In December 2020 (Link to whole conversation), ClemRutter was indefinitely blocked by Diannaa for copyright violations per established practice, after having previously received five copyright warnings. Mike Peel objected to this at the time, calling it excessive and claimed it happened "without even a warning", despite indefinite blocks of those with several copyright warnings over a long period of time being longstanding practice. Two hours later, Mike Peel accepted Clemrutter's unblock request and unblocked them with the rationale "Unblocking based on the past trend of amicably resolving the issues, which I trust will also happen here, and than an indef block seems really excessive in this situation. Let's see what happens at CCI for the longer term issue." I saw this at the time and believed it was an WP:INVOLVED action that he should not have done, given his interactions and apparent friendship with Clemrutter. I didn't do anything at the time as I didn't want to step on Diannaa's toes and thought that things might blow over and be fine, despite most previous experiences suggesting otherwise. A Contributor copyright investigation was filed at the time and Mike Peel commented "Just to note that I have unblocked ClemRutter. The specific issue here seems to be with Thinking School, but I haven't checked past edits by the user. Thanks.", which worried me given the specific issue was not with Thinking School, and that he had not checked the user's past edits when unblocking. I opened the investigation (now at Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20210111) and me and Diannaa have found several more violations. Given the several book sources cited, many of which are offline and cannot be easily accessed for text comparison, the CCI will be very difficult to complete.

In July 2021 Clemrutter received another warning for copyright violations, this time on Integrated education. This was labeled as a final warning, and Clemrutter was again indefinitely blocked by Diannaa on 4 August 2021 for copyright violations on Northern Ireland Curriculum. The ~2000 edits since the December 2020 unblock have been added to the CCI and will also need to be reviewed for issues. Discussion is currently ongoing on how to appeal this block on their talk. Had they not been unblocked, the issue could have been resolved at the time, and the current situation and block would not have happened- the unblock set ClemRutter up to be blocked again.

After the block, I questioned Mike Peel on his talk with slightly altered version of what I wrote above. The resulting discussion can be seen here; I encourage any reading this to go and read it all. I was concerned with the involved unblock given his board candidacy, and I found his responses to me and later Diannaa and Ponyo to be very lacking, and repeatedly demonstrated a lack of understanding. Mike Peel repeatedly claimed that Diannaa should have not done the indef herself and she should have taken it to ANI or Arbcom- "My point is that Clem *shouldn't* be a special case - indef blocking is a big thing that should get ANI or arbcom support, unless it's clearly WP:SNOW and/or an intractable user problem.", which I thought was a problematic and incorrect interpretation of the blocking/reporting policy. Ponyo also noted issues as well, saying "Reading through this thread gives me the strong impression that you unblocked Clem because Diannaa didn't handle the blocking as you personally would have, not because there was anything procedurally incorrect with her block according to policy. There are many statements that you've made above that also lead me to believe that you are out of touch with how and when many active administrators on this project choose to use an indefinite block." Mike Peel responded to this with "Look at it another way: I believe my unblock following the unblock request was per policy. We're talking about the general issue in more detail in this discussion, and I'll happily admit that I'm expressing my opinions here rather than quoting policy. Thanks", and after a response from Diannaa, there have been no updates to the discussion for a week, even though there are still unaddressed concerns. I have pondered on whether or not I should bring this here, since I'm unsure what actions to take or if any action is needed, but I think this is something the community should know about given the current board elections and to have more eyes on the CCI and ClemRutter's situation. And as a reminder for other admins, please be careful when unblocking users for copyright violations. Moneytrees🏝️^{Talk/CCI guide} 18:51, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I stand by my actions and my comments (but please read them in full and in context, which doesn't seem to be the case with the quotes here.). I'm interested to see what other admins think to this situation, and my actions. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:57, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

