, if a little harsher than I would've personally given. That being said, the behavior that provoked your comment was worse than your quip, and I'm inclined to agree with the point you were making. My suggestion is for everyone to swallow their pride and move on. Atlant did nothing wrong that I can see, and the reaction to the warning has grown far out of proportion to the initial comment or the warning itself. The best way to deal with highly contentious editing situations like this is to sit back and cool off a bit. -- mattb18:19, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
"a little harsher" is hopefully and understatement, and Atlant has handled the followup poorly as well. He's has an attitude problem, his warning was more of an LA cops "I watching you threat", and he has since made it clear that only a cumbersome process can check him. Authority should not be given to those who obviously want and enjoy it.--Africangenesis21:52, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Again, I advise you let it go and move on. Atlant's warning was justified, even if his message wasn't phrased as gently as possible (which, frankly, isn't a requirement placed on admins). -- mattb21:57, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
I'd say that the comment at [32] wasn't a personal attack. That said, it does appear to be a WP:CIV issue and definately violates WP:AGF. That article brings out the worst in editors, so I can understand why Atlant was trying to maintain civility on the page. Try not to wikilawyer whether or not your remark was an attack or not--just try to be civil and move on from this he said/she said debate. Best, --Alabamaboy18:20, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
It is possible that the other participants were on edge after an initial remark by person 'A', implying that he planned to go ahead and make a change to a very controversial word used on the page, even though he was brand new on Wikipedia. They may have replied in a more bellicose manner than necessary. While editor 'A' does sound well-qualified in the scientific matters, people could simply have explained the need for Talk page consensus to him before making a fundamental change in an extremely controversial article. EdJohnston18:39, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Off topic: Your attention as smart people please
I beg your indulgence. Since admins have managed to convince at least some of the people that they're reasonably sane and in tune with the community, I'd like your thoughts on the following two links: [33][34]. The first is an important essay by Clay Shirky, the second is my take on it. Feel free to go to the second and tell me how full of it I am - David Gerard23:04, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
That's very interesting. I'm not sure how or why Wikipedia should create a constitution, but I think you bring up some good points, like the existence of cabals. bibliomaniac1503:54, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
I feel stalked by this user. I responded to him, adjusted the label on my own records of users who concern me with their hiding of notices based on his feedback, but would prefer to not keep talking about his concerns based on one revert of a welcome that had links that seemed like they would be helpful to a user. I would rather not continue this conversation with this user, despite ongoing messages regarding this issue. I note that this user continues to message me as I write this.--Kukinihablame aqui02:52, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
How about you edit the encyclopedia instead of stalking these three users, only one of whom you have provided ANY evidence of having done ANYthing wrong? --Random83202:57, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't know why we still have to deal with this kind of stuff. It you want to keep mysterious lists of people that may or may not be logging certain actions, do it in a word processor. Wikipedia isn't the only place where one can type something. If you do decide to put something in your userspace, don't complain when someone starts asking about it. -- tariqabjotu04:14, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Exactly. There are many approved avenues for dispute resolution that have processes in place to protect those involved. If a person finds his name put up somewhere for good or bad in a place where he can't respond, that's wrong. - Merzbow04:45, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
There is nothing wrong with keeping notes on people you are watching if it is done in a civil way. Doing it on wiki allows for transparency in your investigation(s). As far as I know, there is no place on Wikipedia where a user cannot respond. If I am wrong about this should I delete User:HighInBC/notes? HighInBC(Need help? Ask me)13:49, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
As I didn't think my keeping track of particular users was uncivil, I didn't see a problem with it. When the name of the list was challenged, I changed that. Finally, I just deleted the list (the wiki one) to close this ongoing attack. That does not mean that I am not going to keep track of users whose edit histories are worrysome to me. Should I not? Finally, HighInBC, I see nothing wrong with your notes. Kukinihablame aqui15:06, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
You're continuing to accuse me of attacking him. The page is not the main issue here, your behavior when questioned about it is. And you still haven't provided one reason why you think removing your welcome template from their talk page is worrysome. When I asked that, you accused me of attacking you. --Random83222:05, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Diyarbakir, also known as Davenbelle and Moby Dick, has stalkedCool Cat for over two years, and repeatedly taken advantage of the anonymity provided by a sock puppet to abuse his arbitration committee topic bans in doing so. It's time to call it a day. Dmcdevit has changed his latest block period to indefinite, and declared that "Moby Dick really has no useful contributions outside of an impressive amount of stalking, and there is no reason not to consider him banned" (see link above).
