Light current (talk • contribs • logs • block user • block log) :There's been some disagreement over at the reference desk- see Wikipedia_talk:Reference_desk#Disrupting_the_reference_desk_to_make_a_point. My personal opinion here is that Light current is either completely clueless or is intentionally trolling, and I've given him a stern finger-wag. However, my supply of AGF is probably running out with this guy so I wonder if anyone else has opinions. Friday (talk) 03:56, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There was a situation before at one of the content policies that appeared to involve trolling from Light current. The warning was a good idea. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 04:10, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. Good luck. See his block log. A warning was proper though. Considering the numerous ones he's had in the past, I wouldn't mess about if he continues however. pschemp | talk 04:44, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Light current doesn't really strike me as bad, but he sometimes acts in a juvenile manner. Dragons flight 04:55, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I concur. He either does not have, or does not use, good judgement about what to say. At a certain point, however, even if we assume the best of intentions, something has to be done. -- SCZenz 04:58, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I know I have responded to all current criticisms and taken corrective action (including deletions). If there are any other outstanding issues, please let me know. 8-)--Light current 05:15, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Light current, be aware that it is common for people to be banned from places they disrupt. I hope you have decided to stop the nonsense. Guy (Help!) 09:51, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have responded to all the issues raised. If you raise a specific issue that has not already been dealt with I will respond.--Light current 14:26, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Friday, you asked for opinions, so here is mine. I don't see how Light current is being disruptive. You unilaterally deleted a non-offensive question about HRT from the Science RD; Light current re-instated the question; and then Light current and StuRat discussed the issue with you on StuRat's talk page. For you to say that Light current is "completely clueless or is intentionally trolling" is unjustified, and very close to a personal attack. Gandalf61 17:07, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. Friday is biased in this matter, and should recuse himself from any actions, as he indicated he would do: "But, I'll admit I'm personally irritated at him too, so if action needs to be taken I'd prefer someone else do it" [1]. That was a good idea, it's too bad he didn't do as he said, and leave this matter to other, calmer heads. StuRat 02:58, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Did you check his contributions? Particular gems include making a masturbation joke in response to a RD question. He's been quite unresponsive to complaints on his talk page. Well, unresponsive is not the right word- he responds, as a chattering child might respond. But thus far he's failed to modify his behavior. Friday (talk) 17:12, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I am familiar with Light current's contributions. Do you have a link for the masturbation joke ? If you are thinking of the "popping your collar" remark, I found that quite funny in context, but I don't believe it was one of Light current's answers. Gandalf61 17:25, 5 December 2006 (UTC)http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/common/images/button_sig.png[reply]

How do you know it was related to masturbation? THat interpretation is purely in your mind!--Light current 23:12, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not off the top of my head. Here's another recent off-topic sexual remark that someone complained about here. See also the numerous complaints on his talk page about his RD activities. He seems to honestly believe in his right to use the RD as a chat board. I'm not opposed to a certain amount of that, but here's a user who's been getting and ignoring complaints for some time. He's exhausted my patience, but I don't know if he's exhausted the entire community's patience yet. Note that mostly his remarks aren't that bad in isolation- you have to look at the overall pattern of disruptive behavior to see the problem here. He seems to enjoy being a pest- if there are little or no useful contributions to offset this, the answer looks obvious to me. But, I'll admit I'm personally irritated at him too, so if action needs to be taken I'd prefer someone else do it. Friday (talk) 17:35, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

He has not been "ignoring complaints", he has discused them, and, where appropriate (and given the opportunity to do so), he has reverted his edits. StuRat 03:38, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So you can't remember what you meant by the "masturbation joke". Is it possible you are conflating the activities of several RD users, and attributing them all to Light current ? As for the "photography" example, Light current's remark was challenged on the RD talk page, and Light current says he would have amended it, but we will never know if he would have, because you didn't give him a chance - you deleted his response 7 minutes after it was raised on the talk page. That does begin to look like stalking behaviour to me. You say that Light current irritates you - my opinion is that this irritation has led to you no longer being objective about his behaviour. Gandalf61 19:56, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I remember it fine, and the diff is here. Why are you objecting to me quickly deleting irrelevant (and possibly, slightly offensive) content? Doing it slower doesn't mean it gets done better. Yes, I've been reviewing his contributions- so have others. This is so we can remove the more juvenile and off-topic remarks he makes, since he's demonstrated no judgment of his own. I guess one man's "stalking" is another's "damage control". However I intent to continue to remove rude, irrelevant, and/or unhelpful comments from pages as I see fit. This is neither a playground, a chat board, nor a forum for free speech. Friday (talk) 20:42, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have posted to Light current's talk page before, mostly over the same sort of problems. See archived threads here and here for examples. One comment in particular was very illuminating: "When you have as many edits as I have, esp on Rd, then you can tell me what to do. Until then, I advise you to keep your counsel. 8-)" (28 October 2006) [2] - despite the smiley, this either displays the wrong attitude, or a worrying lack of judgement over the right time and place to make jokes. This lack of judgment is evident at the Reference Desk as well. There also seems to be a pattern of behaviour along the lines of pushing the boundaries and defying authority up to a certain point, and then claiming innocence, and saying that he has "responded to all queries". Overall, the attitude and behaviour is often (but not always) juvenile and immature. Ultimately, I would say stern warnings (when needed) from uninvolved parties may be the only way to get the message through, along with some mentoring. Of course, the behaviour may improve over time as the user gains experience in life and Wikipedia. And it would be unfair to single out Light current. There are others that exhibit the same sort of behaviour. Possibly showing these sort of users other areas of Wikipedia they could contribute to would work well, as then they really will encounter people who will tell them exactly what they think of silly behaviour. Carcharoth 17:47, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agree that there are other problem editors with the same sort of behavior. LC seems to be buddies with some of them. But, we have to start somewhere. Agree that warnings are reasonable but they have thus far been ineffective. Whether the "innocent child" routine is genuine or not I don't particularly care- the disruption is the same either way. He also made some reference to his edit count to me, as though he believes this justifies his behavior. Anyway, he's characterized my telling him his behavior needs to change as "stalking", which I guess translates into "leave me alone and let me do what I want." A block might help him understand that his behavior really is a problem, but it's hard to point to a single edit that clearly warrants such action. Friday (talk) 18:04, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What about an WP:RFC for user conduct? If enough people agree with what they think the problem is, the message might get through. Carcharoth 18:27, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For what it's worth: User_talk:Light_current#RFC. He says he understands that many people think his editing is frequently inappropriate. Time will tell I suppose. Friday (talk) 21:50, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I tried to reason with him about a month ago (archived at User talk:Light current/archive7#comment at RD/science with a related thread starting at Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Archive 13#Joking on RD with no apparent improvement on his part. This is where the "When you have as many edits as I have, esp on Rd, then you can tell me what to do. Until then, I advise you to keep your counsel." quote came from. When it became clear to him that I'm an admin he backed off (somewhat), but has been pushing the edge ever since. I fear RFC may be the only recourse. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:01, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have blocked this editor for 1 week. See my explanation at User_talk:Light_current#Enough. As always, I invite others to review and adjust as they see fit. Friday (talk) 23:58, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good decision. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 00:19, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It appears harsh at first glance, but I understand the logic. When a user clearly alludes to masturbation and then tries to convince people that it's all in their own heads, that's trolling. LC often seems bent on arguing that nobody can prove what he's talking about, and that the judgement and common sense of others may be faulty, so there's nothing anybody can do; I've talked to him before about the fallacies of this approach, but I guess the lesson didn't sink in. Unfortunately, I'm not sure a long block will make him behave better—but I also have no idea what else to do. -- SCZenz 02:05, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not convinced it will help either, but it will make the trolling go away temporarily. Or, at any rate it'll confine it to his own page where he can talk to himself all day long as far as I'm concerned. Thanks for the feedback, glad I wasn't completely unreasonable here. Friday (talk) 02:21, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not an admin, but a week seems a little harsh to me. Light current has shown that he can talk the talk (ie. he says he understands what is wrong and will try better in the future), but I would say judge his actions during a probationary period. Unblock or reduce the block length, and make clear that disruptive behaviour during the probationary period of a week will result in the block being reimposed. ie. Make clearer to him what sort of behaviour he needs to avoid, and then watch for a week to see that he does avoid that sort of behaviour. Again, mentoring is really what is needed ere, with someone to politely tap the shoulder and say "ahem, do you really think that is suitable?" Carcharoth 03:40, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify, both nonsexual jokes and the serious discussion of sexual topics, such as masturbation, are allowed on the Ref Desk, but there do appear to be significant objections to sexual jokes. That's fine, but the editor should then be asked to remove the post and given a reasonable opportunity to do so. Instead, Friday removed it himself, depriving User:light current of the opportunity to do so, then used this post later as a justification for blocking this editor for a week. Note that User:light current did not restore the comment, and shows every sign of being reasonable in this matter. Furthermore, Friday's actions regarding the Ref Desk have been needlessly rude, as he himself admits: [3] and disruptive recently, including his suggestion that the Ref Desk be deleted entirely. StuRat 03:14, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Very good point, it's not nearly as serious as if you had asked him and he had refused- friday did it himself and then blamed him. LC posted it in the first place of course but he should have a chance.. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Froth (talk • contribs) 20:17, 6 December 2006 (UTC).[reply]

As an addendum to all this, I am serious that users who use Wikipedia as a chat room or discussion place, should be encouraged to take that behaviour to genuine discussion forums. Lord knows there are enough IRC chatrooms and bulletin boards out there, and Usenet as well. Carcharoth 03:31, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Support block. I like User:Light current and I think he enjoys editing here. But he has to realize that his reference desk behaviour is crossing that murky line from making funny comments to being disruptive. If he shows a willingness to tone down his RD commentary on his talk page, I'd be in favour of unblocking -- Samir धर्म 04:36, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Support block. This guy has been trolling, and the block will reduce disruption. Hopefully it will only be needed once. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 05:01, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• I'm a non-admin, but I support the block. Comments like this are not acceptable, especially in light of given question. Were this isolated, it would not be a problem, but he was warned, and continues to lawyer around with things like "you can't prove I meant that". I'm also worried by comments like "I've responded to any specific issues", which seem to be his way of saying, "I'm only going to respond to past questions, and not necessarily fix my behavior in the future." Friday had every right to remove offensive comments on sight; we don't just let ugly comments sit on the board, just so a user has the chance to go back and remove them later to prove his genuineness. Patstuart^talk|edits 06:20, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• I support. This guy is disruptive, and incivil. Viewing his comments on AN/I should tell you that in an instant. I probably won't remember to recheck this so if you have a comment on my comment, leave a message on my user talk. ⇒ SWATJester ^Ready Aim _Fire! 08:02, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose this block. User:Friday has admitted he is biased in this matter, and the "punishment" here is way out of line with the "crime": "But, I'll admit I'm personally irritated at him too, so if action needs to be taken I'd prefer someone else do it" [4]. StuRat 09:25, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• I am a non-admin, and I oppose this block. Light current's reaction to criticism of his RD posts has been persistent but polite. I have seen no evidence that he has broken WP guidelines or policy. He has not been disruptive. Friday has over-reacted, and has allowed his feelings of irritation to override his judgement. He has abused his admin powers to pursue a personal disagreement with Light current. He has escalated from his initial AN/I post to a week long block in less than 24 hours. If Friday thought a block was necessary, he should have proposed this course of action, given Light current a chance to defend himself, obtained concensus on the term of the block and asked an uninvolved admin to enact it. Gandalf61 09:44, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• I agree with Gandalf61. StuRat 11:22, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• So what you're saying is that it's OK for a user to post out-of-context comments about masturbation, camera voyeurism, and other inappropriate subjects, and then, when confronted, not to be penitent, but to lawyer, refuse to admit fault, to argue, and to obfuscate ("you don't know that's what I meant"). I'm sorry, posting nonsense like that, then pretending you did nothing wrong, after repeatedly being asked to stop is totally unacceptable. I'm sorry, he should know better than that. And, I know you're frustrated with Friday, but the fact is, that is an ongoing problem; this is far from the first time this user has been a problem in such areas. Patstuart^talk|edits 10:59, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• An Admin should be neutral, but User:Friday appears to "have it in for" User:light current, resulting in his imposing a week long block for what is, at best, a minor problem. It appears as though User:Friday was looking for any excuse to impose a block. User:light current has been willing to remove any of his posts which are found to be inappropriate, if given the chance. User:Friday, however, has not given him that chance. StuRat 11:22, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In what areas? The ref desk? I don't recall having ever seen you there.

• The ref desk is going to die this way. A one week block?! I sometimes wonder what LC is talking about, but I don't find him disruptive at all. I still don't get what he is being blocked for. It's all about one single remark that he himself agreed to remove (had he been given a chance) and when Friday is asked for another example he restates the same one. Other examples given are from his own talk page. His own talk page! Is that a reason for a block? A one week block? Much more disruptive is factually wrong information, because that looks like a useful answer. That is not the case here. This is about a silly remark. If this sort of deletionist behaviour continues at the ref desk and those who protest it are blocked (in stead of the other way around) the ref desk will become dull, many useful editors will leave (there are too few already as it is) and the ref desk will die. I have already noticed this happening, as I predicted it would. And it's going to get worse. This censorship has to stop. No need to block me. I've done that myself. After thousands of edits over the last year I have decided to stop contributing to the ref desk. And this is probably my last contribution to this page too. It's all too childish for me to waste time on. If people get blocked for a week for something like this, I'm out of here. To those who say 'good riddance' (there will be those): I didn't get two of my three barnstars for my work at the ref desk for nothing. DirkvdM 13:15, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• You are going to block yourself? From this it looks like SCZenz blocked you, not yourself. This is not censorship. The reference desk needs to be kept on topic and focused. The more 'playful' and 'stream of consciousness' it becomes, the less useful it is. As I've said above, there are plenty of other places to joke around at, but WP:RD is not one of them. FWIW, I too think the 1-week ban is too harsh, and I also think Friday needs to provide a clearer reason, and Friday should have left it to an uninvolved admin to impose a block, if needed. Carcharoth 13:47, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• That block has ended. He is saying he will not participate in the Ref Desk in the future, even though allowed to do so, because of his disgust at the level of hostility aimed at certain Ref Desk contributors from certain Admins, such as User:Friday and User:SCZenz. StuRat 14:21, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yup. You beat me to it once again. Btw, this is a nice example of how some people don't understand certain types of humour. Which is no reason to delete it. One note to what you said: I don't care if it's admins who do it. Any deletions (by others) at the ref desk are baaaaaad because there are about a thousand edtis per day there, which makes it impossible to keep track of deletions. If that issue is somehow resolved, notify me. I might return. DirkvdM 15:07, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose one week block: Support 12/24-hour block: I did not see any warnings on User talk:Light current so I was going to oppose any block pending adequate warning, but then I discovered that LC has prematurely archived the warning and lots of relevant discussion on this topic with this edit. I find that disingenuous and it speaks to the need for administrative disincentive for inappropriate behavior (dare I say disruptive? don't mean to dis anyone). I have myself found some of LC's post to the forum frivilous and I personally have decided to ignore any questions posted by him. That is based on what I saw as "crying wolf", i.e. asking questions that he really had no desire to have answered, just for fun. I hinted at such in this edit. I considered that LC was disrespectful to the fact that I had gone to the effort of giving him a legitimate answer to what I thought was a legitimate question. As I myself just consider LC overly playful I did not see fit to warn him otherwise. That Friday sees his behaviour as more serious is a matter for those two to sort out but to the degree that LC ignored the warning then he can have the block but one week is WAY excessive; 12 or 24 hours is better. --Justanother 13:26, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Note: SCZenz even removed (not 'archived') a warning template I placed on his talk page. When I asked other admins about this, the answer was that one can do whatever one likes at ones own talk page. Even though this was a bit more than just 'disingeneous'. DirkvdM 15:07, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think that calling SCZenz' attempts to improve the desk according to his own understanding of purpose and policy; calling those efforts "vandalism" is baiting and he was justified to remove it. "Any good-faith effort to improve the encyclopedia, even if misguided or ill-considered, is not vandalism." I also think that admins that "don't like the reference desk" should give it a wide berth. I am not judging anyone there, I am simply making a comment. I further hope that LightCurrent (and others) can come to understand that the banter and off-topic junk on the Desks is an enjoyable aside to the real work of answering questions and is never to be started or encouraged as an end-in-itself. I hope that LC gets something out of all this effort and remains on the Desk. --Justanother 16:39, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose one week block. I feel very strongly about this, as an RD regular. I think sometimes LC is over the top, but he's shown suitable contrition in response to the recent discussions. I regularly do RC patrol and report vandals. I see persistent, malicious blankers and offensive posters receive blocks much shorter than 1 week. And they are non penitent. Shorten this please. --Dweller 14:00, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose block. Even if one accepted that Light current needed blocking, a one-week block is inappropriately harsh. Yesterday a spammer who created two articles spamming a website, who deleted spam tags from them, recreated the delteed articles twice after admin deletion, listed the article on the req for page protection page to try to protect it from *me* and the deleting admins, forged my signature, and then lied about it, requested a review of the block, got one, blanked the user page and requested another one, got the same--a week's blocking.

Furthermore, even if one accepted that Light current needed blocking, the action for which he was blocked was under active & general discussion and it was premature to do so prior to some conclusion of that discussion, especially in the absence of clear, uncontradicted and unambiguous guidelines about the behavior for which he's been blocked.

So I would appeal to Friday to rethink the week block and lift it, undoing the self-action, and parole Light current to time served. -THB 15:00, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Opposeblock as clearly excessive. This is an unwarranted abuse of admin powers by user:Friday, who has previously proposed eliminating the reference desk: "I'm probably going against years of established practice here, but I fail to see how the reference desk adds encyclopedic value. It's a time-waster- why don't we just ditch the whole thing? Friday (talk) 18:36, 29 November 2006 (UTC)" It is very hard to assume good faith when an admin proposes eliminating the reference desk then applies grossly excessive penalties to frequent contributors. Edison 15:10, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Agreed, Friday should recuse himself from all matters related the Ref Desk, as his extreme bias against the Ref Desk negatively affects his judgment in such matters. StuRat 15:34, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: Just a few remarks and I'll probably bow out of this. As for warnings, there were months of warnings prior to this from different people. Light current has been blocked for trolling before. This was blatantly obvious trolling yet he kept up his "innocent and clueless" routine. He's just looking for a reaction out of people- check out his attempts to engage in conversation after the block, acting like he doesn't know what he did wrong. I did start the discussion here well before blocking, and so far there seems to be admin consensus for the block. So, I'm not personally inclined to change it, however my standard offer still stands: if any admin disagrees with this and wants to change it, I invite them to do so. I don't "own" my blocks any more than we own our edits. I realize a week seems harsh here, but he was very obviously trolling and this has been an ongoing problem, apparently for quite a long while. I acknowledge this is a tricky situation- hardly any of Light current's edits, taking in isolation, seem remotely blockable. This is why I sought input from others before and after the block. Also, please- let's not let this turn into a perceived "admins versus reference desk" fight- I blocked one particular editor- discussion of other editors who are also problems are not relevant to this situation. If anyone cares to notice, after some initial disgust at the sorry state of the reference desk and me questioning whether it adds any value to the project, I've decided it IS valuable, so I've jumped in and started trying to help answer questions. I thank all the people who do useful work at the reference desk, or in any other part of the project. Friday (talk) 15:29, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You say let's not let this turn into a perceived "admins versus reference desk" fight, after having said "there seems to be admin consensus for the block", thus implying that you ignore the opinions and consensus of non-Admins, and in particular Ref Desk contributors. Can't you see how ignoring the opinions of non-Admins causes just the type of problem you claim you want to avoid ? If you want everyone to work together, then you need to respect the opinions of everyone, not just Admins. StuRat 15:45, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Attention! I'm going rogue and starting a wheel war!

Er, by which I mean that I'm lifting the block on Light current. Per THB, I'm paroling him. I don't think that the block was undeserved, but I do think that LC has acknowledged ([5]) that some of his comments were inappropriate for the forum in which he made them and that his judgement has not been up to snuff on occasion.

I think that leaving the block in place will shed more heat than light, as the mounting evidence here would suggest. LC is often a useful and productive contributor to the Ref Desk, and – providing he can restrain his occasional impulse towards off-colour humour and borderline newbie-biting – it would be a shame to lose that. I fear that we may have rushed into a block just when LC was starting to 'get' that the weight of opinion did not support his behaviour. I think it appropriate to give him a shot at reform. Note that I do not use the word 'parole' lightly, and I do expect that LC will make every reasonable effort to temper his remarks. His block will be restored (by me or by someone else) if he doesn't avail himself of this opportunity.

Note also that I expect other parties (both to this specific incident and those involved in the broader Ref Desk discussions) to refrain from sniping, kicking LC or others while down, taunting, gloating, oh-so-'clever' remarks, or anything else that might be taken as a lapse in civility. I'll be all over any sort of 'I-told-you-so', namecalling, 'You-don't-have-a-right-to-talk-about-Ref-Desk-because-you're-not-there-as-much-as-I-am-so-sod-off', or other petty ugliness like stink on cheese. We're at the Reference Desk. We're supposed to be there to help our fellow human beings, and we're doing it because we're nice, friendly, helpful people. Is everyone clear on that? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:34, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

TenOfAllTrades, thank you for opening the door to lift his block. It would have been better had Friday done it, but Friday did leave the door unlocked and let it be known that it was unlocked, so that's a good thing. -THB 15:41, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse block on general principle. This seemed like a reasonable judgement call by the admin, and it isn't a horribly extended or indefinite block, so we shouldn't be second-guessing it. - Crockspot 15:51, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• It is hard to assume good faith when Friday applies an exceptionally long bloc for a minor offense on the part of a frequent contributor to Reference desk after Friday has said "I'm very serious. I stay away from the reference desk but have dropped in a few times lately due to reports of problems there. I was rather shocked at what I saw. I suppose we must let each editor contribute in their own way, but I've not seen a bigger time-waster here than the RD. This is an encyclopedia- the goals of the project go no further. When I buy a copy of Brittanica, I've bought an encyclopedia. I don't expect that this includes a guy who will come to my house, hold my hand, and read it to me. Is it reasonable to expect a reference desk? Not in my opinion. We're an encyclopedia, not a forum, and not a place to get other people to do your research for you. Friday (talk) 20:38, 29 November 2006 (UTC)" Edison 16:15, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• • Please note that my request to be utterly civil and courteous and to try to put this behind us wasn't actually solely for the pleasure of hearing myself type. It would be appreciated if you stopped quoting that remark on talk pages and noticeboards in an attempt to push Friday out of this discussion. If you look upward about six comments, you'll see that Friday has reconsidered his opinion on the Ref Desk, and is actually endeavouring to be a helpful participant there. In the same comment, he also explains that the block was not for a single incident, but for a pattern of behaviour — which we all hope and expect has now been remediated – from an editor who has received many warnings about his conduct. I will also note that Friday has expressed support for my approach to handling this block, and that he seems to be a pretty reasonable guy. I expect that he would have done exactly what I did had I sent him a polite message—I was just impatient at the bickering here. It is not appropriate to kick Light current while he's down, nor is it appropriate to try to lynch Friday while he's being reasonable and accomodating. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:48, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think the idea is that if an admin is only starting to understand a project as radically unique as the RD, maybe he shouldn't be allowed to assert his admin powers there. Which I don't necessarily agree with by the way --froth^{T C} 20:32, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, can I assert my opinion into this one? I don't know if it's valuable here, but it looks like there's a long history of Light Current managing to find a way to get blocked, then unblocked. And the one time he wasn't unblocked was by Pschemp, and he's still bitter about that. In other words, perhaps we need to make it clear that infinite patience doesn't exist, and constantly walking the oline between appropriate and inappropriate, then acting like "poor persecuted me" when he called on it, won't be tolerated forever. That being said, he is a long-time contributer. I dunno: it's "yes, we love you at Wikipedia, no, you can't make masturbation and porn jokes out of context at ref desk after being warned for it." Patstuart^talk|edits 17:01, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm confident that enough people have seen this pattern of behavior to ensure that it won't be allowed to continue unchecked. (can't keep my big mouth shut, sorry). Friday (talk) 17:23, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why are we so soft on a user who continues in a pattern of pushing the line? LC's actions appear childish and are frustrating when they happen again and again. i see this block as a cumulative effect of LC's own actions. Friday was right to block in such a situation, although, possibly a week was too long, but I do not know enough of this users background to judge. Regardless of the length of block, if these actions continue then the blocks should become progressively more severe. LC's claims of innocense, given the masturbation link posted by Friday above, are laughable. Go to usenet for toilet humour. David D. (Talk) 17:43, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Strong oppose block. Friday has a clear conflict of interest- see their back-and-forth in the latest archive of the RD talk. Other than that I would have said that he deserved it anyway (after due process, not this one day AN/I fiasco) but lately he really has been quite good about responding to criticisms and having an open mind about his behavior. Also, I'd like to say that I appreciate that friday is starting to understand the point of the RD. Admittedly it seems overblown and unnecessary at first glance but there really is a huge demand for it and light current is overall a positive contributor. I'd hate to lose him over this --froth^{T C} 20:14, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well just to round off this discussion, I would like to say that all this apparent waste of time has indeed shown something:

We all make mistakes, some more than others. He who never made a mistake, never made anything. Let us not judge too harshly, lest we be judged in the same manner. Peace on all! 8-)--Light current 23:25, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh yes, I'd like to thank all my supporters for defending me and pleading for me. And I will try not to hold it agianst anyone who supported my blocking. I think we ahave all leaneda little from this unpleasant episode. 8-)--Light current 23:47, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm coming in late to this, but I have to say that I oppose the block. I do think Light current is too flippant on the RD, and it would not hurt for him to be mentored, but I'm trying awfully hard to wonder why so many admins are suddenly hopping into the RD and tsktsking when they aren't regular participants. The RD has been running fine for months now, there is nothing wrong with the way those of us who do frequent do things there. We need to quit warring over this, guys. Try talking first, blocking second. I would support an RfC on Light Current. User:Zoe|(talk) 00:51, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Light current, rather than giving somewhat veiled threats to those who opposed you, is it possible you could just admit wrong-doing, say you're sorry, and promise to stop in the future? Amazingly, you seem unable to do this. Already on your talk page, talking about the censorship on RD (having masturbation comments removed, what awful tyranny). Two ounces of penitence goes a long way. This is the kind of half-hearted backdoor response that's gotten you blocked 7 times. Patstuart^talk|edits 04:10, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see how his opinion on censorship, listed on his own talk page, can be grounds for a complaint here. StuRat 13:27, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was responding to his above comment. i only came back and added the thing about censorship later when I found it. -Patstuart^talk|edits 15:21, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment - I am a completely neutral party here, having never even been to the RD. However, I just want to chime in and note that, after reading this report and the one above about the block of DirkvdM, it seems to me that a number of users view the RD as a fiefdom and a lot of the debate here has been about "people who frequent" the RD and letting them do things their way, and criticisms of users who "don't usually hang around" at RD but nonetheless voiced opinions in these matters, as though they had no right to do so. Seems a little skewed to me.--Dmz5 05:44, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Update: Since Light current was unblocked, I noticed a set of edits to You have two cows such as this one where the edit summaries made it sound like he was removing jokes. (Light current is currently upset at WT:RD that people have been criticising joke answers to articles.) However he was removing content from an article about a set of jokes. The removal was reverted, so that's not an issue. But, I really have to wonder about WP:POINT here. I'm not doing anything about this myself, due to the complete uproar caused by my recent block on Light current, and my own questioning of my remaining supply of AGF. However I bring this here in case others have opinions on this. Friday (talk) 01:49, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My edits at You have two cows have nothing at all to do with my recent blocking. i dont know why Friday is continuing to persecute and stalk me in this manner.--Light current 02:00, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I note with regret that Light current has opted to try to push the envelope of WP:POINT (and also made at least one attack on Friday) since I unblocked him as a gesture of good faith. I have restored the remaining six days of his original block. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 05:14, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Based on Light Current's recent edits to his talk page (where he's making a production out of his block with countdowns, selectively deleting comments, and so on, I'm contemplating protecting his User and User talk pages for the remaining duration of his current block to help keep him from stuffing his foot any further into his mouth. Thoughts? - CHAIRBOY (☎) 02:11, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That seems quite excessive, to me. Allowing him to vent may actually be a therapeutic thing. And what's wrong with a countdown, exactly ? There should be far more tolerance for what a person says on their own user page and talk page than on Wikipedia in general. StuRat 07:33, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What's wrong is that the user simply refuses to ever admit culpability, no matter how many people tell him to knock it off. While I'm not going to accuse Light current of being a dick (I don't really know if he is one), I can point out the famous WP:DICK addage that "if enough people tell you you're wrong, they probably have a point". Light current needs to learn to stop trying to game the system at every turn, and then complaining about the unfairness of his blocks. He needs to learn that Wikipedia is a community, and he needs to abide by community rules, and not his own WP:FREE rules; that's why a talk page block would work. -Patstuart^talk|edits 07:42, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

StuRat & PatStuart, I appreciate your feedback. I've decided to institute the protection, and I'd like to respond to your concerns (Stu). First, the block isn't meant to be therapeutic, blocks are to prevent disruption. They aren't punitive, they're to stop a problem. The intent with temporary blocks is to break the chain of disruption long enough that the user can reset and be productive on their return. Pat's quick summary above is very accurate, and reflects my concerns here too. Not only is this user failing to acknowledge any culpability (note that on his user page, he talks about how "responding" to criticism should somehow equal changing behavior, yet makes no attempt to) but there's also the matter of his/her editing of his or her talk page. A blocked user is allowed to edit their own stuff when blocked primarily so they can have an opportunity to discuss the circumstances of the block and appeal appropriately. Instead, Light Current has used this to create grudge lists, working to categorize bad faith edits, announcing alternate interpretations of policy, and nest building in general. I think LC has the capability of being a valuable editor, but his or her shennanigans in user space are going to draw a legit lightning bolt. Also, a couple of posts from other users may be lending to LCs opinion that he or she is a victim of some great conspiracy, and that's hardly conducive to becoming a good editor. I'll protect it now, and ask that any admins who disagree contact me before unprotecting so we can discuss it. I'll make a point of checking for messages frequently. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 22:05, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If Light current is blocked, then why is his userpage protected? His user talk page is one thing, but why did you protect his user page, Chairboy? Picaroon9288 22:21, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Howdy, Picaroon! Did both at the same time per above for the same reason. I've got my fingers crossed that he'll come out of the other side of the block intact and that he'll take Zoe up on the mentorship offer. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 22:23, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I can't imagine how he could disrupt anything besides his own pages if you lifted the page protection. BTW, how long is the page protection in effect ? StuRat 23:04, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's only to be protected until his block expires, of course. I've answered your other question above. Regards, CHAIRBOY (☎) 23:15, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, now I see what you mean, Chairboy. I think I misread/didn't read closely enough the comment of yours which I replied to. (Well, that's what happends when you skim a 7,500 word section in ten minutes!) Picaroon9288 23:11, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This ban is way too long, and regardless of the reason blocking his user page is unacceptable. You said that blocks aren't theraputic, they're to prevent further disruption... well isn't blocking his user page "to keep him from stuffing his foot further into his mouth" more theraputic than to prevent disruption? He should be able to say whatever he wants on his own pages. You're talking in circles because such an unreasonable action is undefendable --froth^{T C} 00:05, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Froth! I appreciate your comments, but I'll respectfully disagree. We don't get to say "whatever we want" on our user pages. This isn't a blog, it's an encyclopedia. I've been corresponding with Light Current in email, and I've expressed my hope that he can use this opportunity to turn things around. I'm not sure I understand your other point above, as I mentioned before the block is not intended to be therapeutic. I've protected his page to help him, not punish. I told him in email that I'd rather he be a succesful wikipedia editor who hates my guts 6 months from now than an indefinitely banned editor who likes me. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 01:27, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: If the block is intended to prevent further disruption and not to be therapeutic then I do not get the point of blocking him from editing his own talk page. I can understand feeling that he needs a break and suggesting that he take one. Enforcing that he do so even to the extent of blocking his access to his own talk page when he obviously does not care to take that advice amounts to punishment. You cannot even say he is using his talk page improperly, IMO, as he is using it to discuss wikipedia issues and if someone does not want to see his remarks then they simply need avoid his talk page. For the record, I also suggest that he take a break but if he chooses not to then that is his choice and if it contributes to further disciplinary action in the future then that is on his head also. --Justanother 18:04, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah that's what I meant chairboy --froth^{T C} 21:14, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the feedback, guys! I've talked this over with Light Current, and he's on track to coming back as a productive editor in a couple days when the block expires. The almost 50 edits he made to his talk page during his block before the protection was pretty darn crazy and he might have spun a bearing without intervention. The page protection is the inanimate carbon rod that governs his fission reaction, and it'll drop shortly along with the block. Keep the shiny side up, and let's get back to work. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 23:39, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see anything wrong with making a large number of edits on his own pages. And 50 doesn't seem like a lot to me, in any case (then again, I have over 15,000 edits, so I may be biased). StuRat 01:56, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've unprotected his user and user_talk pages as the block is now over. Regards, CHAIRBOY (☎) 22:11, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ever want to sleuth down one of the long term vandals? Well a couple of people think I've succeeded. My summaries of the matter are at User_talk:Durova#Editor_X_.2F_Joan_of_Arc andTalk:Joan_of_Arc#Return_of_Wikipedia:Long_term_abuse.23Joan_of_Arc_vandal.3F, which I daresay make interesting reading especially if you put on a pair of dark sunglasses and play The Pink Panther theme. If my evidence holds up to scrutiny, this guy has been disrupting Wikipedia's Catholicism, homosexuality, and crossdressing articles for 26 months without getting caught (December 8 will be his anniversary).

Trouble is, because he's been so slippery, I probably can't get a checkuser on this sock drawer. Doc Tropics suggested an RfC. I'd like to find out whether I'm right and if I'm on the mark I'd like to seek a community ban. So all of you Sherlock Holmes types, come on over and bring your magnifying glass. This one might boggle your eyes. Durova^Charge! 15:48, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That took a while to read! You have amassed a bevy of suggestive evidence; statistically, Editor X could have won the lottery before being two people from the same town with the same in-depth knowledge and yet rather bizarre theories, unless of course, he has converts. In either case, the behavior is incredibly disruptive not just because of the behavior itself, but the subtly with which it undermines the article. The editor has already been almost completely unresponsive to discussion and attempts to reform their behavior including being dishonest when cornered - since it doesn't appear meaningful contact can be made, I'd support the idea of a community ban. Shell ^babelfish 16:06, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

[ec] Blimey. That was a patient and thorough piece of work! I suspect that support for a ban based on this will be pretty much unanimous, but one could always take it to ArbCom in case of doubt. Gold star, either way. Guy (Help!) 16:09, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I can try and help you get a checkuser through but if he's on AOL it won't do any good. If you assemble a list of accounts with recent edits (<1 month) and a brief statement, go ahead and file it. I expect once more people read this they will support a ban without technical confirmation (which can only go back a few weeks in any case). Thatcher131 16:40, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've invited one of these accounts to agree to a checkuser. How exactly does the AOL wrinkle crease this seam - would they be limited to confirming whether or not this person hails from Reston, Virginia? That could be enough in light of the other evidence. I'm not the least bit averse to naming him at AOL's abuse department and requesting they revoke his service. That would take considerably less effort than I've already spent undoing his damage. Durova^Charge! 17:00, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If he's using AOL then I'm not sure how you can even be sure of his geographic location, since I think all US AOL addresses show up as Reston VA. Unless this editor made a specific slip-up which I am reluctant to discuss publically, the only thing checkuser could reveal is that each of the suspected accounts has edited from AOL. Since thousands of editors use AOL, this would not provide any confirmation that the accounts were operated by the same person. A check may still be productive if this person was careless in a certain way, or he may be using multiple ISPs where it would be easier to track him. Thatcher131 17:10, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I see. To the best of my knowledge he's been a loyal AOL customer. They host his website - and as extraordinary as this is for an AOL homepage, of the 3 million-odd Google returns for a "Joan of Arc" search he's consistently numero uno. So regardless of his actual residence location I'm pretty sure AOL's abuse department could pinpoint him and I don't think he wants his service interrupted. What worries me more is his disruption on other topics, which appears to have been continuous - the homosexuality pages especially. I'm getting set to roll up my sleeves and dig into that evidence now that people take this matter seriously - he's clever but not too clever. Durova^Charge! 17:34, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The only thing checkuser can do then is, for any user name he has used in the last month or so, give you the IP address as of the time of its edits. This would probably not be released to you but could be forwarded to AOL's abuse department, so they could attempt to determine if the wikipedia vandal is the same person whose web site they host. I don't know what it would take to convince AOL to take action, though. Thatcher131 17:38, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Durova: All AOL users show up from Reston, Virginia. But the most important thing to keep in mind is that the IP address for AOL users is never linked to a specific account but instead is based on the page (URL) being viewed or edited -- see Wikipedia's information on this. It's very odd but that's how AOL IPs work for reasons known only to their engineers.

The upshot is that an IP check won't do any good and neither will reporting a set of IPs to AOL. They're likely to just ignore you because you won't be reporting a single and discrete user given that all users are on the same range of IPs. You will instead be telling them that some of the many millions of AOL subscribers happen to get those IPs while editing certain articles, which is not going to come as a surprise to them.

You can never be sure whether an AOL vandal is one person or a whole host of users who end up editing under the same IPs. Other websites such as BBs have the same problem. EReference 17:55, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the dissection of AOL's innards. Since I actually do have this vandal's real-life name, would AOL's abuse department take notice? Durova^Charge! 18:46, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, aren't you assuming that the IPs are linked to that real name? They wouldn't necessarily be linked to a given individual, or even a single individual. And since anyone can claim to be anyone else on here, a name is not proof of identity. AOL cannot suspend someone's paid account based merely on an allegation. This comes up repeatedly on many websites since there's no way to tell who anyone really is on the internet. EReference 19:02, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Durova, with all due respect for your detective work, I'm a tad uncomfortable with you referring to the guy as a "vandal" and "long-term abuser". Did he ever get blocked? He's not currently banned under any of his accounts, is he? From your description I take it that his main accounts were used subsequently, not in parallel for blatant illegitimate sockpuppetry, or were they? I mean, I have no doubt he may be a disruptive POV-pusher, but has he done anything actually "illegal" in Wikipedia terms besides POV-pushing? And what would we expect his ISP to do about that, at this stage? Let's ban him if he's as disruptive as you say, and then we'll see - any new reincarnations of his will probably be easy enough to spot, once people are alerted. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:06, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So far as I know he's flown underneath nearly every radar except mine. In his earliest months Fire Star tried to offer him some guidance. He was still trying to behave like a regular Wikipedian back then. One quick answer about sockpuppetry is User_talk:Durova/Archive_5#Wikistalking (with several instances of blanking vandalism thrown in). User:Durova/Complex vandalism at Joan of Arc demonstrates that he violates WP:NOR, WP:V, WP:VANITY, WP:RS, WP:OWN, and WP:POINT. Possibly WP:COI also. The damage he caused at Joan of Arc has been incredibly pervasive and subtle - not just garden variety POV pushing but degrading footnotes, inserting inaccurate statements into previously cited material, and fraudulent citations. He even vanity published and faked the appearance of a legitimate scholarly journal in order to bypass site standards and cite himself. Note that the author name on the pseudojournal is the same as the name he self-identified on the original account, and that the IP inserted it while coyly avoiding use of the author's name at Wikipedia. Due to the high profile of the Joan of Arc article I acutally had to dig through several thousand edits to undo the harm that he caused - expending weeks of my time. If you need more evidence than I've already supplied at User:Durova/Complex vandalism at Joan of Arc then say so and I'll dig up other examples and more diffs. The peculiar POV he pushes and the amount of scholarly background it reflects identify him as unique - how likely is it that two different people would strain the evidence to draw identical conclusions about a 1929 scholarly work available only in French? And describe their views with the same syntactical structure and leap into edit wars? I know how serious this allegation is and I wouldn't raise it unless I had researched this with extreme care. Durova^Charge! 19:42, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, I remember looking at the constributions of Center-for-Medieval-Studies (talk · contribs) after he edited some pages on the Dukes of Burgundy. He was accused at the time of being identical AWilliamson (talk · contribs) (see diff of him removing those from his talk page). IMO, this falls under the "users who aggressively and repeatedly violate fundamental policies" portion of the blocking policy, WP:OR in particular. Faking up a vanity journal to insert your point of view is absolutely the sort of behavior for which you should be run out of Wikipedia on a rail — it's a direct attack on our credibility. I haven't been involved in any disputes with Center-for-Medieval-Studies, and haven't been involved in the Joan of Arc article, so I feel I qualify as an uninvolved endorser of a ban. Choess 22:10, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've got to give a nod to Switisweti. During my first weeks as an editor he clued me in to some of this activity. That guy had an awful time because he'd been trying to watch Williamson for a year but lacked the academic expertise to challenge him in detail. Plus there was another disruptive editor at the article who pursued an entirely different agenda. Switi and I wound up holding conversations at my user talk page in German in order to dodge them (I didn't realize that was un-Wikipedian at the time). Switi finally quit the project a year ago and I can't say I blame him, but I hope he rejoins us someday. Durova^Charge! 03:15, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would also support a ban.—WAvegetarian•(talk) 17:18, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Durova has done an exceptional job of gathering and presenting evidence which, if accurate (and it appears to be), would certainly warrant a community ban for long-term systematic abuse. I had thought that ANI might not be able to respond to such a convoluted case, but between D's excellent summary, and the dedication of the editors who have posted here, I realize that I underestimated Wikipedians in general. Sometimes I'm actually quite happy to be wrong : ) Doc Tropics 18:30, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would also support a community ban (disclaimer: I've been involved in a dispute with the editor in question). I'd be more comfortable if there were technical confirmation, but for the reasons explained above it seems unlikely that WP:RFCU will do any good--another reason to dislike AOL. --Akhilleus (talk) 18:44, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cross posting the following from my user talk page: if any doubt remains, have a look at some diffs from Voln's talk page. This says "Archiving" in the edit note and an exceptionally small archive was created. The types of complaints and the topics covered bear an eerie similarity to AWilliamson, particularly The Bible and homosexuality and Homosexuality and Christianity; talk page blanking and misleading edit summaries are also trademark Williamson tactics.[6] He also performed a similar blanking that included the removal of a final block warning while marking the edit as minor.[7] Durova^Charge! 20:38, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Honestly, the evidence you have collected is damning. I also have no problem in supporting a community ban.--Aldux 21:36, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Burn at the stake - erm, I mean I would also support banning this disruptive and time-consuming user. KillerChihuahua^?!? 22:11, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So far this is unanimous. Think the responses are enough to call a consensus? Much as I'd like to do the honors myself, since I am an involved editor it would be more appropriate for someone else to perform the ban. Then we could set up the suspected sockpuppets category. Who's got an itchy indef block finger today? Durova^Charge! 23:01, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Support permaban. Sneaky hoaxers are scrouge of Wikipedia. Still I fear that somebody would have to monitor the related articles and block the puppets. Alex Bakharev 01:59, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A check of some of the allegations turns up the following.

• The most serious allegations revolved around the claim that the editor (or someone suspected of being the editor) was using a fanciful academic publication ("Primary Sources and Context Concerning Joan of Arc's Male Clothing" within the "Joan of Arc Primary Sources Series") and a fanciful nonprofit organization ("Academy (Association) for Joan of Arc Studies") to dishonestly include his own original research in Wikipedia. But a quick search finds the following entry at a government site which lists this organization as a registered nonprofit in good standing: search result
• And a search at Google Books finds the allegedly "bogus" book in print: http://books.google.com/books?ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Academy+%22Joan+of+Arc+Studies%22&as_brr=0
• A search at Google Scholar finds the "Joan of Arc Primary Sources Series" although only one item is currently indexed. http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22Joan+of+Arc%22+%22Primary+Sources+Series%22

The most serious allegations are therefore clearly mistaken and some of the other allegations were based on an erroneous understanding of the manner in which AOL IPs are assigned. The rest were I believe mostly or entirely related to allegations of POV-pushing or suspected sockpuppetry, which are more subjective. If people want to vote for a ban anyway then that's the decision. EReference 06:12, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

501c3 tax status is fairly easy to get and doesn't amount to validation of the content; I daresay some of these people were acting in good faith. I traded e-mails with Virginia Frohlick some years ago and she seemed very friendly, although she was much too quick to give credence to my assertions. She is, however, an amateur enthusiast who maintains a website[www.stjoan-center.com/] and the only Google Scholars entry for her is another publication from the same organization.[8] Likewise, the only Google Scholars return for Robert Wirth that does not appear to be incidental - there seems to be a medical doctor by the same name - is one of this organization's publications[9] (although this drew my interest briefly) For Margaret Walsh, the other claimed reviewer, there is a Margaret Walsh who is a professor of American economic and social history.[10] [11] [12] [13] [14] Some of these names also turn up random returns in the hard sciences, dentistry, and medicine so I doubt these are the same person. It's been three months since I wrote the original summary and it doesn't particularly surprise me that this group has produced a hard copy edition of Williamson's study, but I see no reason to conclude that this nonprofit is anything other than the pet project of four people who have no formal expertise in their field. I could create a 501c3 organization with three friends, throw up a website, and print out a few copies of my pet theories - but that wouldn't make me an encyclopedic source. I'll post more on Williamson himself in a few moments. Durova^Charge! 14:33, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For starters, here's Allen Williamson's Google Scholar result - you decide if he looks like a real historian.[15] On his original user page he claims to be a historian who specializes in Joan of Arc and her portion of the Hundred Years' War[16] and claims to be a historian in talk page posts[17] [18] [19] and at mediation[20] but, to my knowledge, never identified his academic qualifications or affiliations. At User:Center-for-Medieval-Studies the first question the talk page receives is from Adam Bishop to ask which Center for Medieval Studies this is. The question went unanswered and the account blanked similar questions from other editors without reply.[21] The account blanks other criticism without response[22] including a suspected sockpuppet template[23] and finally blanks all remaining material and redirects to both the user page and the talk page to a new account User:Center-for-Medieval-Studies.[24] [25] on 10 May 2006, one month after User:AWilliamson got blanked and redirected to User:AWilliamson..[26] [27] Assuming the anonymous AOL account is the same editor, here's a post where he manufactures a fraudulent citation and admits in the edit note that he chose the source because he thought I hadn't read it.[28] Well I had read that source and he thoroughly misrepresented it. There can't be room for good faith in this instance because I had objected to the relevant passage the previous day and transcribed a quotation coauthored by the same historian in a later publication that vigorously denied any such claim.[29] If other editors are curious about the subject details I'll go into those matters at my talk page - but to summarize this doesn't strike me as someone who's out of his depth but as someone whose every move is tainted by the need to advance his own peculiar opinions by any means necessary and who plays just as fast and loose with his sources as he does with Wikipedia's policies - so much so that I doubt he could pass peer review at any journal he didn't control. To be candid, I hold only a bachelor's degree in history from Columbia University (my graduate studies were in another field) and my interest in Joan of Arc is an amateur one (although serious enough that I have traveled France to follow her campaigns). Yet I know the standard reference works and I can recognize when someone cherry picks data and distorts information in bizarre ways. Challenge me for more evidence if you aren't convinced: this case is so complex that I've held back to conserve space. I welcome scrutiny because I want to know whether I'm right and I think I have enough facts to satisfy reasonable doubt. Durova^Charge! 23:08, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have time right now to respond to all the topics you've raised, most of which are rather obscure. I'll post a reply later today or tomorrow. EReference 05:33, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This "book" by Allen Williamson is a great example of self-published scholarship. It's available in two flavors, print and pdf. On Amazon, the "book" costs a whopping $5.00, which means it's probably a bound print-off of the pdf. The title page lists not only the editor, but the names of two peer reviewers. In legitimate scholarship, peer reviewers are not given credit for the work--there's a reason they call it "double blind". This work definitely fails WP:RS, but if anyone has any doubts, Amazon still has 2 copies in stock--order now, and it will be delivered before Christmas! --Akhilleus (talk) 06:34, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I might as well add that the diff I showed for the IP's misuse of sources contained two fraudulent citations. His reference to Henry V's will is another bizarre distortion. What's insidious is how the reader has to know this material as well as the perpetrator to even challenge it. Durova^Charge! 14:05, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have more time now. I guess I might as well cover several items in the same message since they're all interrelated.

Yesterday Akhilleus alleged that a certain book by this organization is not valid because the peer reviewers are listed. I don't think that's justified since this type of disclosure has in fact become more common in recent years for a number of academic publications. For example see the following guidelines here (see point 5 specifically) for an academic publication which lists the peer reviewers and accepting editors who recommended each article (only reviewers who rejected the work remain anonymous under their method).

The low price is not too unusual for smaller books, especially at Amazon.

Durova has brought up a number of subjects, mostly dealing with old debates and issues which are hard to follow. Some deal with the organization which you dispute.

For starters, let's look up the organization's website. On one page it lists at least fifteen members in two categories without listing whatever others there may be aside from these "recent" ones. You had said the total was only four people. Googling the listed names finds that Stephen Richey authored at least one published book on Joan of Arc. François Janvier is evidently an official at the CAOA in the Department of the Meuse, France. François Thouvenin seems to be a translator with the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. Others could be Googled if I had time. The website also lists a publisher's ISBN prefix, which is definitely not cheap to buy. It lists an Employer Identification Number, a SAN, several ISSNs (which might take months to obtain from the Library of Congress) and a list of current or upcoming publications which include subjects such as military records, government docs, a "transcription of BNF fr 4488 ff 463-476" and a bunch of other stuff. This clearly extends beyond four people with one pdf file, I think. Remember that this ultimately comes back to the allegation that a dishonest editor had created or invented a bogus org so he could insert his own stuff into the article. A bit of searching indicates that this is wrong.

Your objections to the people themselves have been of two types. One was based on a search for their names at Google Scholar, which is likely to be unreliable for several reasons. It looks like you initially didn't find the organization's publications there either although at least some of them do show up if you use certain keywords. It's also the case that Google Scholar is hardly exhaustive. The other argument was based on the assumption that certain anonymous IPs or accounts here are disguises for one of the members (which would be hard to prove). You assume that certain edits by these anons were deliberately made in bad faith and therefore undermine the person's credibility as a historian. In one case this was because (if I understand correctly) you believe he misrepresented an author's position with regard to specific pieces of evidence. After looking over the links to the old edits you provided it looks to me like the two of you were arguing about rather different issues (an author's mention of a document versus an author's view of a theory related to that document) and therefore misunderstanding each other. Here's why I think that. Looking at the first link you provided, we see him adding citations for two books which quote or mention some historical documents he was using to back up one of his own theories. Now, his edit comment specifically says he's citing a book by Pernoud because Pernoud "mentions this document" (he doesn't say Pernoud supports it) which his text lower down specifies is a letter from "the University of Paris.. to John of Luxembourg" which was among several documents which he said supported his theory that "Charles or his faction" attempted to save Joan of Arc. The other link you provided leads to your rebuttal which you based on a quote from one of Pernoud's other books in which Pernoud casts doubt on this theory and questions the reliability of the "Morosini" records... but it seems that neither of those two issues were the point. He wasn't saying Pernoud's book supported his theory but rather that this book by Pernoud "mentions" the University of Paris letter. This is "original research" on the anon's part but not dishonesty. You state that these rather ambiguous matters would undermine a specific real person's scholarly credentials ... which would not be the case even assuming that he was genuinely the anon in the first place.