From a review of the (in full) talk page discussions linked above, I'd say Diannaa is essentially completely correct, and Mike is mostly wrong. Diannaa's first indef block was fine. Mike's unblock was technically within policy, but outside accepted practice (unilaterally, against the desire of the blocking admin, based on an incorrect assumption of a lack of warnings). Diannaa's second indef block is fine. Mike does not seem to have a good understanding of how blocking works, and shouldn't be telling other people what is required for blocking/unblocking until he re-educates himself. In particular, he is wrong that an admin should go to ANI or ArbCom before indef blocking someone. He is also wrong that Diannaa should have tried shorter blocks first. He is also wrong that Diannaa should have stepped aside and have some other admin take over. He is also wrong that CR was blocked without warnings. I will say that bringing up Mike's WMF board candidacy is probably a red herring. Finally, if Mike thinks Moneytrees' summary is inaccurate ("but please read them in full and in context, which doesn't seem to be the case with the quotes here"), he should say where. If it actually is in context, then claiming without evidence that it is inaccurate is unethical. As for what to do about it, I don't know, it depends on whether they take feedback here at AN onboard. --Floquenbeam (talk) 19:51, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Floquenbeam: Thanks for the review. I'm listening. Some points in response: with ANI or ArbCom, my point with that comment was that admins shouldn't feel like they are going at it alone - if they're coming across problems like this, then it's worth getting other admins to have a look as well, both with the specific issue (to get more opinions on the case), and also generally (to get more admins involved in copyvio patrolling). Note the use of the word 'should', not 'must' - but on hindsight, using 'could' would have been better. With the quotes above, it was specifically with the last quote, where "... was per policy" and "... rather than quoting policy" both appear but were about separate things (first about the unblock; second about the extended comments), and I think quoting them together confuses the issue. thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 06:17, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this was a terrible unblock. Not only was it based on an incorrect understanding (that CR had not been sufficiently warned), but MP clearly misunderstood the reasons for the block (it wasn't about the Thinking School article) and even admitted that he "hadn't checked the user's other edits". Simply, like BLP issues, we don't mess about with copyright blocks after a user has been repeatedly warned, regardless of how prolific a contributor they are - they should be indefinite. I doubt if there's anything we can do about the original unblock eight months later, but what is very clear is that MP should certainly not be taking further administrative action regarding Clem Rutter, and probably needs to read up more clearly on the more complex areas (i.e. not simple vandalism etc.) of blocking and unblocking before taking any more actions. Black Kite (talk) 20:11, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Moneytrees and Black Kite: You keep saying 'it wasn't about the Thinking School article', but Diannaa specifically said the block was caused by that article. There's a wider issue, sure, but the first block was clearly linked to that article. I've already said that I don't plan to unblock Clem again as things stand, and have already been doing more background reading. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 06:17, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Why doesn't it surprise me that this editor has been an administrator for 14 years? Isn't it time we took a bit more seriously suggestions of term limits for admins? Phil Bridger (talk) 20:15, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We have plenty of veteran admins who use their tools regularly and are very familiar with how to use them. The problem mostly comes with veteran admins who don't use the tools very often (Mike, for example, has used block/unblock precisely four times in the last ten years). We would be better off with an activity limit, rather than a term limit, but this has been rejected in the past as it's too easy to game. Black Kite (talk) 20:28, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with BK. Mike Peel has been very active, very productive, and very useful. This is not a case of legacy admins clinging to the bit. It's not about lack of activity overall, and not a case of someone being an admin too long. It's not even a matter of someone not using block/unblock much. It's a case of someone not using the block/unblock button much, and then using it in a situation where they didn't research the situation, and then lecturing an admin who is familiar with blocking/unblocking. It's not important that an admin be active in all areas, but it is important that an admin know what they don't know. --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:37, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Phil Bridger, Black Kite, and Floquenbeam: Just to point out that I regularly use the admin tools for things that aren't logged (e.g., I have a bot that creates Wikidata items for articles, and it's useful to go back and look at deleted articles to see what happened to help debug the bot), for editing protected pages (particularly in the template domain), and for deletion (although not as much as I would have liked, since I've mostly been working in other areas and have limited time/energy). I'm not too active with blocking/unblocking, I'm familiar with the technical tools but - clearly - not all aspects of the social side of it. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 06:26, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have not looked at the blocks/unblocks, and do not have time to do it right now, but if we managed to solve a similar problem with Elisa.rolle, may be we can solve the problem here without indefinite blocks? The user has 40+K edits, which are hopefully not all represent copyright violations.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:53, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You can see by his talk page that ClemRutter cannot yet be unblocked even as of today, because as far as I can tell from his remarks there, he still doesn't understand why he was blocked or what he did wrong, and has an inadequate understanding of how copyright law applies to Wikipedia editing.— Diannaa (talk) 21:52, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Since that editor was indefinitely blocked for an extended period of time, it may not be a good example of how to deal with the situation without an indefinite block. isaacl (talk) 21:54, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think what Ymblanter is referring to is User:Valereee/ER, the mentoring program headed by several experienced users that helped get Elisa unblocked. Moneytrees🏝️^{Talk/CCI guide} 22:12, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, it could provide a path to end an indefinite block. Since there is already an indefinite block in place, though, the connotation of solving the problem without indefinite blocks is to lift it summarily, and it's a bit tricky to draw that conclusion from the example, which also had a failed appeal. I agree that it's always good to see editors willing to participate in learning initiatives, from both the teaching and learning sides. isaacl (talk) 22:43, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• I've been aware of ClemRutter's latest block, and deeply saddened by it. I hadn't been aware of the earlier block, but reading through it, I can't fault either of the blocks, and I don't understand the December unblock. FWIW, I was lucky enough to 'meet' Clem last year, at an on-line London meetup on Zoom, and I don't for a second doubt his good faith, or his commitment to our project. He taught me a few things, and I was inspired by his passion. I can understand why MP might want to see CR unblocked (I do too), but that has to come on the back of some serious undertakings from CR to take the copyright policy seriously, and to take on board the feedback he's been given in the last few months. Girth Summit _(blether) 22:02, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, ClemRutter is clearly in good faith and does not strike me as someone who has intentionally done wrong, I would like to see them unblocked and not having issues with copyright for sure. What I would like to happen is: Mike Peel acknowledges the erroneous unblock and apologizes to Diannaa, ClemRutter is able to understand the copyright issues and gets unblocked, and the CCI gets all nice and cleaned up. Moneytrees🏝️^{Talk/CCI guide} 22:09, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • At the moment I feel able to offer a limited (but not full - see below) apology to @Diannaa: I apologise for interfering in your workflow when dealing with CCI cases by making the unblock in this case.
      That said, I am generally disappointed that the conversation that I explicitly expected to see after the unblock did not happen. This is to both sides: I was expecting Clem to be much more proactive in figuring out what the problems were, and active in fixing them. I was also expecting Diannaa to follow up with the issues on Clem's talk page or at CCI. That seems to be happening now, after the second block, which is good to see (and this is part of why I don't personally plan to unblock them again). However, I still think this should have been able to happen without one party being blocked and having to have their answers copy-pasted to other pages when necessary. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 07:17, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