I'm listing this here as a formality to notify other admins of the action and to solicit comment on this suggestion. --Tony Sidaway
08:30, 3 May 2007 (UTC) (timestmap added, not reflective of the time Tony commented, to aid archival bots)
He's banned. That account doesn't happen to be blocked, but he hasn't used it for about eighteen months. If he uses it again it can be blocked under the ban. --Tony Sidaway23:04, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
I suppose... A ban now would only be symbolic anyways due to technical limitations. I was merely pointing out a minor detail, wasn't requesting anything - or at least that was not my intention. -- Catchi?23:15, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
This case is now closed and the results have been published at the link above.
Freedom skies is placed on standard revert parole for one year. He is limited to one revert per page per week, excepting obvious vandalism. Further, he is required to discuss any content reversions on the page's talk page.
Freedom skies shall select one account and use only that account. Any other account used may be indefinitely banned. Pending selection of an account Freedom skies may not edit Wikipedia.
A user, Lucky outrageous (talk·contribs) has been removing the middle names of Lynx and Lamb Gaede, as well as the name of the girls' stepfather, and the middle name of their younger half-sister. Lucky outrageous E-mailed me to say that they had spoken the the girls and their family. Lukcy outrageous said that Lynx and Lamb don't want their middle names on Wikipedia, their stepfather doesn't want his name on Wikipedia, and the mother doesn't want the younger sister's middle name on here either. I contacted Lucky outrageous on their talk page with this edit, explaining what they should do about this. I also said that it should be Lynx and Lamb or their family, and not Lucky outrageous themself who should contact Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation about their name. Have I taken the right course of action with this? If not, what should I have done? Plus, what do I do next? Acalamari18:49, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Read above, please be aware that these pages are not the place to bring disputes over content, or reports of abusive behaviour — we're not referees, and have limited authority to deal with abusive editors. Having said that, it seems if You have sources to verify the names then nothing stops us having them in Wikipedia. feydey19:03, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
It's really a living bio issue - so the living bio noticeboard is the best place, but this one will do as admins should be good with this stuff. Are the middle names and the stepfather's name really public and highly documented? Apply verifiability and sourcing policies with a particularly jaundiced eye - David Gerard19:08, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Just done a search: "Prussian Blue Mark Harrington": the search results came up with him being their stepfather. It is public knowledge and there is no reason for it not to be on Wikipedia. Acalamari19:15, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
I went ahead and removed the girl's middle names and all reference to the younger sister per WP:BLP. I don't really see the relevance of the full name and birthdate of a 2 year old here, even if it is sourced. Last time I edited this article I was dubbed a "member of the Jewish Media" on a National Vanguard forum... should be interesting to see if I get bashed again.--Isotope2319:16, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Thank you all for sorting this out. I now feel extremely foolish. This shouldn't have gone here, and it was an easy problem to sort out. Next time I'll know. Sorry for this. Acalamari19:19, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
And then see this one. "Speaking in my individual capacity in my traditional role in Wikipedia, I am simply advising everyone to stay relaxed and focussed on the big picture goals of Wikipedia, and understand that people who disagree with you on this point are also human beings who love freedom of information." So that leaves us back at square one. ⇒SWATJesterDenny Crane.04:48, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
They're both kinda saying the same thing; chill out, the Foundation has not received a C&D. All's well with the world. - Alison☺04:55, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
This is only right, since many editors have worked very hard to ensure that doesn't happen. This is not, of course, an excuse to relax vigilance. Guy (Help!) 06:24, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
This arbitration case has closed and the final decision is available at the link above. Betacommand's administrative privileges are revoked. He may reapply at any time via the usual means or by appeal to the Arbitration Committee. This notice is given by a Clerk on behalf of the Arbitration Committee. Newyorkbrad23:38, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Is Off Grid Living spam?
I think I detected spam, but need a second pair of eyes to look at it and confirm that my guesses are correct. Please see Talk:Off-the-grid#Off Grid Living (spam) for a discussion of the situations.