You also objected to a comment the anon made about Henry V's will in the same link. As far as I can see this refers to footnote 3 in that text in which he argues (I'm summarizing here) that the decision to keep Joan of Arc as a prisoner rather than letting her be "allowed ransom" was similar to previous cases in which important prisoners were also retained in this way. He gives as an example the case of Henry V retaining "the duke of Orléans" according to a statement given in Henry's will. You didn't say why you object to this, but I'll do my best to try to figure it out. Is it inaccurate to say that the duke of Orleans was retained as a prisoner by Henry V ? Or as with the other disputed Pernoud citation are you objecting to the reference to Pernoud because perhaps Pernoud may have disagreed with this theory as was the case with the other one? Since this reference to Pernoud's book occurs in the middle of the sentence right after the mention of Henry V's will but before any mention of the theory which compares the two cases, he doesn't seem to be attributing the theory itself to Pernoud but only the claim that Henry V's will ordered the duke of Orleans to be kept a prisoner. But I'm grasping at straws here to guess the specific objection since I don't think you stated the problem. At least not in your last note. EReference 06:27, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Despite the practice of the Digital Medievalist, it is not common to disclose peer reviewers in most academic publications. Nor is it common for an association to publish original material that's authored by one member of the association and "peer reviewed" by two of the other members. This is a self-publishing house that isn't following standard academic rules. That's not surprising, because its members/contributors aren't academics--Chris Snidow and Catherine Hénon are musicians and tour guides (or perhaps I should say pilgrims?); Kevin Hendryx is, according to his webpage, "an editor, is a freelance writer by night, and ... loves Tolkien, the Beatles, and Joan of Arc..."; and Bob Perler apparently enjoyed the 2004 pilgrimage guided by Snidow and Henon. I'm sure that all of these people have a strong and sincere interest in Joan, but they don't have the credentials we expect from people who are running a research institute or academic press. At the risk of publicizing too much personal information (even though it's accesible through brief searching on the web), I'll note that the organization is headquartered at the residence of one of the members of the "academy", which is another indication that this isn't an academic organization.

By the way, ISBNs are not cheap, but they're not astronomical, either; a person could get a few contributors together to cover the cost, apply for 501c3 status, and voila, you have an "academy" that issues publications and a journal. --Akhilleus (talk) 08:01, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The four people I listed were the four named in connection with this particular publication. As I stated before, some of them may have acted in good faith. My original summary was written three months ago, at which time the organization had no other members, and I wouldn't be surprised if they're trying to get something more serious off the ground. An author who self-publishes may have partners and a larger goal of building a real publishing firm.

My earlier post traces a history of unethical behavior by Williamson and his probable sockpuppets in which he consistently attempts to put himself forward as more authoritative than he actually is. To address the two specific instances of misused citations:

• Henry V's will To explain why this is worse than garden variety OR requires background knowledge, a good deal of which I can demonstrate through the same book that Williamson cites. Henry V died seven years before Joan of Arc entered public life.(168, 266) That will did forbid any ransom of Charles I de Valois, Duke of Orléans but did not in any way extend that prohibition into some general rule against ransoming prisoners.(193) Ransoms were one of the principal ways of profiting at war and the English accepted other war ransoms for French prisoners.(172, 190) The duke of Orléans was a special case because at the time of Henry V's death this duke was second in line to inherit the throne of France according to the Valois claim. This duke's son would later become king of France when the older line died out.(196) Henry V claimed legal right to inherit the French crown and had solidified his claim through marriage and treaty,(3) so his prohibition against this particular ransom had everything to do with dynastic succession and nothing to do with Joan of Arc: Henry V wanted to bequeath rulership of France to his infant son. Furthermore - even if by some stretch of the imagination this will did apply to her - Williamson claims this document held legal force in Burgundy, which it didn't. The English alliance with Philip III, Duke of Burgundy was not even a very cordial one.(170)
• Attempts to ransom Joan of Arc As my other diff demonstrates, there weren't any such attempts. Far from what Williamson tries to represent about Charles VII's actions, "cowardly abandonment" is the standard interpretation of his behavior while she was a prisoner.(167) Williamson's citation of a delegation from the University of Paris is completely misleading: Paris was not under control of the French king at this time and its university was solidly pro-English. The University of Paris endorsed the charges against Joan of Arc during her trial and many of her judges had some prior connection to that university.(125-126, 207-217) The delegation from the University of Paris that Williamson mentions is not any action on behalf of the French king - to make that implication in this context is absurd - and Morosini's rumor mill was unreliable: in August of the same year Morosini thought that Joan of Arc had escaped.(99)

To summarize, Williamson has been laying traps for the uninformed. This is someone who knows exactly what he's doing and who sets out to fool people. One of his own edit summaries admits that he selected citations because he believed they were out of my depth. Before I joined the project he had successfully disrupted one of Wikipedia's core biographies for a year because - I think I can use a strong term without exaggeration - his other crankery actually was beyond the depth of previous editors. He constructs sophisticated exercises in contextomy while giving them a veneer of plausibility and the above two examples are by no means the only offenses. The good faith assumptions of editors such as EReference account for much of why I waited so long to raise this matter: as absurd as Williamson's claims really are, Wikipedia has at most a handful of editors who know this material in sufficient depth to challenge it on its own terms. So I had to build my own reputation for editing, investigations, and integrity before my charge could be taken seriously. If Wikipedia were a university I would have referred him for formal academic discipline in November 2005. While this assault on Wikipedia's credibility is significant, my real concern is for the students who relied upon us while his edits stood. At best, those students' time was wasted. More likely their grades suffered. Durova^Charge! 15:58, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I see there's another round of allegations here to sift through and try to analyze. I would ask both of you to please read through the whole thing before thinking of replying. Maybe we can finally bring at least this one part of the matter to a close.

Akhilleus' post was first. I have to say that I've been confused by your statements here. I'm curious whether you also reject other publications which disclose peer reviewers? Remember that your original accusation held that this was an unethical practice, not merely that it was uncommon. Clearly some journals use that method (uncommon as it is) without being accused of an ethics violation, do they not?

You have now added the related allegation that this publication should be taken to task for using peer reviewers who belong to the same association. I may be mistaken, but doesn't (for instance) the Journal of the American Medical Association include articles in which both the author(s) and peer reviewers belong to the American Medical Association? My understanding is that they do, without being considered suspect. I think that's also the case with many small, narrowly focused organizations, isn't it? Your statement on this matter repeated the view that this is an "uncommon" practice, which is debatable but again it isn't the issue.

You objected to some of the members, for example by describing Chris Snidow as a musician and tour guide. It doesn't take much searching to find that Chris Snidow has a published book on Joan of Arc which was given the endorsement of a person who is a familiar name from one of Durova's links, Marie-Veronique Clin. Now, in Durova's link Marie-Veronique Clin was described as the co-author of a book which Durova was using as a source. Clin therefore would apparently be someone whose endorsement of Snidow's book would be significant, I would assume? Your characterization of Chris Snidow clearly is unfair I think. If I had time I could wade through these other accusations you've been making against quite a number of other people, but I think a clear pattern is emerging.

With all due respect, what I've been seeing here frankly seems to be a case in which arguments continually shift ground whenever one assumption is shown to be mistaken after closer examination. There has also been a great deal of speculation which assumes the very worst about all of the people connected with this organization without any verifiable evidence to substantiate that assumption. I'll assume you are acting in good faith but it's becoming more difficult to maintain that view when you repeatedly refuse to do likewise for the increasingly larger and larger circle of people you're trying to discredit.

Next is Durova's post, which sought to explain a few previous allegations.

You addressed the issue of the organization's membership. You said that when you had written the first allegation three months ago the org had no one except the four members who are listed in one of their pdf files. Their site mentions other members being brought in far earlier than that, such as Stephen Richey who came in more than a year ago. The rest of your comments consisted of speculation about their motives. You assume they are acting in bad faith (or worse) based mainly it seems on the following issues concerning the anon. I'll now look at those.

You first addressed the anon's handling of Henry V's will and the Duke of Orleans. You said the anon claimed that Henry's will held "legal force in Burgundy", therefore he was claiming that it directly affected Joan of Arc's circumstances. In the link you provided he never said anything like this. What he did say was the following. He said important prisoners were sometimes retained and he gave the case of the Duke of Orleans as one example which was rather similar to Joan of Arc's case. He never said that one case provided the legal basis for the other. It seems his point was that Joan of Arc was important enough that her enemies didn't want to allow her to obtain her freedom either. In your recent note you seemingly argued against this by saying that the Duke of Orleans was a "special case" who was retained only because he was so important, which makes it sound as if you're implying that Joan of Arc wasn't important enough to be retained like this Duke was. Didn't she have a significant effect on the war, much more than the relatively obscure Duke of Orleans in fact? Whatever their relative importance was, I can't find any statements from the anon saying what you thought he said. It's common in internet debates for misunderstandings to arise, and I think that's what happened in this case. Unless you feel he was dishonest for saying that Joan of Arc was likely considered too important to be allowed her freedom, I guess I don't understand why you charge him with dishonesty.

You then addressed the anon's handling of Charles VII's actions. You said (in summary) that the anon's citation of a letter from the University of Paris cannot be accepted as valid evidence of Charles VII's actions because this University was pro-English rather than pro-French and therefore could not have been acting on Charles VII's behalf. In the link you provided the anon never claimed this University was acting on Charles VII's behalf but rather that the University's letter mentions actions taken by Charles VII's government. The latter is not the same thing as the former. A letter can describe actions undertaken by an enemy ruler even though the letter's authors do not support him. I guess I don't understand how you're reading something different into this passage.

You then again charged him with dishonesty which you said was sufficient to undermine his credentials and credibility, which is a little hard to fathom. I'm sure you know that in order to make an allegation of this type against a real person by name you would need very substantial proof and there is no proof here. He clearly doesn't seem to be saying what you attribute to him, and it's an anonymous editor saying it.

You criticized me (and unnamed others) for our "good faith assumptions" about the anon and this organization but with all due respect I'm finding it increasingly difficult to see these allegations as anything other than a series of misunderstandings at best. We all tend to jump to conclusions in heated internet debates. Sometimes it's best to step back a bit.

A ban based on charges of sockpuppetry against whoever is behind the accounts might be justifiable, but all these other allegations against quite a sizable group of named individuals and their organization are frankly rather disturbing. If I had unlimited time and patience I could continue sifting through more of this type of thing, but since all the previous allegations have turned out quite clearly to be mistaken I would suggest it would be better to drop this portion of the matter. This has long since gone beyond a productive stage, especially since a siteban could be pursued by other means. EReference 08:47, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

EReference, you raise a lot of points, most of which I won't respond to. However, you're slightly misrepresenting what I said. I didn't say that disclosing peer reviewers was "unethical", I said that what the publication did--not only disclosing peer reviewers, but using "peer reviewers" who are members of the organization, is not typical academic practice and wouldn't be done in legitimate scholarship. There's two reasons: first, the publication seems to be giving them credit as co-authors, but more importantly, these "peer reviewers" are not independent of the publisher. If you want to use the AMA as an analogy, what the "academy" is doing is like the editor in chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association writing an article and submitting it to two members of the editorial board for "peer review". If that article were published, you'd have no confidence that an independent assessment of the article's quality had been performed. Similarly, we shouldn't have any confidence that Virginia Frohlick and Margaret Walsh performed an impartial assessment of this publication, since they are members of the association that published the book--this is elementary conflict-of-interest stuff.

Whether or not other publications disclose the names of peer reviewers is less important than the fact that Frohlick and Walsh are not independent peer reviewers. However, I note that the Digital Medievalist is not a historical journal, but a journal about the use of technology in studying history--its practice isn't directly relevant to how peer review is used in historical scholarship. It's more relevant to look at journals like the American Historical Review or the Journal of Medieval History, neither of which, I believe, disclose the names of referees. The Journal of the American Medical Association does disclose peer reviewers, but doesn't associate them with particular articles.

A more important issue than peer review is that none of the members of the Historical Academy (Association) for Joan of Arc Studies have the credentials we expect in a historical academy (association). Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that even one of these members/contributors has an advanced degree in history or a related field, or a position at a college or university. We have seen evidence that they're amateur historians and devotees of Joan--this is fine, but the format of their publications is clearly designed to make readers think that they're getting the same kind of product they'd get from a university press, and that, I think, is misleading at best.

Chris Snidow's book is no evidence that this is a legitimate academic organization. Rather the opposite--the book is a print-on-demand work which you can order from iUniverse.com. This is self-publishing, which fails WP:RS. Snidow's book hardly gives me any confidence that the Historical Academy (Association) for Joan of Arc Studies is a reputable academic publisher, academy, or (association).

You wrote: "If I had time I could wade through these other accusations you've been making against quite a number of other people, but I think a clear pattern is emerging." I don't understand what you're implying. Could you spell it out, please? --Akhilleus (talk) 18:29, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

...sigh... I was hoping we wouldn't have a repeat of previous allegations without much substance to back them up, but that is seemingly what has happened again. And it's late. I'm hoping my fatigue will excuse any mistakes or apparent irritability.

Akhilleus, you have repeated many of your previous charges against these people without addressing my comments very much. To reduce tedious repetition to a minimum I'll just cover the following topics. You stated that you aren't making allegations of unethical behavior but then proceeded to do precisely that by claiming that this publication violates basic standards of scholarship. The "conflict of interest" allegation and hypothetical analogy given to illustrate it was insufficient for many reasons. Among these would be the fact that the author in this case did not also serve as the editor (as in your analogy) and more significantly you entirely sidestepped the point I had made about JAMA's similar practice of publishing articles in which the author and peer reviewers all belong to the AMA. In other words, if you applied your argument consistently you would need to also dismiss the Journal of the American Medical Association, one of the most respected publications in any field. Rather than addressing this you instead switched the topic to JAMA's disclosure of peer reviewers, which was not the issue. Worse yet, you alleged that the publication was listing peer reviewers as "co-authors" whereas on the contrary the publication states otherwise by clearly labeling them peer reviewers. If you want me to view this as a good faith discussion then you need to stop doing this. You also need to show that your objections can be applied consistently. Namely, if you're going to reject this publication because the author and peer reviewers are members of the same association then you also need to reject JAMA and many others for doing the same. Do you reject JAMA because their authors and peer reviewers often all belong to the AMA? I think this is probably an important point.

The allegations you have raised against the people are again based on unsupported speculation. You ignored the members I had already noted who clearly do possess more standard credentials or positions. You sidestepped the point I had raised about Chris Snidow's book having been endorsed by someone who apparently is (correct me if I'm mistaken) a respected author and perhaps recognized authority in the field since one of Durova's links to a previous discussion uses one of her books as an apparently authoritative work on the subject (please correct me if I've missed something here). The publishing method for Snidow's book would not appear to be relevant because the book's content and the expert endorsement it received would not be outweighed by this factor or other objections you have raised.

There may well be some problems with this group but this current discussion isn't accomplishing anything. Nor is it directly related to the siteban issue, so I think it's time to move on. EReference 09:28, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

EReference, I haven't addressed most of your comments because I don't believe they're germane. For instance, it doesn't matter whether Snidow's book has been endorsed by Clin--it's still self-published, it still fails WP:RS, and it in no way establishes that Snidow has an advanced degree in history or a position at a college or university. Similarly, nothing you've said about the other members of the Historical Association (Academy) for Joan of Arc Studies (HAJAS) has established that they have advanced degrees in history (or a related field) or positions at a college or university. The only member of the group that has a significant publication on Joan that's widely known among historians, Stephen Richey, is an independent scholar, not associated with a college or university. As far as I can tell, he doesn't have an advanced degree. To repeat myself, the members of this group don't have the credentials we'd expect from an academic association. They are, rather, enthusiasts and amateurs. There's absolutely nothing wrong with being an amateur, but the publications of such a group don't meet WP:RS.

Here's the byline on Primary Sources and Context Concerning Joan of Arc's Male Clothing: "Robert Wirth (editor), Virginia Frohlick (peer review), Margaret Walsh (peer review), Allen Williamson (authorial contribution and translation)". These credits imply collective authorship. Frohlick and Walsh are listed after an editor and before an author/translator; to me, this looks like they're getting equal credit for producing the work with Wirth and Williamson, i.e., they're basically co-authors. If I were to list this work in a bibliography, it would appear as "Wirth, Robert, ed., and Virginia Frohlick, Margaret Walsh, and Allen Williamson. 'Primary Sources...'", etc. If the intent is simply to acknowledge that Frohlick and Walsh were only peer reviewers and not authors, they should be listed in a separate line, or acknowledged in a footnote--most journal articles that I've read recently thank the anonymous referees in the first or last footnote of the article (and in all of those cases the referees remain anonymous, as in this article in the Journal of Hellenic Studies). An additional point that needs to be raised is that since neither Frohlick nor Walsh have formal expertise in this field, there's no indication that they're qualified to perform peer review--we have no way of knowing whether they're familiar with scholarship on Joan of Arc or historical method in general.

What you're saying about the AMA is ridiculous. It's obvious why it's ok for ordinary members of the AMA to author and referee articles that appear in JAMA--they're not directly connected with the editorial board of the journal or the administration of the AMA. In contrast, Walsh is the president of HAJAS, Frohlick is Secretary-Treasurer, and Williamson is "Founding Director". If the president or founding director of the AMA published an article in JAMA and it was refereed by the secretary-treasurer, I think most people would see a problem. Now imagine if none of them had an M.D., yet the article were about the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. I think you'd lose some faith in the editorial standards of JAMA at that point...

Failing to meet the standards of legitimate scholarship isn't necessarily unethical. As Durova stated, most of the members of HAJAS are probably acting in good faith; but since they aren't professional scholars, they're unaware of the standards that should be met. However, if someone is aware of the proper editorial processes in publishing professional work in history, including peer review, and still presents HAJAS is a legitimate academic publisher, then I'd say there's a potential ethical problem. That's just one of the things Editor X is accused of. --Akhilleus (talk) 23:49, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ok. Since you won't let this drop I'm going to analyze the latest spate of accusations. If nothing else it should show why other editors really need to check allegations more closely from now on.

You again alleged that this organization is not scholarly because its members fail WP:RS. You justified this in part by stating that Stephen Richey's book fails this test because he's an amateur without a university position. This is puzzling since a search of Wikipedia finds that this book is cited as a source several times in the main Joan of Arc article and the Joan of Arc Bibliography article. The edit histories of both show that these articles have been repeatedly edited by you yourself. With all due respect, this puzzling pattern begs the question: Did you object to this book before or only after it became apparent that the author was associated with this organization you're trying to discredit? In the first of these articles that book is not only cited but also extensively quoted in the text itself (for example, see this part here. This fact could hardly have been overlooked since entire passages from the book are included so prominently in the text. Clicking on previous versions from the edit history shows that they've been there a very long time without being removed.

The WP:RS standard has nothing to do with the wider issue of scholarly merit since WP:RS is a purely internal regulation which governs WP inclusion but does not necessarily affect someone's legitimacy as a scholar. Snidow's book clearly has merit because it was endorsed by an expert. Richey's book appears to have received good reviews from De Re Militari for example. A scholarly organization can be composed of independent scholars without violating any rule and indeed many of these organizations contain quite a few independent scholars. Wikipedia's RS rule would only be germane if you want to remove any of their books from WP articles, in which case Stephen Richey's would appear to be the chief one which would require removal.

I think your other criticisms are also clearly irrelevant or unfair. In brief: the publication clearly states that the peer reviewers are peer reviewers. Listing them in a single line may be nonstandard but since they are labeled quite clearly to indicate their function your criticism on this point is petty. Your treatment of my AMA analogy was unfair, since your objections (the closeness of one group's members) would essentially boil down to the difference in size between the organizations. You need to assume good faith and remember that we're dealing with a very small and new organization which cannot be expected to have the same degree of distance between members that an old and large organization like the AMA would have. If you look at other small scholarly societies such as the Marie de France Society I suspect you could find the same objections to make. It's a small close-knit group, the founding members still have prominent positions and all the members obviously know each other pretty well since their website includes a jovial tongue-in-cheek group photo of them gathered together. Surely their peer reviewers must belong to the same small group unless there are lots of other Marie de France scholars out there somewhere who could provide meaningful critiques for this very obscure subject. The point I was making with the AMA example was that if the AMA also allows its own members to provide peer review (the procedure which you're complaining about) then the only point of objection comes down to how well the participants know each other. This seems a senseless objection when applied to a very small group which is just starting out.

If your criticisms have merit then you will need to remove the quotations and endnote references to Stephen Richey's book from the Joan of Arc article. I'll leave that up to you. I've been trying to bring this discussion in here to a close because I think it has gone beyond the productive stage and is turning into a classic Usenet debate. But ending it is also up to you since you are the one making public accusations which I've been trying to balance against some analysis. Some balance is clearly needed I think. EReference 09:52, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, where did I say Richey's book fails WP:RS? Apparently a feature of a "classic Usenet debate" is the failure to read carefully. At any rate, it seems that none of the members of HAJAS have advanced degrees or have a position at a college or university--it's a group of amateur historians. So I can't see how it can be described as a scholarly society, or how its publications can be regarded as reliable sources.

Regarding the byline: when "'Primary Sources and Context Concerning Joan of Arc's Male Clothing" was added to Joan of Arc bibliography by an IP user (presumably Editor X), the author was given as "Robert Wirth et al." (see this diff). The same credit was given to another work published by HAJAS. So, I'm not the only one who thinks that Wirth, Frohlick, and Walsh are being given credit as co-authors--Editor X does also. Or, perhaps he just doesn't understand how bibliographies should be formatted, in which case I hope he's not doing any copyediting at HAJAS.

Last (and least important): why do you assume that the peer reviewers of HAJAS must be members of HAJAS? Is it because no one else would pay attention to their work? Perhaps a quote from peer review is in order: "Typically referees are not selected from among the authors' close colleagues, students, or friends. Referees are supposed to inform the editor of any conflict of interests that might arise." HAJAS would be on better ground if it recruited peer reviewers who aren't members of the organization, and who are recognized experts--for instance, professors in history departments! This is the practice of most academic journals--they find referees who are experts in the subject that aren't members of the editorial board. --Akhilleus (talk) 03:39, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You have said that these people lack degrees or university positions. A bit of digging would find that Margaret Walsh is/was a university professor. If I had time I could check others.

In your last post you denied having ever said that Stephen Richey's book fails WP:RS. In your post the day before that one, at 23:49 on 10 December 2006 you said the following: "Stephen Richey, is an independent scholar, not associated with a college or university. ....To repeat myself, the members of this group don't have the credentials we'd expect from an academic association... the publications of such a group don't meet WP:RS."

You quite clearly have said that Richey does not have the right credentials, by which I assume you would mean his book fails the standard you've been applying.

The rest of your comments probably require only brief observations. The method chosen by an anon at WP to list one of the group's books does not change the fact that this book quite clearly and explicitly does identify the peer reviewers as peer reviewers. Finally, I already cited examples of two other journals which also evidently use peer reviewers who belong to the same organization. Yet you do not criticize or dismiss these two for that practice.

I will ask again that you please allow this increasingly pointless discussion to finally drop. We both could be doing better things with our time. EReference 09:27, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• That's pretty frickin' impressive, Durova. I definitely support both a community ban and your actions here. Good job. Let's take this misinformationist down once and for all. ♠PMC♠ 09:29, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Durova did a lot of hard work, but my analysis has indicated that much of it was probably honest misinterpretation or was in various degrees unsupportable, as happens with all of us in this type of endeavor. She should certainly be commended for her anti-vandalism efforts though. EReference 09:50, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The bottom line here is whether this editor and sockpuppets deserve a community ban. I think the final smoking gun is here.[30] For that account - which was created last August to impersonate me - almost the entire contribution list is blanking vandalism of old talk pages and talk archives pertaining to Allen Williamson's posts and favorite topics. I took the liberty of banning that account because I know for certain that it isn't me. With the exception of EReference (and regarding whom I'm on the verge of requesting a checkuser), support for a community ban has been unanimous. This discussion has continued for a week. Shall we proceed to the bans? Durova^Charge! 02:41, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Let me join the horus of 'awesome job'. It's not often that we manage to take down such a giant problem; unless some convincing evidence is raised that would suggest RfC or other form of DR, I agree with permbanning the problem.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  23:31, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• OK, I have blocked User:AWilliamson, User:AWilliamson. and User:Voln. Any more for any more? Guy (Help!) 00:07, 16 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm admittedly coming into this discussion late & perhaps after all is said & done (sorry, I've been busy with personal affairs), but I would endorse that Durova has more than adequately performed due dilligence on this matter: there is something questionable about the sources AWilliamson, et alia have been quoting. (I'm especially worried at AWilliam's sockpuppet's failure to provide bona fides to Adam Bishop (Adam's a real medieval scholar, & could easily verify any personal information.) This is one of the problems that I would assert every Wikipedian worries about: wonky information being slipped into Wikipedia. (Remember the NPA personality theory article?) Durova deserves our thanks for her hard work uncovering this.