      Diannaa Would there be a problem changing the block to a partial block from article space? That would allow CR to participate in discussions easily, without (I think?) any risk of his introducing more copyvios. Just a thought. Girth Summit _(blether) 10:59, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

      Copyright violations on talk pages, drafts etc are still copyright violations. Hut 8.5 12:01, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

      Oh, yes, totally - I'd like to hope though that CR would have the sense not to start putting copyvios on talk pages. At the moment people are having to copy/paste his comments into discussions, which seems unnecessary - it's not like he's a vandal who's going around abusing people on talk. Perhaps keep blocked from article/draft/file spaces, but allow engagement on talk until he's shown that he understands the concerns? Girth Summit _(blether) 12:17, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

      Given that CR has already been indeffed once for copyright violations, and carried on anyway, I don't think that being blocked is going to get the message across by itself. Hut 8.5 12:30, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

      Mentoring sounds like a good idea on paper, but so far I have not been getting through to him as to what he needs to do differently, so I may be the wrong person to do the mentoring? Or perhaps he believes he was right and I am wrong, and will suddenly see the light and unblock? See for example this post of August 20, where he misinterprets how much copying is allowed, states that the patrolling admin must get consensus on the talk page before removing violations of the copyright policy, and states that the violation that got him blocked was "so minor that it is beneath the threshold of concern". He has not yet posted an unblock request either. So there's no clear path forward at this point. I haven't formed an opinion of the usefulness of a partial unblock; so far I have copied two posts to file talk pages for two files I have nominated for deletion, that's not a big inconvenience (at this point, anyways). — Diannaa (talk) 14:40, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

      Diannaa, OK, understood, it was just a thought. I feel very warmly about Clem following our face-to-face discussion last year, he is passionate about education and is very much aligned with our mission of disseminating information. His failure to take on board what you have been telling him about copyright violations is baffling to me however, and I can entirely understand your frustration with the situation - I think you have been very professional in how you are interacting with him, given the situation. Girth Summit _(blether) 17:08, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

      Mike Peel, it doesn't seem realistic for you to expect that I would take over the task of mentoring after you unblocked after two hours without consulting me or even notifying me. I was angry and I walked away. I guess that was a mistake on my part; I didn't think it through that I would likely be the person who would end up cleaning up the resulting mess. I am still angry, too. Fact: Clem won't figure out what the problems were or be responsive to teaching until he admits there is a problem. That still hasn't happened. — Diannaa (talk) 14:51, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

      @Diannaa: You already seemed to have taken on that job (not quite mentoring, but the role of correction) by warning + blocking them. My unblock shouldn't have changed that IMO - or at least that's what I expected. A clear message saying that you were walking away from it would have been useful. Sorry that you're angry - but that also isn't helpful here. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 15:58, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