I'd like to take thoughts here on what people think of creating a new noticeboard that all username issues can go through. If you check the link above, you will see my proposal, it works very similar to AIV, usernames can be reported, a few comments if required, then blocked or allowed to edit, users can take the borderline cases which they don't agree with here (and I believe that will only be a couple a week). Basically it incorporates WP:AIV with WP:RFCN but with far less bureacracy. We need to get this issue sorted once and for all. Obviously there's the RFCN MfD going on at the minute, but we need to sort something out before (if?) it gets deleted. I would propose we call the page Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against usernames or WP:AIU for short. I would appreciate comments. Ryan Postlethwaite22:47, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Strong support for reducing the RFCN 'cracy. I'd however suggest a more neutral name that doesn't imply all usernames reported there being inherently vandalistic (drop "vandalism") or that administrators are against them (drop "against"). I believe something along the lines of Wikipedia:Administrators' intervention regarding usernames (WP:AIU or WP:AIN) would be more appropriate. Миша1323:04, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
I like the idea very much. I've followed Ryan's proposal since he began working on it, and it's a great way to reduce and refine work at AIV. The renaming suggested by Mischa seems perfect too. Kickstart the new system at will! Phaedriel - 23:16, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Unvotelike, non-bolded, support. Great idea Ryan. We need something between AIV and RFCN. --TeckWiz is now RParlateContribs@(Let's go Yankees!) 00:32, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Per consensus at WT:AIV and WP:AN, I have created the above page, which incorporates both AIV username section and RFCN. If this is adopted, RFCN should be tagged as historical, and I have created User:Ryan Postlethwaite/UAA/to do with what needs to be done to various other templates and pages to incorporate the new system (there may be others so please add to the list) - regards. Ryan Postlethwaite18:09, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
This is a Good Idea. I've fixed some of the grammar: more generally, it would be nice if we could get rid of this practice of combing through the user creation log looking for dodgy usernames. Since most accounts never edit, the only thing that's good for is the edit count of the person getting these miserable non-accounts blocked. It would be preferable if the encyclopedia actually got edited for a change. Grrrr! MoreschiTalk19:00, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I've advocated somehow banning patrolling he newusers log before too. I think asking Azatoth to completely eliminate any user name reporting function from Twinkle would help reduce the amount of names reported, thus cutting down on the controversy surrounding the practice. Twinkle has generic "report to AIV" function that could still be used to report blatant cases. John Reaves(talk)01:45, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
But the new TW ARV has basically every possible reason for a username violation. So now you just check one of the over 20 checkboxes. --TeckWiz is now RParlateContribs@(Let's go Yankees!) 02:11, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Hello - the following may be in the wrong place, but I'd like to float things past people anyway. I'm here as PalestineRemembered [36], and I edit exclusively on one topic (you guessed it). I have personal reasons for acting in this way, which I attempted to explain on my UserPage. However, even my attempts to explain seem to cause huge problems. The question I have for you all is - does my UserName really present a problem? Most people use some form of nickname for much the same reason as I'm doing. Mine is slightly different, I'm using it to share with you all something I wish to share (I trust that makes everyones life easier). I'm sure many other people are posting much as I do, but with less transparency. Is there something fundamentally wrong with a UserName such as mine? PalestineRemembered09:39, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
As many of you know, there are now sufficient votes to desysop Betacommand for the remedy to be carried out. I've made it clear I'm quite sad about this, but I also think it raises some larger issues we need to think about. Except for historical pages documenting those who have had sysop status removed, we do not have much information available for admins about what kinds of actions are likely to lead to that circumstance (note that there's general agreement that some kinds of policy violations are worse than others, as far as admins are concerned). To rectify that, I've started a new page at User:Chick Bowen/Desysop. It duplicates information recorded elsewhere but in a very different form. It's meant to provide a reference point for administrators on, not just what to avoid, but what is likely to lead to this particularly severe penalty, and thus, I hope, cut down on future desysop cases. Please edit it and improve it, and please feel free to add links to it if they are appropriate anywhere, but since it has my name on it I reserve the right to revert or delete it if it gets away from my intent. Thanks. Chick Bowen03:43, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Where would Robdubar [sic] fit into the category? Sure he unblocked himself, but he also banned others (though not in a dispute). He also showed poor judgment, I think... hbdragon8805:07, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
