• I am in support of removal of the autopatrolled right. There are simply too many potentially problematic stubs for me to be comfortable with him mass-creating without someone checking his work (in addition to the issues mentioned above, a random spot-check showed about 75% of them are orphans). I'm not sure we need to go to S.v.G. levels of article nuking, but I wouldn't be opposed if someone were to put it up for debate. Primefac (talk) 00:34, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• I'm surprised to see SwisterTwister do this, because he's a stickler for good sourcing at AfC. SarahSV ^(talk) 00:50, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • And had issues in the past at AfD with leaving generic "delete" comments...does seem to be a 180 in philosophy but I'm sure there's a reason for it. ansh666 01:11, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Primefac removed SwisterTwister as an AfC participant on 15:02, 4 May, [5] because of concerns about copyvios not being spotted, and ST began creating the stubs at 21:28, 4 May. SarahSV ^(talk) 02:31, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Would it be beneficial to take a route similar to the handling of SvG's articles? Meaning, all the ST articles with BLP violations are placed in a draft space for the time being to allow editors an opportunity to clean them up or delete them after a pre-determined deadline. I must add I am surprised this issue originates from an editor like ST.TheGracefulSlick (talk) 01:33, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• I haven't followed past SwisterTwister-related issues, but I'm surprised to see this from an experienced editor. On the one hand, most if not all of these people would pass WP:PROF, and it's not unusual for academic articles to rely on limited and non-independent sources for basic biographical and career information. We're not going to suspect that the University of Pittsburgh is lying when they say that Rocky Tuan is on their faculty. The main problem with these articles isn't so much that they fall short of some WP:ALLCAPS, it's that they're useless. These days, a good rule of thumb on whether or not to create a new article is "will this article be a better resource for readers than what's already at the top of the google search results?" None of these articles actually serve that purpose; they just regurgitate a small amount of already-easily-available information. That doesn't serve any purpose other than playing high-score games, and in fact it might make it less likely that these people will get proper articles written about them in the future. While one-line articles listing people's faculty positions are unlikely to contain overt BLP violations - at least, I haven't found any on spot-checking - some of these are so devoid of content that their emptiness itself feels like a BLP issue. Given that this type of mass stub creation has recurred a few times with different editors, it may be that we need more effective guidance on creating a new BLP. (I might be willing to just make it simple and say that a BLP should never be a stub.) For the time being, I'd be in favor of draftifying or deleting any that haven't been substantially edited by others. Opabinia regalis (talk) 01:42, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• This is utterly absurd. Every individual Fellow of the AAAS , the ACS or the APS is notable, as is every member of the National Academy of Sciences , as is every person holding a distinguished professorship at a major research university. The relevant guideline is not WP:GNG, but WP:PROF. I note a comment above doubting this for the AAAS, burt I cannot recall a single case where this has been successfully challenged at AfD. (The only example mentioned above is someone who is not just in the AAAS, but holds a distinguished professorship at Wisconsin.) Furthermore the society membership can best be understood as a shorthand to simplify discussion, because I cannot imagine a case where the would not have met the really key part of the WP:PROF guideline, being a major influence in their field, as shown by book reviews or citations. Unlike the sometimes confusing status of the other special notability guidelines, WP:PROF is explicitly an alternative--it is enough to meet it without having to pay any attention at all to the GNG.

All that is necessary is to prove they are indeed Fellows, etc. Ideally this should be from the organization's announcements of lists. But the person's official CV is also acceptable, as is an official university page. Out of the 5 or 10 thousand academic bios I've looked at here, I recall just one where the official CV was challenged, and was in fact making a claim, (to a doctorate) that could not be demonstrated. (I spent a day of checking all possible sources for it under any likely error in name or year or university before coming to that conclusion, because it was so extraordinary). Other sources are a little more dubious, because newspapers and publishers and conference organizers sometimes get things a little bit wrong. (I've just commented at a bio talk p. about one such a bio that was a little oversimplified to the point of making an incorrect implication).

I've looks at a few of these articles. I have not found one yet that would not have 100% success rate at AfD. The cited description of above that is called promotionalism, is in fact the exact quotation from the award from a professional society--most such academic field descriptions that might sound like puffery are. Yes, it should have been sourced more explicitly, but the source was in the reference list. (I normally remove a few adjectives from such statements, since they do tend to be a little flowery.)

I am going to check the entire list tomorrow. If there is any I think actually inadequate, I'll deal with it. For everything else, I will defend any prof article that I think meets WP:PROF as strongly as I can, just the same as I always do .

It sometimes has been regarded as inappropriate here to mass produce stubs of this sort without a fuller description & better sourcing. Personally, I do not myself think it wrong. I even would urge doing this here and in similar cases--people have done it, for example, for Olympic athletes, or winners of major prizes, or those holding positions in legislatures. All of those were good things to do, and so is this. In fact, I have planned to do just this myself, probably starting with the National Academy of Science list all the way back to the beginning and going on from there. Not really having the time, I've instead just urged other people to do this. Now, seeing this challenge here makes it very much more likely that I will take the time out from dealing with paid editors and do just that. It is not prohibited to create stubs--the argument for them is that other people can then build on them, and are more likely to do so when they find an article has already been started. We have sometimes reverted such additions--but only in cases where it could be shown that the method or sourcing was actually wrong , such as geographic stubs taken incorrectly from a census in a language the contributor could not read. Otherwise, attempts to make a speedy criterion for stubs have been overwhelmingly rejected several times.

I do agree that doing these in this large a number can be imprudent, especially for editors who realize that some other editors are not all that happy with some of their other work. I very strongly urge Swistertwister to immediately start filling them in. DGG ( talk ) 02:45, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

PROF is not the only issue. The pages I looked at were WP:PRIMARY violations because they relied entirely on primary sources. Policies apart, the question is whether these pages are useful for readers. The micro-stubs aren't. SarahSV ^(talk) 02:57, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I must be missing something. Neither WP:PRIMARY nor WP:BLPPRIMARY says that. Certain primary sources, e.g., trial transcripts, are indeed against policy but a distinguished society's own list of fellows or a university's designation of a distinguished professorship are nowhere prohibited that I can see. These policies say, "use caution," and verifying such facts against authoritative sources seems very cautious. Do we really think the AAAS or (for example) University of Wisconsin can't verify these facts? I also fail to find any policy that says BLP with only primary sources is not permitted. WP:BLP says that the non-negotiables are NPOV, verifiability, and NOR. These seem to have those qualities and notability under previously-agreed standards. Is "no primary-source stubs" enshrined in policy somewhere hidden? Am I being obtuse about this? Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 04:30, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Eggishorn, WP:PRIMARY, which is policy: "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources and primary sources. Secondary or tertiary sources are needed to establish the topic's notability and to avoid novel interpretations of primary sources."

I only looked at a few of the micro-stubs, but they were based only on primary sources. SarahSV ^(talk) 04:39, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

At the risk of repeating myself, @SlimVirgin:, WP:PRIMARY also says:...primary sources that have been reputably published may be used in Wikipedia.... Again, is there anything to suggest that these universities and the AAAS not reputable publishers? Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 14:13, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Primary sources can be excellent sources, but articles should be based on secondary sources. SarahSV ^(talk) 19:17, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Eggishorn, you're not really missing anything other than that "primary" sources are likely to be more common in academic biographies and less so in most other biographical topic areas. It doesn't make sense to object that these articles about AAAS fellows source that claim to the list of AAAS fellows published by the AAAS. Opabinia regalis (talk) 05:12, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Opabinia regalis:, thank you. I think that was my point. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 14:13, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The point of the policy is to avoid articles like this, where we have no way of judging how notable the person is. That's why we need secondary sources. Another consideration is that not everyone wants a BLP. Creating borderline-notable BLPs on people who may never have sought attention from secondary sources is problematic. SarahSV ^(talk) 05:28, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

DGG, I thought that at first too. What's going on here, people are dragging someone to the stocks for not using stub tags? But defending them on the grounds that the topics are notable overlooks the sheer uselessness of the articles, which displace more substantive resources in search results and are so sparse that they do a disservice to their subjects. I have no doubt these were created as a good-faith de-redlinking effort - as were the masses of stubs about athletes before this, and the masses of stubs about villages before that, and the masses of stubs about beetles, and the masses of stubs about algae, etc. I think it's been pretty well established by this point that indiscriminate stub creation from a list of redlinks without adding any substance to the articles is not a good way of growing the encyclopedia. Opabinia regalis (talk) 05:12, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think they are useful. At least, they are useful to people l who are much more likely to expand an article than to write one. Reasons why people do this differ: For me, I check thousands of articles, and I try to fix or add something about anything that I look at. They are useful to students and beginners, who may not know how to start an article and not want to figure out, but they know enough to add information, especially with the visual editor. They are very useful at Editathons. At least in NYC we generally advise people to start by expanding an existing article. in order to gain confidence. The number of editors who add material is much greater than those who write new ones,, and we need both . They are even useful to readers, who may see a vague reference to some academic in a press release , because they'll at least see the basics. WP grows. Almost all articles were stubs in the beginning. Any stub article on an academic is expandable. If we can find a cv we can add the full biographical data and positions and significant honors. Even if we can't we can add their most cited articles, and their books. We can go further add reviews of their books. We can say what the most important articles actually did. We can check for notable students. As I said, I am myself going to follow my own advice, and do a hundred or so brief stubs. Challenge my user rights if you care to. DGG ( talk ) 14:43, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