As for EReference, I want to point out that any user who describes her/himself as "distinguished" more often than not does not deserve that title. Speaking from a few years of experience with Wikipedia, I'd say that there are a couple of dozen editors that this adjective could be applied to, but most of them have screwed up in one way or another in their time with Wikipedia. In short, one should never describe oneself or another Wikipedian as "distinguished" -- we have Barnstars that work just fine for that purpose. -- llywrch 00:29, 16 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This user's page [31] is blatantly offensive to Muslims, pagans, and homosexuals, to name only a few groups mentioned therein. My reading of [[32]] regarding "Polemical statements" seems to indicate that Dwain's page is in clear violation of the userpages policy. 141.154.220.74 21:32, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

His user page does not seem offensive at all; nor can I see any mention of muslam. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 21:36, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) There's the quote. That said, he doesn't say much more than what a lot of people say about Christianity, and "to name only a few" seems groundless. --Kizor 21:48, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Matthew, see the quotation on the very top of the page for what is being referred to there. Newyorkbrad 21:39, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Yes, and the reporting IP probably also means the bolded "quotes" towards the bottom. 141.154.220.74, please first try to resolve this issue by discussing it with User:Dwain himself before alerting administrators. Sandstein 21:44, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's because it's not User:Pitchka, but User:Dwain, which is where the user actually complained (contribs show this). I have no idea why the link is different, but Dwain also maintains a very polemical Freemasonry page linked from his user page that borders on libel, as he has inflammatory statements regarding Freemasonry placed right before a list of Masons on Wikipedia. MSJapan 21:43, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, it appears to be both: User:Pitchka seems to be the main account that does most of the 'real' editing, but that account's user and talk page redirect to the secondary account, User:Dwain, which is used mainly for userspace edits. the user also signs with a piped link that reads 'Dwaian', but links to 'Pitchka', which redirects back to 'Dwain.' Is that kosher? It seems like it would just cause confusion, as above, and make it more difficult to access the contribution history of the editor you're dealing with. -- Vary | Talk 21:57, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think the quotes should be removed. He's entitled to his opinion, but this is a bit too much. Khoikhoi 21:52, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

He also seems to enjoy in a little libel himself every once and a while. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User%3ADwain&diff=92489363&oldid=92436162 and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Dwain&diff=prev&oldid=92436062 Ours18 21:53, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Given the precedent regarding this sort of behavior I think an indefinite ban is in order. We wouldn't tolerate this kind of misbehavior from a new user, why should we tolerate it from User:Dwain? The Mirror of the Sea 22:03, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This man is a dick. However, the views he is expressing on his userpage are typical devout American Catholic opinions - you can't block him for that. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 22:07, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It has been made clear that maintaining a userpage with controversial material designed to be polemical is trolling and can be punished for as such. Need I also mention that he deliberately libels Wikipedians who are also Masons? That seems like deliberately disruptive conduct. The Mirror of the Sea 22:16, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was saying that his userpage, as it stands, is not offensive but religious. If he's disrupting the wiki, sure, ban him, but blocking him for being devout and/or redneck isn't a good idea. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 23:00, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I find it offensive. I find it to be a deliberate bit of trolling intended to incite disruption. That is not what wikipedia is for. After all the stuff that went on in the userbox wars, it seems patently obvious to me that polemical and uncivil material is not welcome on wikipedia, in ANY space.--Vidkun 00:06, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Calling it a "typical devout Catholic opinion" is a bit of an over-generalization... My experience with Dwain/Pitchka has been that he has virtually no understanding or regard for WP:CIVIL, but if we start indef blocking for that, there are an awful lot of editors and admins who wouldn't be editing here anymore. I do think one of his accounts should be blocked though because he edits from both of them and it is damn confusing if you aren't watching very closely to discern those accounts are the same person. To be clear, I've never seen him do any abusive sockpuppeting, but unless he has a very good reason for running two accounts he should be given the option of keeping one active and having the other locked. He can link to the contribs for the other account from the userpage of whichever account he choses to stick with. From what I see there is no good reason he has two accounts.--Isotope23 22:57, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't want to see any user blocked for his religious beliefs or lack thereof. As far as I can see, the paramount issue here is the use of two accounts for one editor, which I believe is verboten. Let's ask him to stick to one account, and handle any mainspace issues as they occur. | Mr. Darcy talk 23:16, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

On the subject of highly offensive userpages, does this qualify? riana_dzasta 03:41, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think it is -- Samir धर्म 07:23, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Whoa, whoa, slow down here. Indef ban? I've seen people put pornography on their pages and not get indef banned. He was expressing his personal opinion, albeit it with the tact of a hammer. Wikipedia policy says he needs to remove it, but an indef ban is going way overboard. Patstuart^talk|edits 07:35, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think that recommendation was based not just on the user's userpage content, but on his refusal to remove the offensive material. He has removed several messages about the content from his talk page without responding to them, and with edit summaries like 'removed devil worshiping anons statment'. I agree that an indef block might be a bit harsh when the user has never been blocked before and has made constructive contributions, but this is about more than just userpage content. -- Vary | Talk 14:28, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Get some perspective. It looks like all the complaints really are about "just userpage content". There have been admins and would-be admins who have posted their disdain for Christians on their user pages and elsewhere. I do not share this guy's views, but they are his business and well within the range of statements to be found on userpages. I, for one, consider the tolerance here for the posterior orifice who professed his admiration for Osama bin Laden infinitely more offensive than this (yes, the tolerance expressed here for it, not just the box itself). Lots of people have alternate accounts: as long as they are not used in the same conversations they are not sockpuppets and not against policy. Not everyone in the world is "politically correct" and you need to deal with it when it creates a problem in articles, not just its existence on userpages. alteripse 14:51, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I know, his name is Dwain. He chose the username Pitchka, and then discovered that it meant something offensive in some other language. He didn't want to abandon the account, so he created the account Dwain. (If that's not exactly how it was, it's still fairly close, I think.) Yes, he has things on his user page that are confrontational. I don't endorse them, but I don't find them any more offensive than some of the things that other users have posted on Wikipedia about Christians. As for blocking him, that's absurd. He's a good-faith editor, who sometimes gets annoyed when people are trolling and harassing him. A few months ago, he removed a message or some messages from his talk page — something which is not forbidden by policy, and which many administrators do — and within hours, users were descending on him, reverting, sending him template warnings about vandalism, and making him even more annoyed. I've seen numerous insults aimed at Christians here on Wikipedia, and I have never even considered blocking the users. I think we need to move from an "I'm-not-going-to-let-him-get-away-with-it" mentality to one of "it's-not-urgent-to-get-rid-of-it-and-I-don't-want-to-make-matters-worse." I would suggest that someone who hasn't already been hassling him might suggest nicely that it would be better not to have those quotations since they might offend some people. AnnH ♫ 15:52, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure I completely agree. During the userbox wars, it was flat out verboten to have polemical attack user boxes, be they anti Christian or anti anything else. Listing a number of people for whom you have distaste (based on their associations) and then accusing them of trying to prevent verifiable information from being added to wikipedia is assuming bad faith. Repeatedly referring to those who have attempted to discuss the polemics as being devil worshipping vandals is BEYOND overbaord, and shows that the editor is more concerned with disruption and insults that what is or isn't encyclopedic.--Vidkun 20:25, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And that my friends is grounds for an indefinite ban. Such behavior is completely unacceptable and given the fact that Dwain is unrepetent, I believe his time here is done. The Mirror of the Sea 04:10, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I do have to wonder if that's a good idea in this situation, as historical precedence rarely favors indef'ing users in such instances. Also, Mirror, I find the fact that you're a new user who immediately jumped into administrative level action, and who has the words "free timecop" (a known GNAA troll who's offline stalking an admin of ours) on his userpage, to be rather suspicious. -Patstuart^talk|edits 08:57, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please don't insult my intelligence, Patstuart, it doesn't take that long to figure out how Wikipedia is run. I'm entitled to display "Free timecop" on my userpage, as the policy page on userpages states that you can show "your opinions about Wikipedia." I am illustrating my opinion that the block was illegitimate. Mirror, Mirror, on the wall... 02:43, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(personal attacks, removed) --202.213.148.223 11:57, 11 December 2006 (UTC) (timecop, lol @ wikipedia, trolled for life)[reply]

(personal attacks, possibly from Timecop, removed)--61.114.193.102 12:47, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The only real issue I see here is that he still edits from User:Pitchka and as I said above, one of his two accounts should be locked from editing because there is no valid reason for him to have 2 active accounts. Other than that I have to agree I don't think an indef ban of the user is even close to warrented here.--Isotope23 14:32, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FYI, Pitchka in some of Slavic languages means "cunt". There are also more examples: Swear words#Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian. "Pitchka" is read same as Serbian "Pička". Btw. Im not involved with anyone here, this username just caught my eye while I was browsing ANI. Shinhan 07:20, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

At the recommendation of admin Steve Block, I'm asking on behalf of User:CovenantD, User:Doczilla, other editors and myself who have tried many times and ways to talk and work with a persistent rogue editor, User:Asgardian, over his repeated wholesale reversions to several sites in WikiProject: Comics. He insists he doesn't have to follow the comics project exemplar, he reinserts misspellings and other erroneous edits, he removes authoritative reference sources that I and others have used and cited, and he won't give straight answers to our questions and comments.

There's some discussion about all this at this article's talk page. There had been much more criticism of his edits at User talk:Asgardian — with other editors complaining about his clumsy wholesale edits of Galactus and other articles — but he erases all comments.

Could you suggest a way to go on this? Maybe have a third party compare, for instance, the properly formatted and written version of the short "Awesome Android" article here and Asgardian's consistently reverted, "nyah-nyah-nyah" version here. Just by skimming, not needing to know details of the character, the differences are obvious to the naked eye.

As you can see from these comments he erased from his talk page and retrieved from its History here, here, and here, other editors have tried to speak with him about his wholesale reversions that go against both consensus and editorial policy/guidelines/exemplar. The word "stubborn" comes up a lot in these posts. Several editors are at their wits' ends.

What can we do? Please help us: Dealing with him is taking up so much of so many people's times that could be put to good use writing and helping to improve Wikipedia articles. Thank you so much for any help. --Tenebrae 17:55, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sometimes he responds. It's sporadic. Sometimes he takes a lesson to heart when it's explained in great detail. Sometimes. And sometimes he just repeatedly blows off style guidelines no matter how many people disagree with him. I first got drawn into his mess because someone else in WikiProject Comics begged for people to come take a peek and try to help find a way to resolve Asgardian's relentless edit wars over the Thor articles. At that point, he'd only been at it for a month. I think it's been three months now, fighting the same edit wars. See how he stubbornly insists on reverting Hercules (Marvel Comics) to tightly in-universe perspective. One night I spent hours trying to edit his version bit by bit to give him a chance, then he just redid all the same mistakes and guideline violations. It wears you out. So many of us got so tired so long ago of fixing his edits that we just can't devote the energy to selectively keeping his good edits when he makes so many bad ones, therefore a lot of people have to revert articles even when it means reinserting some problems he'd fixed because he did more damage than good. Several of us repeatedly advised him to make one edit at a time so he could learn from each. It's just bizarre. There are now at least two competing versions getting edited, bouncing back and forth for almost every article he keeps hitting. He has some good information. He makes some good edits. He's just so amazingly stubborn.

He got warned about 3RR. He got blocked for violating 3RR. I saw other times I could have reported him for violating 3RR after that, but chose not to because I really was trying to find a way to work with this intelligent, knowledgeable person despite how aggravating it could be. He deleted WikiProject Comics notices about his edit wars until I warned him very strongly that to do so was deceptive when he knew darn well that edit wars were going on. Lately he hasn't been as overtly contentious. Lately he simply hasn't been replying to people as often. Admittedly, a lot of us have given up on explaining all of our fixes to his edits when we've already offered the same explanations repeatedly. I still think there's hope for him. I really do, based on the times he has learned lessons, but after this much time, I question whether he's worth the effort because he creates so much work for so many people voluntarily helping edit Wikipedia articles. Doczilla 02:52, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Summary:

• He is willfully lowering the quality of Wikipedia articles.
• He is fully aware that his edits are contrary to various policies and guidelines.
• He isn't responding (well, severely unresponsive) to light methods of behavior correction.

He's doing no good and shows an obvious disinterest in collaborative efforts. Block him for a month; hopefully that will make him realize that, hey, we're here to improve articles together, not single-handedly make them shit. EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:07, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I stumbled across this user's edit war with Covenant D over the Thor comics articles about two months ago. Sadly, since that time, I have seen little progress, only regression. The edit war still continues and has expanded to other comics articles. I reported the disputed articles on the WikiComics Project notice board in order to get more people involved and, ideally, settle the dispute. However, rather than trying to work toward consensus, he erased my notice. [33] I know that we have to assume good faith, but actions like this strain credulity. Nonetheless, I have tried to work out compromises by changing problem sections within disputed articles in a piecemeal fashion, rather than a wholesale reversion. Initially, this seemed to be effective, but things eventually degenerated back into blind edit warring with little to no discussion. Occasionally, he will justify his edits on an article's talk page, but he is more likely to ignore or erase requests for discussion. When he does comment on talk pages, he is frequently incivil [34] [35] [36] and more than a little combative. [37] [38] Sadly, he actually makes some valid points in his arguements, but they are all but lost in the edit wars he provokes. Like Doczilla, I, too, had hope for Asgardian. But that hope is fading. --GentlemanGhost 08:57, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• The posters here assume a great deal and present a fairly weak case. On behaviour, their own has been self-righteous and condescending on more than one occasion. Citing users such as CovenantD is also not a good idea given his track record and some of the comments he has made (such as "as long as that silly list appears, it gets reverted"). As for deleting comments on my user page, what of it? At least two of the persons cited do it all the time - as is their right. As for the argument that I am lowering the quality of the articles - I believe that's a very silly thing to say. They both know I have created over half a dozen sourced entries on characters that did not exist. Not for my benefit, but for the everyone's use and enjoyment. I have also added references and tidied up many, many more. They KNOW some of the entries were a mess prior to the fix. Rather, we are tussling over fine grammatical points, NOT revised articles per se (example - much of the Thor article is my version).

On co-operation - the posters here seem to have missed the discussion on Galactus, another comic character. I trimmed it back to an acceptable length, and was acknowledged by some as being quite good. Others responded with petulant insults. It is here that many posters fail - it is NOT about who knows more but the enjoyment factor, and of course presenting the information within a "Wiki context." I then offered another poster a chance at presenting his version of the Galactus article. I don't think he's been able to repost yet, but true to my word I've stayed off the page until he has had his chance and we can then discuss it. If that's not co-operation, I don't know what is.

As for 3RR, the first time was simply an experiment. I wanted to see if Wikiepdia followed through (I wrote a paper on Wikipedia and procedues). The second time I believe the moderator got it wrong - I was editing and improving on an article, not swapping backwards and forwards three times or more times. I explained this and simply received a "you should know better." I actually expect better from a moderator.

I am happy to discuss this, but there needs to be more objectivity and less exaggeration. At present, some of the argument smacks of "X must be stopped!" and is a tad immature. The fact that certain users have followed me to pages they had never previously visited speaks volumes (or those that I've created). There needs to be a little less "my way or the highway" from everyone, not just myself.

I won't be making any edits for the next fews day or so, but would hope that when I do that a discussion can follow - not a simple revert and complaint. They are simple grammatical issues that can be thrashed out courtesy of the Exemplars. So long as people are reasonable and a little less self-righteous, then a compromise can be achieved. I'll start with a topic over there in about two days and hopefully some positive change can come of it.

Regards

Asgardian 02:07, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• • Re: "As for deleting comments on my user page, what of it? At least two of the persons cited do it all the time - as is their right." Actually, I stopped deleting comments on my talk page because a remark someone else made on your talk page made me realize that wasn't how Wikipedia does things. (I'd thought of it like deleting old e-mail. Somehow I'd missed that Wikipedia policy along the way.) The one exception to this in the last several weeks was to revert a heading Asgardian should not have added to my note about my own talk page. Doczilla 06:31, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• • Wait a minute. It just hit me: Asgardian, you just said you deliberately violated 3RR as an experiment while writing a paper. You're not editing much this week because you're taking finals, aren't you? Did you start these edit wars as an "experiment"? Doczilla 06:40, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• • That's it, isn't it? That would explain the thing that has baffled me beyond all else about you. Why else would anyone spend three months making nearly two thousand edits (seriously) on the same bunch of articles over and over, editing, reverting, defying Wikipedia guidelines, reverting, and reverting without branching out and taking an interest in other articles any more than you have? Doczilla 09:08, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:Asgardian's answers here are simply spin. He is at the very least guilty by his own admission of violating Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point.

Three editors here and a larger number throughout the affected Talk pages are all corroborating the extent and the nature of Asgardian's behavior. I don't know if he's been behaving as he has for purposes of some Sociology or Media class project, but it's extremely unfair to let him continue when so many responsible editors are spending so much time and effort on him. I don't want to give up on the Comics Project, but all it takes for his kind of behavior to flourish is for good Administrators to stand by and do nothing. --Tenebrae 22:28, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• The comments are still somewhat self-righteous and quite a few assumptions have been made once again. I suggest more discussion on character pages where needed. Have there been any reverts of late? No. Cooperation? Yes - see Galactus. Some of the articles mentioned still need work (eg. Awesome Android) and some will also have to accept that a touch up is inevitable. I'll start with an Exemplar discussion today as some of the "accepted" features need to be readdressed. See you there.

Asgardian 02:44, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Have there been any reverts of late? No." How can you say that? Here's the most immediate example of how that's just not true: Your last four edits before this noticeboard report were all reverts.

[39] reverted all changes since [40].

[41] reverted a lot of changes since [42], keeping (or adding, whichever) two little edits

[43] reverted all changes since [44]

[45] reverted all edits since [46]

And we could keep going back through your edits, pointing out how very many of them are reversions. You tend to edit your version of each article and not the version most other people are working on. Doczilla 03:36, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• You seem to forget that I rewrote much of the information on those pages and it is still in use. The changes are also minor and acceptable. You are also not taking in what I've been saying. As this is an Admin Board, forward any direct comments to myself or place it under the relevant character.

Asgardian 05:06, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this is an Admin Board, and this information is for the benefit of whichever admin looks at this because they'll be unfamiliar with what you've been doing, even though I've worded these newest remarks in second person to Asgardian. I say them to you because part of me still hopes you'll work with other editors (remember, I personally made sure you knew about this so you could contribute to this discussion), even though experience says how stubborn you are about not taking other people's remarks to heart. I haven't forgotten your edits. I know you've reworked a lot of things, and I've tried to incorporate your better changes to see if you'd accept that as the compromise you mention further above, but you just don't back off. You've kept reverting and kept reverting for three months. You've got your own version of each of those articles. Someone reverts your version, other people edit, you revert back to your own version, it gets edited, it gets reverted. Notice how many different people have been reverting away from your version. You're the single person repeatedly reverting back to your version in spite of all the reasons people have outlined over the last three months regarding what's wrong with your changes. Yes, some of the edits in your versions still need to be added to the version everyone else is working on. I've entered some of your edits into the other version of some articles and I've left some for you, hoping you'd start working with the other regular contributors to those articles. It's just not working. If you really want a compromise, act on the suggestion that several of us have made: Make one edit at a time and learn from other people's responses to them. There have been good edits I'd have backed you up on if you hadn't made twelve bad edits at the same time. But you've gotten this advice and gotten this advice, and yet here we are now. Doczilla 06:51, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So let us begin with Exemplars. One final observation I will make is that the more serious contributors seem to fall into two groups - those that focus on technical edits, and those that contribute creative edits (I'd be the latter. I'll let anyone else reading decide what camp they sit in). Marrying the two together seems to be the challenge, which is not always easy. Asgardian 07:00, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I find it interesting that when you refuse to follow the consensus or the exemplars, you dismiss it as a "technical edit". Being a "creative" type doesn't justify stubbornness, unresponsiveness, incivility, or an unwillingness to work with other editors. --GentlemanGhost 01:11, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• You are making an erroneous assumption.

Asgardian 05:36, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Asgardian uses a fallacy called a false dichtomy to try and excuse the fact that he feels the policies and guidelines of Wikipedia do not apply to him. --Tenebrae 01:27, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Not said. I am making an observation. Most of those I've talked with to date on Wikipedia perform more technical as opposed to creative edits. If still in doubt, ask yourself how many articles you've written or added to as opposed to correcting little technicalities. Anyway, this is not the place to be discussing such things at length.

Asgardian 05:36, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Using the erroneous "technical vs. creative" dichotomy not only splits editors along a nonexistent line, but also serves as a futile attempt to demean other editors (in short, an ad hominem attack). Regarding your assertion that it is hard to "marry the two together," apparently many have done so, with positive results. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 05:51, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• I have to disagree.

"Erroneous" is an assumption on your part. Analysis of many of the comic entries shows that some contribute via a technical "dotting the i's and crossing the t's" edit, while others are creative and may rewrite or create an entire new entry. Edit Histories will show this. It is certainly not a "nonexistant" line - people are different, and their contributions will also differ accordingly. Neither is better than the other, making your claim that it was ever a "futile attempt to demean other editors" a tad ridiculous. As for marrying the two together, not so easy with the comic entries. There's often a greal deal of passion involved but not as much logic. Just study the entry for Thor. It took months to get that article to the standard it is at now. People with pet fetishes, people wanting it to look like a fan site, people insisting such and such happened in issue X and so on. Asgardian 06:48, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Since you used it as example, I checked your last Thor edit. How does, among other things, repeated refusal to follow the exemplar for identifying him as a fictional character help keep the page from looking like a fan site? Doczilla 07:12, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I just noticed that since Asgardian has refrained from doing much on Wikipedia this week, Hercules (Marvel Comics) has gone three days in a row without inspiring other contributors to fix it. The last time it went three days (two whole calendar days) without edits was also when Asgardian refrained from immediately undoing someone else's reversion of his work. That just happens to be the only page my watch list includes from Asgardian's edit war list. I expect this phenomenon can be found on other pages he has kept at. This illustrates what I have kept saying about how much work Asgardian creates for other people. Doczilla 07:28, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• You make a good point and a not so good point. The "fictional" issue needs more discussion over at Exemplars (after all, of course Thor is fictional!) as do 1-2 other terms that aren't too clear. As for creating "work" for other people, you again sounding a tad self-righteous. Please remember no one owns Wikipedia, and that some changes are inevitable. There's being conscientious, and then there's taking the hobby (which is what it is) a tad too far...

Asgardian 09:17, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Remember no one owns Wikipedia. Words to live by. Can you take your own advice? --GentlemanGhost 22:47, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Since I said it, I should think so.

Asgardian 00:10, 16 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. I have unblocked Amoruso yesertday in response to his request. However, Dmcdevit has convinced me that it would be proper to restore his block and solicit wider consensus. So I have reblocked him and taken the matter here.

Before you opine, see:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=block&page=User:Amoruso
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Dmcdevit#Amoruso
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Crzrussian#Amoruso
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/3RR#User:Amoruso_reported_by_User:RedMC_.28Result:48_hours.29

I have restored the original unblock request on Amoruso's talk page. Thank you. - crz crztalk 21:46, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• He's clearly revert-warring without reference to the talk page. That he's four minutes outside 24 hours is frankly beside the point. I would also support page protection. Mackensen (talk) 21:50, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse block - "which he didn't trip, making his 4th revert after 24 hours and four minutes" stinks of gaming the system, the purpose of WP:3RR is to prevent edit warring, not to permit provided specific rules are followed --pgk 21:52, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse as well. There's no reason we should encourage edit warring. Once people revert more than once you already have an issue. WP:IAR overrides such technicalities of four minutes. Cowman109^Talk 21:55, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• My reasoning for the block was that for someone who has been blocked for 3RR before, 4 reverts in 24 hours and 4 minutes is simply gaming, and, compounded by the incivility, the block was valid and uncontroversial. 3RR is not an entitlement to edit war. Dmcdevit·t 21:57, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

copied form user talk

I'm disappointed by the POV of some users concerned in their remarks. User:Patstuart's claims for "warrior and single purpose" for example are completely false. While I was blocked once for 3RR it was controversial since I saw that as a serious infringement of WP:BLP. At this time I was involved in the edit-war and accidentally reverted 4 times against someone working against consensus. There was no incivility and I believe you were right in cutting the ban to essentially 12 hours. 48 hours was inappropriate especially since I contacted user:Dmcdevit personally and also apologisied for reverting 4 times and agreed not to revert the article ever again - this even though I never violated WP:3RR. Amoruso 22:01, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yet he removed my explanation (as blocking admin) as to why WP:BLP did not apply for that case, then proceeded to request an unblock as if such an explanation never existed, writing: "Not only is that ruling wrong, but it's also supposed to be max 8 hours per first offense. But really in an edit war like this, no block should have been made, perhaps page protection" El_C 23:03, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

He also got away recently without a block for persistent edit warring on Pisgat Ze'ev (cf page history), although another user was blocked for five days for a similar level of edit-warring on the same article. This user is a persistent problem. Palmiro | Talk 23:08, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Being the editor who reported Amoruso for 3RR (for which El_C blocked ), I disagree with Amorusos report of the events. First; if anybody worked "against consensus", it was in fact Amoruso. Only three editors worked on the article at the time; two of us were in agreement, and Amoruso disagreed with the two of us. Secondly; I found Amoruso extremely incivil, e.g saying I made "outright lie"s, etc., which I find very offensive. (And nobody reviewing the edits/block have agreed with Amoruso) Regards, Huldra 05:09, 12 December 2006 (UTC) (who is, btw, a "she", even if Amoruso insists on referring to me as "he".)[reply]