      Mike Peel, If you step into a situation and overrule somebody by doing things your way, you should be prepared to own the issue from then on. If you don't believe me, try cleaning the company fridge wherever you work and see who ends up doing it next time. MrOllie (talk) 17:00, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Honestly that unblock is a slap in the face to editors who deal with copyright issues. Nobody should be unblocking someone with a history of copyright problems without first making very sure that there aren't going to be any problems in the future. The unblock happened after a mere two hours with no attempt to discuss with the blocking admin or anyone else apart from this, which erroneously claimed the user hadn't been warned (they'd been warned five times) and criticised the block for being indefinite (which is standard for copyright blocks). Now there are another 2,000 edits which need to be checked for copyright problems, which is probably one of the most tedious tasks on Wikipedia. Hut 8.5 12:01, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Obviously a bad unblock, and reading Mike, who has used the block button five times in the last 14 years, trying to lecture Dianaa (6301 blocks) and Moneytrees (278 blocks in 18 months) on the blocking policy and CCI is embarrassing. But the elephant in the room is why Mike decided to step in and make this, as far as I can tell, the first unblock request he has ever processed. There has recently been some discussion of whether there's a 'generational' difference in how strict admins are about WP:INVOLVED, but the idea that Mike is a purely disinterested party here just isn't credible. I wouldn't have thought that we'd have to have an explicit policy saying "don't use your admin tools to protect your wiki-friends", but maybe we do. – Joe (talk) 13:53, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• One concerning part of this, if my understanding is correct, is that there is an admin whose only unblock in 14 years was, by their own admission, of someone who they met at a wikimeetup and consider a wikifriend, without first investigating all the facts and based on a misapprehension of those facts, over the opposition of the blocking admin, and without consulting the community or any other admin (for a third opinion) first. But what is even more concerning than that is that 8 months later, MP still stands by his actions and comments. Levivich 14:44, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Maybe we should normalize that, if you find out someone's blocked because you're watching their talk page, it shouldn't be you pushing the unblock button. —Cryptic 15:04, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    It would make sense to me, though it is probably impossible to enforce.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:18, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Not my only unblock, see my block log. It's rare, but I do unblock sometimes. (I actually thought I'd unblocked more than is on my unblock log here, but maybe that was on other wikis.) Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 15:55, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Mike Peel: Your first time responding to an unblock request, though? Your other two unblocks were of bots without an explicit appeal and, since you bring it up, both were re-blocked shortly afterwards. But anyway, no response to my actual point, that you were obviously intervening in an area of admin work you normally have zero interest in, because you're friendly with ClemRutter? – Joe (talk) 08:25, 27 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• In addition to the apparent bias, lack of pre-unblock research, and post unblock follow-up by Mike Peel (if you as an administrator think there needs to be follow up, don't blame others that it might not have occurred to your satisfaction, you do it). Mike Peel should understand that any "injury" runs not just to Diannaa, it runs to community, the copyright holders, and to the unblocked user, as copyright infringement has both ethical and legal dimensions. Administrators may not be able to stop a user from committing infringement elsewhere, but they can prevent a user from getting into that quagmire, here. Thus, the present limited apology to Diannaa (which even to a fellow administrator, seems decidedly weak, and goes on to blame) seems most unsatisfactory, and lacking in understanding. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:18, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • My follow-up has included following discussion on his talk page, and a few off-wiki chats. I can do more if needed, but right now it seems that would do more harm than good. In general, the time to discuss this was back in December when the unblocking was done - not 8 months later - but I guess the timing was to make a political point. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 16:18, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • You don't think the timing has anything to do with the recent re-block? You're confident that you're just a victim of political machinations here? Ugh. --Floquenbeam (talk) 16:24, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      • Not confident, it just seems odd timing. The unblock was 8 months ago, new block was 22 days ago now, the discussion on my talk page had run its course, and then this new conversation was started out of the blue yesterday. Happy if it's just a coincidence though - but since the poster specifically says "I think this is something the community should know about given the current board elections" ... Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 16:38, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
        • Wait a minute. The second block, which more or less proved that your unblock was wrong, occurred on August 4. The discussion on your talk page started a week later on August 12 and continued through August 18. This thread was started a week later on August 25. Nothing was "out of the blue". You continue to stand by your actions, taking none of your colleagues' feedback on board. There are literally zero editors who have said they agree with your actions. You may yet become the subject of an arbcom case request asking for your administrator permissions to be reviewed. This is all definitely relevant to your candidacy for WMF trustee. I advise you to do or say something to fix this immediately; it will not go away on its own, it will only escalate unless you address it to the satisfaction of the community. Levivich 16:57, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