And this reflects the fact that, despite their importance and contributions to knowledge, academics and scientists just do not get anywhere close to detailed coverage compared to sports, and hence, while arguably being honored by these societies is one of the highest honors in academics, does not presume notability can be met (that is, it seems very doubtful that NACADEMICS#3 is really appropriate here). We've had to stop editors in past mass creating one-line BLPs on athletes, this is no different here. --MASEM (t) 05:20, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If WP:PROF makes every AAAS fellow notable then it needs some overhauling in my view. I just went through a bunch of these stubs and couldn't find a single one that could be more than the single sentence they currently are due to there being no other sources out there other than these people's papers. In essence that equates to thousands of articles that will never be more than, "So and so is a professor at this school who researches this, this and that and became an AAAS fellow in (fill in the year)." What's the point of that?Capeo (talk) 19:03, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• It is with deep regret that I also must support removal of autopatrolled rights from SwisterTwister. Mass creation of poorly sourced articles is most certainly detrimental to the encyclopedia, especially when not adding those articles to the appropriate WikiProjects, or adding to stub categories. Indeed, SwisterTwister's continued lack of tangible response to criticism on his talk page is extremely disconcerting. I also attempted to work with ST regarding one of these articles that he removed the CSD tag from one of them, they simply refused to respond other than leaving an edit summary that there was no violation of guidelines. Frankly, I'm surprised that they would consider all this acceptable, while still declining articles at AfC with no better reason that "Not satisfying the applied notability standards.". Also, while this thread isn't about SwisterTwister's behavior at AfC, Zppix complains about the removal of ST from AfC and of some great IRC cabal conspiracy while citing logs he claims to have as evidence. ST was removed from AfC for allowing numerous copyvios to pass through un-checked by an administrator and continuing to do so after being alerted to the problem. There is a discussion on the topic at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/Participants#Removal_of_SwisterTwister if anyone wishes to review it. I've tried to help SwisterTwister in the past, and even defended them more than once here at ANI desperately trying to get them to just slow down a bit, but to no avail. There is no great conspiracy. ST's lack of due diligence is affecting people across the project in many ways and now it's finally coming to a head - it was bound to happen eventually. I'm very sad to see it happen, and I tried to prevent it, even spending hours on IRC trying to work with them on improvement but with obviously few results. Waggie (talk) 03:03, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• If ST is going to mass create stubs, he should at least tag them appropriately. I've just spent 3 and a half hours going through them adding stub and {{WikiProject Biography}} tags, and there are still umpteen more to do! Adam9007 (talk) 03:33, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• I support removal of the right. I don't see autopatrolled as a right we give to people who have "done nothing wrong" while creating articles. I see it as a right we give to people whose articles are good enough that patrolling would not improve them further. In this case, these articles could be improved through normal patrolling with the addition of stub and WikiProject tags, so autopatrolled should probably be removed to let the patrollers help out. In other words, I don't think the question of whether SwisterTwister's articles violate policy is the only question relevant to whether he should have autopatrolled. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 05:17, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Yes, please remove the right, and inform them that adding meaningless sentences like "His most cited papers are 324, 322 and 244."[6] or "His most cited papers are 650 and 463 and was especially most cited in 2016."[7] only make the articles worse, not better. I see above that there have been copyvio concerns: looking at Christopher D'Elia, I see "nutrient dynamics in aquatic systems, estuarine ecology, coral reef ecology, algal/invertebrate symbiosisp, science history and policy, math and science education, marine pollution, global climate change and analytical chemistry" where the source[8] has "Nutrient dynamics in aquatic systems; estuarine ecology; coral reef ecology; algal/invertebrate symbiosisp; science history and policy; math and science education; marine pollution; global climate change; analytical chemistry." including the same "symbiosisp" typo. Fram (talk) 07:28, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The speed of creation: n-n-n-nineteen all at 06:12 and another nineteen at 06:13?!? — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 08:06, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Fram, what's missing there is just a link to those heavily-cited articles. Citation figures like that are meaningful though they can need interpretation, and if they are that high go very far to proving notability . I always add them to any article I write about a contemporary scientist. I've advised people to add them wen they ask me how to write about an academic in the sciences, and I have some standing information to that effect on my talk p. that I ought to convert to an essay. DGG ( talk ) 14:16, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No, DGG, what's missing there is readable English. "[...]and was especially most cited in 2016." won't be saved by just adding a link, such "sentences" need a complete rewrite, and someone who adds these meaningless lines to his stubs in response to the ANI discussion here (instead of contributing here or making high-value improvements) gives every indication of being an editor who needs a close watch. Fram (talk) 14:34, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Which explains why even in such short articles they get the facts wrong, like at Barbara Fried (who is not the "Marc and Eva Stern Professor of Law and Business at Columbia Law School"). Fram (talk) 08:28, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Wasnt SwisterTwister restricted recently in some way regarding deletions? Or was it another of the threads that went nowhere - the archives are full of so many SwisterTwister threads and our search is so crap its difficult to pin down one event. Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:59, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Fram and Only in death: It's worrying, definitely. Actually that's putting it mildly in the context of this conversation. ST has previously been discussed here (deletion activities), here (AfD again), here(reviewing), and here (alleged aspersions). Nil consensium. — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 10:41, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed ST's autopatrolled rights per the above discussion. Autopatrolled is a right which should be given to those users whose articles require no further immediate checks by other users, including - but not limited to - copyright violations and tagging. Since ST's articles have had to be tagged with WikiProjects and stub tags, cleared of some copyright violations, and multiple users have raised concern about their quality, it is clear that further oversight of ST's articles by new page patrollers would be beneficial to the project. Sam Walton (talk) 09:49, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• The claim that the AAAS elected fellow page is primary as to the professor is just not accurate. The AAAS is not the professor, and it provides "independent" "evaluation" of the professor, all of which makes it WP:SECONDARY as to the professor. Alanscottwalker (talk) 09:53, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• The AAAS is a primary source on who is an AAAS member. If the AAAS was being used as a reference for the content of the *work* of one of its members, it would most likely be secondary, however as it has an inherant conflict of interest in the promotion of AAAS members it would fail to qualify as an indicator of notability. Secondary sources are not required to be independant of the subject, sources to demonstrate notability are. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:02, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No. The professor's work is independently evaluated by the AAAS to make them an elected fellow. And the elected fellow is elected by other scientists based on the independent criteria. That makes them secondary as to the professor. Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:06, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Still no. AAAS are a primary source on who is an AAAS member. As all organisations are on their own members/fellows. This is the context in which ST has been creating stubs 'Is a member of AAAS - source AAAS'. Their evaluation of his work would be secondary, but that is not what is actually under discussion. It would still also not be independant for the purposes of notability because they are reviewing his work in the specific context of him becoming a member/fellow of their society. Primary or secondary do not come into it. To demonstrate that mere membership/elected fellow of the AAAS is inherantly notable, you have to demonstrate that they as an organisation pass NPROF 3. NAS elects less than 100 a year, the Royal Society 50ish. In 2016 AAAS added closer to 400. If we are using the examples in NPROF, thats a very big difference in numbers. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:27, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That's called goal-post moving since you now claim primary/secondary does not matter, and I am addressing primary/secondary. Mere membership is not the evidence I said my OP is about, the evidence is elected fellow. As for whether the process of AAAS elected fellow is NPROF3 worthy enough, that's best dealt with at AfD (or in an RfC), since DGG has already argued it is. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:45, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There is no goalpost moving. The evidence of elected fellow is their membership of the AAAS, sourced to the AAAS. That is a primary source. Used correctly for how a primary source should be used. If you cant understand that basic fact about primary/secondary then there is no point continuing. Only in death does duty end (talk) 11:35, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No. Elected Fellow is not mere membership in the AAAS. Elected Fellow is an independent process of evaluation of the professor's work by other scientists. The plain words of wp:secondary for AAAS fellow are met -- while it's true that secondary does not have to be "independent", and what matters for secondary is that it is evaluation of the subject by the author, here the author is the AAAS making an "evaluation", and the subject is a professor, and here it's an independent judgement, too. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:11, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That's synthesis, though, because the links provided in these articles don't contain any of that evaluation, they merely say that someone is a member. For a proper secondary source I'd expect some review of their work and/or the reason why they were elected a member. I'm not saying they're not notable, incidentally, simply that currently there aren't any useful secondary sources. Black Kite (talk) 14:13, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely not. No one on Wikipedia is making up anything about the professor being elected. And a claim of not knowing what of the word, elected, means is no basis for a claim of original research. The why and the how of elected at the AAAS is explicitly wp:verifiable in black and white. They have told you why and how they elected him [[9]]. No one on Wikipedia is inventing or making anything up -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:10, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, we can verify the process by which they are elected, but AAAS does not publish much of the justification of why academic A was selected over Academic B, just that Academic A was selected as a Fellow. That gives us no secondary information to work with. Contrast that to what the Nobel Prize committee does, usually providing a great deal of rationale of why the selected awardees were picked and the importance of their research/contributions to humanity (eg what is linked too off this page [10]). If the AAAS provided something even close to these lines, that might be something, but they do not give any reasoning, just that their selected Fellows were from the output of their process. They clearly did some critical analysis but their lack of publication of this analysis means we can't use them as a secondary source. --MASEM (t) 16:24, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No. Your comment just admitted while trying to not admit it there is information there ("not publish much" you argue). Whatever you claim is peculiarly enough for you is irrelevant. They have said why, with adjectives and everything which in ordinary plain English mark him out above others by the judgment of scientists, not himself, but by the judgement of other scientists in several rounds reviewing primary sources they tell you about - secondary in every way. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:14, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm looking at [11] and subsequently linked pages and I see no secondary information about these people. Secondary information involves transformation of primary and other sources (evaluation, critical analysis, synthesis, etc.), and a catchall statement of how fellow are elected by the AAAS fails this test. If they told us a summary of those rounds of elections unique to each person, then yes, there is something, but AAAS membership is a primary source and does not contribute to notability, given the limited information they provide about each. --MASEM (t) 03:31, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I linked above, [12] and your talking about mere membership just means you are ignoring what has been stated multiple times, we are not talking about mere membership. That you claim to not be able see the superlatives and the adjectives of evaluation just means your not reading the source. That you claim to not be able to see the list of primary documents upon which the evaluation is made just means you are not reading the source. As to the professor, that is secondary in every way. 14:12, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

I read that, it explains very well how they are selected. That's great. But because they do not publish any of the specifics for how a random Fellow is brought to nomination and elected is the problem. From the encyclopedic side, it gives us zero information we can use to expand the article beyond "they are an AAAS Fellow", and as this discussion has shown, being an AAAS fellow is certainly not a guarantee that secondary sources for that person can be found. Again, contrast that to what the Nobel committee posts about all their winners, a high-level but reasonably deep explanation of why the recipients' contribution was important to human development. For something like AAAS Fellowships, I wouldn't expect that much coverage, but I would expect at least a paragraph for each Fellow that explains why their work is important. Secondary sources are based on transformation of information, not relationship (that's captured by the independent-vs-dependent axis) and that is completely lacking here. --MASEM (t) 14:24, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Also, to be brutally honest, having been a member of similar professional societies, the "AAAS Fellow" feels more like a rite of passage and/or a tenure after you've spent 4 years in the organization; there is nothing in the way that every 4+ year serving member of AAAS could become a Fellow (which of course would clearly make it a non-unique achievement and thus far unsuitable for notability). In contrast, the IEEE Fellow sets a specific limit [13] "The total number selected in any one year does not exceed one-tenth of one percent of the total voting Institute membership.". (And to add, at least the IEEE has a sentence or two for each Fellow as to why they were named such [14]). The way the AAAS is set up is the nature of how these professional societies work. --MASEM (t) 14:39, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Understood that some want to make the fellowship not PROF, but you do that in an RfC, and don't use the intellectually dishonest game of saying it is not secondary as to the professor, because such a claim is absurd. The adjectives of evaluation "distinguished" "meritorious", etc. etc. by the scientists are there, and the primary sources for their evaluation, the professor's articles, recommendations, etc, etc. are listed. Secondary all the way round. (What I would want to do with bio stubs is make lists, if anything, but I am not going to make up silly claims that that website and organization is as if it is a personal blog, and it does not say what it says). Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:24, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, based on past problems of the years from other editors in mass article creation, we should have had consensus confirmation that AAAS Fellowship merited inclusion by PROF #3 before the mass creation was run. It would be completely appropriate to do a mass creation on IEEE Fellows - it is specifically called out in PROF #3, but AAAS doesn't appear to have been evaluated by consensus, putting the onus on ST to have checked that before creation. Clearly, now, there is probably a need for an RFC to clarified PROF #3, but this should have been done before the point of mass creation and now we have to deal with cleanup.

Separately, a catchall description of the Fellowship using vague words like "distinguished" and "meritorious", which are being applying to 300+ people per year, doesn't sound at all like a secondary source. I stress the need for a unique reason why these people were selected as AAAS Fellows, and from the general process for AAAS fellowship, at some stage, that reasoning had had to be made internally to the AAAS, but it is not published to the outside world. We cannot verify the exact reasons, and even though we could like access the CV and article lists does not allow us to make the original research-leap of logic of why the AAAS selected them. So no, we don't have any secondary information about the Fellows strictly off being named an AAAS Fellow. It's not an attempt to be dishonest, it is practically speaking that the reasons that would attribute to being a secondary source of information are not published and can't be verified. We can speak to the fellowship being given in context of a much broader biograph, it's not a bad primary source, but it has no weight to be a sufficient secondary source due to lack of publication of reasoning. --MASEM (t) 15:53, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

More absurdity, we are not here to see if the work of sources is reproducible, like you wish to do with the AAAS. We are not leaping anywhere -- they have expressly told you why and how they elected him. Your job as an editor here is not to make your own original research to see if you can reproduce the AAAS judgement and argue they got it wrong or right and should not have done what they did in finding him distinguished, meritorious, etc. etc. It is their clear secondary judgement. That your logic is indefensible and dishonest on the point of secondary sourcing is patent -- if they would have written more you argue, your argument would consider it secondary, but because they did not write more, your argument wishes to pretend it's primary - none of that has anything to do with primary or secondary, it is secondary as judgement by others, not because of how voluable they are. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:28, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe it is secondary, but the lack of rational makes it a very useless secondary statement for purposes of meeting the GNG and building an encyclopedic article. They have told us how they elect Fellows, and by obvious logic, how random Fellow A was elected, but they have not told us why random Fellow A was elected. Yes, the "how" gives us qualities they look for, but these are very broad, vague terms, and effectively leads to a empty, fluffy statement from an encyclopedic view: "Prof. John Q Smith was elected an AAAS Fellow for his distinguished and meritorious work." Maybe it is secondary, but it certainly does not satisfy the "significant coverage" that secondary sources are supposed to provide for meeting the GNG (and further, it is technically neither independent, since the Fellow must have already been a member of AAAS). Note that this is not casting doubt at the judgment of AAAS, but that because they don't give us any more to work with, just being noted as an elected Fellow of AAAS is not qualified enough to meet the GNG. (The question of NPROF #3 remains, but as noted, at that point we can use primary sources. But from what others have shown, there doesn't seem to be a good correlation between being an AAAS Fellow and having a deal of other secondary sources written about that person, making whether NPROF #3 really applies here in question). --MASEM (t) 16:36, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I plan on releasing the logs if needed AFTER I personally get consent from the parties involved, I never had an intent to blackmail anyone, I only intend for the correct thing to be done, however if anything should be done is that, ST would have to go to those creations and tag them properly, I really don't see the point of removing a right when they could just fix it themselves... not to mention, WP:SOFIXIT exists. Ⓩⓟⓟⓘⓧ _Talk 12:53, 16 May 2017 (UTC) I moved this from the new subsection below because it belongs up here. Primefac (talk) 13:34, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Zppix, WP:SOFIXIT was not intended for mass-creation of stubs of dubious encyclopedic value. Are we supposed to follow SwisterTwister around the project and clean up after him instead of insisting he actually improve or doing constructive editing ourselves? As someone else pointed out, nineteen a minute! That's a full time job just going around and performing the basic due diligence that is expected of an experienced editor. Truly, removing auto-patrolled is really the bare minimum we need to do here, as he is clearly not getting the message that haste is not appropriate. Almost all of these AN and ANI threads regarding him all boil down to him being overly hasty and completely disregarding others when they ask him to slow down and collaborate effectively. People are airing serious and long-term grievances here, and for you to tell them "fix it yourselves" is quite a slap in the face to them. As I've mentioned above, I like ST, and have defended in quite strongly in the past and even tried desperately to help him improve, but feel like it's resulted in nothing tangible. I'm just not sure what else to do for him at this point. Waggie (talk) 18:06, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