I wasn't talking about that 3RR Huldra, you read it wrongly. Amoruso 17:43, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse. In general, I believe once a block is reversed on an editor, it should not be reinstated. Assume good faith, prevent edit wars, make the administrators look more consistent.  :) However, there are too many other issues with this particular editor and I believe a 48 hour block is justified. It's only two days, anyway. --Yamla 23:10, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Coincidentially, I'm just finishing up writing a few words on this user based on his edits from last week alone, which I intend to post tomorrow/when done. This user has been engaged in some heavy disruptive behaviour and edit warring for months, and I'm surprised he hasn't been blocked more than twice. I think some furter action is warranted. -- Steve Hart 23:36, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• I respectfully disagree. I know this is not a popular opinion and although I do not support Amoruso's every edit (in this case, I wish he had waited and not called his opponent a vandal). Please let's keep in mind that we deal with the area of WP inundated with daily attacks of all kinds. In his defense, I'd like to point out that Amoruso usually does discuss his edits on the talk pages and is far from being the worst violator of WP policies. ←Humus sapiens ^ну? 01:26, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Here is a recent example of a user with worse violations who made 5 RVs in 24hrs weaseled out of block. I find such discrepancy in applying penalties unacceptable. ←Humus sapiens ^ну? 02:24, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Discrepencies mean that it should be better enforced, not that we should unblock them all (otherwise you are aguing for that unblock). Dmcdevit·t 03:03, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Agreed. Since we discuss technicalities here, 24 hrs is 24 hrs - I saw users casually being forgiven for reverts made over period longer than 24 hrs. And finally, Amoruso's opponent was a sockpuppet of a banned user: #The return of User:Panairjdde/User:Kwame Nkrumah etc. ←Humus sapiens ^ну? 04:37, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• I've edited on the same pages as Amoruso for quite awhile now. Like Humus, I don't endorse every edit he has ever made, but I completely disagree with Steve Hart and Palmiro that he should be singled out for censure and criticism. I would ask you Steve, when you make the list yo mention, to look at ALL parties concerned and their behavior as well as Amoruso's. It obviously takes more than one editor to make an edit war. Amoruso is interested in some very contentious pages. These pages are also plagued with frequent vandalism. The general contentiousness of his topics of interest, and the way MANY OF US deal with them, are at the root of the problem. Given the contentiousness of the topics, we would all do well to pay very close attention to WP policies about NPOV, civility and assuming good faith (note to self and others). Singling out one editor for severe censure is not as helpful to the project as learning to compromise, to state things neutrally, to allow more than one pov on a particular page. Elizmr 01:52, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Editors are judged on their own edits, the misbehaviour of other editors is not an excuse for violating the rules. I'm not going to include other editors as I'm not involved in the case, but do report them if you want. Your wise words about NPOV and civility is actually the root of the problem, since this user has a longtime history of not adhering to these policies. When a user such as Jmabel posts to the Notice board for Israel-related topics that, quote, "I'm not particularly interested in staring into Amoruso's soul. I'm interested in understanding the purported reason for the removal of material" [47] (partial quote) it should ring a bell. -- Steve Hart 07:56, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately Elizmr if Amoruso is being singled out, he's being singled out for not being blocked and not being banned when the users who are behaving like him are blocked and banned. For example crz's 5-day block of User:ILike2BeAnonymous for being essentially one half of an edit war on Pisgat Ze'ev with Amoruso, who remained unblocked. Or User:PalestineRemembered, who looked rather like the mirror-image of Amoruso and was indefinitely blocked if I recall correctly. Palmiro | Talk 21:42, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, Palmiro, this is a strong personal attack against Amoruso and I feel you should retract it. I'm quite familar with User:PalestineRemembered's editorial history. This user ran afoul of many core Wikipedia policies including WP:AGF and WP:NPOV on many occasions. Please refer to the history of her talk page to see the lack of any development as an editor in terms of adherance to policy or "culture" in terms of civility, etc. In terms of WP:AGF, she accused everyone who ever disagreed with her of poor faith, attacking her personally, etc. She once accused me of trying to get her to make a racist remarks. In terms of her understanding of WP:NPOV, she once said that "infidels" had no place editing pages in English Wikipedia that have to do with Islam. Saying that only one class of EDITORS should be editing on a particular topic raises a very red flag when it comes to her participation in this project. Finally, her understanding and implementation of WP:NPA was completely lacking. Calling non-Muslim editors "infidels" and refusing to retract that remark was highly uncivil. She did not even attempt to be CIVIL to anyone she considered a "Zionist" (which was basically a curse word to her). If you are going to compare Amoruso to this woman, you are way way off base. (Also please note that many editors who share PRs viewpoints are great Wikipedia editors and I very much enjoy working with them, but she was not by any criteria a good editor). Elizmr 00:07, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Elizmr. Yes, it's quite rude of Palmiro to say what he did. But it's not surprising since Palmiro was involved in many rude edit-wars and is probably thinking of himself in that sense. Which is a shame. Amoruso 02:58, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose block per Humus and Elizmr. It also seems to me that if the "3RR" is going to be applied the way some people are applying it, the reference to 24 hours should be eliminated from the policy page. If the rule is really that you can't revert more than three times in an unspecified time frame as determined subjectively by an administrator after the situation has occurred, let's say so. 6SJ7 02:16, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse, User:Dmcdevit's judgement was correct. This is particularly the case when the user who posted the Amoruso 3RR report was himself blocked just before from a report posted by Amoruso. Also, ANI should not have been brought into this rather obvious case. (→Netscott) 02:24, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose block per Humus, Elizmr and 6SJ7. Amoroso was not violating 3RR so the reverse of the block was correct. I agree also with Humus that he has thrown himself into the maelstrom of some very contentious pages and that there needs to be evenhandedness here. I've personally stopped editing some contentious pages involving religion because the arguing is endless and never resolved. He might want to step back from some of this editing but I think that singling him out for severe censure is not warranted.--Mantanmoreland 03:05, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Edit warring in general is discouraged. I think that WP:3RR likely contributes to the erroneous notion often held by edit warriors that they have a right to revert 3 times within 24 hours, as long as they do not exceed the electric fence. This is false and it should be clarified that edit warring is bad, without specific reference to the numerical requirements of 3RR. Khoikhoi 03:34, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The fact of life is, we do need an electric fence because some users won't listen to any arguments and some policy must be enforced. The problem is, it is enforced inconsistently. ←Humus sapiens ^ну? 03:48, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree...but four minutes? WP:3RR even says "users may be blocked for edit warring or disruption even if they do not revert more than three times per day". Khoikhoi 03:52, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Amoruso's editing is aggressive, but those he is opposing seem equally aggressive, if not moreso, and Amoruso does use the Talk: page to support his edits. Jayjg ^(talk) 03:58, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose block per Jayjg. Once we begin overstepping the actual 24h limit, we're down a slippery slope. Does 4 reverts in 24H+ 55 min count as gaming, too? 25 H? Isarig 04:26, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• If Amoruso was indeed engaging a banned user then I would support a lifting of his block. Obviously the original blocking admin User:Dmcdevit could independently verify this. (→Netscott) 04:58, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose block per Humus and Elizmr explntion. He is a revert warrior but is a longstanding contributor in a very contentious area where we have recently seen the formation of a clique dedicated to protecting their member's views. FrummerThanThou 05:34, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose since he was reverting a blocked sockpuppet (per Humus et al). While I don't agree with many of his edits, I don't see why he should be singled out, especially as he does utilise Talk and generally respects policy. Tewfik^Talk 06:16, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per humus and others, I can recall of many precedents were it was decided that 3RR specifically means that the user reverted at least four times in a twenty-four period (at least one of Irishpunktom's blocks comes to mind, [48]). Anyway, Amoruso isn't really a problem user, while he can be very aggressive I would primarily attribute it to reactivity to the behavior of other users rather than anything malicious on the part of Amoruso.- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg | Talk 07:58, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: I'm disappointed to see several editors who share Amoruso's political viewpoints, to the extent that a couple of them has exchanged barnstars with him, suddenly comes out in support. Editors should not value political leanings over rules and procedures. And I don't think edit warring with a sock puppet changes the facts of the case, unless he knew it was a sockpuppet, in which case he should have reported him instead of revert warring. Dealing with a sock puppets is not a carte blanche to do what pleases us. -- Steve Hart 08:03, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please read over the WP:AGF policy before you decide to comment on the presonal motivations of other editors.- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg | Talk 08:29, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• WP:AGF does not exclude me from raising the point that sometimes editors let their personal opinions stand in the way of upholding our policies. -- Steve Hart 09:25, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Moshe's right; just because it a number editors who have 'exchanged barnstars'with Amoruso are supporting him in this does not mean that we can assume that it is their shared viewpoints that lead them to do so. That being said, I note that a good number of the arguments are "but the others are worse!" Not a relevant statement, and one that one hears from people who are supporting someone for the sake of supporting someone. Hornplease 09:32, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose block, per Humus and Moshe. I don't believe Amoruso and I have a single political viewpoint in common; nevertheless, he has made plenty of worthwhile contributions to the wikipedia and I have never found him to be disruptive despite laboring on many an article alongside him. It's easy to cherry pick a few bad edits out of the bunch, as below, but I'd hate to see the write up someone could do about me! -- Kendrick7^talk 10:35, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This block is wholly unjustified by the 3RR, and appears to be inconsistent with WP:BAN#Enforcement_by_reverting_edits

Wikipedia:Three-revert_rule#Reverting_edits_from_banned_or_blocked_users clearly states that

Editors who have been banned from editing particular pages, or banned or blocked from Wikipedia in general, and who continue to edit anyway, either directly or through a sock-puppet, may be reverted without the reverts counting towards the limit established by this policy.

As Amoruso was blocked because of his reversions of the edits of RedMC on Masada, and since RedMC has been blocked indefinitely as a sockpuppet of an indefinitely banned user, Amoruso's reversions on Masada qualified as "reverting edits from banned or blocked users", and thus did not violate the 3RR or otherwise constitute revert warring. Moreover, Amoruso's alleged incivility on Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/3RR#User:Amoruso_reported_by_User:RedMC_.28Result:48_hours.29, "characterization of others' edits as vandalism", was actually quite appropriate language when employed to describe the edits made by a sockpuppet of banned user. John254 22:15, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

:Thank you... and yet I served the whole 3RR so I would like to ask someone to ban and unban me after a second and say it wasn't a deserved block for the record. Because else people will use the bad record of block against me. Thank you. Amoruso 12:00, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Longtime disruptive behaviour by User:Amoruso

(note: there's a preceding debate above regarding a disputed 4RR by this user, I wrote this up before that situation arose).

Attention to User:Amoruso per WP:DE. This user is engaged in editing Arab-Israeli articles where he, as I see it, is on a personal mission. While I believe he has violated pretty much every policy and guideline we have in the months he has been here, I will limit diffs to a few of his recent edits (mostly from Dec. 3 - 8):

• removing the flag of Lebanon from the article 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict: [49]

• page move, moving Sirhan Sirhan (militant) to Sirhan Sirhan (murderer) [50]

• deleting material properly sourced to BBC: [51], ABC News: [52], PBS, others; blanking text in references: [53]

• adding material based on partisan sources without independent verification, e.g.: [54] [55]

• a tendency of being uncivil on talk pages, e.g.: [56] [57]

• consistently removing warnings on own talk page, e.g: [58] [59], including removing an olive branch response by one editor addressed not to him, but to a third editor: [60]

• and finally, what I read, perhaps wrongfully, as a suggestion to editors of WikiProject Israel to take the edit wars over Israel to other country articles in the region, I quote: "See the concerns over Talk:Israel#Permanent semi-protection. I wonder how we can address the issue that Israel's article will be attacked fervently but it seems that nobody is concerned with articles concerning Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Iran... ... I feel that this line of thought is an attack on Israel's sovregnity as state and I just wonder if there can be some perspective or edits by us on other country articles in the region atleast to attempt to balance the heavy and undue bias.", [61] (partial quote)

I should provide additional diffs on request. I briefly wrote about this editor's behaviour three months ago, here: [62]. There was a brief discussion on AN/I last month which involved the editor and a bad faith request to have a page unprotected: [63]. You should note that I was involved in a dispute with the editor in August [64], but I also received some kind words from him [65]. I'm generally not editing the same articles as him, we crossed paths as I was working on the NPOV backlog.

People are allowed to hold strong opinions and still edit articles. But it doesn't exempt them from following rules. In this case we're dealing with a user who for a long time has replaced well sourced material with text and links to partisan sites, is edit warring when other editors objects and often resort to calling those who disagree with him vandals.

This user has been subject to every attempt of dispute resolution except ArbCom, so it would be nice with some discussion on AN/I. I believe that this kind of behaviour is out of line and has been allowed to go on for too long. While I wouldn't call for a ban myself, I do think that the editor needs a break from editing Israel-Palestine related articles, at least for a month or more. -- Steve Hart 09:34, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Use Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. If you want to call for a lengthy block, then it should be clear from the discussion above that you won't get consensus for it. I understand that you find some edits by Amoruso objectionable, but overall, this is a productive editor with a history of positive contributions. Beit Or 09:49, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Alternatively use an user conduct WP:RFC. (→Netscott) 09:55, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

First of all, I would like the editor to move this back where it was, in its own section. This sections deals with a disputed 4RR and I have said what I have to say about that (and I'm not calling for a lengthy block). Second, I stated that every attempt of dispute resolution but Arbcom have been tried. This will go to Arbcom I presume, but I would like a discussion on ANI first. -- Steve Hart 10:19, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I moved this thread here as it is directly related to the above thread. It is generally poor form to have two discussions about a given user separately on ANI. Obviously no one owns ANI so if you feel that my moving the thread here was unjustified then feel free to move it back. I'm still reviewing this post myself. (→Netscott) 10:22, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, I'm not reverting. But my post has nothing to do with the 4RR and should not have any bearings on that discussion (it is a separate case), and it was mostly written before the 4RR occurred. What I would like is a broader discussion on what kind of edit behaviour is actually acceptable. -- Steve Hart 10:34, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Steve Hart, I understand. Although it does happen occasionally, ANI isn't really meant for such discussions, it's generally for reporting nefarious editor behavior where timely admin intervention is likely to be necessary and also for review of admin actions. Again I'd suggest a user conduct request for comments. (→Netscott) 10:44, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Steve Hart: earlier you assumed bad faith, and now you are piggybacking on another case to besmirch your opponent who is temporarily unable to respond at ANI. Not a good place and not a good time, colleague. See WP:DR. ←Humus sapiens ^ну? 11:18, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not opposed to Amoruso editing at WP or for that matter an unblock per se. Nor do I care much for either side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What I am concerned about is allowing this kind of editing pattern to continue, a pattern which even according to some of those opposing the block is aggressive and revert warringish. -- Steve Hart 13:30, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So why aren't you pursuing with equal vehemence editors on the other side of the Arab-Israel question who are equally if not more guilty of edit warring? I'm really uncomfortable with the way this is being handled.--Mantanmoreland 15:20, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I certainly will do. It's not like I'm immune from doing something when I see it [66]. -- Steve Hart 16:47, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but listing an article for deletion is not on a par with pursuing a campaign against an editor. The list of so-called "offenses" above, such as your objecting to Sirhan being called a "murderer," indicate political bias here.--Mantanmoreland 17:00, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not going to justify myself to you or give you "a list". If you disagree with my edits, drop me a note or file a report. As I have stated: I don't care much about the conflict at all. If you believe that editors should stand silent while properly cited material are removed and replaced with unverified statements from dubious partisan sources under the pretext all or nothing you're free to do so. I, however, disagree. -- Steve Hart 18:12, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You just called for removing Amoroso from editing Arab-Israel subjects for a month or more. This is a harsh and in my view unjustified penalty, based on the flimsy "evidence of disruption" that you've accumulated here. Your citing his justifiable Sirhan page move is, I think, significant as that was a good move and a good edit.--Mantanmoreland 19:26, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I forgot, to your objection, you might wanna read up on Let the facts speak for themselves. -- Steve Hart 18:20, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And in your view it is a "fact" that the convicted murderer of Robert F. Kennedy, who has spent the last forty-odd years in a California prison and was never a member of a millitant group -- that that convicted murderer is more accurately described as a "millitant" than as a "murderer." OK, you are entitled to your opinion, but it is anything but a mainstream one and speaks to what are clearly strongly held opinions on your part. (see below) --Mantanmoreland 19:26, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mantanmoreland, the Sirhan Sirhan (murderer) is different from the assasin Sirhan Sirhan. (→Netscott) 19:30, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(restoring margins) Thanks for clarifying, Netscott. Then Amoroso's edit seems even more justifiable. That Sirhan was a murderer of children! Good gawd. Just underlines my point that this was a good edit and that political motives are involved in this effort against Amoroso.--Mantanmoreland 19:57, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Amoruso has published a reply on his user page. I'm taking the liberty to post a copy. If I'm out of line, I'll remove it: -- Steve Hart 13:33, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Steve, it appears to me that Amoruso's responses to your specific allegations are more than adequate, and that in general this has the feel of a personal issue, rather than an AN/I issue. Jayjg ^(talk) 21:15, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So you feel it's ok to delete material which is relevant to an article and properly cited to reliable sources? Or to include material based on partisan sources, even over the objections of other editors? In that case we will never agree. Yes, this is personal issue, but in the sense that I'm tired of seeing propaganda in articles. This is either an encyclopedia or not an encyclopedia. Amoruso isn't the only one doing this, he's just the worst offender I have come across so far. -- Steve Hart 07:18, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is a usual content dispute on which I have no opinion. Anyway, AN/I is not an appropriate place to resolve such issues. Beit Or 08:38, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Steve Hart, I believe I completlely refuted your claims. Saying I deleted material which is relevant to an article is simply a false statement. Partisan sources is your POV in the matter, it's a regular content dispute - I and others believe it's a very valid source , and frankly if we take the Lebanon flag example your allegations seem to have been made in bad faith. You couldn't have missed the original user who explained that Lebanon wasn't a combatant and removed the flag before me, and you couldn't really have missed the user who added the flag who admitted his mistake and even apologised. One would think you chose that example to make a quick slur which people won't check, and it's disturbing. I want to assume good faith here and I hope you won't resort to this again. I hope we can continue happilly as fellow wikipedians now. Cheers. Amoruso 11:56, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Amoruso, you certainly have not addressed my issues (see above), ..I found it quite insulting (+totally wrong) the way you accused me of making lies; I think an apology is due. Regards, Huldra 19:40, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Huldra, I answered you on my talk page at the time. You were confused, misunderstanding - you talked about the previous 3RR while I talked about this ban. There was consensus here not there, I said "this time" and you thought I meant the other thing. You read that wrongly, so it's in fact you who needs to apologise ;) Amoruso 17:43, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

One by one respones to allegations of Steve Hart

I will reply one by one to the allegations made by user:Steve Hart here.

• removing the flag of Lebanon from the article 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict

Too bad Steve Hart didn't (hmm.) go a bit further and saw that the user who placed the Lebanon flag admitted he was mistaken. Lebanon wasn't a combatant in the conflict and therefore the flag was out of place. The editor who placed the flag removed it himself. [67]

• page move, moving Sirhan Sirhan (militant) to Sirhan Sirhan (murderer)

Yes, I did. Murder is NOT WP:WTA as far as I know concerning someone who murdered a whole family. Perhaps Steve Hart can explain us how is such a person a militant ? A militant could belong to an organization like HAMAS or Islamic Jihad MAYBE but this person was acting SOLO. So perhaps Steve Hart wants us to change the definitons of Criminal Law ? This page was not a page in contention and no edit war or reverts took place.

• deleting material properly sourced to BBC: [134], ABC News: [135], PBS, others; blanking text in references: [136]

Did I ? I would like to remind Steve Hart that Blanking = vandalism and that's harsh accusation incivil one and he should avoid that ASAP. This was according to policy, another banned user pushing this, not Timshifter apparently possibly (who got 3RR for this) but BlueDome (actually another sock-puppet of the banned user in question ) and policy explained here [68] and here [69] by many users. User was acting against consensus of atleast 4 users in good standing.

• a tendency of being uncivil on talk pages, e.g. [139] [140]

none of the two example seem to be incivil. Actually, the Paranoia remark seems very light-hearted and a WP:LOVE behaviour if anything, just jokingly. If someone got offended by it, I'd apologise of course. In fact, like Steve Hart said I (wrongly it seems) was particulary civil to him too even though he deleted material of mine. Seems strange allegation. [70]

I'll just note that the "paranoia" comment was directed towards myself and in all honesty based upon what I was saying to User:Amoruso at the time that was a pretty tame response. At this point the whole discussion that was occuring surrounding that comment is now a moot point. (→Netscott) 15:58, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• consistently removing warnings on own talk page, e.g: [141] [142], including removing an olive branch response by one editor addressed not to him, but to a third editor.

Ah, the ol' "don't remove from your page" think. Have you looked on other user talk pages at any chance ? Are you seriously pushing this allegation ? Note that the alleged olive branch response was made by user:PalestineRemembered a user now banned for 1 month for disruptive behavoiour on people's user pages. Seems Hart is missing a whole lot of information here. The timeshifter allegation was addressed already above - it was completely inappropriate and therefore removed.

• and finally, what I read, perhaps wrongfully...

Yes, you read that wrongfully. The topic on hand was how leads should be written for country articles. I suggested we try to reinstate some format into this in the name of WP:NPOV. I feel it's my right to discuss such issues with my fellow wikipedians at the project page ? There was no malice or ill-intent there, just concern to make Israel on par with other country articles.

Steve Hart notes that he was involved in a dispute with me back in August. That's true. In fact, this seems to be what it's all about. Steve Hart not just disputed but edit-warred over that page and reverted constantly and was also warned about it [71]. He also wanted to ban me from the head-start which was almost a threat and perhaps a violation of WP:BITE - "Frankly, I'm not sure you will be allowed to edit for much longer if you are to go on like this" and didn't seem to be concerned of WP:NPOV issues [72]. He says he already mentioned something bad about me in August right when I was a newbie but forgot to say I refuted his claims[73]. Finally, his repeated violations of WP:AGF saying that other users are biased towards me for political reasons even though this has just been contradicted by a good faith editor who disagrees with my political opinions completely and utterly.[74] Another proof of Steve Hart's agenda which revolved again over his war edit in August can be found again on this noticeboard. Steve Hart violated WP:CIVIL (I shall file him a complaint over that because it seems repetitve) by saying "Let me be perfectly clear: There's no reasoning with these guys. You will have better luck convincing a priest that God doesn't exist" [75] and making sure we all realise his crusade "One day someone's going to write him up and report him, and he'll be gone. Not even WP's forgiving policy enforcement is going to save him" (see same edit). <sigh>. Amoruso 11:13, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Amoruso, I knew I shouldn't have said anything on czr's talk page, because you would accuse me for having it out for you. As I said on his talk page, I happen to be on your side quite frequently. But, looking over your edit history, how can you tell me you're anything other than a single-purpose account to promote Israel? Your contributions speak for themselves. I might remind you that WP:AGF specfically says, "there is no need to assume good faith when there is evidence to the contrary". Otherwise, we'd never be able to address what we see as problem editing. -Patstuart^talk|edits 14:16, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I answered you in your talk page. Cheers, Amoruso 11:49, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A possible way forward

As explained here, Amoruso's block is not justified by the 3RR since he was reverting edits by a sockpuppet of a banned user. Such reversions are specifically exempted from the 3RR, and, to my knowledge, are not otherwise considered to be "edit warring". With regard to allegations of edit warring and WP:NPOV violations by Amoruso generally, it would be a mistake to block only this one user, but to refrain from blocking other users who have been engaging in at least equally severe policy violations through pro-Israel and anti-Israel revert warring on a large number articles related to the middle east. As just a small example of this phenomenon, some users have repeatedly added entirely unreferenced anti-Israel material to Terrorism against Israel. Blocking a single user is not going to stop pro-Israel and anti-Israel editors from carrying on the Middle East conflict in the form of edit warring on Wikipedia articles. Rather, it might be advisable to identify the articles suffering from the worst pro-Israel/anti-Israel revert warring, and instead of fully protecting them, community banning the editors most involved in the revert warring from editing those specific articles for a period of several months. Unlike outright blocking, temporarily banning the editors responsible for the revert warring on a per-page basis would allow such editors to continue to contribute to any other articles that they could edit in a constructive manner. John254 01:52, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• I think this is a great suggestion. I would also like to see a zero-tolerance policy against adding unverified statements, claims of facts, and so forth, which we see from both sides. Dubious or contested material should always be moved to talk until it's either verified or consensus is reached. -- Steve Hart 06:59, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that one should always add referencedd statements which are true, and this is something I've always adhered too. We should be careful not to exploit this doctrine in order to enforce one POV over another. Amoruso 11:50, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just to throw something else into the mix here that may be relevant...I've seen calls before in other discussions, incuding Jimbo's talk page, for a Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser to be done on Amoruso and Mantanmoreland. Has one been done, and if so, what were the results? Cla68 00:27, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(sound of applause) Hear hear! I knew that this thread would attract a troll pushing the User:WordBomb line of swill, and Cla68 has filled that role handsomely, as he has in the past and I am sure will in the future. Meanwhile, I think he should get a block to remind him that being a meatpuppet of a banned user is not the way to go.--Mantanmoreland 03:09, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I just noticed that Cla68 engaged in the above trolling in not one but two AN/I threads![76]. Bless my soul he is a dedicated troll.--Mantanmoreland 03:34, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I checked the reference again ([77]) and it's a message from Fred Bauder accusing Mantanmoreland and Lastexit of being the same, not Amoruso. I apologize to Amoruso for casting aspersions on his/her account. Cla68 03:41, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Pareto principle appears to apply to many of the users whose actions are discussed on this page. It seems that the same names are always being discussed for corrective action such, as in this case, disruptive editing. Would the administrators agree that 80% of the disruptive editing problems caused on Wikipedia that demand their attention come from the same 20% of Wikipedia's editor population (besides anonymous IP editors)? Cla68 04:13, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I believe less than 20% of editor's cause repeated problems. I would guess 10%. Cla68 04:14, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why would you apologize to Amoruso and not to Mantanmoreland, as a matter of interest? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 06:08, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going by what Fred Bauder reported in the diff that I posted above because I understand that Fred has a lot of credibility on Wikipedia. If he's wrong on what he reported, then of course I retract and apologize to Mantamoreland for presenting false evidence that he used sock puppets in the past. Let me make it clear, that even though Fred presents evidence that Mantanmoreland was using sock-puppetry in the past, I'm not accusing Mantanmoreland and Amoruso of being the same person right now. I realize I need to apologize to Mantanmoreland also for implying that. I'll expressly state it: I apologize to Mantanmoreland for implying that he and Amoruso are sock puppets of the same person. Cla68 06:18, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Cla. Whatever Fred was referring to was back in March and has been dealt with, so it's best not to keep on raising it. It's pretty clear that Amoruso isn't a sockpuppet. Thanks again for the apology. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 06:23, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cla, what is your explanation for your making the same allegation in this other AN/I[78]? If you have an explanation, that is.--Mantanmoreland 15:27, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cla68's cyberstalking and trolling