It does fit three of the classes there, but anyway it can properly fit under a class called "Gone crazy". —Centrx→talk • 05:14, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
(ec) I didn't include Rob because he obviously knew perfectly well he'd be desysopped, so his example doesn't really help as a gauge of admin behavior. Also, there was no arbcom case beyond this confirmation. But yes, folks shouldn't do what Rob did either, so feel free to add. . . Chick Bowen05:15, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Now that I think about it, though, it was self-unblocking that really did Rob in. If he'd stopped after the initial wave, and then offered some kind of explanation, who knows how arbcom would have acted. Chick Bowen05:19, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
It does raise an interesting point - deleting the main page is enough, but deleting VFD (ie, the predecessor of AFD) - back in the days when everything was actually listed on the page, not transincluded - isn't (or wasn't) grounds enough for deadminning (although it probably helped cost Ed his bureaucratship). Guettarda13:27, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Well, there is the obvious difference that Ed was making some admittedly misguided actions in an attempt to improve things, and Wonderfool was simply bent on causing a lot of disruption. >Radiant<13:42, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
No argument there. "But back in my day..." ;) Seriously though, I suspect that there are things that would get you deadminned today that wouldn't have a couple years ago. We seem to be less tolerant, more inclined to take ourselves seriously...though necessarily, I suppose. Guettarda15:24, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Much of the increasing difficulty of passing RfA has been laid at the feet of the difficulty of getting bad admins desysopped. So in general, the easier it is to desysop admins, the easier adminship will be granted to slightly controversial or unexperienced candidates at RfA. NoSeptember 15:48, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Bah, this was much more controversial than I anticipated. I've deleted it. I still think we need to have a discussion, and have information more readily available to admins, about where the line is and how not to cross it. Chick Bowen17:13, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Are you sure that was vandalism? Because there was a problem a while back with the page histories, where people's browsers were being fed out of date revisions, resulting in large numbers of accidental mass reverts--VectorPotentialTalk14:19, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
I think I've restored the missing comments. I tend to think this was an accident rather than deliberate. Thatcher13115:07, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
There's nothing wrong with the archive. The earliest comment removed was 12:11 May 3; the bot archived threads with the oldest comment on 2 May, so no threads destined for archiving were affected. Thatcher13116:35, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Annoying messages
Resolved
Hi, I hope this is the right place to report this. I just want to say that as a new logged in user, I am constantly getting confirmation questions, saying Your edit includes new external links. To help protect against automated spam, please enter the words that appear below in the box. It's happening all the time. Can't the server figure out that I'm a good faith user eventually? And do these messages ever stop? Thanks. The Evil Spartan16:01, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Don't worry, it should only last four days (then you're "auto confirmed" (or something)). Matthew16:03, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
It's because your name contains the descriptor "Evil". The system assumes good faith that you are telling the truth that you are evil, and gives you those messages accordingly. Hope this helps. --Ali'i16:28, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
The part about 'evil' is a joke (I think!). The CAPTCHA is basically a method to prevent spambots, and to slow down the rate of new users linking to their new favorite site on every page even remotely relevant. I do a lot of anti-spam work, and I find that when a new user is linking to a site on many articles as their first few edits, they're almost always doing it badly (for example, linking to sites for PSP emulation on Homebrewing). I'm not assuming bad faith here; I have every belief that they mean to improve Wikipedia. I just think that they go about it the wrong way. Veinor(talk to me)17:25, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Glance through my contribs. I'm sarcastic to the point of being a dick. This, however, is a new user who probably doesnt know that mediawiki doesnt actually do that. -Mask?17:35, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Well glancing through his contribs, I see him warning users, and "reverting" as some of his earliest edits, followed quickly by loading TWINKLE into his monobook.js, so I doubt he has trouble figuring out a lot about MediaWiki (and that what I said was a joke). Especially since his query had already been answered. --Ali'i17:59, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
The last thing I want or need or am qualified to do is to get into an argument with a lawyer. Please could some kind admin look at this and work out what the right thing to do is? Thanks. Philip Trueman16:47, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
This guy is basically Iviewit mark two; that account was eventually blocked (by me) for being a corporate username. Apparently, they might just be business associates, but this definitely looks like a meatpuppetry job to me. Veinor(talk to me)17:22, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