With reference to O Fortuna's comment above, SwisterTwister has repeatedly been discussed at admin noticeboards for their editing over the years. The area changes - AFC, AfD, NPP, now article creations - but the pattern is the same: editing far too quickly and with too little care. Each time they just escaped a consensus to restrict their editing, though Primefac removed them from being an AFC reviewer this month. I don't know if this is a problem of competence or temperament, but SwisterTwister does not seem to be well-suited to being a constructive Wikipedian. I can think of restrictions that may help: 1. SwisterTwister will not create articles without reliable secondary sources; 2. SwisterTwister will not make more than one edit a minute; 3. SwisterTwister will follow WP:BEFORE in all areas related to deletion. Fences&Windows 13:38, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I've disagreed with Swister several times, but I strongly believe he's a constructive Wikipedian. Given that in the past he's been far too rigid (my opinion) in his notability interpretations and sourcing requirements, is it possible he's attempting to gain some empathy for the editors whose articles he is patrolling? 78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 13:56, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• I looked at a couple, and they are copied word for word from the one web site. Shouldn't there be quotes or a cc license included? --2601:648:8503:4467:31C4:7809:BB3F:FBC0 (talk) 15:39, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  If that's the case, then those pages need to be nominated for G12 speedy deletion. Primefac (talk) 15:56, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• It seems there's a lot of discussion here about AAAS and whether it is primary or secondary, and whether it's a reliable source in either category. That would actually seem to be a discussion for RSN, not here. I propose moving that aspect of this discussion to there, as the problem would affect other articles as well, and we should make sure that the same standards apply to all articles, not just the mass-creations by ST. It is important that the same rules apply to everyone. Waggie (talk) 17:23, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-arbitrary split regarding general mass/quick creation

• Circling back to Opibina's point is there a guideline that can be created on mass/quick stub bio creation? Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:09, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes, though it should probably just read "don't do it". Primefac (talk) 11:49, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  OK. I note for example there is this stub-article Edwin Ross Williams, which was not part of this editor's mass creation, but according to the history was created because he is an APS fellow, so it seems we do need to target by guideline mass/quick creation, if we both allow Edwin Ross Williams and the like but want to not have mass/quick creation. Unless Opibina or others think they can get get a non-stub rule. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:27, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  While there are undoubtedly similar articles to the ones we're discussing, I think the issue with mass-creation is that it's harder to patrol. 19 articles per minute being created? That's just nuts. It implies that there is zero thought actually being given to the pages being created. This is what brings it back into SvG territory - that many creations can't easily be checked for accuracy, and as mentioned above there are a few ST creations that have factual errors. The autopatrolled made things worse, but even then the speed and volume would still make patrolling rather difficult. Primefac (talk) 13:32, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  Wikipedia as a whole would better off if we got a firm handle on mass stub creation. I've seen this many times by many editors over the years. In reality, stubs that are one or two sentences provide no substantive information to the reader. Mass stub creation like this serves no purpose but to create more work for oversight like this. Wish someone would come up with a definitive policy to ban mass stub creation. — Maile (talk) 14:26, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  Perhaps a sentence at WP:STUB creating stubs section would do for a beginning. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:48, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  I'd like to see something about this added to the BLP policy. SarahSV ^(talk) 19:22, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  Even I wouldn't propose an outright ban on mass stub creation, though it would probably be reasonable to say that one should get consensus (or at least absence of serious objections) before starting the work, and ideally provide samples of articles created using your intended process and data sources before scaling up. I think Sarah has the right idea in suggesting that any new guidance should focus on BLP stubs. I can imagine cases where they're created from a well-curated and thorough data source and therefore are OK, but in most real examples there have been too many problems that leave carelessly written and error-laden articles in mainspace where they will be unlikely to attract further editing in a timely manner. While it could use some fleshing out, I think this is actually already implicit in the text of the BLP policy: The idea expressed in WP:Eventualism—that every Wikipedia article is a work in progress, and that it is therefore okay for an article to be temporarily unbalanced because it will eventually be brought into shape—does not apply to biographies. Opabinia regalis (talk) 22:14, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• WP:MASSCREATION? -- Tavix ^(talk) 20:00, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment. Here is the problem. Every member of National Academy of Sciences is indeed a notable person per WP requirements. However, the membership in American Association for the Advancement of Science is something very different. It includes 120,000 members, and almost any productive scientist can become a member. I think creating thousands pages about people who where not even mentioned in any secondary RS was a really bad idea. My very best wishes (talk) 18:37, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Membership in AAAS is very different from being a Fellow of the AAAS (which, confusingly, is again different from AAAS Fellowships) I see no arguments above that AAAS members are notable, only that AAAS Fellows are. Here is a description of the process for becoming a Fellow, and the honor is selective and peer-reviewed, exactly what our notability standards ask for. They are a significantly limited selection of AAAS members, for starters. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 18:47, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I see. But I checked a few these pages, and they only included information about person X being a scientist in the field Y. That was sourced only to their University or Society pages. These are actually self-published materials. I do not think anyone should create BLP pages sourced only to self-published materials and publications by the person on the subject of his/her scientific research (i.e. primary sources). My very best wishes (talk) 19:01, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal regarding page deletions

SwisterTwister has created ~1700 articles, all but 200 of which are <1000 bytes, and most are still the (current) version. There are so many issues mentioned above, and more seem to be mentioned every third post. Thus, I am proposing that, similar to S.v.G., these articles be moved to draft space, checked by editors, and any unacceptable pages left over after a period of 60 120 days be deleted. Primefac (talk) 19:16, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: Due to some concerns below I've upped the timeframe to 120 days. Primefac (talk) 12:21, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Support

1. As proposer. While I don't particularly like the idea of nuking articles, when people's names are spelled wrong and their job title isn't even accurate, we have BLP issues to think about. Primefac (talk) 19:17, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
2. I concur, these should be moved to Draftspace for more careful review, as there's simply too many issues with them to leave them in mainspace. Waggie (talk) 19:31, 16 May 2017 (UTC) Edit: I support, but would like each to have the usual 6 months in draftspace providing there isn't blpvio or copyvio issues. Waggie (talk) 09:41, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
3. Obviously, since I proposed this earlier, I support this method. Unfortunately, there is too many concerns to be addressed but on the bright side the encyclopedia will not be too affected if most of these articles are just one or sentences long.
   Also, why hasn't ST come here to respond to this discussion? Does he not care about the outcome?TheGracefulSlick (talk) 20:36, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
4. That's a good idea. - Mlpearc (open channel) 21:06, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
5. Indeed. I've looked at a more since I found the name spelled wrong and there seems to be some issues of extremely close paraphrasing in some instances. I also found issues where the person's areas of research were described incorrectly or incompletely. Many list specific areas of research that are so exact that they are meaningless without the broader context of the field the person researches in. This context is usually provided in the sources already there. Capeo (talk) 21:10, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
6. Support 78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 21:14, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
7. I agree. Leaving aside issues of notability or verifiability, in the 200 or so I've looked at I've found too many errors of the kind I fix in copy editing and cleanup work. While ST fixed the ones I mentioned on his talk page, more remain. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 21:37, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
8. Support. This allows for them to be checked and possibly salvaged, which is what the draft space is for. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:30, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
9. Support. I noticed one of these via a new maths pages lists and considered prodding it myself, as lacking both proper sources and any indication why they were notable. But on such a scale dealing with them manually would be impractical, creating work for everyone. Better to mass nuke them, keeping only the ones that other editors are able to find proper sources that establish notability.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 01:40, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
10. Support for lack of better solution. I do want to note my concern about the sixty day requirement considering the backlog in AfC, though.  I dream of horses (My talk page) (My edits) @ 04:27, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
11. Support; it does not (in my opinion) help the encyclopedia to create stub articles in this fashion. Chris Troutman (talk) 05:11, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
12. Support:--Good proposal!Winged Blades ^Godric 05:27, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
13. Support. And the irony that it is our most notorious deletionist mass-creating all these stubs is not wasted on me, nor I suppose on anyone else who has ANI on their watch list. Softlavender (talk) 08:09, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
14. Support. Came here following the trail from ST's talk page after I happened on a couple of these and went to drop him a note. This mass creation of sometimes erroneous, generally under-referenced stubs is an imposition on others to clean up the mess. Which in itself isn't that bad (after all cleaning up is what one does on WP much of the time). But making a mess, shrugging and walking off without comment shouldn't get the seal of approval, otherwise the next batch may be thrice that size and lead to real problems. Proposal is a good compromise of salvaging what's good but making the point.--Elmidae (talk · contribs) 10:44, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
15. Support. But how long can people tolerate ST wasting their time. Only in death does duty end (talk) 12:37, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
16. Support, less about the notability issue and more about possible copyvios and unreferenced BLPs that have been identified. This seems like a proper way to quarantine questionable material until other editors can vet it further. --MASEM (t) 16:28, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
17. Support, and trout DGG for assuming bad faith on anyone who sees a problem here that warrants further action. Fram (talk) 07:24, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
18. Move these pages to draft space or userfy. Most of them do not satisfy even minimal requirements in terms of notability (this must be proven by sources currently used on each page) and content (no significant info about the persons). My very best wishes (talk) 04:50, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
19. Support – 120 days of review ought to be enough to salvage the truly notable ones. Others can be placed in a list, as suggested on Swister's talk page, to no answer. — JFG ^talk 07:53, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
20. Support moving these articles to draft space or userfying them. These are very sloppy, make-work sub-stubs which amount to line-item list entries broken up into hundreds of individual pages. Giving them 120 days quarantine is adequate time for ST to improve them if they want to, and (crucially) to save other eidts the endless job of cleaning up after ST. -BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:26, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose

• I oppose blanket discrimination against a class of BLP articles that have sources and are likely notable, as detailed by DGG and myself above. The porn tabstar/professor problem has been academically noted and is not new. An attempt to address this issue isn't a problem unless we make it one. SwisterTwister may have gone about their creations quickly but nuking them for that reason is a poor excuse for actual examination and deliberation. Many of the reasons for disliking these articles given above, e.g., they're based on primary sources, they're just stubs, they're created too fast for careful creation, etc. are not actual policy-based reasons for deletion. No one has yet convincingly argued that these professors and other academics are not notable under WP:PROF nor (with one possible copyright issue) have they been identified as otherwise against inclusion criteria. This case is easily distinguished from the SvG one on the grounds that there were no likely basis for notability for the vast majority of those. We haven't yet heard good rebuttal to the idea that these are of people that have verifiable qualifications for notability. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 21:53, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What little I paid attention to the SvG case, claims of notability were made (a lot of olympians), but sources were in fact used incorrectly, or mis-read. In this case I think they should be moved to draft space not because there is no claim of notability, but because multiple issues have been brought to light, not the least of which is copyright concerns, which certainly is a policy-based reason for deletion. I would oppose outright deleting them, which would truly be "Nuking", this option gives the community time to review them. 78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 22:03, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Just because multiple notability guidelines are too permissive doesn't mean we should create thousands of non-notable articles. The problem with all these walled garden project guidelines is that nobody pushes back against them. That's how we end up with thousands of non-notable porn star articles and athlete articles. To me the answer is to cull not keep making more chaff. Even looking at WP:PROF I don't think being a fellow of the AAAS would cut it. They give out way too many fellowships. They also give out awards yearly that they themselves say are for notable accomplishments. That I could see being worthy of an article and I'm trying to find some of these stubs that may be these people to try to expand. I understand other editors don't agree with my interpretation of notability as far as these article subjects are concerned, and that's fine, because we're not talking about deleting them. Everyone is free to clean them up, and they need some serious cleaning up. These are BLPs and myself and others have already found a slew of basic errors. That has to be taken seriously. Capeo (talk) 22:32, 16 May 2017 (UTC)ttps://www.aaas.org/general-process[reply]

@78.26: and @Capeo:, I understand the quality concerns. I wonder, on the other hand, what is "too many" fellowships? As mentioned above, 377 a year out of a working population of millions seems hardly non-selective. That's a side issue, however. If we want to modify WP:NPROF, then this isn't the right venue (an RfC on Wikipedia talk:Notability (academics) would give everyone a chance for input). More importantly, however, is that this discussion seems tending towards the SvG outcome, which is a short-circuit of the established deletion processes. If we had AfD's on one of these and the deletion rationale was: "There's too many cleanup issues." then WP:DELETIONISNOTCLEANUP would be linked in an eyeblink. I would counter-propose that we send the copyright vio's that 78.26 mentions straight to CSD#G12. If there's a reason to perform a mass AfD, then let it go through the normal process unless it can be demonstrated that there are reasons to avoid those processes. Poor quality hasn't been a reason historically to avoid established processes. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 23:43, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Eggishorn: I agree. I don't want to see everything deleted via G12, because I doubt all the articles have that issue. Moving them to draft, and letting editors such as yourself look at them seems to be the most prudent course of action. There appears to be enough issues that leaving them in mainspace also does not seem prudent. Primefac's proposal seems to be the most moderate approach. It is because I don't want to see all of these articles outright deleted that I support this. 78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 00:53, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@78.26:I think my real issue is the 60 day limit in Primefac's proposal, after which these are to be removed. If there really is no deadline, why limit it? Especially when we seem to agree that there is at least a reasonable possibility of notability? Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 01:11, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Look at these stubs. I haven't looked at all of them obviously but the ones I have have shown nothing but decently published academics that have done nothing of note. Not a single of the ones I've looked at has advanced their field in any notable way outside of any typical working field. No theories that have made any traction nor any practical applications that have lead to any actual technical or procedural advances. To me, I see no point in filling an encyclopedia with CVs. That said, I know most here don't agree with me as far as notability in general, so I'll just reiterate the sloppiness of these mass created stubs that include enough errors, already found, that BLP has to be the overriding factor. Not to mention, how many of these people would actually want a stub on WP that pops in searches above their CVs? That's already happening. Do a google search on these names. Do you think these people want that? Add in the errors and I can't see how one would have a problem with throwing these articles into draft and seeing if anything can be made of them. If most articles get nuked in 60 days it's not like the list of AAAS fellows on their website suddenly disappeared. Capeo (talk) 03:40, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