His last comment and "apology" to Amoroso -- conspicuously not to me -- was a repetition of the same old User:WordBomb cyberstalking and harassment directed at me. Cla68 engaged in more than just trolling and disruption in two unrelated AN/I threads. He acted as a sock/meatpuppet of a banned user, as he has in the past, for which he was warned to desist[79]. I reiterate my request for an appropriate block. --Mantanmoreland 03:51, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cla68 is a respected and dedicated editor, the author of many superb articles. Please do not waste people's time with absurd claims that he is a "sock/meatpuppet" or a "dedicated troll". It will achieve nothing, and reflects very poorly on you. --Robth^Talk 06:26, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In fairness, Rob, Mantan was responding to Cla's allegations. The best thing is for these claims not to be recycled, then no one will feel they have to defend themselves. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 06:35, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Rob, Cla68 has a history has pushing the agenda of banned User:WordBomb [80], and of making false sockpuppet allegations against me[81]. In this AN/I he made scurillous sockpuppet allegations -- in two AN/Is, one having nothing to do with Amoroso -- against Amoroso and myself. When called on it, he offers up a lame excuse and apologized to one of us. This is nothing less than Wikistalking, and I think appropriate sanctions are warranted.--Mantanmoreland 15:18, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's true, Cla68 has made such malicious allegations before - it seems very strange this behaviour and I don't know what he was looking for in this discussion. Amoruso 13:59, 16 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There are penises on Fundamental Rights, Directive Principles and Fundamental Duties of India. Cannot work out how to delete them. They seem to be floating above the text. Could someone with more technical experience take a look? -WJBscribe ^{(WJB talk)} 02:28, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like that image was used in {{Politics of India}}. User:HappyCamper got there to revert it about 10 seconds before me [82] ;) BigDT 02:36, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Any ideas about the painting of female genitals now super-imposed over the article?-WJBscribe ^{(WJB talk)} 02:38, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That was from {{Rights}}. That too is gone ... though someone should face being eaten by a clown for protecting it without reverting it. [83] ;)

And it looks like there was another one in {{fnb}} that User:Can't sleep, clown will eat me got. FYI, to patrol for search things, take a look at [84] ... this is Special:Recentchanges set on the template namespace. You can easily look for redlinked users and find them. BigDT 02:46, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Two additional templates were affected by this, and all have been vandalized using deceptively phrased edit summaries and creative use of includeonly code, just as they were last week. The entire lot has been semi-protected for the time being, please feel free to adjust as necessary. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 02:52, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The day's featured article should be move-protected as well, as there has also been pagemove vandalism on a couple of the recent FA's, and there is no valid reason why anyone would move them. Newyorkbrad 02:55, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agree wholeheartedly. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 08:36, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For those of you who haven't been familiar, this is the same vandal that's been hitting over and over again for weeks now. He's been hitting high-use templates, requiring us to protect them all. He often uses deceptive edit summaries, and sometimes logs in to do it. I heavily suggest, that from now on, before any article is put on the FA list, that we semi-protect any templates that are transcluded onto it, including templates that are transcluded onto the templates, and so on and so forth. This has been going on for weeks, and it needs to stop. -Patstuart^talk|edits 13:48, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent idea, this is incredibly damaging. riana_dzasta 13:56, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well d'oh... of course.... *nods* in Patstuart's direction, well spotted there. (→Netscott) 14:00, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Same here, and we need to have the IP access folks o thecase. Fast. It's the only solution, I shudder at thinking what would happen if they hit e.g. {{Infobox Cricketer}}, {{Infobox Politician}}, {{Methodism}}, {{Politics of Canada}}... Circeus 18:38, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Are those typos red-links a cunning double-WP:BEANS bluff to send the vandal astray? :-) Seriously, don't give them ideas. Though if this is the same vandal that managed to vandalise the "#R" button in the editing toolbar, that's actually quite inventive. Carcharoth 20:58, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The vandal doesn't seem to look at this page. If he did, he would already have stopped using redlinked accounts... Circeus 22:19, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You know, even better than having to track down all of these templates to semi-protect would be if we had non-vandalized versions. Now that would be nice. --Cyde Weys 22:23, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm starting to think, with the dozen or so attempts at vandalizing the article within an hour of it going live, that they are specifically out to force us to protect it. Circeus 01:03, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Technical question: Is it possible to protect an article from the addition of images without changing the editability of the text? If not, is this a feature that should be requested of the developers? Newyorkbrad 01:06, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't really see how that'd be possible. Adding an image really is just adding something to the source. I suppose you could hash out a list of images in the article, and disallow new edits to the wiki source if it changes the list of images at all ... but really, that'd be very ugly, and probably not worth dev time. Also, you'd still have to somehow deal with template vandalism. The real solution is just to finish up those non-vandalized version flags that the devs have been working on for awhile now. --Cyde Weys 01:08, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is a question for any recent change patrollers who browse special:recentchanges: do you watch article-only changes, or do you include all namespaces? Vandalism to articles is regularly reverted within seconds, but I've seen vandalism to talk pages and wikipedia talk pages that sits for several minutes, as if there is a significantly smaller amount of people watching those spaces. By extension, it means a significantly smaller amount of people then the normal amount of rc patrollers see edits to templates at all. This might be the explanation as to how template vandalism can sit for a while. (Or my theory could be completely off base. That's possible too.) Picaroon9288 01:21, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'd take issue with the statement "Vandalism to articles is regularly reverted within seconds". I'm reverting vandalism that is hours or days old in several articles every day, and ocassionally deal with vandalism that has been sitting around for weeks or months. I often see vandalism being reverted that misses the two or three other vandal edits that preceeded it. The bots can't help it, but live editors need to be more careful about looking at the recent history. I'm apparantly the only editor that reverts vandalism on many of the articles on my watch list, and I shudder to think of all those articles that are not on anyone's watch list. In other words, it is my opinion that we are not doing well in the fight against vandalism, be it in article space or elsewhere. -- Donald Albury 14:56, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And there are also human mistakes as well. It took me ages to work out what was wrong with this version of Carol Ann Duffy, but I eventually realised that two or three closing </ref> tags were missing, and corrected matters with this edit. The article history shows it had been in that state for a week, since 20:52 on 6 December 2006, and that two registered editors had edited in that time, one to revert vandalism, but they had failed to pick up on the formatting errors made on 6 December. Carcharoth 10:41, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. I do it too. I see a problem in an article, or something I want to correct or add, and I edit without thoroughly examing the article. I tend to focus on thing at a time, and not see other problems. That's why having more than one set of eyes watching an article is important. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be enough of us to go around for all aricles. -- Donald Albury 12:15, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There have been a series of disputes over the past couple of weeks regarding whether a disputed question should remain on an ArbCom candidate's question page or be deleted. My suggestion is that in future elections there be a designated Election Official who could resolve these disputes. In the interim, I suppose this noticeboard is as good a place as any to elicit consensus on whether this question from User:Tsunami Butler should remain on a candidate page or be deleted. Newyorkbrad 22:21, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Editors are completely entitled to ask whatever questions they want. Candidates are also entitled to not answer questions they deem to be trolling. Indeed, I could see a candidate choosing to answer that question as arguably a negative. JoshuaZ 22:25, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

...not to say that it is a very interesting question even from the point of view of its logic, being doubly loaded. A possible answer would gove an interesting insight in candidate's way of thinking. That leaves me wondering: is Tsunami Butler a shrink?  :-) `'mikkanarxi 22:57, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see anything wrong with that question. User:Zoe|(talk) 23:37, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There's probably something wrong with it somewhere along the lines, but there's no reason for it to be removed. If he asked a question that contained a personal attack or broke some other policy, ok, remove it, but there's nothing wrong with permitting this one to be asked. BigDT 00:41, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see anything wrong with that question Consider the source: the user's contributions shows his/her single-minded interest in Lyndon Larouche, part of an seemingly endless series of single-purpose editors that those articles attract. --Calton | Talk 05:10, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Speaking as someone who was on the other end of this ... hell no, questions shouldn't be removed. The very thought that the elections can be impacted by removing questions by someone acting in defense of said candidate is ludicrous. We definitely need impartial election officials for all such elections in the future to deal with issues such as these. Since it is too late for these elections, I say we take a very conservative approach and only remove questions that are clearly beyond the pale. This question doesn't even approach the pale. And remember, the candidate always has the option of ignoring the question.

I just want to emphasize how important it is to have fair elections. The electoral process is sacred, and we shouldn't do anything that even gives the impression of something below-the-board going on. That is why it is so wrong that another administrator actually wheel warred over whether my question about a candidate's statement could be asked. It disgusts me that someone would even think of doing such a thing. And I hope, for all of our sakes, that it never happens again. --Cyde Weys 00:55, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If electoral process is "sacred", then "what is your response to those critics who say that Wikipedia has aspects of being a cult"? ;) --BigDT 01:16, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

we prefer to think of ourselves as a new internet movement.Geni 02:55, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

While the question isn't relevant to the ArbCom election, it's still an interesting question. Wikipedia is listed on List of groups referred to as cults with a solid reference. -Will Beback · † · 08:16, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, that is an opinion piece, seen here. That is one journalist wondering whether Wikipedia can be thought of as a cult. This is precisely why people should assess the sources, not just whether there is a source at all. Carcharoth 11:19, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Leave it to the candidates. Any 'impartial election monitors' could disagree over whether a question should be displayed or not too... and there'd be nothing preventing regular users from warring over it as they have this time. IMO any and all questions / comments should be left entirely alone by everyone except the person adding them and the candidate. --CBD 12:12, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I find myself in agreement with CBD. A candidate's question page is the sole responsibility of the candidate. We don't need an additional layer of bureaucracy for Arbcom elections. Mackensen (talk) 12:18, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"CBD and Mackensen agree. Film at eleven!" :] --CBD 12:28, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ha! If this isn't consensus, I don't know what is...Mackensen (talk) 12:35, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, not quite a consensus, because I still think an Election Official would be helpful to deal with, if not this particular type of question, trolling like was occurring on Avraham's question page a few weeks ago. But we have a year to figure that out before next time. Newyorkbrad 15:23, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The same here. If we have clerks, stewards and all sorts of officials to keep the RfAr discussions more or less decent, I don't see why we should not have officials who would keep election pages in order. ArbCom elections do not appear to be a less sensitive topic than most of ArbCom proceedings. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 15:33, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ghirla, you really don't have standing here, as you were one of the people trying to remove my question to an ArbCom candidate. --Cyde Weys 17:27, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, thinking it inappropriate, he decided to remove it because there was no designated person he could speak to about whether it belonged or not. So I think it's fair for him to point out that having a designated person(s) to make such decisions would have avoided that controversy, among others. Newyorkbrad 17:31, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

He has close ties with various people involved in that question (especially the person the question was about). It's indefensible of him to think that he could somehow play the role of neutral elections official when everyone knows he wasn't neutral in that situation. He's just trying to cover for himself now by blaming a lack of elections officials when the real fault was his inability to determine that he was too involved to have standing to neutrally address the question. --Cyde Weys 00:25, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cyde, please don't hijack the discussion to ad hominems and ready assumptions of bad faith, OK? Contrary to your insinuations, I have no interest in "playing the role of neutral elections official" or any other official role in Wikipedia now or in the future. I hope we may return to discussion of content (rather than personalities) now. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 08:25, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Derek Smart article is in a sorry state of rampant edit warring which lead to the semiprotection of it and its talk page too.

Mael-Num (Mael-Num|talk • Mael-Num|contribs) has been pushing to have two cited incidents from reliable sources, namely the notable incident involving the alleged assault by Derek Smart of a coke machine, and a cite from ben kuchera of ars technica. User :Mael_Num has claimed a consensus for deletion of the cited information based on a discussion in the talk page that has lasted only a few hours, and with only three contributors out of many, which is not acceptable. He has warnings for civilty on his talk page. He can be possible SPA by his contributions Mael-Num|contribs.

I kindly request the admins to mediate and offer a acceptable solution to this long running (>13 months) edit war. I would also request for a checkuser to be performed on Mael-Num and Supreme_Cmdr and WarHawkSP to see if there is any violation of the blocks placed under WarhawkSP and SC.Kerr avon 01:52, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• I mirror Kerr avon's stated concerns. Except the check user is much more complicated. Besides the 3 usernames, there are also anonymous IP addresses that have recently appeared editing the Derek Smart article and it's talk page. They all purport the same viewpoint, share writing styles (mostly) showing uncanny similarities to recently blocked WarhawkSP and Supreme_Cmdr, and always agree with each other. The IP addresses are 63.28.69.164 and 63.44.66.100, which are both Fort Lauderdale IP Addresses, where Smart lives and runs his business. Also, it should be noted that these violations may fall under WP:Auto policy because it is likely the person is Derek Smart himself. --Jeff 02:19, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Addendum: I don't believe Mael-Num is a sockpuppet. Supreme_Cmdr/WarHawkSP and the IP Addresses are. Mael-num has a distinct writing style, but there are still issues that need some oversight over at the derek smart article.--Jeff 04:20, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm concerned as well. I'm concerned that there is organized off-wiki attempt to push a POV on this article that removes cited sources. As mentioned above on this page, WarHawkSP and Supreme Cmdr have been single purpose accounts blocked from editing due to this. There have been numerous more single purpose accounts and now a rash of anon edits. Checkuser is inconclusive, but did not rule out the possibility that these are socks. I mentioned above, this edit war does not appear to show signs of slowing down soon, and I believe it will likely continue until everyone is 3RR blocked, or it goes to ArbCom. We absolutely need some administrator intervention. Users are misquoting policy, especially BLP to remove cited, reliable material. This is a major problem. ⇒ SWATJester ^{On Belay!} 03:04, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is beyond tiresome. I believe this page needs full protection until all parties can form some sort of agreements. --InShaneee 05:27, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Note: I'm working with Mael-Num to try to keep him civil and try to find a reasonable solution to this. I guess you could call it informal mediation. However, I do think this case would be good for a formal mediation attempt, which I have neither the time nor the interest for conducting myself (not to mention I'm not AMA). I agree with InShaneee. This page needs to be full protected, a mediation needs to be conducted, administrator oversight towards those who continue to be uncivil needs to be enforced with short blocks, and hopefully this can be fixed without the time and frustration of an ArbCom case. Unfortunately, I think that it will end up coming to that otherwise. For further reference, see the cross conversation on my talk and Mael-Num's talk. ⇒ SWATJester ^{On Belay!} 05:35, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Screw it, I'll go ahead and do a full mediation on this. I posted on the talk page. Got nothing else going on anyway. Hopefully this will at the very least determine who is willing to help advance the article, and who is not. ⇒ SWATJester ^{On Belay!} 05:43, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've fully protected. It's getting hard to keep track of all the SPAs on that article. -- Steel 12:48, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm requesting a moderate length block on WarHawkSP: after agreeing to mediation, and after the article was protected, WarHawkSP is now deleting comments off the user talk that disagree with his position. He cites WP:BLP as his validation, and calls it vandalism, but the comments he deleted were a) opinion and not subject to libel, b) nothing that would even be considered a personal attack if you were to subsitute a wikipedia editors name in, and c) directly related to the validity of inclusion of a link in the article, which is why the page is protected in the first place.

WarHawk is a single purpose account, that has been blocked for 3RR on this account. It's inconclusive as to whether he is a sockpuppet or not. I'm requesting a block length of 48 hours so that further talk page discussion can go on undisrupted by him. ⇒ SWATJester ^{On Belay!} 01:54, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Anything? Hello? ⇒ SWATJester ^{On Belay!} 06:08, 16 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Take a look at all of User:Bosniak's edits from the 13th of December 2006 onwards ([85]). He is inserting this on a lot of user pages and on articles.

It is interesting how Serbs promoted invented word "Serbophobia" on the internet. First they introduced the word to wikipedia, and then thousands of other scrapper sites copied content from wikipedia, and now Google yields thousands of matches for this invented word. Of course, while Bosniaks wanted to do the same, and create an article Bosniakophobia, Serbs quickly jumped and voted "NO!". And of course, attempts to create Bosniakophobia article failed thanks to Serbian activism on wikipedia! They don't use wikipedia for educational, but for their nationalistic/politic purposes. It is sickening to see Serbian propaganda and lies poisoning Wikipedia

Some of the users he is sending the message to are completely random and have never interacted with him, or Bosnia related articles before. Is this bad faith behaviour or is this sort of thing acceptable on Wikipedia. It just seems to me that it is User:Bosniak who is causing trouble, not Serb editors. Any comments? - Ivan K 07:33, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I received it.. I'm trying for the life of me to figure what it is going on about :-\ thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 08:18, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) I was about to post this very same same thing, but you beat me into it; I was one of many on the spamlist. I feel inclined to rollback all that ranting and warn the user, but I'd prefer a neutral admin to do it. Is there a relevant policy—such behavior is awful from whichever side it comes, and I'd like it to stop in the future. Duja► 08:22, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:Coredesat and I just reverted all of the messages. JDoorjam Talk 08:32, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! - Ivan K 08:33, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is not the first time that Bosniak (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has been warned, and blocked, for disruptive behaviour. He was only recently unblocked for some of the behaviour reported at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive149#Block request for User:Bosniak. —Psychonaut 12:45, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Do not connect this user with other Bosnians on this Wikipedia; that is incorrect and not human. His username shouldn't make us bad, or worse than Serbs (I've never said anything bad about them on English Wikipedia nor anywhere else). --Emx 22:12, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh yeah, enough of your Serb-loving comments. Show some fairness, objectivity and neutrality for once, please. I was communicating to people who were affecting articles such as Srebrenica Massacre, Bosniaks, Markale Massacre, etc. Most of them were Bosniaks, although some of them were Serbs and their loyal friends. Some users have complained about YOU rolling back and deleting comments that I left them, here are some of many example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Bosniak#re:_comment_on_my_talk_page and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:JDoorjam#My_User_Page By the way, user Psychonaut is Serb and he defends Serb interest on Wikipedia, just so you know. Peace Bosniak 01:38, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I calmly explained how the editor's behavior violated several policies here, and he has not only resumed his page-spamming, but he's also making wild accusations against myself and a couple other editors, and he even posted to ANI. Last I checked, I wasn't Serbian. I think a longer block may be necessary, because he's not heeding warnings or advice. --Coredesat 04:35, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why people always have to be compared by nationality? --Emx 15:41, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was heavily bold and deleted Serbophobia, Anti-Croatian sentiment and Anti-Bosniak sentiment in the name of symmetry, brotherhood and unity, and WP:IAR. Those were poorly referenced, troll magnet, POV-exchange and hopelessly apples-and-oranges articles serving the purpose of proving a point of how poor us are prosecuted and tortured by them throughout the history.

I stand open to potential deletion review and, if called for, a request for comment and even recusal of administration rights, if the community wants it. Duja► 08:36, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say deleting them was a good move. - Ivan K 08:40, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If the related articles were any indicator of the Wiki-ethnic feuding going on there, this was almost certainly a good move. Though Serbophobia would imo be better stubbed to referenced info than deleted outright, since it does seem to have enough references to justify its notability as a term. I think you can safely up your rouge application level to full in that userbox now. --tjstrf talk 08:51, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for pointing this out—Acknowledged . I know that something could have been salvaged, but e.g. Serbophobia survived the AfDs mostly because it was a larger stub describing only the usage and origin of the term; meanwhile, it humongously grew to describe all acts of violence and discrimination against us throughout history. If I stubbed them, the vicious circle would undoubtedly repeat. Yes, some ethnic groups are hated by some people; that doesn't make the respective articles necessarily encyclopedic. Duja► 09:08, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Boy, the way those guys go after each other you'd think someone had started a World War over it. WAS 4.250

• That's a very bold move Duja. You are brave. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 08:58, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Hah, that's ROUGE indeed. But I'm all for the deletion of such articles. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:04, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Very bold, and effective. Viridae^Talk 11:24, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• I can't believe that practicing IAR can be sometimes much more easier, funnier and effective than throwing a rotten tomato at the face of a rotten actor! Good job anyway. -- Szvest ^{Wiki me up ®} 12:50, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Yes, good stuff. All had gone well past the point of irretrievable nonsense. Guy (Help!) 13:46, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Hurrah. What we need here is coverage of ethnic conflicts and rivalry in the Balkans in general. Serbian-Albanian conflict seems to be one of the least bad articles like this, for example. Having those three articles, each of them being a POV fork, is just silly. Morwen - Talk 13:51, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• The pages sound like they are better nonexistant. But why IAR? Why not follow process? Regards, Ben Aveling 21:10, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Because process is not policy, and process is not, in some people's eyes, required to produce an outcome consistent with core policies. Mackensen (talk) 21:17, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • True, true. But in this case, I don't see why process would have been a barrier to producing the same outcome. Regards, Ben Aveling 08:02, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• No objection from me, but I would say that being poorly referenced, troll magnet, POV-exchange and hopelessly apples-and-oranges articles serving the purpose of proving a point is a better deletion rationale than symmetry, brotherhood and unity, and WP:IAR. Eluchil404 00:06, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Pile-on support. This is a good application of IAR. JDoorjam Talk 00:10, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Support Duja's unilateral deletion, although he won't be rogue until he deletes Anti-Romanian discrimination and Anti-Hungarian sentiment... ;-) Khoikhoi 10:27, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  Which ones? I don't see them... Duja► 09:13, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  LOL. :-) I was actually sort of joking, but I agree that both of those articles are unneeded. However, since Anti-Romanian discrimination was restored, I'll restore Anti-Hungarian sentiment until we can get a consensus. Khoikhoi 00:37, 16 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There's also Anti-German sentiment and Anti-Polish sentiment, both of whose neutrality is (surprise!) disputed. Kusma (討論) 09:17, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There's in fact a huge big lot of them, conveniently listed at List of anti-ethnic and anti-national terms. While I believe most of those ought to go, I don't think speedying them all would be a good idea. We need a proper discussion about what are sensible criteria for inclusion of such articles. Big ugly messy bloody group AfD, anyone? Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:29, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds great! We can have the feuding factions all unite to oppose deletion of their personal victimhood pages. (Or maybe they'll vote, delete all but mine, and we'll get an easy consensus?) Non-sarcastically, please don't nominate too many of them at once. Keep it to an amount of articles you can read in one sitting, so that us outside editors have a reasonable way of evaluating them individually. --tjstrf talk 09:34, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Reasonable. Or maybe a centralised discussion page first, and then individual AfDs spawned off from that? In any case, it's going to be big and ugly and a lot of work, and potential drama. I wonder why we haven't yet seen any complaints of admin abuse for the ones deleted so far? Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:44, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Only a few on my talk page, but far less than I expected.
However, Initially I wanted to clean up only "my" ethnic feud and I don't feel like spreading rougeness worldwide. But those articles should go. They're mainly unsalvageable soapboxes. Like Morwen said, pages akin to Serbian-Albanian conflict (i.e. Foo-Barian relationships/tensions/conflict) could have much better prospects, if only because they would be subject to edit-warring scrutiny of Fooians, Barians and neutrals. But I'm uncertain how to proceed at the moment. Duja► 10:06, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Good move by Duja. Before people start nominating these for deletion, take a look at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Anti-Polonism and at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anti-Polonism. (Don't know if other such "articles" also already had AfDs, this one I just knew from the top of my head.) Lupo 11:02, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Unfortunately, yes, there have been several "keep" precedents on such AfDs - and usually the existence of one page was cited as a reason to keep the other:
    • Anti-Serbianism: survived 2 AfDs (1, 2);
    • Anti-Croatian sentiment: survived 1 AfD)
    • Anti-Bosniak sentiment: survived 1 AfD
    • Anti-Iranianism: survived a particularly ugly and vicious one.

On the other side:

• • • Anti-Georgianism: deleted at AfD
    • Anti-Kurdism: speedied by myself today

Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:58, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I strenuously object to how this was done. Anti-Romanian discrimination, which had hundreds of edits by over a dozen contributors, including quite a few administrators (none of them me) does not look to me like the sort of article that should have been summarily deleted. It contained significant material (including quite a few citations) that, even if this article is deemed inappropriate, belongs somewhere else in Wikipedia; such salvaging of parts of articles often happens in the course of an AFD, but there is virtually no chance for it when an administrator acts unilaterally. I'll also add that the article did not particularly read like a polemic, and even explicitly acknowledged regions outside of Romania where Romanians are treated well (e.g. "The Romanians living in the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina are very well represented at the provincial level despite their small presence…"). At most, I think it should have been retitled more neutrally to encourage discussion of positive as well as negative treatment, but it seemed to me on the whole to be a decent article. - Jmabel | Talk 17:13, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I respectfully disagree. These articles have only produced bad feelings among wikipedians, and hampered friendly collaboration, promoting instead a clan sentiment. I disagree with any attempts to recreate the articles in question.--Aldux 17:38, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Aldux, are you just saying this on general principles, or did you actually read the article I am somewhat defending? - Jmabel | Talk 20:57, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, the Romanian term for anti-Romanianism is antiromanism: of course, occasionally that same term (usually in English) means opposition to Roman Catholicism, but a Google search turns up literally hundreds of on-topic hits from what are usually considered reliable sources. Some of them are debating whether there is such a thing, others are assuming that there is, but it seems to me that there is plenty here for a topic. Again, there may have been problems with this article, but I would certainly have opposed simple deletion if there had been an opportunity for discussion, and I do not like the fact that discussion is taking place only in the face of a fait accompli. - Jmabel | Talk 21:07, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, I've tried to spell out my arguments for the deletion of these articles, on Duja's talk page, for the time being - not about the process, but in about the content. Still not sure where such a discussion ought to be conducted best now. We need some venue for assessing and reviewing the remaining articles, developing some kind of common criteria for them, and reviewing the deleted ones in the process too if that turns out to be necessary. Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:29, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm almost afraid to ask, because people have been known to follow up on my rhetorical questions by actually doing the thing in question, but does this objection extend to the article on Antisemitism?