          Levivich basically has the timeline down, I'll add that I was on vacation when the second block happened and once I got home I tried getting to it as soon as I could. I should've been more clear about my concerns; one of the outgoing community elected board members faced COI allegations from the community that they helped get a user who had been targeting someone they were in a relationship with blocked (not that I necessarily believe those allegations but it was a community concern), and another one was sanctioned by Arbcom and later created a copyright-violating mirror to the disapproval of the community. So I think it should be more widely known going forward, because this is something the community cares quite a bit about. I don't really know Mike Peel outside of this, I haven't seen anything to suggest that he is a controversial editor outside of his admin actions. Discussion had ceased after a week and no one aside from Mike Peel seemed satisfied, which was one of the main reasons I brought this here. Moneytrees🏝️^{Talk/CCI guide} 18:08, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• This is beyond absurd, admins have to do blocks as necessary and Diannaa's original block is per long standing practice. That one admin feels that it should instead be discussed at ANI or by ARBCOM indicates that Mike Peel needs to familiarize himself with our policies and practices first. And finally, an admin who unblocks unilaterally should take some ownership of the problem that follows rather than wash it away with a "had a conversation over tea and crumpets and didn't expect it to continue." —SpacemanSpiff 16:43, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• I have some wishes. I wish Mike would stop telling Diannaa how to act. What really did he think would be accomplished by this piece of (what I find to be patronizing) advice he wrote after his limited apology to her? I wish Mike would accept responsibility for failing to follow policy around unblocks in 2 of his 3 uses of the tool ever [1] [2]. I wish Mike would realize that failing to follow written policy - namely Except in cases of unambiguous error or significant change in circumstances dealing with the reason for blocking, administrators should avoid unblocking users without first attempting to contact the blocking administrator to discuss the matter. - means that he does not know how to use the tool on enwiki. Especially because I have confidence Mike does understand the nuances of "should" judging by his explanation above of what he meant by saying someone should have gone to ANI/ARBCOM. Further, not consulting with the blocking admin isn't a social convention he violated - an example of a social convention violated would be his unblocking of a bloke he liked from a wikimeetup. I wish Mike would realize that this is coming up now because the reblock happened now. Finally I wish Mike the best of luck in his board candidacy - he would bring a lot of skills and experience to the position. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:53, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Barkeep49: Thanks, that's useful. I'm happy to stop Diannaa how to act (which was meant more to explain my thinking/viewpoint - but regardless). I'm happy to accept responsibility for my unblocks and any failings with policy that they have. I'm happy to commit to not unblocking users, if that would be helpful (perhaps to only unblock in the future *after* training/getting approval from an experienced unblocker). I'm also happy to acknowledge the perceived conflict of interest, and that I should have backed off this sooner (or ideally not started with it!). I'm happy to write off the timing as coincidence/due to the reblock. I'd also appreciate any other suggestions of things I can do now to make this right. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:11, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    Thanks for this @Mike Peel. It feels like the kind of message that could allow this issue to resolve and which I hadn't seen to date. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:08, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Note I reverted this close by Ched- while this is here I would like to see if any further assistance with ClemRutter and the CCI could be offered. Moneytrees🏝️^{Talk/CCI guide} 19:44, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Moneytrees - then you should have started a thread about ClemRutter. — Ched (talk) 20:18, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    Ched, "another bad admin action" - Really? Me and Diannaa have not communicated if we were satisfied (I am still thinking on it and doing other things right now), and I really think keeping it open longer might end up helping someone. Moneytrees🏝️^{Talk/CCI guide} 20:45, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    @Ched, reopening a discussion you think was closed too early isn't an admin action. MP's depth of misunderstanding of the seriousness of copyright issues, of what constitutes admin involvement, and of the value of indefinite blocks per the discussion on their talk is concernng, and while like Barkeep49 I think their final post yesterday is at least acknowledging that, it took forever to get us there. I don't think the closing was bad, but if the editors most affected by this issue think there's still productive discussion to be had, I think we should listen to them. @Moneytrees, what assistance w/ClemRutter and the CCI are you hoping someone might offer, and what kind of continuing discussion are you thinking might be helpful here? —valereee (talk) 14:16, 27 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

ClemRutter has asked that the following statement be copied here from his talk page:

Copied here by Diannaa.— Diannaa (talk) 20:39, 27 August 2021 (UTC) I have posted a response to Clem's message at his talk page, as it contains some incorrect information and misinterpretations of Wikipedia policy.— Diannaa (talk) 21:11, 27 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• It's rather sad that we have an indefblocked user (whether or not he's figured it out and can mend his ways is a matter for another day) and I'm much more concerned about the one doing the unblock. The replies above amounts to a pretty clear non-apology, and that's highly concerning to someone working in copyright. We do the best we can with (very) limited manpower and if people are just going to unblock because they feel bad and like someone then we won't get anywhere. Someone like that running for Trustee is, frankly, scary. Wizardman 20:58, 27 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Soggy that you're angry, Wizardman, but that also isn't helpful here! What, I said soggy, that's my appalling'y. AN: I SED STUP FLAMMING! if u do den ur a fuken prep! fangz 2 raven 4 da help n stuf. u rok! n ur nut a prep. El_C 05:18, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• I don't understand why some people seem to think that it's difficult not to violate copyright when editing the text of articles. OK, understanding the finer points of the law in various jurisdictions may take some effort, but the basic principle is so simple that nearly every schoolchild in the world knows it. You simply don't copy things, but write them in your own words. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:59, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• This was a very ill-considered and disruptive unblock by Mike Peel, who I advise considering whether to resign the tools if this is the manner he intends to use them in. I'm very thankful to Diannaa, MER-C, Moneytrees and the other admins active in the copyright area. We may need to authorize a somewhat less discriminate use of the block and deletion tools to get rid of the CCI backlog. Sandstein 20:40, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Bad unblock by Mike Peel, who has conspicuously not offered to help clear the 2000 edits added to the CCI backlog, or otherwise help reduce it a similar amount. It seems their problem is that an ideological procedure is more important than preventing actual harm caused (which is the only point of a block, not to be "fair"). Unfortunately, their understanding of procedure is also incorrect, as they think the blocking admin's feedback can be unilaterally bypassed (by (a) not consulting them and (b) going against what they recommend). Due diligence involves far much more research than Mike Peel did here. Also, Sorry that you're angry - but that also isn't helpful here. What the fuck is that? Certainly not an apology for mansplaining over the people who actually do the SPI backlog you have just added dozens of hours of labour to. I thought Sandstein's recommendation of resignation above was a little over the top before reading more and finding it to be perfectly appropriate. — Bilorv (talk) 21:28, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Mike Peel, while I don't know all the ins and outs of blocking policy and conventions, an unblock request should at least be discussed with the blocking admin. There are some exceptions: blocking admin has resigned since placing the block, is inactive, on holiday or the block is clearly abusive. None of these exceptions apply here. If the blocking admin is unwilling to lift the block, it would be advisable to seek input from more admins or users who have interacted much (both positive and negative) with the blocked user. The conclusion could be to overrule the wishes of the blocking admin and grant the unblock, but going at it all alone is generally not a good idea. Even less so when there is a friendship between the blocked user and the unblocking admin. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 10:49, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• BTW, just voted for 18 out of 19 candidates — am I allowed to say that in this space? El_C 12:02, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Good news: I didn't get elected, so I'll continue to be more active around here! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:24, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We cannot sweep copyright issues under the rug any longer

Nah, because peoples attention are on this right now, so I really need to say something. We had a giant wind of users helping out with CCI earlier this year, but the backlog has only increased, now there's ~164k articles at CCI. 202 cases, 164456+ articles as of the time of me writing this! That's ridiculous! There's about ~25 or so users I could call up and rally for a case, and we would still barely make a dent in the overall backlog. The backlog just gets bigger and bigger as the years go on, and the issues becomes more and more serious. We have a CCI that just turned 11 years old at Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Ardfern. As Mike says on his talk, it's so old the person it's on forgot it even existed! Earlier this year we accepted a CCI, Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Ruigeroeland, so huge it broke the CCI counter's page. It effects an entire massive topic area and the violations are innumerable; a massive community initiative will be needed to clean it up. I was writing one at Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Ruigeroeland CCI cleanup, I said back on March 6 that I could "start a cleanup over the weekend" but I have a real life and I haven't been able to get to it. This year I have been really advancing in my career and college work, I simply can't spend as much time as I used to helping out with copyright violations, especially when incidents like this happen and I have to put the time and effort into pursing and resolving them. I don't want to put my foot in the door, I don't like doing it, but I simply don't have a choice. Because if I don't call this out, it'll be the next generation of editor's problem. And that's not going to work out.

Every "copyright admin" has a real life, we can't be here 24/7. Diannaa and MER-C have done so much work in the area for years and years, and it is completely unacceptable. Diannaa has been like Atlas holding up the clouds for so long, and it is not healthy. Dianna's done 87,609 reviews at Copypatrol, and several thousand other reviews off of various requests. She's been the go to person for copyright issues for so long, it's basically a policy to ask Diannaa about your copyright issues. There's so much shit going on, how is it even fair to expect Diannaa to keep up so extensively with a user who is not getting it? But don't worry, DanCherek can take Diannaa's place as the person who carries the massive weight of vetting current edits for copyright issues- he's done 1,275 reviews in the last 30 days. That's not fucking fair for him at all! We can't let this shit continue like that! If MER-C stops editing, the workflow at CCI will face serious issues, since he's the only one with access to the script that removes not copyright-able edits from the the contributor surveys- if he just stopped editing one day, what would we do? Other editors in the area- Hut 8.5, Sphilbrick, and Wizardman, just for example, have been around for over a decade, and despite the work they've done, it just doesn't end. If Any of the mentioned users stopped editing, there would be serious issues for the entire site. That sort of system does not fucking work!