None of these arguments address any basis for deletion in our documented deletion policy. They all amount to some combination of WP:IDONTLIKEIT and an re-definition of notability for academics. Again, if we want to have a discussion on standards for academic notability, this isn't the place for it. WP:BLP is not a reason for deletion, as BLP requires adherence to NPOV, V, and NOR, none of which are violated by stubs. Is ANI to become an undocumented but de facto fourth deletion process for the project? If so, then we are doing readers and article creators a huge disservice by making it possible to delete large bodies of work based on whoever happens to show up in this corner of the project. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 12:22, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Again, we are not talking about these stubs being deleted at this moment. Not that any particular policy matters here. IAR-based common sense does when dealing with, yet another, mass, speedy creation mess. Particularly when it's mass creation of BLPs. This proposal is not unlike other solutions the community has come up with to deal with similar circumstances. I've looked at a ton more of these and many are not good. Many have areas of research that are unintelligible because it seems ST just cut and paste terms without understanding their scientific meaning. I guarantee you most of the article subjects would rather have nothing on WP instead of a single run-on sentence that doesn't represent their research. Capeo (talk) 16:00, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion is exactly what this process points towards, though. The 60120 day limit in the proposal all but guarantees mass deletion. Furthermore, at the risk of repeating myself yet again, "not good" is not a reason for deletion. Just to test the proposition that these are unredeemable, I picked one SlimVirgin identified as useless above, Stephen Pearton. SwisterTwister created this, which gave me enough information to add his Distinguished Professorship, fields of study, two books he co-authored (one with the inventor of semiconductor lasers, a hugely important scientific/engineering advance), two very important academic awards, and four distinguished Fellowships in selective academic societies[15]. This article is about a subject that ticks so many boxes of WP:PROF it isn't even funny. Arguably, all of #'s1-6. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 16:26, 17 May 2017 (UTC) Updated post because I hadn't seen Primefac amended proposal. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 16:38, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't identify this as "useless". Here is what I wrote. SarahSV ^(talk) 21:04, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You'll notice I didn't put it in quotes which was specifically so as not to put words into your keyboard. That said, you also said: ...the question is whether these pages are useful for readers. The micro-stubs aren't and soon after identified Stephen Pearton as one of the articles that policies are in place to prevent from being created. My point is the article you pointed out was as one that should not be part of the project was actually about a person who is notable. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 21:14, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Eggishorn, looking at Stephen Pearton actually shows the issues with these stubs, even after you expanded it. You're using two primary sources to say what Pearson's primary areas of study are rather than a secondary bio or, if you insist on using a primary source, it should be at least Pearson's own words about his focus. You basically decided yourself that those sources mean those must be his main areas of research. In this case this is easily fixed because he has secondary bios on the pages of some the institutions that granted him membership or awards, which should be the sources rather than simply the lists anyway. They go into better depth as to what he is known for in his field. This article, amongst I'm sure a ton of these mass creations, could actually be brought past being just a stub. The point is, they all need to be gone through to see if this is the case. Even if they have to remain stubs they have to be checked for the basic errors that have already popped up. Putting this many BLPs out there that could well contain errors isn't something we should be doing. I have time this weekend and hope to expand those stubs that can be expanded whatever the outcome of this discussion. I'm just in favor of prudence when it comes to living people. As of this moment google already suggests his WP article in the search bar first and the article is already the 4th link after the search. For most of these people their WP stub is first after the search, more than any of their accomplishments. WP is hugely favored in searches and, especially with living people, serious thought needs to be given to tossing out a one sentence, possibly inaccurate, stub about them. Capeo (talk) 22:45, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Primary sources can only be used for notability if we are talking about showing how a subject-specific notability guideline is met (the general notability guideline requires secondary sources). But there is a question that is begged is if AAAS Fellowship is something that qualifies under WP:NPROF #3. If AAAS had been previously established via consensus as an organization that fit that SNG, then mass creation would have been fine, though I'm sure we'd be arguing over how these could be expanded. But AAAS never seemed to be discussed as an appropriate organization that would fit NPROF #3, so we presently have a huge number of mass created articles that fail the subject-specific guideline and lack secondary sources, and others have found most cannot be expanded ("cleaned up") to qualify for an encyclopedic article, so we need to consider deletion or at least isolation off mainspace to figure which ones can be salvaged. --MASEM (t) 14:30, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We're both starting to sound like broken records ;) I didn't bring up the problem of primary sources establishing notability. I said you used primary sources, two books co-authored by the subject, to make them claim of what research they are know for, instead of secondary sources like their bios at some of the institutions that granted him recognition. Those bios actually give the history of his notable research and it doesn't gel precisely with what you wrote. That's neither here nor there at the moment though. As I said I don't care about the deletion policy in this instance. There is no policy for every situation, especially the mass, speedy creation of hundreds upon hundreds of BLPs. It's times like this when the community must IAR and come up with a creative compromise. I think putting them in draft and having interested parties go through them is the best compromise. Capeo (talk) 15:01, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Just an example of the type of secondary source bio I was talking about for Pearton [16] in regards to an award you mention in the article. Definitely a notable award by the way. Given out once per year from a prestigious institution that outlines its selection criteria. That's the type of stuff we'd hope to find for some of these stubs. Capeo (talk) 15:24, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

For what it's worth, I took the day limit into consideration and bumped it to 120 days, but if that's still an issue it could be negotiated. Primefac (talk) 16:31, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I amended my above statement to reflect that. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 16:38, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think we have enough interested parties here at this point, on both sides of the discussion, that these would not be left alone in draftspace. I support (as noted above) that the articles be given the full 6 months. Outright deletion isn't being discussed here, just trying to give these articles a chance to improve without ending up in Google search results where they would potentially be very problematic for us if there are blpvios or copyvios that we haven't caught yet (other folks already caught a few). The fact that an experienced editor committed copyvio in even just a few of these should really be a clarion call here that each of these really does need to be reviewed in a more careful and "quarantined" manner. Experienced editors should know that copy/pasting content is absolutely unacceptable here, yet it was clearly done. I just don't understand why the copyvios found so far aren't a good enough reason (never mind all the other arguments), to "quarantine" these mass-creations until we can get a handle on what might be copyvio or not. Waggie (talk) 17:34, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I went back through the conversation above, and I see only one article where a copyvio has been asserted, Christopher D'Elia, which Primefac has already removed. I am aware that ST's autopatrolled bit has been removed because of copyvio issues prior to this creation of academics' articles. That doesn't mean that there's any rash of copyvios in this set of articles, or even "just a few." As of now, we have zero (thanks to Primefac). If we find more, then maybe it needs a separate process. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 19:42, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Procedural oppose -- would such a proposal mean that we could also move other stub-class BLPs into Draft? In my experience, numerous sports bio articles would fall under this category. See for example: Priit Tomson, among many. In addition, 60 days seems arbitrary. Abandoned AfCs are generally given 6 months before they can be speedy deleted. K.e.coffman (talk) 01:47, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose 95% of these articles are about notable individuals. Almost all of them adequately document the essential elements of notability. Most of them are incomplete. Some have errors.I estimate the proportion of unacceptable articles is lower than one percent. Voting for this is a vote to abandon the policy that stubs are permitted--or at least to abandon it if the editor is unpopular. I see above some very questionable statement ,

for example, that most are copyvios. I do not see that demonstrated either. I don't see it demonstrated that 10% are, or 1% (In fact, most of the articles are composed of non-copyrightable facts that have a limited number of ways of expression)

or that there is an unacceptably high proportion of errors. I see that based on 1 or 2 examples. Not on evidence that 10% or so have major errors. Or 1%. If all the people working to try to discredit the editor have been able to find only these, there can't be many.

I see a mention of one article where the person was confused with someone else. I do not see that even 10% of them are. In fact, I don't see that even 1% of them are.

I see a statement that AAAS Fellows are not notable. Even if we disregard the established convention that they are, I thing 90% at least can be shown notable by the other parts of WP:PROF. I see not a single example of even an attempt to find any examples or evidence to the contrary.

I see the absurd statement that an organization is not a RS for the list of its members.

I see a far-reaching statement that we should revise the WP:STUB policy, by which I suppose mean eliminate it. It was overwhelmingly supported in the past. It would require very wide consensus to change it, not just here. If we did forbid stubs, it would indeed have an effect00it would greatly decrease the growth of the encyclopedia and the new contributors. I gather some see that as a good thing.

I see a remarkably over-reaching statement we should change WP:BIO, I suppose to require independent sources for everything ,not just reliable sources. And I see some of the comments here by "independent" mean totally disconnected. That's overkill based on this one case, and would of course require very wide consensus.

I suspect that some of the people mean by this they would eliminate WP:PROF. By the same principle, we could eliminate state legislatures, and geographic places. We'd also omit al the early Olympic athletes, and I know some here do have said elsewhere that they fact want to do that also. We would certainly greatly reduce our already pitiably small coverage of the less-developed nations, and even the most developed nations that do not use the Latin alphabet. alternatively, it might mean only professors. There are in fact a few people who have expressed from time to time the view that they were not notable unless they were in effect famous--that is , to effectually eliminate a whole field on the basis of IDONTTHINKTHEYREIMPORTANT.

I am going to make a prediction here--if this passes, I and others shall personally be able to fix or verify 95% or more of the articles. (I hope others will do some of it, but rather than abandon two of our basic working principles that hundreds of editors have used, WP:STUB and WP:PROF I would even do it myself. ) In practice, a 5% error rate is as good as one can hope for in an encyclopedia like ours'. The best editors can sometimes reach 2%,but not most people.

I've been asked why I care: I came here to improve our coverage of science and scientific bios-- I found that the sciences that I knew were pretty well handled, but not scientific bio. I think some of the negative attitudes that I found here about them was do to bias--that people just didn't think that ordinary science was as important as ordinary films, or ordinary politics. I've always been an inclusionist for most topics--(except local topics), which means that I think small variations in WP:N are not actually more important than the gross violations we have throughout WP in some of the other factors of NOT. I care about stubs because I write that way myself, in successive improvements. Many other people do also. Many of our best articles were written that way.

I also care because I want to get away from the very foolish and destructive idea that we should base general rules on individual cases, and from the even more destructive idea that we should act on the basis of isolated examples. We have elements of the herd mentality here--there's a tendency to panic over things we could perfectly well handle carefully. That's a very poor basis for cooperative work.