No. See the link I gave exactly in the contribution above: [86]. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:07, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tajik (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) and E104421 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) have been involved in a long Turkish-Iranian feud over issues of historical central Asian ethnic identities, with week-long petty revert wars on multiple articles, POV forks, personal attacks, sockpuppet allegations, mutual accusations of stalking, several blocks on both sides, and other such niceties. After a renewed bout of revert warring on at least three articles I've blocked both of them (see WP:AN3 and my talk page). What can be done to keep these guys away from each other? Short of Arbcom (which might become necessary too though), I propose going ROUGE on them both and imposing an informal community 1RR probation on both of them. Can we do that, through admin consensus? Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:02, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As a fellow cabal member, I endorse your block and the 1RR probation proposal. Duja► 09:57, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse. This has become quite disgraceful. Hopefully the 1RR probation would not lead to sockpuppetry. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 12:42, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Me to: we really need to put a cut too this.--Aldux 16:10, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The last time Tajik was blocked for 24 hours, he immediately returned to incivility, and was blocked for 48 hours for incivility, then he came back and immediately plopped a bogus Stalking warning on my user page in retaliation for my reporting him. When I complained about Tajik posting the bogus stalking warning on my page, I was ignored, except that administrator Khoikhoi came to his defense, without any evidence, and while evidence to the contrary existed on Tajik's talk page. I certainly hope administrator Khoikhoi can read German. I would hope, though, after a user has been blocked for 24 hours for incivility, then almost immediately reblocked for 48 hours for incivility, then comes back and acts incivil, again, and then posts the incredibly nasty comments about other users (not just E104421) and about Wikipedia in general, that Tajik did, that an administrator would block him for longer than the 24 or 48 hours that did nothing the first time. As long as Tajik OWNS Afghanistan on Wikipedia, no one else will be able to edit it. And, considering how he feels about the competence of other Wikipedia editors, it's no wonder he feels he should own the article. And, yes, I am biased against Tajik, he is attempting to instill hostility into my experience on Wikipedia, in retaliation for a copyedit of the Herat page, and he has a lot of administrator support in owning his pages. Actually, I hope more administrators than Khoikhoi can read German. KP Botany 18:05, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

PS And if Tajik is blocked how come he is editing his talk page while blocked?[87] KP Botany 18:21, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A blocked user can still edit (only) his or her own talk page, unless the page is specifically protected by the blocking admin or another administrator. This is necessary to allow dialog and the posting of requests for an unblock. Newyorkbrad 18:22, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the information, and quick reply, as I didn't know that, and had seen numerous spats about this particular thing on Wikipedia, and thought they had to e-mail or something. But that's not what he used it for, he used it to remove a 3RR warning from another user. KP Botany 18:48, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, but to be fair, that one was not a problem - the warning was for the revert-warring he had already been blocked for anyway, so the warning was unnecessary in the first place. Besides, like many here, I'm not a big fan of sanctioning the removal of warnings anyway. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:09, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

From what I have personally seen from these two users (particularly on Babur prior to its protection), they have been quite incivil and disruptive. I support the idea. -- tariqabjotu 19:40, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fut.Perf, you said on my talk page, "for the moment, I propose to impose an informal 1RR regime on them both, on all the articles they've been reverting each other recently". To clarify, this 1RR would only apply when Tajik and E104421 are edit warring together, right? If so, I would support it. However, if it applys to all articles, I don't think it would be very fair both to Tajik and E104421. Khoikhoi 02:11, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And what's fair to other editors who go in and try to do a copyedit on some article Tajik OWNS, and become a target for his incivility and visciousness? Tajik has been blocked twice recently and warned numerous times, and what does he do? Blast all of Wikipedia for being inferior editors to him. And administrators have done nothing, there's even a notice above Tajik's complaint about E104421, on the 3RR board, another editor complaining about problems with Tajik, another editor ignored by administrators. I tried to use WP:DR, including just withdrawing from the articles for a while, and Tajik blasted me for NOT CONTINUING AN EDIT WAR! And Khoikhoi supported Tajik posting a blatantly false retaliatory stalking warning on my talk page--which is, in fact, the very essence of stalking: creating a hostile atmosphere for other editors, with the help of an administrator.

What would be fair to other editors who would like the Afghanistan articles to be usable and worthwhile for users of Wikipedia? Who don't have all day to edit and administrator shop to get administrators to protect their pages and edits, who don't have all the time in the world to make sure they have an administrator on their side, ready to speak up on their behalf, no matter what they've done? Editors who are targetted by Tajik in retaliation for COPY EDITS, then find out that Tajik is protected by administrators in his atrocious and repeatedly uncivil behaviour?

What's fair to the rest of Wikipedia?

And how unfair to Tajik is it, since he thinks no one else in the world is capable of reading an authorative source and using it properly to assist in writing Wikipedia articles?

Well, obviously I am ticked off at being the target of Tajik's abuse, and of having him targetting me and so many others be ignored by administrators, however, Tajik's behaviour has been ignored for a long long time. Ultimately I don't think unilateral action against Tajik is fair, because I truly believe that he was created by administrators thinking they were doing him a favor by siding with him and ignoring his behaviour--ultimately, imo, administrators who ignored his bad behaviour early on created what he has become: an uncivil, edit-warring, reverting, abusive, personally attacking editor. He does not appear to be able to work with other editors. This has not always been the case, though.

Administrator favoritism does nobody any favors, not the editor, not the community, not the administrator.

The next time he puts phony warnings on my talk page, or attacks me for a copyedit, I would really like to see an administrator take it seriously, and when Khoikhoi comes in to defend his atrocious behaviour, I would like an unbiased administrator to come in and take it seriously. It's a great technique he has, though, attack attack attack, get supported by an administrator, and bam!, there you go, he's got rid of another editor. KP Botany 02:58, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

PS, And I am going to start editing the Afghanistan and Herat articles and other Afghanistan articles. I never should have allowed Tajik to bully me away in the first place. And I do know better now than to try Wikipedia DR, because administrators don't support editors who try it, and editors like Tajik, who see newbies like me foolishly use it, are probably just snickering. KP Botany 03:03, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Calm down. Wikipedia does not allow you to simply throw around accusations anywhere and for any reason you please, and you can only harm the site if you're going to jump into debates to 'save the day'. --InShaneee 03:06, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia administrators allowed Tajik to "simply throw around accusations anywhere and for any reason," against me, and Administrator Khoikhoi did the same thing to me, in support of one of Tajik's "thrown around accusations." When I complained about unsupported accusations by Tajik and Khoikhoi, I was ignored. I wasted my time with supported allegations, Tajik and Khoikhoi countered with unsupported allegations, and I was the one ignored. That's where I learned it from, from another editor, far more experienced at Wikipedia than I am, and from an administrator. Wikipedia does not only allow it, but seems to prefer it, as the unsupported accusations against me carried far more weight than my supported accusations against Tajik--the unsupported accusations carried 100% of the weight, and the supported accusations 0%.

If it is harmful to Wikipedia for users to "Simply throw around accusations anywhere and for any reason," then administrators should not have stood by in mute silence while Tajik and Khoikhoi did it to me. But, administrators did just that, ignored it when it happened to me, probably because I'm a new user.

When administrators and editors use a technique to gang up on a newer and less sophisticated editor, and Wikipedia administrators support it by ignoring it, it's a bit confusing to then have another administrator come in and say, what was allowed to happen to the new editor, what more experienced Wikipedians used against the newer editor, is "not allowed" to be used by the new editor. Khoikhoi is an administrator and Khoikhoi supported Tajik's unsupported accusations against me, without Khoikhoi providing any support for his own support of Tajik. All the more experienced editors and at least one administrator know how to profit form this technique, to scold only the newcomer for following established practices of more experienced users simply gives Wikipedia more of an appearance of bias towards established editors and administrators and against newer editors. KP Botany 15:51, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not much a fan of wiki-drama, however, maybe it would help if you specified what you want. I don't (and I doubt anyone else does) care if you're right or not, just want everyone to be happy. What do you want, do you want Khoikhoi to ban Tajik? //Dirak 16:01, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately Tajik still involves in edit wars, he constantly removes well referenced information from articles. Especially the articles that's related to Turks, Azeris or other Turkic peoples'. I hope administrators will find a way to keep him away from these articles.--BlueEyedCat 17:25, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What a lie! Just look at BlueEyedCat's edits...he is not one to talk about other peoples edits...Azerbaijani 17:56, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• What a lie!,is a personal attack here,Please choose your words carefully.
• Your arguments are baseless. Edit summaries of BlueEyedCat's gives enough explanation about edits. He/she brings reliable sources to article Safavid dynasty, and removed by Tajik( and by some other user]. Tajik also had deleted POV tag from a section in that article.

Combining this incident as User:Tajik and User:E104421 doesnt represents the events. Correct name for incident (as everybody can see) may be User:Tajik and "Other users".

regards.Must^TC 11:12, 16 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Regards.Must^TC 11:12, 16 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I first blocked Pkulkarni on the 7th when it was discovered that he was running a large sock-farm to disrupt articles and attack other users. [88]. He continued to create more accounts and I increased his block to 2 months. Today 5 more sock accounts were discovered by Dmcdevit. See this. 4 of these accounts have been created after my second block. In light of this continued disruption, I have indef-blocked Pkulkarni. If anyone feels that an indef-block is too harsh he/she is welcome to reduce the duration of the block. - Aksi_great (talk) 10:35, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like the correct decision to me. Proto::► 12:57, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good call. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 19:15, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with the indef block. Still might be a good idea to keep an eye out for sockpuppets, though, given his persistence. --Coredesat 14:25, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

StuRat (talk · contribs) did not like the way discussion at Wikipedia:Reference desk/guideline was headed, so he created a fork of it, essentially taking the people who agreed with him along to write a new page without involvement of those who do not agree with him. He's been using parliamentary-style eight-hour votes for the wording, convinced of the idea that supermajority voting is recommended or endorsed by WP:CON. Needless to say this is not a useful way of arriving at consensus; hence, his fork is now on MFD here.

StuRat has been vote-stacking this MFD by canvassing several people agreeing with him before (but none that disagreed with him) to "vote" on it. I feel this is disruptive. [89] [90] [91] [92] [93] [94] [95] [96] [97] [98] [99] (Radiant) 17:17, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Um Radiant, I am on that list but I don't recall ever agreeing with StuRat on anything. Soooo... I feel that you're misrepresenting me. Anchoress 01:12, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have frequently disagreed with StuRat, so notifying me of an issue on RD is perfectly appropriate. Edison 05:09, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As one of those canvassed by StuRat, I was surprised to be notified by him of the MfD. I had been peripherally engaged in the most recent discussions at the Ref Desk talk pages, and StuRat had canvassed me for my opinion on several previous ocassions over the last day or so. In the MfD, StuRat does seem to misunderstand several points about how WP works, so it is possible this is a genuine misunderstanding here, rather than deliberate vote-stacking. For the record, I voted merge. Carcharoth 17:29, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also note that a least one person on the other side of the debate has only solicited votes from those who they think will agree with them, such as User:Hipocrite submitting an RFC against two of us in the "supermajority" and only contacting those in the opposition minority for comments: [100], [101], [102] (in addition to contacting the two of us who were the subjects of the RFC). So, is there a specific rule against this type of behavior ? If not, then it shouldn't be brought up as an issue here. StuRat 23:03, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's worth noting that I've explicitly advised StuRat in the past that attempting to stack discussions isn't a good way to handle disagreements: [103], [104]. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:36, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And probably worth noting he's ignored your comments. Honestly, everything on the ref desk these days is being decided by a small group of editors who harass anyone with a different opinion. I've half a mind to make a nomination to delete the whole project, it has become quite disruptive to Wikipedia. pschemp | talk 18:55, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'd support that. Seems like it's outside the scope of Wikipedia and if the users there want to continue providing the service, they should do so via a separate project. | Mr. Darcy talk 21:40, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You have a good suggestion there, maybe the Ref Desk has somewhat outgrown Wikipedia. What steps should be taken to make this happen ? StuRat 22:21, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nonsense. The RD has not become disruptive, those who do not particpate there and want to make it over into the way they think it should be are the ones who have become disruptive. User:Zoe|(talk) 22:28, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your support, Zoe. Still, I hate to see such unnecessary conflict, no matter what the cause is, and, if moving the Ref Desk outside of Wikipedia into a separate project would accomplish that, I would be willing to do any work necessary to accomplish that goal. StuRat 22:49, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Zoe, that is correct. People have been "sent in" to "fix" the reference desk, one of whom is a sockpuppet. Although admittedly the sockpuppet has not been disruptive, the others have been, and it's disturbing. -THB 01:01, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've attempted to count every vote during stroll polls to determine whether a supermajority exists. I now understand that, while a supermajority is often used as an indicator of consensus in many area, like determining who should be an Admin, who should be on the ArbComm, and AFD, and RFC, several people object to using a supermajority to determine a consensus on the Ref Desk. I will, therefore, only refer to the results as a supermajority from this point on, and not a consensus, in an attempt to ease any conflict. StuRat 19:07, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The way to ease conflict is to listen to the people who don't agree with your little group rather than blowing them off and attacking them, not to have more polls and count votes more process wonkily. pschemp | talk 19:12, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

First, it's not a "little group", it's the majority of the people on the Ref Desk Talk Page. Second, I do listen to the opinions of everyone, and respond, and have found that the supermajority wanted something different than what I wanted in a number of cases, and I've respected those results. However, there are some who just refuse to participate in the process. It's difficult to accomplish anything if you need to build a consensus, and you have several people who refuse to participate in building that consensus. For example, they've deleted the straw poll results, launched sockpuppet attacks, deleted the contents of the page where we recorded those results, and now are trying to delete the page itself. This makes it quite difficult to proceed. Instead of continuing the revert war they started by deleting the supermajority content, I thought it wiser to move to another page, so they can do whatever they wish with the old page, and tempers can cool down a bit. Then, once we complete our proposed rules for the Ref Desk, and they complete theirs, we can once again work to merge them together. StuRat 22:33, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please note that XFD/AFD is not - most categorically not - a vote. Closing admins do not just number crunch: they look at the arguments as well. Moreschi 19:12, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And I believe I've also looked at the arguments for each side of an issue. For example, I've often had a poll where a yes or no answer was expected, but, based on responses, formulated a more nuanced "yes, but..." or "no, except..." answer to the question under consideration. Once I take a read on the consensus, I'm also quite willing to reconsider if people tell me I've read it incorrectly. There was a rule interpretation I took to be a supermajority, but was then asked to look at it again after more input came in, and I saw that there was no longer a supermajority either way, so removed that rule interpretation from the list. And, at this point, we are only building a list of proposed rule interpretations for the Ref Desk. These are not carved in stone. After the list is completed I will ask for more input on additional rule interpretations people might want us to consider, changes that should be made to the current rule interpretations, etc. StuRat 22:46, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is just part of a multi-pronged attack including a vfd [105] and an rfc [106] all of which are baseless. -THB 21:12, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that StuRat's behavior is disruptive in some ways- the vote stacking mentioned above is part of that. However I'm not the most unbiased person, having been the target of what I considered a bit of harassment by StuRat. I invite uninvolved admins to review. Friday (talk) 01:21, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not an admin and I'm not completely unbiased, either, but I'd like to point out that this discussion should probably not be focusing entirely on User:StuRat. I could be wrong, but it appears (based on perusal of the history of Wikipedia:Reference desk/guideline) that he and some other Reference Desk regulars were attempting a reasonably orderly, consensus-based construction of some useful Reference Desk policies and guidelines, when their process was somewhat rudely barged in on by User:Radiant! and User:Hipocrite summarily making some fairly sweeping changes in directions different from that of the fledgling consensus. (Examples: [107], [108].) Naturally StuRat was upset by this, and while I can't condone vote-stacking, I can certainly sympathize with his frustration. But AN/I probably isn't the place to discuss all this further; there are already ample discussions going on at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Reference desk/rules, Wikipedia:Requests for comment/StuRat, Wikipedia:Requests for comment/THB, and of course Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/guideline. —Steve Summit (talk) 05:23, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yet again, an energetic RD editor is being victimised. In my view, both Rick's MfD and Hipocrite's AfC are intended to provoke StuRat. Those of us who were there know exactly how Radiant and Hipocrite hijacked Wikipedia:Reference desk/guideline. For those who weren't there, Steve Summit has provided edit history links above. No amount of wiki-lawyering and Newspeak double-talk can disguise the fact that this is simple playground bullying. Gandalf61 10:07, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• And yet I note that on that guideline, you are part of the discussion and part of its continual improvement - so you are not in fact being bullied, you are being cooperated with. How is that a problem? Note the difference between StuRat's version and the current one. The former was a set of sentences, each individually voted on, that was not allowed to be modified by anyone without further vote. The latter is a descriptive guideline that gives a consensual view of refdesk operation. I invite you to look through our other guidelines and see which of the two methods is commonly used. (Radiant) 15:00, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The bullying of StuRat is Rick's MfD, Hipocrite's AfC, your accusations here of vote-stacking, and now, in addition, Hipocrite's completely outrageous accusations at RD Talk. This follows a repeated pattern of singling out an energetic RD editor and either hounding them until they leave or provoking them into a blockable misdemeanour. Seen this wolf pack behaviour too many times now to be fooled by the old "we're just trying to improve things" routine. Gandalf61 20:37, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• The bullying is the deletion, by the minority, of supermajority votes, deletion of those rules agreed to by supermajority, blocking of users in the supermajority, filing RFC's against members of the supermajority, filing an AFD against the page containing the supermajority rules, etc. The minority appears to be determined to get their way "by any means necessary". StuRat 15:10, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• • Have you considered that the minority may in fact have the same goals as you do, but is disagreeing with your methods? Note that "supermajority rules" are disliked on Wikipedia, we prefer consensual guidelines instead (and no, that's not just a matter of semantics). I am unaware of any deletion or blocking related to this issue so far. (Radiant) 15:45, 14 December 2006 (UTC) (I am, of course, aware of some blocks related to other issues on the refdesk, but not related to the proposed guidelines)[reply]

• OK, it's surprising you forgot, since they were your own actions, but here's a reminder...this is where you deleted votes to establish a supermajority: [109], [110], [111], here's where you deleted requests on your talk page to stop doing that: [112], [113], and here's where you deleted the supermajority rules for deletion proposal, without discussion: [114]. StuRat 17:54, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Deletions are done with the admin delete button, and are logged here. What you're talking about is removal of text from a page, not deletion. And I might add that you've made similar removals yourself, e.g. here, so you may want to take a look at WP:KETTLE. (Radiant) 08:49, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• One quibble: I can not say (and I'm not sure how you can) that the current state of Wikipedia:Reference_desk/guideline represents a "consensual view". (It certainly doesn't yet accurately reflect mine. But no, I haven't edited it yet, either.) —Steve Summit (talk) 15:19, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• • I stand corrected, it's not consensual yet (hence, the {{proposed}} tag at the top). So let's reword it until it is. (Radiant) 15:45, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Andries (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log): Andries is a self-professed critic of Sathya Sai Baba and said he will continue to revert the Robert Priddy article [115] despite specifically being warned by Admin to stop [116]. Since the time of Admin's warning, he included the link in defiance of Admin and the Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Sathya Sai Baba 4 times, 3 times today so far. See: [117][118][119][120]. I have placed 4 warnings on his talk page. SSS108 ^talk-email 17:56, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am relisting this incident because no one responded to it. This has been a persisting problem and I fail to see how it is going to be resolved if Admin does not step in to resolve it. SSS108 ^talk-email 17:56, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please take it to WP:3RR. User:Zoe|(talk) 22:11, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Zoe, he reverted the article 3 times but no more. So it does not violate 3RR. Originally reported it as Vandalism, and the Admin there moved it here. Who else is going to deal with this issue if not the Admin here? SSS108 ^talk-email 16:39, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Andries readding the link again: [121]. SSS108 ^talk-email 07:01, 16 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

SSS108 and I have a dispute about how to proceed with dispute resoluton. See Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Arbitration_enforcement#User:Andries. [122]Andries 12:20, 16 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Per the rationale described here, I suggest that Palestinian exodus be unprotected, but that the following editors involved in the revert war be prohibited from editing this article for the next month: Zero0000, Amoruso, PalestineRemembered, Isarig, Nielswik, Humus sapiens, Huldra, Shamir1, ManiF, Shrike, Ian Pitchford (and any other users I missed). This remedy should improve the editability of the article for most users, and should allow uninvolved editors to work towards an article that is more consistent with WP:NPOV than the protected version, which was arbitrarily selected from two competing versions in an edit war. John254 19:45, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

On a more general note, our current tools for dealing with ongoing edit wars (where each editor is well-meaning, but the sum of their efforts negative) are rather too granular (blocks, protection, or nothing). A one-article "daisycutter ban", where every editor who had edited a contended article in the last n months would be prohibited from editing it for the next n months, might be a way to break the logjam and let some fresh brains tackle the problem. But I'm not aware of community consensus for anything like either what you describe or my more general version, and really WP:VP/P is a more plural venue for obtaining said. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:06, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. Therefore, even if there is no consensus for a general policy authorizing the use of this remedy in most cases, we can still unprotect Palestinian exodus, but prohibit the users involved in the revert war from editing the article, if there is a consensus for this remedy on this particular article, as shown in the discussion here. John254 21:34, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm all for creativity and flexibility in applying admin measures like that, below the arbcom level. If we as admin-community have the power to wield the strongest of all sanctions, the indef ban, then a fortiori we should have the power to hand out lighter but better focussed sanctions such as partial/temporary bans, revert restrictions, probations and the like. For a similar idea, see my proposal for an individual 1RR restriction for certain articles to be imposed in a different case, above under #User:Tajik and User:E104421. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:11, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The trouble is that there is no policy basis for banning individual editors from certain articles unless these editors are on probation. Applying bans as proposed will amount to placing all Wikipedia editors on probation. Beit Or 09:12, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Recently blocked User:DaffyDuck619 (see above) is back again as User:220.237.67.250. I have blocked the anon (logins are still possible). Is there any way to track new accounts coming from this IP? Could someone also check that I have done this block correctly, as it was my first time doing this sort of block to an anon IP. Thanks. -- Samuel Wantman 21:10, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm looking at the talk and blocks page, and it's fairly obvious to me that near every edit that's happened from that IP is from Daffy Duck. What makes you think it's a shared IP (I'm not sure someone didn't put that on the top erroneously). Patstuart^talk|edits 22:33, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I took the tag on the page at face value. If it is not a shared IP, there is still the guideline on the block page that says that anon IPs should not be bloced indefinitely. So what is supposed to happen when a indefinitely blocked user moves to anonymous edits? -- Samuel Wantman 08:36, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I took a long look at the history, and it was clear to me that every edit was from Daffy Duck. Perhaps we just put a long hard block on it, like 2 months, and if he feels sorry, he can appeal the block (though he's been a problem user for months now, and it's unlikely). That would be my take. -Patstuart^talk|edits 14:18, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was communicating to people who were affecting articles such as Srebrenica Massacre, Bosniaks, Markale Massacre, etc. Most of them were Bosniaks, although some of them were Serbs and non-Serbs. Some users have complained about user Coredesat and user JDoorjam rolling back and deleting comments that I left them, here are some of many example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Bosniak#re:_comment_on_my_talk_page and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:JDoorjam#My_User_Page By the way, user Psychonaut is either Serb or pro-Serb oriented and he defends Serb interest on Wikipedia and constantly complains about non-Serbs to administrators, which brings his fairness and good faith into questioning, just so you know. Peace Bosniak 02:01, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I admit that I have recently posted three WP:ANI reports about users who self-identify as Bosnians or Bosniaks:

• Bosniak (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive149#Block request for User:Bosniak, 14:43, 26 November 2006 (UTC))
• Bosna 101 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive150#Serial copyright violator User:Bosna 101, 23:21, 30 November 2006 (UTC))
• Ancient Land of Bosoni (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive152#Ancient Land of Bosoni, 21:52, 1 December 2006 (UTC))

These reports were made because the users in question had repeatedly violated Wikipedia policy in defiance of warnings, and not because the users were Bosnia{n|k}. Whether or not I am a Serb is irrelevant. —Psychonaut 02:30, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Uninvolved outsider here, but I'd like to point out that any POV-pushing here is definitely a 2 way road. [123] Characterization of other editors as vandals for content disputes, attempting to rally editors along ethnic lines, accusations of conspiracy, etc. are all uncivil and will simply polarize a situation even more than before. I also found this rant[124] rather disconcerting, in which he "thanks God" that another editor has stopped editing and effectively vows to have an article created despite its deletion by community consensus. --tjstrf talk 02:17, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not a Serb, or a Serbophobe, or a Bosniak, or an anti-Bosniak. I didn't even know "Bosniak" was a word until yesterday. I'm simply anti-spam. It was requested up the page that a neutral admin roll back the dozens of spam messages User:Bosniak posted; I did so. Don't spam Wikipedia. JDoorjam Talk 04:07, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bosniak left the same message on Talk:Srebrenica massacre which I deleted according to the talk page guidelines as it did not pertain to the article. I now see that it is also mentioned here, so I thought I'd better left a note. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 04:18, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Less cries plz, Bosniak;) - Ivan K 07:08, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm oriented to block Bosniak for two weeks, for his endless pattern of disruption, spam, pa and uncivility. What I especially find frustrating is that he got his last week-long block just a few weeks ago, and he doesn't seem to have as yet grasped the rules. Opinions?--Aldux 18:39, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, he seems to have stopped. If he starts again, two weeks might be a good minimum. --Coredesat 03:27, 16 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I second that. Stop The Lies 09:03, 16 December 2006 (UTC)Stop_The_Lies[reply]