What lawyer? A man who represents himself has a fool for a client. Blatant sockpuppet blocked. Guy (Help!) 17:34, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Community sanctions
As you're probably aware, there's presently an MFD on the community sanction board, with the suggestion that such sanctions should in fact be discussed on the admin board. Supposing for a second that this suggestion meets consensus, could we at least create a new sub-board for it, e.g. Wikipedia:Administrator's noticeboard/Problem users or something like that? The reason I'm saying this is because AN and ANI are both overly lengthy already, and it wouldn't hurt to make a clear split. >Radiant<07:56, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
I think part of the problem is that that doesn't seem like a good way to be dividing up tasks. This is analogous to the WP:PAIN issues. At this point, I would rather have it in a highly trafficked board, and retain our current process. Why is traffic bad? If it is because no one can follow them all, I'm not convinced that's a bad thing; having people devoting time to bans as an end in themselves is much less representative of the community than people who happen upon such discussions in a highly trafficked noticeboard. Dmcdevit·t08:32, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
High traffic is bad not because individual people might not be able to follow every issue (which as you say isn't a problem) but because individual issues can get lost in the flood. Both AN and ANI are very large and still growing, so we will benefit from a split or reorganisation at some point. Imho. >Radiant<10:02, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't know that the same amount of content broken up onto 6 different pages is easier to follow. It's surely not clear why this would be the case. Christopher Parham(talk)19:34, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Radiant... it doesn't make sense to discuss community bans here even if the WP:CSN page is deleted or archived (and all indications are that it will be). Beyond the fact that a community ban isn't generally an administrative task, it's just going to overload this board... and even moreso ANI if for some reason people wanted to start ban discussions there. There are already enough questionable reports at ANI as it is.--Isotope2320:13, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
I think ANI is already too highly trafficked, but if CSN is retired, I have to wonder how much more traffic will be sent AN/ANI's way. Maybe 1 thread per day? That's not enough to get worried about. --Akhilleus (talk) 04:30, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
I had a quarrel with User:Jeff dean ([38], [39]) which he seems to take quite seriously. After my changes were accepted, he defaced some pictures linked from BMW motorcycles, invalidated them and removed the link from the article. He was asked to stop, but ignored this and continued to remove content.
As he expressed ownership of some material in Wikipeda, I have to assume that he is trying to leave behind scorched earth.
Could someone please ask him (again) to stop (I'm pretty sure he won't listen to me), and more important, make sure that no material is lost? (Files are involved, which I as an IP cannot handle.)
To put it in simpler terms, User:Jeff dean is vandalizing a number of images by uploading blank images over them. I've blocked him for 24 hours until this is sorted out. --Carnildo22:18, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. Could you please revert the changes on the pictures? A bot already marked them for speedy deletion because they are all identically blank. --87.189.126.65
This arbitration case has closed and the decision is available at the link above. Certified.Gangsta and Ideogram are each placed on revert parole for one year, and Ideogram is admonished to adhere to all Wikipedia policies. For the arbitration committee, David Mestel(Talk)20:45, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Where was this discussion to change venue held? How was it advertised? Untill I see consensus, I'll do my reporting to RfCN. -Mask?21:54, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
It looks like the MfD on RfCN is going to be kept. I've added a proposed tag, and another user is raising similiar questions on the talkpage of your board. You need to get broader consensus on this. -Mask?22:04, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Consensus seams clear to me, We've clarified comments on WT:UAA, it's going to be a propsed merge once the MfD is over - there's been no opposes to this page. Ryan Postlethwaite22:06, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Start the process at WT:RFCN and mention it on the Villiage Pump. I'll oppose personally, but im not going to be a dick about it, if the consensus is to merge in a full discussion, merge away. Untill then, this is just a proposal. -Mask?22:09, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
I recently encountered Sportvereinigung Dynamo, which was written primarily by two editors who are apparently native German speakers who are relative newcomers to the English version of Wikipedia. The article references the German version of Wikipedia, which is inappropriate, so I added Template:Citecheck and made a suggestion that the authors should find references outside the German version of Wikipedia. I received a response from User:Lucken that did not quite make sense but which seemed to ask about where Wikipedia states that Wikipedia should not be used as a reference. I then pointed him to Wikipedia:Citing sources. User:Lucken then removed the warning template without really fixing the problem with the referencing. Someone else posted something in German on the talk page which may or may not referred to my comment.