An even worse basis for cooperative work is instability. To me, it has always seemed obvious that the key part of the inclusion policy is that it should be predictable. People should know what they can expect to find here. People should know what they can expect to be able write about. People like to have some idea whether what they do is going to be accepted to the group they're joining. One or two of my first articles were rejected. I stayed anyway, because I cam here with a longer term plan I'm the exception. DGG ( talk ) 04:50, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose Has anyone actually found any real concern with the content of the articles? Are there massive BLP issues? Copyvios? Other areas to worry about? As there are 1,700 articles in scope, take a random 1% of them to AfD to see what happens. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 06:59, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, people have been pointing out copyvio issues, primary source issues (BLP's need secondary sources to verify the contents), etc. Waggie (talk) 17:19, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Which ones specifically? Please list a few here and we can take a look at them. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 07:22, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your reply Lugnuts. Already posted below in the discuss sub-section at the bottom. Waggie (talk) 07:31, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose In addition to the good points made by DGG and others above, it seems clear that these are skeletal stubs which don't say much and so it wouldn't be a significant problem to leave them where they are. If you make them red links, then they are likely to get recreated and this would cause chaos and confusion if there's another draft elsewhere. If people think there's a problem then just stick a clean-up tag on them. Note also the case of stubs like Farukh Abitov. That's still a two sentence-stub which was nominated for deletion by John Pack Lambert. He was sanctioned for going up against WP:NFOOTY. Is it one law for football players and another law for professors? Andrew D. (talk) 07:28, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose - I actually came upon one of ST's stubs while doing NPP, which was striking to me since I knew he was an established editor (still not sure how it happened, since it was either last week or the week before – prior to this discussion being enjoined). Then I discovered this discussion going on. Seems to me most of the support !votes are based more on a dislike for ST than on actual policy. Are they stubs? Yes. Is there a policy against making stubs? No. Are they poorly sourced? Yes. Is that against policy? No. Are they incomplete (missing stub tags, talk pages, etc.) Yes. Is that against policy? No. The one issue that is a problem is the copyvio issue. I am not sure how prevalent that is. I've reviewed (and added stub tags) to well over 100 of ST's stubs, and that hasn't been an issue. In all those stubs there was only one which I found with questionable notability as well. As per WP:DELETE, if these articles' subjects are deemed to be notable, which according to current guidelines they are, then as per WP:ATD, "If editing can improve the page, this should be done rather than deleting the page." And I see no advantage to moving them to draft space. Would all of them be moved to draft space, even the hundreds which have already been looked over by other editors? Talk about making more work for folks. I think the more coherent arguments in this discussion are by Eggishorn and DGG. Especially DGG's final point: People need to feel secure in that the same rules apply to everyone. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 11:45, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose, for good reasons expressed by editors Eggishorn and DGG. The pages are identified now as stubs, or they could/should be tagged that way. The editor's article creations are no longer auto-patrolled (by removal of auto-patrol right during this discussion). If there is some way to toggle the status of the articles created already, so that they show as unpatrolled, bringing them to new page patrollers' attention, that could be done. But simply put, stub articles on notable topics are allowed, and I don't want to see Wikipedia changed that way. Also I tend to think all these topics are notable, that the recognition of fellow status is in effect secondary, reflecting judgment of a group, and is difficult to achieve. What would be primary and unusable would be individual nomination documents that assert a given professor should be accepted to fellow status. --doncram 15:33, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

doncram, my concern is that some of these aren't notable stubs, and there's no way to know the percentage without actually checking them all. It seems appropriate (and again, I reference the SvG case) to move them to draft as a stopgap measure - it allows us to check the pages, approve the actually notable ones, and delete the non-PROF pages. Primefac (talk) 15:40, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You can create a worklist of articles to be checked (perhaps at a subpage of WikiProject Biography), and check them, without removing them to Draft space. --doncram 15:47, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes there is a way to know the percentage without checking them all: use random sampling upon the articles in a full list created by copying the results of Xtools on the editor's contributions. A sample size of about 30 will suffice to assert a 90 percent confidence interval on what the percentage is. I'll help with the statistical reasoning, including about what sample size is reasonable to measure the rate of non-notability within some specific range like +/- 5 percent, if you start such an effort. --doncram 15:55, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose I agree with DGG, the proposal is an irrational waste of time given that the stubs are almost all notable (I looked through about 20 and couldn't find on that was not notable). --I am One of Many (talk) 17:38, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Out of curiosity, I am One of Many, did you check them for copyright violations? Primefac (talk) 17:41, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • No, but since when are copyright violations a criterion for notability? --I am One of Many (talk) 17:46, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • A criterion for notability? They're not. A criterion for deleting a page? Always. Copyright violations must be deleted. I genuinely can't believe I have to spell that out. Primefac (talk) 18:07, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'm sorry, are you seriously suggesting we should leave copyvios in mainspace because the subject is notable? People aren't stating categorically that the subjects aren't notable, in fact most people are saying that they are, but that the articles probably need serious attention. We need time to identify whether each article has copyvios in it, as it's clear that it's more than just one or two that have copyvios issues. Copyvios isn't about inclusion criteria, arguments over WP:PROF, or people not liking ST, it's about possible legal ramifications for the WMF that we need to act on with efficiency and due diligence. Waggie (talk) 18:14, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        • You fix copyright violations when you find them. It is a safe bet that there are currently thousand of undetected copyright violation in articles. Should we move all articles in to draft space to be on the safe side? --I am One of Many (talk) 19:48, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
          • Hi I am One of Many, thanks for your reply! Most new articles are subject to NPP or AfC review, which should (ostensibly) be copyvio checked. What's happening here is that most of these creations have been marked auto-patrolled and thus circumvent any prompt review and checking for copyvio. Some articles that have been in mainspace for awhile do get copyyvio that creeps in, and we try to catch that as we can. The big difference here is that an experienced and auto-patrolled editor shouldn't be the one introducing any of that copyvio. I've provided some samples of problematic content from these articles (in a copyvio sense) at the bottom of the Discuss sub-section below. Waggie (talk) 06:48, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose unless someone can point me to where someone checked a significant sample of these articles for copyright problems and found an unacceptably high percentage. The noability issue seems to have been addressed - the articles are presumed notable per WP:PROF. Maybe that SNG is too loose, resulting in useless articles, but if that is the case the SNG needs to be amended, instead of backdooring it here. Similarly the sourcing concerns also seem weak to me. Secondary sources are certainly preferred, but primary sources are still permitted with narrow exceptions. The big concern is copyright, and if anyone can show me a pattern of copyright issues, I'll quickly change my tune. Tazerdadog (talk) 00:38, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Your wish is my command, Tazerdadog. Provided below at the bottom of the Discuss section. Regarding the notability issue, I'm not sure it has been addressed. I agree, though, that this is not the correct venue for discussing whether or not AAAS or a professor's own school website is a reliable source for meeting WP:NPROF. Waggie (talk) 06:48, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment' Many copyright problems are very easily fixed. If a few word is cited from a persons or his institution's web site, which is what is usually the case for bio copyvios of the sort being discussed here, they just need the reference added. If a plain list of non-copyrightable material is added from such a site, tho it is not copyvio, the attribution needs to be added. If a sentence or two of unessential material is a copyvio, it can be removed. (I will say that a list of academic fields from a persons or university web page is essential to understanding, and should be sourced, not removed) This is very different from the sort of copyvio spam where essentially all of a long articles is lifted directly from the web site. If the person is extremely notable, it is possible to quickly rewrite, but usually, it isn't worth it i've come across academic bios like that, and I delete them except on the very rare occasion nowadays I have time to rewrite them. Usually such a copyvio is promotional as well, and both reasons should be given--if only to discourage the person from going to the fruitless effort to license what will be deleted anyway. I very much doubt if there are any copyvio here of that sort, but if there are, I shall either delete or rewrite them. We cannot tolerate copyvio, but the preferred way to deal with it is to fix them or stubbify or find a noncopyvio version, but that does not seem to apply here).

As for notability let's see what happens at AfD. I cannot exactly predict, for AfD is subject to pile-ons of various sorts. and even for straightforward cases, results are erratic. I am going to make again a more exact statement of what I said before. I think it likely that essentially every AfD brought on the basis that AAAS fellows do not meet WP:PROf or that WP:PROF is not a valid guideline, will fail, and both principles will be upheld. But even if it is decided that AAAS Fellow is not sufficient to meet the guideline, I am certain that I can show that at least 90% of them meet the WP:PROF guideline on other grounds--most of them here have distinguished chairs, and almost all the rest will have stellar citation records to show they are considered authorities in their field. I am going to say this even before I individually examine them, because I am familiar with the in-practice decisions generally used by AAAS. If I am wrong about AAAS, I shall say so. If 90% jhold up, will the people challenging them say as much?

The sort of bullying that is being seen here is not very unusual at AN/ANI. What is unusual is the variety of issues used as an excuse, and , most of all, the disproportionality of the condemnation by small sample; usually there's more of a pretense at representative evidence. DGG ( talk ) 04:46, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi DGG, did you see my response to you earlier with the diffs of collaboration issues? Could you look at that response and respond in return, please? I hope you don't see it as a "pretense at representative evidence." I'm not bullying SwisterTwister, I've been trying to help him, but have been clearly rebuffed. I was his friend for almost a year on IRC, but he finally stopped talking to me when I kept trying to coach him on collaborating more effectively. I have never been mean to him, spoken poorly of him, or intended anything but to help him - I've even defended him from bullying (more than he knows). Have you considered that the variety of issues is unusual because there's simply a lot of issues going on with him in many areas of the project? People are frustrated and it's been building up for a good long while, so the level of frustration is breaking through, which I believe contributes to the seeming disproportion you refer to. Yes, some people are mean to him, which is highly inappropriate and needs to be handled with a very firm hand, but there ARE issues here that need to be addressed. I really want him to do well here at Wikipedia, and I want him to learn and grow here, because he has a lot to offer the project, and we have a lot to offer him. Waggie (talk) 06:35, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The pretense at representative evidence is your listings of purported copyvios. 1. that someone else added a copyvio is not blame of tST, who did not add it. 2. A list of publications has no copyright--it has an extremely limited possible way of presentation. 3. It is impossible to say without copying or close paraphrase the material that says X held a position or received an honour. One is inevitably going to have to write one of 3 or 4 variations. Your examples are at best your own misunderstandings. DGG ( talk ) 05:12, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I do need to clarify that though I think some here are indeed bullying , some or undoubtedly not realizing the nature of the bullying, and are joining the hue and cry out of genuine concern. And there are genuine concerns: he generally works too fast and consequently not as carefully as he should. I've said that in the previous discussions, and it is true here also. I apologize if I gave a different impression. DGG ( talk ) 05:12, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

DGG, I added the list as an absolutely fair representation of what I found, for people to make up their own minds. Would you rather I had not disclosed my results fairly? I sampled a variety of articles, and I selected ones that had a copyvio score above 25%. If I was making a pretense, I would not have posted these, or I would have searched extensively for the most egregious violations I could find and only posted those. Note also, that I was extremely careful to clearly point out that someone else had added the Bertram Bruce copyvio, did you miss that? I pointed it out because it was hijacked within days to add the copyvio and promo content, for people to make of it what they wished. Also I wouldn't call this just saying "X holds Y position", nor this, they are clearly copy/pasted detailed descriptions of various fields of study with some slight modifications, but the order of the fields of study aren't even changed. I am of the opinion that ST is not exercising care in creating these stubs, simply copy/pasting "X does Y" with some quick modifications, and sourcing it to the subject's own school or awarding institution. This is not improving the encyclopedia, it's simply posting a huge number of stubs based on primary sources. Regarding impressions, you definitely gave a different impression, as you've been repeatedly defending him in various forums even when it's clear he's been problematic, such as at AfC with the copyvios he was accepting there, and also by not responding to my earlier comments regarding his lack of collaboration with other editors. I am genuinely concerned that he focuses far more on quantity, rather than quality, pretty much to the point of disruption until he wears out his welcome in a particular venue, then just moves elsewhere on the project. Editors clearly have tried to engage him in discussion and are simply blown off. That is a clear problem. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I like SwisterTwister and wish him well, he really just needs to slow down and actually collaborate. Waggie (talk) 07:26, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose This oppose is based on my personal principles. I cannot, in good conscience, accept a 60-day countdown to nuke option. This is especially true when the proposal calls for automatic deletion of pages if people don't take action. I can forsee ahead that those who want to see such pages gone to simply stand around and not do anything. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 04:53, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  As a minor point of interest, OhanaUnited, I upped the timeframe to 120 days about 16 hours before you posted. I know that probably doesn't change your overall opinion but I felt it should be mentioned. Primefac (talk) 12:25, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose per above. Most of these are notable and problematic articles can be fixed. This is a Wiki after all, and it's meant to be improved on. -FASTILY 06:53, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Of course there is one law for football, if you nominate people for deletion who meet the criteria, you will be sanctioned. There is another law for subjects that do not apply heavily to hard core males. So I guess heavy deletion nominations of articles on female porn starts might earn a sanction, especially if the aritcles deleted included photos. Nominating sports figures earns a special level of hate. Actually, this whole discussion shows another problem with Wikipedia. There is not enough defense against hounding. Bascially SwisterTwister is actually trying to do the common work of crafting a set of guidelines for the encyclopedia and leaving it to others to flesh out the project. Now, maybe this should be done with much clearer under collaborators in mind. I may be among the few who feel biographical articles should tell us at least a little about a person's life and not just be a list of citations. However I hold that even with these articles we can say more of them as people.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:14, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Look at something like this. Maybe he is notable expert, I do not know. However, this is not at all clear from the "referencing", which is something essentially self-published. Moreover, the page does not tell anything of significance about the person. As written, this is advertisement, pure and simple, regardless to motivations. This whole discussion is actually about responsibility in creating new pages. Everyone who creates new page must be responsible to satisfy at least some very minimal requirements for a stub. My very best wishes (talk) 17:39, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Just to clarify: you can't tell from that stub whether some-one holding a named professorship at Harvard Business School is a notable expert in their field? Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 06:28, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose I have reviewed several of these articles (before the listing here) and there were OK. It may be annoying to have an article with so little information, and I have recently requested another writer doing the same thing to put in worthwhile information. TS may be rushing too fast through whatever tasks performed (AFC, stub creation, AFD listing) and not apparently changing behaviour on request. But in this case, a small fraction of problems does not warrant any more than a patrol by someone else, no more than other random article creations. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:39, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose The majority of the concerns which led to SvG's articles being mass deleted were the additions of incorrect measurements of height and weight to BLPs. The majority of SwisterTwister's BLPs simply list awards and what the scientist has done. The whole situation is radically different from the SvG scuffle. Stikkyy (talk) (contributions) 05:22, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Discuss

What if there're pages that haven't been reviewed after 60 days? The wording on the proposal seems to suggest that any unreviewed pages are defaulted to nuke option. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 21:41, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

OhanaUnited I think that is the case. Like with the SvG scenario, any article that is not reviewed will be nuked.TheGracefulSlick (talk) 22:02, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think there's reasonable concern that 60 days may be too soon. I would support a modification of the timeframe to simply match the G13 criteria. Waggie (talk) 03:02, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think six months is a little extreme, but I just picked 60 as a relatively round number (and two months seemed like a reasonable timeframe to go through 1700 two-sentence stubs). If the general preference is to make it longer, I have no objections. Now that I write this out, I realize that 60 may have been too short... Primefac (talk) 12:19, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Is anyone else... bothered that he has not replied once to this discussion? --Tarage (talk) 21:57, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You are not alone Tarage. I quipped about that in my support to the proposal above.TheGracefulSlick (talk) 22:02, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I've been wondering about that as well. He removed posts from his talk page from BrownHairedGirl and Huon with the edit summary "I have nothing else to say here, questions have been answered," having addressed only the notability concerns by citing PROF. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 23:03, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

And that is part of the larger problem here, he doesn't see a problem or doesn't want to deal with it, and that's simply not collaborative editing which is part of th Wikipedia Five Pillars ("Editors should treat each other with respect and civility"). It concerns me quite deeply. Waggie (talk) 03:02, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm less concerned about a lack of response here (although it seems odd behaviour that an established user would not at least give a brief statement to present the rationale behind their actions, rather than leaving it to be inferred). If someone chooses not to respond to a noticeboard discussion, that is their prerogative, even if it's possibly not the most prudent choice.