There is a 147 article backlog in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion. Admin help appreciated. — ERcheck (talk) 04:12, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• I just deleted ten and made another one a redirect. If each person around handles five entries, we'll have it down to a manageable size in an hour or so. | Mr. Darcy talk 04:32, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Still 119 articles left, not to mention images. — ERcheck (talk) 05:16, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I've cleared out atll 165 images, and I see the articles are down to 38. I'm going for a lie down now. Proto::► 10:33, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have been looking through Wikipedia trying to find a policy that covers this. This userpage User:ViraltheShow appears to be nothing more than an advertisement for their service and company and links to promote it. Ordinarily, if this was an article, I would put a speedy delete on it and move along, but how to handle if it is the user account. This user has no edits to anything other than their userpage and it is pretty obvious what they are doing here, but never having dealt with this before, I didnt want to make a mistake. Any direction? Can U put a speedy delete on a userpage, or should this be addressed in a different way? Caper13 07:00, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Speedied the userpage. Someone else can decided what to do about the user in question, I am going to make a pizza dough. Viridae^Talk 07:08, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I speedied the page again after the user recreated the page. The user has been warned. Gdo01 07:45, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Speedied again and Salted. Never seen a salted userpage before. Is this a first? Viridae^Talk 07:58, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So what? If it stays on the userpage, is it a big deal? Trollderella 07:49, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Read WP:NOT. Wikiepdia is not a free webhost. That includes your userpage. Viridae^Talk 07:58, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but on the other hand, see WP:Enforcing every rule, all the time, wastes a lot of time, annoys a lot of people, and makes you look like a petty rulemonger, especially if no obvious problem is being caused. Trollderella 08:16, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How does this in any way benefit the encyclopedia? If it did, or if it was a valuable contributor I would be inclined to overlook it. But it doesnt and its not. Viridae^Talk 08:51, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Considering it was recreated 3 times, after being warned twice, and they have made no useful contributions in the larger encyclopedia, I support an indefinate block on this account. Viridae^Talk 08:02, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Seconded, we need no more spam. Doc Tropics 08:37, 14 December 2006 (UTC) PS - did you mention "pizza"?[reply]

Mmmm, pizza...Oh, sorry. Just to let you know that {{prod}} now applies to user pages. And yeah, giving a free pass to user pages of the sort not allowed in article space to the sort of unvarnished spam, self-promotion, and other MySpace-like pages is a ridiculous notion. --Calton | Talk 12:24, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed I did mention pizza - wasnt half bad either :P Gotta love home made. Viridae^Talk 21:28, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Since the user now has zero remaining contributions after deletion of problematic / spam content, I think we're wasting our time even discussing this. See ViraltheShow (talk · contribs). Guy (Help!) 12:28, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I indef blocked them. Viridae^Talk 21:32, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We have a IDF barnstar? Can I create a OBL or Hamas barnstar? Or should the IDF barnstar be deleted? What is the correct course of action? --Striver 07:04, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The IDF isn't an internationally recognized terrorist organization. --Haizum μολὼν λαβέ 07:08, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And you need not create an OBL or Hamas barnstar because you already have the following on your user page:

• An Islamic sword helping to symbolize Islam, the Religion of Peace. [125]
• An unabashed image displaying a US serviceman sitting on an Arab as a blanket statement about all Americans. [126]
• A pentagram hexagram drawn on an American national seal - an obvious "Jewish conspiracy" insinuation. [127]
• Numerous intolerant, anti-Masonite images and links. [128]
• Miscellaneous inflammatory links. notably: [129] --Haizum μολὼν λαβέ 07:20, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I must admit, your userpage is stepping rather firmly on the line between offensive and acceptable.--Vercalos 07:37, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Errr....a pentagram has 5 points, not 6. And since when has the pyramid been an American seal? Why is the picture of the serviceman a statement on all Americans? Maybe it's just a statement on those who take photos of themselves sitting on prisoners? The sword is an important symbol of shia islam (it's compared to excalibur in the description page). Anyway, your argument is ad-hominem. We're discussing the IDF barnstar (which I find totally acceptable, by the way. I'm sure there are dozens of US Army inspired barnstars out there), not Striver's userpage. yandman 08:01, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My mistake; I completely missed the "Jewish conspiracy" insinuations. Thanks for pointing that out. --Haizum μολὼν λαβέ 08:08, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Right... we are discussing the IDF barnstar, and you're really jumping to conclusions with quite a few things. For example, the purpose of the hexagram is to show the connection between the letters that spell MASON. Also, I'm sure you're aware of your sardonic use of Religion of Peace. Anyway, in regards to the IDF barnstar, I don't see it as a problem. They're a military defense organization, not a terrorist group that targets certain groups of people. -- tariqabjotu 11:34, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That being said... another name would have been better since the Israeli Defense Force doesn't really seem relevant to the barnstar itself (it's not like it's for contributing to articles related to the IDF). -- tariqabjotu 11:38, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Errr...I'm pretty sure I said the seal was American, not the symbol of the pyramid. --Haizum μολὼν λαβέ 08:10, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and my 07:08 one-liner was a devestating refutation - the rest is ad-hominem, but only in response to Can I create a OBL or Hamas barnstar? --Haizum μολὼν λαβέ 08:13, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would certainly support renaming and redisigning the barnstar so that it is less explicitly POV, but to a certain extent that it up to the members of the wikiproject. If you think that it is inflammatory the best course is to nominate it for deletion at WP:MfD rather than creating another problematic one (see WP:POINT). Eluchil404 07:50, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The barnstar has no likeness to actual IDF logos and there is no Star of David. It is arguably less POV than any barnstar containing a symbol that represents Israel/the Jewish people. What precedent would you like to set? --Haizum μολὼν λαβέ 08:04, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Based on this discussion and the attacks against Striver, the IDF barnstar is very divisive. -Lapinmies 08:25, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, but that premise doesn't make any sense. It's a total non sequitur. This discussion, and "attacks" on Striver have nothing to do with wether a barnstar is acceptable or not. --Haizum μολὼν λαβέ 08:37, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Lapinmies, I tend to disagree. The majority of the discussion is about how disruptive Striver is. The barnstar itself doesn't seem to be a problem. Doc Tropics 08:33, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

People are so passionate about that barnstar that they have to start making accusations against Striver because he brought it up. This is why I say it is divisive. -Lapinmies 09:03, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Who's passionate about it? I think it looks poorly made, but poorly made doesn't mean it's offensive. Striver should just stop calling the kettle black - and stop disrupting for that matter. He hasn't even bothered to participate in this discussion. --Haizum μολὼν λαβέ 09:06, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The IDF barnstar is a fine way to reward those who are here as soldiers of Israel (as opposed to being here to make Wikipedia into an accurate and balanced encyclopedia). --Zero^talk 08:59, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There are plenty of barnstars that are used figuratively. It's not like anti-vandal barnstars are only for people with black surveillance vans and satellite uplinks. --Haizum μολὼν λαβέ 09:03, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion of the Wikiproject page says that the IDF barnstar was created since most Israelis would recognize the distinctive shoulder bars since Israeli armed forces service is compulsory making it extremely common in Israel. I find nothing offensive about it existing. Despite what the IDF might have done, it is no worse than having US army type awards or userboxes on Wikipedia. If we remove the IDF, we'll be on a slippery slope to removing all presumably militant-themed awards and userboxes. Gdo01 09:11, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I certainly don't disagree with you on those grounds, I'm just saying that it isn't required to be as literal as Zero is maybe suggesting. --Haizum μολὼν λαβέ 09:15, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It'd be simpler and more neutral if all project awards were named for their project. This award is being given by WikiProject Israel. Just call it "Israel Barnstar". -Will Beback · † · 09:20, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Having this barnstar apply to any Israel-related contributions, and not specifically to the Israeli military, is absurd, and the barnstar below it advertised as "for Israel's defenders" similarly makes it seem that this WikiProject seeks to advance or protect particular interests, rather than write a neutral encyclopedia. (Would someone contributing to articles about American universities ever be given a "U.S. Army barnstar"? is the "Bagel of Zion" only available if you create articles full of praise?). —Centrx→talk • 09:33, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, but they might be given a very generic looking mascot barnstar for working on a university project. So I agree with you in the sense that an IDF barnstar for any contribution is absurd, but I don't think an IDF barnstar for general Israeli projects is inappropriate. --Haizum μολὼν λαβέ 09:47, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The description of the barnstar is "The IDF Barnstar is given to Wikipedians who have made extensive contributions to Israel related articles on Wikipedia." It doesn't mention anything about the military. -Will Beback · † · 09:50, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And I'm saying it doesn't have to per the aforementioned. --Haizum μολὼν λαβέ 10:36, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think that the only way someone would have a problem with the barnstar is if they didn't like the IDF... Where exactly does the barnstar actually pus POV? All I see is 'exstensive contributions'. I have nothing to do with the project, Israel, or the middle east, so I don't have any problem with the barnstar.. It'd be one thing if the barnstar was for something patently offensive, such as the KKK or the Nazi party, but it's the IDF, and the only place the IDF is found to be offensive is by those currently hostile to Israel....--Vercalos 09:51, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I totally disagree w/ people exchanging IDF barnstars as per Centrex and Zero. As for Striver's userpage, it is another issue which cannot be discussed using ad-hominem arguments. This is supposed to be a neutral encyclopaedia guys! Are you fighting here militarly Haizum to defend Israel? If it is the case than we got a serious problem here. -- Szvest ^{Wiki me up ®} 10:02, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• It's not complicated. I only brought up Striver's userpage when he asked if he could make a UBL or Hamas barnstar. To be even more clear, he wanted to make something offensive - I explained that his user page was already offensive. Just drop it already. As for me, I'm using logic. I don't actively participate in any Israeli projects, I'm not known to, and I don't intend to. So, if you want to point POV fingers, direct them at the guy that has a sword of Islam on his user page. --Haizum μολὼν λαβέ 10:26, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(to Vercalos) I know a user here who witnessed his friend being killed by the IDF. Would you mind if I created a PLO barnstar? Khoikhoi 10:03, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Let me explain to you why this is an admission of POV. The IDF embraces a moral and peaceful ideal on the official level. Accidents happen, people make mistakes, but the goal of the IDF is peace, not war. Your statement. by virtue of deductive logic, shows that you believe all deaths at the hands of the IDF are wrong/evil/bad and are never by accident or in legitimate defense of Israel. --Haizum μολὼν λαβέ 10:32, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The very fact that this image now forces us to discuss whether the IDF is "good" or "bad" shows how divisive it is. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:35, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Don't legitimize the bias - the morality of the IDF is not up for discussion. --Haizum μολὼν λαβέ 10:43, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can we all try and avoid "The Userbox Wars 2 - The Return" please? yandman 10:12, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe we should avoid creating offensive barnstars. Khoikhoi 10:17, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'd be in favour of getting rid of this. The whole old "barnstar of national merit" idea is suspect too - as Wikipedians, we are simply not supposed to act with the motive of promoting the interests of a particular nation. But this one is particularly bad, with its implied reference to "defending" the interests of one particular nation, and to military violence as a means of achieving this. The image clearly alludes to military organisation, and the filename is part of the message too. If this was technically a template and not just an image it would certainly have been speedied under T1 long ago. I'd say that images designed primarily or exclusively for quasi-userbox purposes should fall under the same criteria as userbox templates proper. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:32, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe just implement the German userbox barnstar solution for this type of barnstar? yandman 10:39, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand why it is so difficult to create a different Barnstar to award for excellent Israeli-related contributions but simply a less contoversial one. Issues aside, this will cause flames. And there is no reason for extra inflammation. --Irpen 11:34, 14 December 2006 (UTC

I feel sorry for people that have such a timid outlook on the world. Controversy does not mean there is something legitimate to controverse; in this case, we're talking about pixels on a screen. --Haizum μολὼν λαβέ 12:04, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We do encourage anyone to contribute to the encyclopaedia and we do have plenty of barnstars as rewards. The point is that Israel-related articles are not limited to the IDF. The IDF (be it bad or good) got a military connotation. There's nothing wrong at all to present Jewish/Islamic/Christian barnstars as they cover thousands of articles but the IDF? -- Szvest ^{Wiki me up ®} 11:45, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Addendum... Israel Defense ForceS are defending Israel on the ground but what are they defending here? -- Szvest ^{Wiki me up ®} 11:48, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OMG, maybe, just maybe the IDF barnstar is sometimes being used figuratively. OMG, ever consider that? I mean, it's not like editors are literally receiving little metal stars in the mail. WOOOOOOW, that just dawned on me! --Haizum μολὼν λαβέ 12:04, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Come to think of it. My ancestors slaved in the barnstar factories, and my father was killed by a falling barnstar. I'm offended by their usage. Why can't we just say "Thanks for being a great editor on this project. Three cheers!" instead of using such a sharp, and offensive object such as the barnstar? --Haizum μολὼν λαβέ 12:07, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I understand what you mean but that doesn't give objective answers to my questions Haizum. -- Szvest ^{Wiki me up ®} 12:17, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Editors that strengthen project Israel articles with reputable and verifiable content, and defend them from vandalism, rogue edits, and unsourced material are IDF barnstar worthy in my opinion. --Haizum μολὼν λαβέ 12:23, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ok! -- Szvest ^{Wiki me up ®} 12:48, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think its quite funny that you guys are taking this serious, has anyone actually looked at Strivers edit history, this is what he does, start drama. Anyway the idea that the barnstar be given for anything doesn't make sense, but me giving a barnstar for the wrong reason does not delegitimize the barnstar itself. Wouldnt the simple answer be to revise the banstar text instead of deleting since it will just be recreated with the new more acceptable text anyway? Also this whole issue over "defense" meaning defending Jewish ideals is insane considering it most likely means defending articles against vandalism, takes some bad assumption of faith to assume its for ideological reasons. --NuclearZer0 13:24, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh. You got to the right point. So it is set as a counter-vandalism award! Who are those vandals? Palestinians or wikivandals? Does this barnstar concern non-Israeli fighting against vandalism at Israel-related articles? What is the use of barnstars that are given w/ restriction? As for Striver's userpage, i personally have concerns about it as well and would argue against many things used on the userpage. I've just blocked a new user 2 days earlier for having anti-Jewish quotes (according to what he explained, they were only quotes stated by others. Ummm!) Again, what i am defending here is keeping this place clean of troubles especially between contributors working on heated articles. -- Szvest ^{Wiki me up ®} 13:50, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What does this have to do with Palestinians? --NuclearZer0 19:32, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The IDF barnstar is a stupid and ridiculously POV barnstar, and ought to go (I suggest any admins to speedy the thing right away). And, for that matter, so should all the Muslim barnstars which are distributed as often as a way of saying "thanks for pushing our Muslim POV" rather than "thanks for helping out the Muslim articles". And so should the LGBT barnstar or any other barnstar which is a subtle way of saying, "thanks for the POV pushing". And, finally, Haizum is right, Striver, your userpage is incredibly offensive. You might have a point about a bad barnstar, but this is a case of WP:POT if I ever saw one. -Patstuart^talk|edits 16:17, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes great and who gets to judge why a barnstar is given, anyone cited as not being given for the right reasons is going to look like a violation of WP:AGF. Why is the barnstar POV again? because you personally think some people are given it for pushnig a POV instead of just contributing to articles. Who cares if its a Isreali article or not, If I give a friend a star of David for a gift for doing something nice for me, does that mean something more then it just being a thank you? It is what it is, just because you can imagine grave circumstances in which its used for a more horrible reason, doesnt mean it actually is.

Patstuart, you could not be on all counts any more correct. All such awards must be deleted, IDF, Muslim, LGBT or otherwise. Who gets to decide? Hmm, who gets to decide everything else? Our standard should be, if any substantial minority of editors thinks it POV, delete. Barnstars are not sufficiently compelling to preserve in the face of controversy.Proabivouac 11:47, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

--NuclearZer0 19:32, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

... wow, Striver is even more offensive than I am. Anyway, I think that a barnstar for WikiProject Israel is a good idea. But linking it to the IDF is probably not very smart. I understand that a lot of people support Israel and the IDF as only reacting to terrorism, but I can't see any reason why the barnstar should identify with the IDF or use that kind of styling. As for the assertion that the only people who find the IDF offensive are Israel's enemies, I cannot agree. I personally feel that both sides have stepped over the line far to many times to be taken at face value anymore. --Elaragirl^Talk|Count 16:30, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps linking to IDF is overboard, perhaps the people who use it will accept the keeping fo the style just redirecting of the link. --NuclearZer0 19:32, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Durova and myself have just left a message at Stiver's talk page urging him to do some GOOD CLEANUP to his userpage. I believe this kind of stuff SHOULD stop so nobody would argue anymore. It's just too silly to hear stuff like ohh, jacko got a puppy, i want one too or he does shit on the floor, why not me?!. I hope there would be no need to follow WP:IAR. I also hope this would help wikipedia. -- Szvest ^{Wiki me up ®} 17:14, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Striver left me a very respectful reply and cleared his userpage. I'd like to add that there appears to be some merit to his complaint even though I would have expressed the thought much differently. Most national merit barnstars are rather bland. I've given one to Yannismarou for several featured articles about Greek history. Since a reference to the IDF does carry POV overtones, how about bringing that barnstar more into line with the norm? Durova^Charge! 20:55, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Overly controversial, should be edited. Nothing wrong with a barnstar for Israel or IDF articles, but it shouldn't be a military symbol for a controversial military. Consider this - we should certainly have a barnstar for Soviet Union or WWII Germany related edits, but it should not be a Soviet or German military symbol. (desperately trying to avoid Godwin's Law, but darn it, it's the most appropriate comparison). AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 17:52, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Of course we need a WikiProject Israel barnstar, but i don't understand why it needs to be related to the countries armed forces. And i am not afraid of Godwin's Law. If anyone is interested, i could fix a proposed neutral Israeli barnstar, and im sure the Israeli wikipedians would love it, or at least like it. --Striver 19:34, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, it's not. The former is perfectly fine, the latter is Nazi. And where is my IDF contributions award? (rhetorical: answer is over here). El_C 19:29, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What military is not controversial ... if you mean controversial as someone doesn't like them. --NuclearZer0 19:32, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I don't believe the 300-solider Military of Vanuatu is particularly controversial (at least not since the 1996 VMF coup attempt). El_C 19:41, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

this is perfectly fine and neutral, a nice barnstar for a real topic, no "you are in the IDF to defend WikiPedia against... <insert>" non-sense. --Striver 19:36, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Have the people receiving the barnstar been called to serve in Israel? probably not. So what exactly is your point then? --NuclearZer0 19:39, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• This discussion has gone way off point. The topic was not about the IDF Award, but if Striver could make an OBL or Hamas one. The answer, obviously, is no. Further, a quick look at Striver's edit history will show a ridiculous amount of POV edits that push an anti-Semitic, Holocaust denying agenda, particluarly here. In this case, any talk of WP:AGF or the like will just come across to me as so much WP:bullshit. There's no reason that I see to afford Striver anymore stage time than he has already received. Please close this discussion so we can go back to creating an encyclopedia. Jeffpw 19:54, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. ←Humus sapiens ^ну? 22:15, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Since we are not affiliated with the IDF, I think we should not use this name. I agree with Elaragirl and I hope we all will agree that there is nothing wrong with defending Israel from POV attacks. ←Humus sapiens ^ну? 21:05, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The main goal of the Barnstar of National Merit, when I created it, was that it was awarded for articles on nations (not a specific one), since nations usually give out medals for doing deeds for it. This was, hopefully, going to be used instead of nation awards, as what the Wikiprojects were doing. But, the Wikiprojects made their own awards, so I just noded and moved away. As for this specific Barnstar, I would really like for it not only to avoid using the IDF connection, but I would really think we should change the design. I state this because the central emblem of the award is a Wikipedia logo, under a copyright license. I do not think we can make it PD at all, so I would suggest replacing the logo with something else (maybe a puzzle piece). User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 21:24, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed the Wikipedia logo from the image due to your concerns. I believe it's good now. -- Ynhockey ^(Talk) 12:03, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I totally agree w/ Humus last comment. I also like the IDF barnstar awarded to el Jefe. So i suggest keeping this barnstar in question solely for IDF-related articles. -- Szvest - ^{Wiki me up ®} 11:04, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Other than the copyright issues I would be somewhat more worried about Image:Bagel of Zion.jpg which is aparently for "Israel's defenders to remember not to edit on empty stomach" I feel some work on pharaseing may be in order.Geni 11:23, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am fully responsible for that one (both img & joke). I don't see anything wrong with it, but YMMV. ←Humus sapiens ^ну? 11:31, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

defending a country is inherently POV.Geni 11:37, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Be careful with generalizations. Anything can be NPOV if done properly. There is nothing "inherently POV" about defending a certain WP area from from POV attacks, slander and demonization. ←Humus sapiens ^ну? 19:31, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have changed the caption to "defenders of NPOV coverage": [130]. ←Humus sapiens ^ну? 21:24, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please note they are not barnstars but 'Wikiproject Awards', there is a difference between WP:BARN and WP:WPPA. Now whether they have gone through WP:BAP is another issue, but let's try to avoid to much bureaucracy...-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  23:34, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It appears at a casual glance that Str1977 (talk • contribs • page moves • block user • block log) is on a mission to depopulate "Category:Christian mythology" (note the last 2 dozen edits in Contribs). Given that the changes are occuring rather quickly, with 20+ deletions in 20 minutes, I thought I should mention it here. Doc Tropics 08:05, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Is it being replaced by something else? Viridae^Talk 09:05, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In some cases, such as Child Jesus[131], yes. In most, no. Some of them appear to be valid recategorizations, others are rather reactionary seeming and misunderstand that the Category:Christian mythology is for Christian wikt:mythos in the technical sense, not myths in the colloquial sense of unsupported/false tales. --tjstrf talk 10:49, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Doc. I appreciate that bringing it here is a result of your concern over a series of rapid decategorizing, but I think it's misguided in this case, though certainly well meant. Str1977 is a longstanding valuable member of the community, with well over 10,000 edits to his credit, many of which are reversions of vandalism, archiving talk pages, helping other users with formatting, etc., and many of which are also completely unrelated to Christianity. So "on a mission" seems rather loaded language. It seems likely that he saw an article in that category which didn't seem to belong, removed the category, and then looked in the category to see what other articles were in it, and removed the ones that he thought misplaced. It seems that the first place to express concerns should have been at his talk page. Bringing it here suggests that admin action (rather than user discussion) is required, especially by using the {{user5}} template instead of simply the {{user}} one. I don't think we need a quick access to this, though others may disagree :-)

It's possible for good editors to disagree over the appropriateness of categories. Sometimes it's more about POV pushing than about honest disagreements between users. For example, there could be a notorious serial killer, who happened to have Jewish parents, but who was himself an atheist. Someone who shows by his pattern of making anti-semitic edits that he has an axe to grind adds the murderer's article to the category (if there is one) of famous Jews. Other editors quite rightly protest. There can also be misunderstanding of what it means to be in a category. Months ago, I took Margaret Roper out of the category of Catholic martyrs,[132] because she wasn't a martyr; her father was. Geogre reverted me, and gave a very reasonable explanation on the talk page, which I accepted.

Str1977 seems to be offline at the moment, and someone has already left a message on his talk page, about him, not to him (i.e. in the third person!), and I'm sure he'll be open to discussing it when he next logs on. In this case, I would certainly agree with some of his decategorizations (or recategorizations), and can see the reasoning behind the others. AnnH ♫ 14:20, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the responses, and the time that you all put into reviewing this issue. I'm not always clear on when to talk versus when to call for attention, and I did have concerns about the speed of the changes being made. I didn't realize that "appears at a casual glance...is on a mission" would be considered loaded language; in fact, my intent was rather the opposite. I was trying to indicate that I wasn't quite sure what was happening, and at 2:00 a.m. (my time) I simply wanted someone else to look into because it was way past my bedtime. Likewise, I didn't realize that the various {{user}} templates were associated with specific "threat levels"; I almost always use {{user5}} on this page because it makes all relevant info easily available. I actually tried to ensure that my post wasn't accusatory or inflammatory, but I did want someone more experienced to review the situation. It appears that he removed the cat from 40 articles in about an hour, which strikes me as odd, but if others are unconcerned about the issue I'll not worry about it any further. Thanks again for your time, and sorry for any inconvenience. Doc Tropics 16:25, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, no problem, you were quite right to bring it here if you thought it was a problem, and I don't think Str will get huffy. Regarding the different user templates, a lot of examples can be seen at the bottom of the {{user5}} one. There used to be a problem with one that was called "vandal". It was eventually moved to {{userlinks}}, so we don't use it with the "vandal" name anymore. It gave user, talk, contribs, block user, and block log; and a decent user who had been blocked for 3RR (yes, there is such a thing!) would have his name appearing on the noticeboard with the word "vandal" in front of it in the source code! AnnH ♫ 17:50, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Seeing this section title made me very concerned until I realised it was short for something. Please use abbreviations with care :-) --Sam Blanning^(talk) 16:30, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, my first thought was "Colbert?" – Chacor 16:31, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Ann for the heads up. Indeed I will not get huffy at Doc for bringing this up here (in contrast to Wetman's reaction filled with his usual condescension and insults.)

I am indeed not on a mission. I got drawn into the category by a posting on my talk page by Storm Rider, a Mormon editor. I had a look into the items of the category and found many inappopriate for various reasons. The "mythology" = "myth" angle was not one of them, though I see the danger in a reader misunderstanding this and also suspect that some editors did indeed post it with this in mind). Very broadly, my concerns were about the misidentification of mythology (concerns deities and supernatural beings) with legend and folklore. The category contained various Saints, even uncontroversial ones. It contained a number of items on relics (again very real objects, regardles of one's beliefs about them), it contained items that were mythology but more precisely Mormon mythology. Regardless of whether one sees Mormons as Christian or not, if an item is specific to only group alone it should not be associated with a wider (or different) group as such. Also, Biblical monsters did not seem very Christian too me. (And of course, the Islamic "al-Rakim" beat it all.) Finally, note that removing the category was not all I did - I also did some edits on problematic bits I came across (especially the Seven Sleepers). Good night, Str1977 ^{(smile back)} 02:59, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Someone made a joke edit in the article Bob Costas in part "Costas captured the gold medal in powerlifting during the 1996 Olympic" [133], when I tried to revert it a Spam protection filter stopped the revert claiming that a saturday night live database link which is being used as a reference for a previous legitimate edit on this bullet:

• Bob Costas has been impersonated several times by Darrell Hammond on Saturday Night Live