But it's "another bad admin action" if I object to a close of this discussion because I don't think everything has been resolved. Please! I spent easily 400+ hours cleaning up Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Dr. Blofeld, one of the biggest and most controversial CCIs ever, and spent months worth of going to sleep late in order to make just a bit of a dent in it. Near the end of the CCI, when it mostly came down to me, I was spending 10 or so hours a day at the CCI, cleaning up as much as I could. I don't have the time for this, no one does! As Hut says above, cleaning out this stuff is incredibly tedious and takes thought and time- I am just a man, I cannot kill the backlog myself. I have so much regret for CCIs like Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20180325, I've put so much effort into helping out elsewhere that it got neglected, and SlimVirgin, who so kindly helped me with it, died before I could even really start on a serious effort to clean it up! That's real guilt, fuck! There's one CCI I can't even name because it involves oversight-able content, also involves someone who isn't around anymore, which I promised to complete- and I haven't been able to because there's just too much shit! This isn't healthy for me, and I do 1/20th of the work Diannaa does! So no, I find it just a little hard to just immediately accept an apology to someone who works so hard, and I find it even harder to accept when my work is insulted. The WMF doesn't help out (that needs to change, we are not equipped as volunteers to handle this and labor for them over it), and not enough of the user base does.

But Ched is not Mike Peel, so I forgive you Mike, I won't speak for Diannaa but I am happy that you are willing to help clean things up. As for helping out, if you could maybe advise ClemRutter further on what needs to be done to be unblocked and help identify issues, I would appreciate it very much. If you have further questions about helping out at the CCI, please ask I'd be happy to answer.

And now it's time to start cleaning all of this up. And by this I don't just mean the ClemRutter CCI, I mean all of CCI and all of our copyright issues. I want everyone reading this to help out at CCI or copypatrol right now, in some capacity, it does not matter. And I mean everyone, I don't care if you think you don't know anything about copyright, or you're not even involved in this dispute at all and are just some AN browser, read my guide at User:Moneytrees/CCI guide or ask me a question if you're confused. Every bit of help counts, because it is impossible to do this just as one or a few. The whole culture of sweeping copyright issues under the rug and letting them stagnate needs to end now, or it will hurt Wikipedia to an extreme extent. This can't be pushed away any longer, and I'm going to keep pushing this in everyone's face. It's not fucking working.

Valereee, I wanted to keep this open to say that (sorry for the delay) the ideal for this going forward is for someone to be able to help ClemRutter figure out how to reword their contributions and not be so reliant on their sources. We would need engagement and better understanding from them in that regard, and that may not happen. I think Ritchie333 has interacted with ClemRutter before any thoughts one what can be done here, Ritchie? I truly hope ClemRutter can be unblocked and understand copyright better, but I am stumped on what do and at this point I hope writing one of my (popular?) long form things like this can get some more eyes on the situation and help get a better resolution. Moneytrees🏝️^{Talk/CCI guide} 05:55, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I must say, as an admin who usually just writes and contributes to articles, that the instructions for how to help out are daunting to say the least.--Berig (talk) 06:10, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Berig, for what it’s worth, I thought so too until I had actually given it a go a couple of times and then it became much clearer. You could also try starting at Copypatrol (linked above I believe) which is effectively a RC filter for copyright issues with an in built iThenticate system to attempt to locate where content was copied from. firefly ( t · c ) 06:53, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Honest to god, for anyone looking at pitching in, CCI is not all that technically difficult, just tedious. My usual process is approximately this:

1. Open the diff and compare to the current wording in the article - is it still present?
2. If it's already gone, mark the diff as such and move on; if it remains, look to see if there's a source cited
3. If the source is accessible, visually compare the wording or use ctrl+F to find keywords (proper nouns are great for this as they won't change, and unusual words are telltale)
4. If you can't access the source but it looks suspicious based on unusual wording, either reword (if possible) or presumptively remove and note that in your edit summary
5. If there's no source but it looks sketchy anyway, run it through Earwig's Tool or try googling short phrases from the diff to see if anything comes up that predates the diff
6. If you find CV or extremely close paraphrasing at any point, remove it and note it as such in your edit summary
7. If you did all that and you're pretty confident it's not CV or really close paraphrasing, the diff is probably clear
8. Mark the diff in the CCI with your results - Y for copyvio found and removed, N for no issues.