What I find more concerning is that the issue about not including stub tags was politely raised on 11 May, then removed without response. Removing without response on the talk page is ok at a low level, although it seems odd to not just reply to a polite request with some sort of thanks / acknowledgement. Removing it without response either in talk or in subsequent actions, does not seem ok. As noted in a new followup message, even a generic {{stub}} tag would be significantly better than no stub tag, although I find it a little difficult to justify an experienced editor not just using a more specific appropriate tag each time. These articles would all fall within either a single specific stub cat, or a small group of stub cats, wouldn't they? So, it shouldn't need a huge amount of additional effort to just use a reasonably correct tag?

In my earlier note about stub tags, I expressed surprise that they were not included, characterising it as a relatively minor issue. That changes to concern when I discover that the issue had been politely raised and apparently ignored.

Murph9000 (talk) 03:19, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

When I bought the lack of stub tags up with ST a week ago, he removed it in a way that it didn't ping me. Unfortunately, I'm unsurprised that ST has yet to respond. I'm sure he is well aware of the discussion, but is being avoidant of it. It's pretty characteristic of him to do so both on-wiki and on IRC.  I dream of horses (My talk page) (My edits) @ 04:25, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Frankly, he would be unwise to respond to an attack like this, one which is clearly based on some degree of dislike. I judge this by the series of attacks on his work that have been brought here and ANI for different things over the last fe months. (I suppose one or another is the root cause, but it's hard to tell.) When attacked by a group, sensible people try to get away. Some would-be heroes would rather go down fighting. We have here a perfect example of why I advise people to keep far away from ANB/ANI. From arb com also; the reason I became an arb is to attempt to at least limit the harm they do. Just as I'm trying to do here. DGG ( talk ) 05:02, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You need to stop excusing ST's disruptive behaviour. The issue with their 'stub' creation has been explained to them on their talk page, and they ignored it. The issue with their new article reviewing has been explained to them, and they ignored it. The issue with them failing to check new content for copyright issues has been explained to them, and they ignored it. I don't think people are asking for much when they ask SwisterTwister to do things in the normal way that they're normally done on Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is a collaborative project, we do need people to discuss issues when they're raised and to actually collaborate, SwisterTwister primarily finds themselves at AN/ANI not because of what they are doing, but because they ignore concerns and refuse to collaborate with other users. Nick (talk) 08:43, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Nick. And I also feel that ST is heading for an ArbCom case to evaluate all of these continued disruptions if he persists in repeated disruptive non-collaborative behaviors. Softlavender (talk) 08:47, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You feel that Huon is attacking SwisterTwister by registering his concerns here after being simply brushed off on ST's talk page? Folks tried to communicate with him and their concerns were effectively ignored, and so it ended up here. I, myself, have tried to work with ST before on his talk page and been brushed off. I realize there have been unjust and specious complaints about ST in the past, and I regard them with disdain, this isn't one of them. Here's a few smattering of examples both recent and past of SwisterTwister not collaborating to resolve an issue: [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23],[24],[25], and here, only a couple months after an AfD keep consensus. It's his prerogative to not respond here, but he is expected to collaborate constructively with other editors. I like SwisterTwister and think he can do a lot of good here if he slows down, performs due diligence, and works to collaborate more effectively (and part of that is accepting constructive criticism). I respect that you're trying to defend people from attacks, but there is genuine concern about a pattern of behavior here. If he won't collaborate on his talk page, and won't address them here, where WILL he address them? If there is a venue in which he'll communicate, discuss, and accept constructive criticism, I would truly enjoy working with him further. Waggie (talk) 09:19, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if any of these could be effectively "trans-wikied" to Wikidata. "Alice Expert is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science", sourced to the authoritative AAAS list of fellows, would presumably fall into their scope. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:41, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

certainly it belongs in Wikidata, as do all other subjects of WP articles. The place to challenge his notability is AfD, not by bringing actions at ANB against the ed. who wrote the article. ANB, of course, does not deal with questions of notability , for no admin has a greater voice in that than any other editor. Before blaming people for disruptively writing inadequate articles on non0notable people, it is appropriate to see if the articles hold up at AfD. DGG ( talk ) 00:57, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A couple of folks have asked for samples of copyvio or similar issues. I did some spot checks and found:

Close paraphrasing: Mark Berliner Mark Chance Nicholas Roy Guhan Subramanian Charles Stewart III

Lists of publications copied in part or whole: Amedeo Odoni

Clear copyvio: Bertram Bruce (note however: most of the copyvio was added by User:Chipbruce - presumably the subject themselves - not SwisterTwister)

Methodology: I took a fairly random sampling from the top of the list, a few scattered in between, and a few around the 1000 mark. The examples above represent approximately 10-15% of the articles I sampled.

That's high enough to warrant some serious concern here, I think. There were quite a few other articles that had very close paraphrasing, but the text was short enough to not warrant inclusion here (because it was only a one sentence article to begin with). Waggie (talk) 06:12, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think your samples support your conclusion. The article you called an example of clear copyvio, is one you admit SwisterTwister didn't create with the violation. It has no probative value to demonstrating whether ST's creations are being put into the project without proper care. The "close paraphrasing" examples include many phrases highlighted by Earwig's tool that have limited or no other ways to re-express. For example, "American Association for the Advancement of Science" is a phrase long enough to be tripped by the tool, but is the name of the organization. From the Mark Berliner article it picks out "...early research focused on Bayesian statistics, decision theory, and robust Bayesian analysis." and I can't think of too many ways to restate that information without gross grammatical torturing. I appreciate the obvious effort you put into this sampling, but the limited number of at best borderline examples is not indicative of a copyright violation problem that requires special handling. I would venture to say that a similar sample of articles that have been approved through AfC, especially on scientific or academic subjects, would find similar levels of paraphrasing. If these weren't the articles created by ST, I doubt this would be considered problematic. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 16:21, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Waggie: I really don't want to move the goalposts here, but I think that almost all of these are either not a copyright violation (Name of an organization or professorship), borderline ( short complicated technical phrase which is difficult to reword), or do not reflect on ST because the copyvio was added by a different editor. The copied list of publications really is a problem, but if that is the only problem, we can just excise such lists from ST's articles using manually assisted regex, and move on with our lives. Thank you for assembling the data - it makes it much easier to have a discussion about what to do about the articles. I don't think a 5-7% borderline copyvio rate and a 1-3% serious copyvio rate warrants a quarantine and nuke approach, but the converse position is totally defensible. Are there any indicators in ST's work beyond a list of publications that may indicate a copyvio is likely? Tazerdadog (talk) 00:17, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tazerdadog and Eggishorn, please see my reply above to DGG. There are two such examples that are more than just a name of an organization/professorship, but clear copy/pastes of someone's fields of study (in detail) that are barely changed at all. As I mentioned in my reply to DGG, I intended the results of my analysis to be fair and objective, so I did not skew or cherry-pick my results to give a "pretense of evidence" as DGG calls it. Thank you for discussing this with me. Waggie (talk) 07:37, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You say 2 examples of clear copyvio, but in your list of them above you give only 1 as clear copyvio--and then say the copyvio was added by someone else. That makes zero. You have made an accusation that your own evidence disproves. DGG ( talk ) 03:21, 21 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hello DGG, thanks again for your reply. If you had followed the diff to my reply above that I provided, you would see which examples I'm referring to, neither of which is the Bertram Bruce article. In fact, you were actually pinged in that diff and instead you replied to the post that you weren't pinged in, which I find interesting. No, I did not characterize these examples as "clear copyvio" in my initial posting of the samples, I was attempting to offer the samples without too much characterization. With respect, you keep treating me like I'm trying to bully ST. I'm really not. Waggie (talk) 18:53, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• SwisterTwister is conspicuously absent from this entire thread. I'm not sure what to make of that. It's clear that he has not created any further articles since it began and, since he has archived this page, it's pretty certain he's seen it. ST, I think a comment here regarding your intentions, any plans for the future, and your opinions regarding this thread would be helpful. I think the ideal scenario would be for you to commit to going back through these articles to check for (and fix) copyright issues, make sure they're notable, and address the other issues brought up in this thread. And, importantly, to commit to discussing any future mass creations. I think if that if you committed to that, then there are some users who would probably want to check up on these articles (or even help), but I think this thread would head towards a relatively quick closure. IMO, anyway. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:11, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• I note the time is now 120 days. They will all be reviewed by then, though there will probably be a number of AfDs that will need longer discussion. Enough people seem to be interested . DGG ( talk ) 15:43, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Of course I knew the articles were not complete, but I would have gone back and fixed them. People should have let me do it, rather than find every possible reason to pick on the few mistakes in a few of the articles. I recognize now that it would have been better if I had gone slower, and written them in more detail initially. SwisterTwister talk 01:06, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• I have not been able to read beyond the start of this discussion. However my basic reaction is that it would be best for editors to at least do a search to see if they can find more sources on the people involved than to complain that all these articles were created. I know such takes work, but with the admission that some may well be notable, it would behove us to do the work to seek for the references, which often do exist for people, they are just hard to find.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:05, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Some people seem to have the view that creating lots of articles on under-covered in our encyclopedia professions (academics, especially scienctists), or under-represented biographical populations (women, especially those who are writers, academics, lawyers and politicians and maybe a few other such professions), ethnic-minority group members in Europe and especially the US, Canada and Australia, people from the world outside of those areas, members of religious minority groups, and a few others, will somehow make for a more inclusive better encyclopedia. I can in general see this sentiment, I have deliberately created articles on people who fit one or more of these criteria Emmanuel Abu Kissi and Joseph W. Sitati are the two that come to mind the fastest, and Edward Dube if I created that article. I still agree with this sentiment in general, however I am not sure that an article like the one of John Enemark that says virtually nothing substantive about him really advances the encyclopedia. Will we really be better off if we go from more articles on porn actors than scientist to more articles on scienctists, but a high percentage of the later are two sentance articles that say nothing of meaning?John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:12, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • A fact we need to face: up until about a few decades ago, and even today, the human mindset did a crap job of covering females, minorities, non-Western/non-Asian citizens, and professions that were important to advancement but didn't have the glamor of celebrity or the draw of money. We can't change that, and that means we are going to have imbalance of articles favoring white and male people up to and including the 21st century. We cannot create information that does not exist (as being asked here), nor should we weaken our sourcing, verification, and notability policies/guidelines just to enable poor or nearly-absent sourced to be used to "correct" that imbalance that we did not create. As an academic myself, it sucks that the bulk of sources overlook the people that actually do the science, but that's how the world works, and we are not here to right great wrongs. --MASEM (t) 03:40, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Actually we can change the level of coverage received be certain people before any given year. The caveat is that it cannot be changed by original reseach in Wikipedia. However no Wikipedia notability guidelines requires a person to have been covered in contemporary reliable sources. Thus Elijah Abel merits an article based on 21st-century coverage of this 19th-century man, to give one example that came to my head quickly.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:25, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • Absolutely true, but my point is that if you turn to sources of the 19th century (to use an example), they are going to be very woefully overrepresenting men and dismissive of females, minorities, etc.. That happened, society is trying to fix it, but we cant retroactively change what was or what wasn't written then. If anything, contemporary sources are going to a more likely shot to cover the underrepresented classes then. That still doesn't mean we should weaking our sourcing requirements to be more inclusive as if try to fix that historical systematic bias. --MASEM (t) 04:44, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment This would probably make more sense above, but I think there is goal post moving. Early on someone complained these articles are based on "primary sources". However then it was correctly pointed out that the published membership of a society is a secondary source. Weather it is fully independent is another issue, but it is not a primary source. While there is some wiggle room, a primary source is generally one that is not published, if a source is published in some form it is secondary. Weather it is either independent or reliable is another matter, but it is not primary.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:21, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Being listed as a member or a fellow of a society is a primary source. A secondary source requires novel transformation of primary and other information, and we would be expecting things like analysis, critique, synthesis, and other aspects (effectively, why each person stood out to be elected a member), and that is completely absent here. --MASEM (t) 03:40, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