I have the sense that this could be a lingual problem or a misunderstanding about the English version of Wikipedia. Could an administrator who understands German try to communicate to User:Lucken about the referencing in Sportvereinigung Dynamo? Also, if my warning template was inappropriate, it can be removed. (It looked appropriate to me.) Dr. Submillimeter22:19, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Internet rumors are circulating that Jay-Z was in plane crash and died. The article is already sprotected (since April, if I remember) but we need to make sure no claims of death are added to the article until we hear something more concrete (they are saying now he wasn't on the plane, but that may not stop some from adding false info to the article). For news on the incident, see this article on TMZ.com.↔NMajdan•talk18:38, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Apparently very much alive, though the rumour mill is still running full-tilt. Might be an idea to add a factual section to the article now to prevent nonsense - Alison☺18:59, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Hmmm. I wonder if the fact that the article was already sprotected prevented anons from vandalizing the page and thus prevented it from being "Wikipedia reports Jay-Z's death" in the media. I still think all BLPs should be sprotected.↔NMajdan•talk19:13, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Some bots deliberately run without a flag, as long as they are approved it doesn't matter. MartinBot is running as an anti-vandal bot, and it is useful to see and review its edits on Recent Changes. The appearance of edits there is what a bot flag suppresses. Prodegotalk01:11, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
This is a relentless POV push, full of neologisms and originating, if past experience is anything to go by, with the "bravehearts" forums and kiltmen.org. I have nuked some of the crap, I anticipate the usual shitstorm. Removal of this content is needless to say always an act of censorship suppression, yada yada. There have been numerous meta-debates with Dr1819/Mugaliens, every one of which has gone on and on endlessly and been characterised by patronising assertions about our motivations for removing this nonsense. If only he'd stick to aviation topics we'd be fine, but he won't.
Does you last sentence mean "interested in [[aviation] and [men wearing [pantyhose and nothing else that I can see]]]", or "interested in [[aviation] and [men wearing pantyhose] and [nothing else that I can see]]"? :-) --Fut.Perf.☼09:26, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Along with censorship, you forgot to mention the conspiracy to keep men in pants. It's amazing how many conspiracies supposedly happen everyday in the world. Must be a conspiracy :-)--Alabamaboy14:54, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
I originally started the Kiyotaki Kawaguchi article. Kawaguchi's actual name, however, is Kiyotake Kawaguchi. In the meantime, someone else started an article under that name. A merge was proposed and there was no discussion for several months. I've combined all the information from both articles into the Kiyotake article and the Kiyotaki version can now safely be deleted. Thank you in advance. Cla6810:35, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
I redirected the misspelled title to the properly-spelled one. You're probably not the only one who might make that misspelling, so having a redirect at the misspelled title may be useful. Also, if you merged information, we have to leave the page history intact to satisfy the GFDL. SeraphimbladeTalk to me10:48, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Some editors are trying to delete the weapon systems list from this article. It is the main part of this article. Here is the last revision of the intact article:
Surviving an AfD or DRV doesn't mean the article can't be edited as normal. If you disagree with the edits, you're probably better to discuss them on the talk page, or seek dispute resolution if agreement can't be reached that way. SeraphimbladeTalk to me08:28, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Discussion has already been tried and failed. Dispute resolution suggests protecting the page while further discussion continues. I am also asking other editors and admins who are reading this to come to the talk page. I am also asking those MANY editors and admins who commented on the AFD, DRV, and PREVIOUS incident report to also come to the talk page. I also am asking those who understand better the dispute resolution processes, and incident boards, to take the appropriate actions. I do not know all of them. I have used many of the dispute resolution processes in the past, but I have found that until some admins get involved, genuine discussion frequently does not occur on the talk pages dealing with Arab and/or Israeli articles. But the bottom line is that an attempt to delete the main part of the article is happening YET AGAIN. The weapon systems list is the reason this article can not be merged with other articles, and should not be merged. It is another roundabout deletion without having to go through AFD. I am requesting that the last intact revision be protected, so as not to allow this roundabout deletion to stand. Here is the last revision with the intact article:
I would like to second Timeshifter's concerns. I would just add that if protection is to go into effect that the latest version with the section in question intact and new references added since be used. Here is the diff: [40]Tiamut12:11, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
The new format for the list of U.S.-supplied weapon systems greatly reduced its length, but without deleting any of the list. I support the merging of the pages. Thanks to everyone who helped, and especially ChrisO and Zleitzen. --Timeshifter19:50, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Resolved