this is one of the cases where that source is the best source. How can it possibly be mistaken or ambiguous? It speaks for itself. The subject's own source is reliable for this also, but a report by a journalist can not be certain to get the nature or name of the distinction right. It's exactly the same as our using a legislative register to show someone occupied an office. (If one wants to be technical, the true primary source is the certificate of the award given to the person, and the listing just an authoritative report on it, or for a political office, the report of the body certifying the election ) Trying to reject article content because of this is getting sourcing exactly upside-down. The true problem is that for some awards and memberships we have no easily accessible membership register. DGG ( talk ) 05:01, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose Having looked at the actual articles, so many of these people not only have done lots of research but hold named chairs from research universities and have done other important work in their fields, that draftifying this is a backward approach. All we need is a few people with the time and temperment to write good bios of scientists to step forward. I have worked to flesh a few bios out, but do not claim a deep enough understanding of science to feel like trying more. However I might if I got some time. 120 days is just too little of a time, that is only 4 months, and a good fleshing out will take a while.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:36, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Vote (X) for Change has been disrupting Wikipedia for years now (see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Vote_(X)_for_Change). Since he was banned in 2010, his disruption has mostly been harrassment of individual Admins. It has a knock-on effect, in that his actions often lead to semi-protection being applied to pages which other IP's should be allowed to access. He is in the UK and in that time the police here have started to crack down heavily on online harrassment and related issues. Who do we have to prod at the WMF with a big stick to get them to actually take action on this? And I dont mean their usual 'we are looking at ways of improving dealing with harrassment blah blah' fob off, I mean actually lodging a formal complaint with the local police authority. And no I am not joking about this. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:04, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

And also Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Vote (X) for Change. Supposedly the Foundation was informed last February following an ArbCom motion and they responded something to the effect of it being on their list of things to look at, which looks to me exactly like what you'd expect a dismissive hand wave from an authority that doesn't give a crap to look like. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 13:11, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• While I have no idea with how to proceed with that, I am in full support of any measures taken to remove an LTA from our noticeboard. Primefac (talk) 13:11, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Just a question/observation, not a proposal: how many Wikipedias have disabled IP editing? Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 13:14, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Ivanvector: IIRC no WMF Wikipedia, disables IP editing... Ⓩⓟⓟⓘⓧ _Talk 13:25, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Not directly related, but in general, there's been quite a lot of stalking of users (offwiki) who I will not name. I've asked Jalexander (Jalexander-WMF) if the harassment which, strictly construed, falls under California law, is being responded to and he said that him and the WMF have attempted to help the victims. Hopefully something legal could happen with these LTAs. Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 14:09, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I am also aware of such cases, and yes, I also know that the foundation legal team DOES assist, where it can, people who are experiencing harassment which originated on Wikipedia and has reached the level where legal action needs to be taken. Being annoying and refusing to go away is not even in the same ballpark when dealing with the sorts of harassment these cases have shown, which is scary as hell. Being told to leave and keep coming back to post on Wikipedia is, while a pain in the ass, not going to be something that the legal team gets involved with. They've got bigger fish to fry, honestly. That doesn't mean there isn't some middle ground between "Taking them to court" and "Doing nothing", but to compare what Vote (X) is doing to the sorts of legal cases that are out there (if we're thinking of the same one) doesn't even compare. Vote (X) is annoying, but generally gets shut down within seconds. If we wanted to, perhaps something in the Edit Filter way could be used to shut it down for a while, but really, this will probably go away on its own; Willy on Wheels did, Mascotguy did, Davidyork71 did, etc, etc. This sort of low-level trolling and refusal to go away isn't the worst thing we deal with; it seems like a bigger problem than it is because it's one person, but it's not hard to shut down, really. --Jayron32 16:44, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Its been seven years. No sign of them getting bored yet. Perhaps you like to deal with this crap endlessly, but there are other options. Only in death does duty end (talk) 16:48, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, yes, we did contact the Foundation about this last year. I wouldn't call the response "dismissive", but it did sound like this was not (then) at a level that would make dealing with it a priority for them. To be fair, being a long-term nuisance on-wiki but not (AFAIK) pursuing people off-wiki or harassing them elsewhere is fairly small-scale compared to other issues on their plate. I understand there's some new efforts at the Foundation aimed at dealing with harassment, and engaging with those efforts might be the best path forward for issues like this that are chronic irritants rather than serious threats. A range-specific semiprotection tool might be useful? Opabinia regalis (talk) 19:10, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I can tell, Vote (X) for Change posts irrelevant stuff but not actual patent nonsense, admins revert and block, cycle repeats. He turned up on my page, I ignored him as a crank and he went away of his own accord. So why don't we all try doing that - he's obviously trolling admins and having a laugh at those who rise to the bait. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 12:20, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ritchie, you might be quite the baseball player with all those WP:RBI. RickinBaltimore (talk)

@Ritchie333: It's not that straightforward. Vote (X) for Change posts are a mix of irrelevant stuff, half-truths, and outright lies that can fool editors into thinking there's something to them if they don't know they're dealing with a LTA. You yourself re-added one of their posts to a RFA after it had been removed by another editor. And then proceeded on a wild good chase that caused a rather heated argument between us. So, yes, RBI but realize they do occasionally cause significant disruption for unsuspecting editors. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 12:42, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I can't even remember what you're talking about or when that was - and I'm not saying that to be belittling, it's just it wasn't significant enough to lodge in my memory. For me, it's the articles that are the main draw, everything else is just background noise I can tune out. It's the admins who can't let this go that keep using their tools like Sisyphus pushing his rock up a hill, and wondering why it never ends. Again, not being nasty, just stating experience. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:03, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, I was blocked for restoring some of (apparently) his posts to my talkpage which I felt were perfectly benign, and was declared by the blocking admin to be "proxying for a banned editor". Thankfully some common sense prevailed after 17 minutes... The Rambling Man (talk) 12:51, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The only solution would be to have him physically restrained from Wikipedia or design a bot which can instantly recognize his posts & edits, that would immediately revert/delete them. GoodDay (talk) 12:48, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I reverted some of the LTA user's edits. Then I found out that Vote (X) for Change's activities extended to Wikimedia Commons, solely contributions from December 2016. This user used one of IPs and a username "Miletian" there. --George Ho (talk) 18:11, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The troll in question is not important enough to do anything special about. There are many of us and only one of him, and typically his garbage gets thrown away quickly. The mere existence of this discussion, however well-meaning, does nothing except to feed that troll. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:14, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Question - Short of GoodDay's proposal, obviously intended flippantly, to design a bot that would instantly recognize troll posts and revert them, what is anyone suggesting be done? We agree that this troll is a problem, but not every problem has an obvious solution. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:29, 21 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Really need quick eyes on this and some admin intervention, cause it's a BLP issue with potentially serious implications. The article is Murder of Seth Rich. The controversy is over a report, originally from Fox News (who then altered their story) which then spread through the fringe conspiracy websites, about Rich's "emails to Wikileaks" being discovered by a Private Investigator. It's a hoax. Sources debunking the story are here, here and even here and here (one fox news affiliate debunking the original fox news story, yup).

There are a couple accounts which are trying to both force it into the article (there's some discussion on the talk page and, obviously, no consensus for inclusion) [26]. The user who's trying to add it also accused those who don't want in of being "DNC users" [27].

Another single purpose anonymous account has been edit warring to add this to In The News [28].

Please, at the very least, semi-protect the relevant articles. This is some Sandy-Hook-didn't-happen conspiracy theory bullshit all over again.Volunteer Marek (talk) 17:37, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

from what I can see this editor above is attempting to end around protect the page as he pushes bias about president Trump and it has nothing to do with Seth Rich story - the editor who added the item originally has a long history on wiki of good faith edits https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/block&page=User%3ALasersharp --2600:8800:FF04:C00:2169:C266:D9F6:9F08 (talk) 17:41, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

on the other hand the above editor Volunteer Marek has an EXTENSIVE HISTORY OF EDIT WARRING BLOCKING and is currently engaged in multiple issues of POV bias pushing and edit warring https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/block&page=User%3AVolunteer+Marek --2600:8800:FF04:C00:2169:C266:D9F6:9F08 (talk) 17:44, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This is the single purpose anonymous account which has been edit warring on multiple articles and adding the crap about Seth Rich to the Portal News. It's also clearly not a new user. WP:NOTHERE.Volunteer Marek (talk) 17:46, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

not sure who you are referring to I each and every day edit the Current Events page as does Lazorsharp - you on the other hand have never edited that page before and keep swearing instead of making a real arguemnet - I ask again are you a sockpuppet of Geogene or whoever today is also swearing on the current events page?--2600:8800:FF04:C00:2169:C266:D9F6:9F08 (talk) 17:51, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Volunteer Marek Is not a sockpuppet. Be careful with your accusations. - Mlpearc (open channel) 17:55, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This anon account has been causing trouble and being disruptive for the past eight hours. It's obviously WP:NOTHERE.Volunteer Marek (talk) 17:57, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• The registered editor has been Blocked by User:Lord Roem for violation of 1RR. I suspect enough people will have eyeballs on the article to prevent a reoccurrence. Black Kite (talk) 17:52, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hmm? Are you sure you're in the right section? I don't see anyone involved here blocked. Never mind I see it now. ansh666 17:57, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Um, try looking at User:Theguide42 at Murder of Seth Rich. And I've just rangeblocked the IPv6 - possibly the same editor - that has been disrupting elsewhere. Black Kite (talk) 17:59, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• The story about Seth Rich and Wikileaks (whether a hoax or not) has gotten enough RS coverage by now that I'd call it encyclopedically notable, so we should document it, carefully of course. Seth Rich himself is also obviously not a living person, though maybe borderline "recently deceased". 173.228.123.121 (talk) 02:19, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• This article does deserve some careful attention, as it has the potential of major BLP violations, but hyperbole such as This is some Sandy-Hook-didn't-happen conspiracy theory bullshit exacerbates the problem, rather than defusing it. There is no doubt that there are some questions to be answered, and we need to be careful about how this article is editied, but the multiple "debunkings" are statements from the family who may or may not know all the facts, regarding one aspect of the story. Words such as "hoax" are not apropos.--S Philbrick(Talk) 16:44, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Given the publicity that has been given to this matter, its a notable political hoax, discussed as such by the NYTimes. There is no BLP question, there is no added harm that can be done by repeating the nonsense in Wikipedia. It's at the stage where we must include it as part of the historical record. DGG ( talk ) 04:53, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Seth Rich himself doesn't present a BLP problem. The BLP hazards are in the claims/inferences floating around that various currently-living people ordered the murder. I haven't been keeping up but I thought the hoax/non-hoax status was still unknown within the margins of reasonable doubt. I did just see something about the family serving notice on the PI to shut his trap about the matter, but there are conflicts of interest all around. 173.228.123.121 (talk) 04:06, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• I agree with DGG that WP:BLP is no longer an issue in respect to Mr. Rich. If you stick to WP:RS and frame the information in the voice of those RSs and not in Wikipedia's voice, BLP shouldn't be an issue for living parties. Whether or not to include should be decided at the talk page, not here, btw. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 00:38, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

HOAX and BLP are not issues. TFD (talk) 00:57, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Could someone fix this page history, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Alan_Robock thanks. prokaryotes (talk) 12:43, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

(1) Please don't put OUTING-related issues at a public noticeboard; report them by email or at least a private message at someone's talk page, please. (2) Speculation about the person using an IP address, while not particularly helpful most of the time, isn't an OUTING thing; OUTING is when you give out private information that you know (or claim to know) about a person, based on off-wiki sources. Merely saying "This IP [or "This account"] is behaving as if it's operated by X" isn't a problem; behavioral analysis can be problematic, but it's entirely based on publicly available information. Nyttend (talk) 13:05, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. prokaryotes (talk) 13:46, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for bringing this up! Maybe my response sounds harsh or complaining: I wasn't at all trying to sound that way. Nyttend (talk) 14:10, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No it's fine. And I wasn't too focused, edited a little, then a door bell ring, had to work on something else, and in between i've noticed the talk page. All good :) prokaryotes (talk) 15:01, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree - it is outing, per WP:OUTING itself Posting another editor's personal information is harassment, unless that person has voluntarily posted his or her own information, or links to such information, on Wikipedia A user has posted what they believe to be the I.P users real name, even though it wasn't revealed anywhere on Wikipedia. I've removed the post and would second the request that it be rev'del'd.  Ҝ Ø Ƽ Ħ  20:25, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I moved the above from the section below; not sure who it's replying to. ansh666 21:30, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• This isn't outing. This was questioning if the subject of the article was also a participant, a WP:COI question. An IP by itself is not so "personally identifiable" in most circumstances as it theoretically only gives you an idea of a region they are in at that given moment, and in many countries (the UK for example) it is totally useless to geolocate someone. Nyttend is utterly correct here. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 21:36, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Besides, i suggest such matters should be brought up on a talk page first. prokaryotes (talk) 09:56, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you User:Dennis Brown for your truly perspicacious arrival at the truth, you are absolutely correct here, in that a conflict of interest was indeed exactly why I posted this on the talk page.

Is there a better way to raise such concerns to prevent a recurrence of users such as prokaryotes, being entertained in their jumping to these bloviated accusational claims and taking these perhaps, intentionally diversionary maneuvers? As instead of my initial edit being viewed as an the innocent raising of a suspected COI, with the obvious motivation behind it being a heads-up to future editors, who can keep an eye-out for further COI editing on this person. We instead find ourselves here, entertaining the fantastical claim that I'm engaged in "OUTING". I mean, are they for real?

From my shoes this whole claim of "outing", is nothing but a lame attempt at diverting away from the subject at hand, which is that someone "was" involved in editing with a conflict of interest. With that person, perhaps, being Alan Robuck themselves.

User:Dennis Brown, A talk-page template for reporting suspected COI editing, would be helpful? To raise suspected conflict of interests, so that other editors are aware of concerns that the article is being edited by those with a COI. Is there such a helpful template? As I'd naturally use that instead, some sort of template that would prevent these clearly childish "outing" accusations, when in reality, I and many others are merely trying to point out a suspected COI.

In any case. I have since re-edited Alan Robuck's talk page, explicitly delineating the evidence for this IP user, having a conflict of interest.

I haven't been active in quite a while, and getting trumped up alerts, like this claim of "outing", do nothing but really truly make me laugh.

Boundarylayer (talk) 14:20, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Boundarylayer, you're reading too much into this incident, and as someone pointed out to you on the talk page, you likely made an error. To streamline the process and to better help integrate new editors we should indeed have some sort of template. prokaryotes (talk) 14:58, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Boundarylayer, I really don't believe we need a new template. If the edits seem a bit COI-ish, just ask them a simple question, and introduce the subject of COI, e.g.: Are you related to, or do you have a direct connection to the subject? Your edits make it seem like you may have a conflict of interest, which we can deal with, but must be disclosed.

If the edits seem quite COI-ish, drop {{subst:uw-coi}} on them, and see what their response is. If they don't have a COI, the wording of that template is not too harsh and you can easily nullify it with a simple "oh, ok then, sorry to disturb you", or similar (if appropriate), or it's there on record to record the suspicion that there may be a COI.

As for the OUTING, there was none here, just suspicion based on public information and editing pattern. IP editors are given fair warning that their IP will be published, so if they don't want to live with the consequences of that they must register an account and always login before editing. If the information is public and trivially available to anyone browsing the site, repeating that information cannot be outing. There was recent strong consensus on AN/I to support that position.

Murph9000 (talk) 15:27, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well put, i agree with you Murph. prokaryotes (talk) 15:39, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

So if I am to understand User:Murph9000 correctly, I may drop {{subst:uw-coi}} on the IP user, and that is all? As from the tone of your comment, are you suggesting that this is the only socially acceptable response I have? In that, I cannot do what I've done, and simply circumvent the pointless wasting of my time talking to a IP address that may be dynamic, or indeed even a public wifi-hotspot, and instead just go raising the fishy COI editing on the talk page of the very article that the suspected COI editing is occurring?

A talk-page of an article on a living person, is in my mind no different from a talk-page on an inanimate object. It is a place for other editors to come in and have a look at potential problems that the article may have. One such problem is living persons, editing their own wikipedia article. That's my thinking on it, but I'd like to know the official word on the matter, from an admin?

Boundarylayer (talk) 16:02, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Boundarylayer, i see you repeatedly re-edit your comment over at that talk page, after other editors commented, which is against Wikipedia best practises, and confusing. Always add additional input in new comments, after someone else commented.prokaryotes (talk) 16:06, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Additional, please read WP:GF. prokaryotes (talk) 16:11, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Boundarylayer: It's not an absolute thing. I see roughly 3 or 4 levels to it, and it's for each editor to judge which approach best fits a situation:

1. Slight suspicion, try to chat to them (yes, even on an IP), and see if you can either confirm or eliminate the suspicion. This does not really need a template, in my opinion, but it might lead to a later templates depending on what they say. This is fully compatible with WP:AGF, it's just a friendly chat to figure out what's going on, maybe help the editor understand neutrality issues.
2. Strong suspicion, perhaps based on the nature of the edits, or something they have said (including in edit summaries). {{subst:uw-coi}} isn't unreasonable in that situation, but initially trying to open a conversation (possibly with slightly firmer COI wording) might also be reasonable, or a combination of the two. Note the "if you have" wording in the template, there's nothing stopping you using it for strong suspicion, before disclosure and/or confirmation, it's informational (and can be easily walked back if you get it wrong). It's still WP:AGF, the template is a good faith template (to be used where the need is reasonably clear).
3. Very strong suspicion, {{subst:uw-coi}} is both appropriate and covers the step of giving them full and fair notice of the policies and guidelines.
4. Confirmed, or good-as-confirmed (actions and words that basically put it beyond reasonable doubt). {{subst:uw-coi}} on user talk and {{Connected contributor}} on article talk header are strongly recommended, {{COI}} on article if the content needs attention.

You've got to be appropriately creative in how you handle it, being prepared to walk the conversation back if you get it wrong. The lower levels of suspicion, in particular, need diplomatic and creative handling rather than fixed procedure and templates. The upper levels are covered by the policies and guidelines. I'm certainly not saying "that is all"; as with everything, you have to choose your approach and words, then be prepared to justify them later. I'm just suggesting ways the existing tools can be used. If you are not comfortable tackling the issue, let someone else do so, wait until evidence is more clear, or open a new thread on article talk with something simple like "I'm concerned that 192.0.2.1 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) may have a COI, based on their edits." and see what responses you get over a couple of days. There's no rush to it, so take your time and see how the attempts to communicate go. If they turn out to be on a dynamic IP or similar, and won't join in chat on article talk, you may end up needing to go to WP:COIN for help (assuming there is reasonable COI suspicion, or WP:NPOVN for cases that may just be NPOV). The above contains big chunks of personal philosophy on the approach to it, but is built upon the policies and guidelines.

Murph9000 (talk) 16:45, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal tban Boundarylayer

I had closed an RFC at Talk:Catalan Countries (edit | article | history | links | watch | logs) based on a request at WP:AN/RFC (Request). The user Asilah1981 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) reverted my closure (diff) with a note calling it personal opinion. I reverted his edit (diff) and took the matter to the talk page asking him to present his reason for overturning my closure (diff). I asked him to show me any points I missed. Before I could reply to his assertions (here), he again removed the RFC closing statement (diff) and left a note asking any other editor to close the discussion.
My reply to his assertions (here) were actually written before he reverted my edits. I asked other editors to comment on my closure. I was working as per WP:closure review where I would have reviewed my own closure and changed the statement had anything meaningful been brought before me or if most of the participants were unhappy with my closure.
Please correct me if my closure was wrong or take action against him if I was in the correct place. Also, I only wanted to resolve the issue with proper discussion but this reverting of closures isn't really helpful. Thanks, Yashovardhan (talk) 14:55, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I believe WP:AN is better place for this. Capitals00 (talk) 15:01, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks @Capitals00:. Yashovardhan (talk) 15:06, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

[29] I don't know if this is the place but I've already grown tired of these jibes and personal attacks every time our orbits come into contact. I avoid the guy because he is always creating conflict but I feel he is trying to intimidate me into not commenting with these constant comments. WCM_email 09:20, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I saw that. That's kind of like WP:Battleground behaviour that he's showing. I've notified him of this discussion but he seems to ignore it. Yashovardhan (talk) 09:55, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Asilah has displayed battleground behaviour throughout this RfC. He edit-warred continually to add his disputed content back into the first sentence while the RfC was ongoing, even when it was crystal clear that consensus in the RfC was against that content (the choice in the end was between two neutral alternatives to Asilah's version). Then he changed tack and edit-warred to add a "failed verification" tag to the second sentence on the spurious grounds that three citations in the second sentence failed to verify the first sentence. He even admitted that this was what he was doing. Note also the tendentious edit summaries like this and this. Asilah made it clear that he didn't like how the RfC was going, and that if he didn't get the result he wanted, "of course he would take it further". He followed this up by posting "Invalid RfC", though he did strike this when he thought he was going to get the result he wanted. Reverting the close without a policy-based reason is just his latest attempt to disrupt the process.

Asilah has a history. He was indef blocked after this discussion at ANI at the end of last year (you can find the sequel to that – the offer of mentorship and the failure of same – between here and the end of the page, and in this section and this); and although his behaviour has been not quite as egregious since then, he continues to show a battleground mentality on multiple pages. In my opinion he needs to be sent a message. Scolaire (talk) 13:00, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We're running short of messages we can send that don't involve blocks and bans. He's been ticked off by admins before and just ignored it or insisted that he was in the right. We offered him mentorship and he agreed terms - but then reneged on them as soon as they involved actually changing his behaviour in any way.

I have not interacted with Asilah recently because he's mostly stayed away from my areas of interest. The problem back then was that Asilah appeared to believe that anyone who did not unconditionally support his position on any matter was acting in bad faith. He'd claim to AGF but then in the same message insist that you were trying to torment him by asking for evidence to back his position. When I read things like this, along with the other behaviour described here, it is clear to me that this may have moderated but not fundamentally changed. Kahastok talk 17:11, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I really don't know about his long term behaviour but I did check that he had been blocked earlier. I just think he needs some good mentoring and a lesson about how to discuss at talk pages. For instance, I had notified him of this discussion but he didn't respond here (yet). Instead, he chose to continue discussion about (attacking?) other editors at the article talk page. He is showing childish behaviour which needs to stop (unless he's actually a child). In any case, I again left a note at that article talk page where he was discussing. Yashovardhan (talk) 18:02, 21 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Is this really worth an ANI, Yashovardhan? I reverted once or twice then moved to talk page. I disagree with your closure but I have long working hours and I'm not willing to waste more time on this. Asilah1981 (talk) 05:18, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

So devious of me....Asilah1981 (talk) 09:16, 24 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I am requesting administrative attention (no specific administrative action at this time) to National liberalism and the pending AFD for that article. That article had an AFD in 2009; the conclusion was Keep. The proponent now is User:Rupert loup. On the one hand, he has the right to propose a new AFD. On the other hand, he is also replying to multiple Keep opinions, which is his right also but which is contentious. He also simultaneously with the AFD filed a thread at the dispute resolution noticeboard, which I closed because the AFD was also running. That looks a lot like forum shopping. I am not requesting any administrative action at this time, but am requesting administrative attention to a contentious AFD. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:10, 21 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• I agree that more watchers would be useful. I've been following the AfD, and, whilst not yet actually a WP:BATTLEGROUND, the WP:BLUDGEONing is pretty unnecessary. — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 20:33, 21 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with the keeps are that they are not presenting arguments on why should be a keep, I presented my arguments but no one are demostrating the contrary. I'm trying to have a discution and I was accused of bad faith, It's becoming a forum because the editors are more concerned to discuss about my edits than the notability of the article. Rupert Loup (talk) 20:58, 21 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have just re-read the deletion policy and related policies, and I don't see where it says that the burden is on the proponents of keeping the article to demonstrate that it should be kept. It is my interpretation that the burden is on the proponent of deletion to show that the article should be deleted. For that reason, the Keep voters do not have to defend their !votes, and arguing with them is badgering. I didn't accuse you of bad faith, and I don't think you are acting in bad faith, but you are badgering. I did say that you were forum shopping. I would have been willing to moderate a discussion at DRN, by the way, if you hadn't also filed the AFD. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:11, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Keep voters still need to substantiate their arguments. When asked for a source to back it up, one keep voter replied with 'Its self-evident'. Really? Thats a new reason to keep for me. 'Keep - its self evident what I say is true' - if only I had known all these years. Think how many arguments it would solve! Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:08, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It is true that Keep arguments should be substantiated, as should Delete arguments. It is also still true that demanding that every Keep argument, or every Delete argument, be substantiated, is badgering. The proponent says that they want a discussion, or that the AFD is a discussion. Their badgering is not conducive to a constructive discussion, and an AFD is not an open-ended discussion anyway, but a discussion with a specific focus. If they had wanted a more open-ended discussion, they could have held off on the AFD and filed the DRN and let a DRN moderator manage the discussion. As it is, this is a case of bludgeoning the process. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:14, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Checco and User:E.M.Gregory, I think that I owe you an apology for my behavior. So I'm sorry. In the future I will try to help, not to disturb. Rupert Loup (talk) 04:35, 24 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2017_May_8#Category:Number-one_debut_singles has been opened since the 9th, with a clear consensus to delete. I just want to make sure that it's actually merged because "Debut singles" is still notable. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 21:14, 21 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]