On any given CCI, shorter diffs will be towards the end of a given page/later pages; those tend to be easier, so people newer to the process may want to start there. Even if all you do is mark stuff off that isn't CV, you will be slimming down the lists that the rest of us are dealing with, so that is still really helpful. If you encounter any issues or have questions, the CCI channel on Discord will be only delighted to help, or you can probably ask an experienced CCIer at their talk page - I for one am happy to answer questions on-wiki or on Discord. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 07:00, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I am tempted to have a go at this, but honestly, ATM, I feel that fake referencing is just as big a threat to WP. Most people here probably don't have a clue about the amount of OR that is hidden in WP articles by using references that either say the oppposite of what they are supposed to say, or don't mention the topic at all.--Berig (talk) 07:54, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Moneytrees and Premeditated Chaos: Thanks for the info! I'll have to have a look into helping with this soon. I feel I owe it to check at least as many diffs as the extra you now have to check from Clem's edits - but would look at someone else's edits to avoid perceived COI. Also, as I offered before, if there's anything that can be automated, please let me know and I can code up a bot script to help. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:27, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for offering to help, Mike Peel. The third page of the ClemRutter CCI had Mike Peel 125 articles and 456 diffs at the point of its creation. There's also an unknown number of articles/diffs on page 1 and page 2 that were post-unblock, since Clem was unblocked on December 29 and the CCI was not created until January 12. Clem performed around 103 edits to articlespace in that period.— Diannaa (talk) 18:17, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Moneytrees, Clem is a real-life friend of mine and one of the few Wikipedians I would trust to look after my children. I haven't had time to digest this thread yet, and I'm rather upset to see Clem blocked at a time when he's got bigger problems to think about right now. From an outsider's point of view, I'm curious to why Diannaa seems to be the only admin looking at this - are we that short of admins specialising in copyvios these days? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 09:33, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ritchie333, are we that short of admins specialising in copyvios these days? Yes, unfortunately. Only four admins regularly patrol copypatrol; out of those four, MER-C is only semi active and is usually preoccupied fighting spam and clerking copyright problems, Sphilbrick does not block, and Moneytrees (me) is not always around; these last few months I've been focusing on real life a lot and I was on vacation at the time the block occurred. That leaves responsibility of it to Diannaa... Moneytrees🏝️^{Talk/CCI guide} 04:44, 31 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

So because someone is a friend of yours, they must be treated differently than any other copyvio case? That stinks of corruption. The inability of the community to catch these problems when they occur before they have escalated to large CCI cases makes it all the more necessary to be firm when the cases to break - with blocks and presumptive deletions needed to protect the encyclopedia.Nigel Ish (talk) 10:09, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Mildly, I think one point Moneytrees is making is there isn't "another admin" to "place the blocks and the warnings" because hardly anyone actually works on copyright issues. Also, while I wouldn't use strong language like "corruption" I do agree with Nigel Ish that there's nothing wrong with the same uninvolved admin issuing a warning to an editor and later blocking that same editor if they ignore the warning. If you feel this is harassment you'd need some more specific evidence than that. -- Euryalus (talk) 10:41, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

More I think about it the more this needs adding: as with others in this thread Ritchie333 you really do need to substantiate or withdraw your harassment allegation. If you're serious about the allegation then no doubt you have evidence to share: if you're not serious you should correct the record. Either option is better than just leaving this here as an unsupported accusation. -- Euryalus (talk) 03:56, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ritchie333, From an actual outsider's point of view, you don't seem like an outsider. Your aspersion against Diannaa is troubling and I wish you'd retract it. El_C 10:52, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That is was a reprehensible attack, Ritchie333, being so intimately involved with the blocked user as you claim, you can't speak as an "outsider". -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:55, 28 August 2021 (UTC) (I've struck though, in part, thank you, Ritchie333, for the retraction (although you should have used strike) -- I foresaw an Arbcom case, if this was not remedied, it was such a hurtful and serious thing for you to have done. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:37, 29 August 2021 (UTC))[reply]

Looks like Diannaa is gonna need more baby chipmunksupport before the day is done if this bizarre friend of nonsense is to somehow continue. El_C 11:20, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is exactly the kind of attitude that makes it impossible to deal with serial copyright issues. People show up to wring their hands over their wikifriends getting warned or blocked for repeatedly violating copyright, but do absolutely nothing to help remove the CV or mentor the person in question. People see how copyright admins get treated and steer clear of the area - who'd want to get involved if it brings this kind of response down on their heads? I too would like to see Ritchie retract this ridiculous aspersion against Dianaa. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 14:04, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Lest anyone else think this was "hounding" (??), here are the links to the relevant CopyPatrol reports that Diannaa handled: 1 2 3 4 5. Here's how to interpret them: These five bot reports, where a bot flagged ClemRutter's edit as a potential copyright violation, make up 0.000057 percent of the reports that Diannaa has handled over the past five years. All of her actions (warnings/blocks) happened after she reviewed one of these reports; none of them resulted from what Ritchie333 is implying. Probably because she's busy going through 87,000 other reports to clean up copyright violations. Sorry, but that accusation is baseless and hurtful. I echo Moneytrees' invitation for anyone to help out with copyright cleanup, even if it's just a little bit — it may seem daunting but it definitely gets easier with experience. DanCherek (talk) 11:36, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know Clem well but judging from the passion of his friends, I'm guessing he's a great person and one who is committed to what we're trying to do here. It makes me sad that someone who is thought of so highly and who is committed to Wikipedia would end up indefinitely blocked, especially at what seems like a difficult time in their life based on what Ritchie has said. But I also wonder where his friends were in all this. Were they helping him behind the scenes after his December unblock or perhaps after the new set of warnings began in July? I don't know whether or not this happened and I hope it did, but if not it strikes me a shortcoming I see in our social fabric at times. To me one of the great virtues of having Wikifriends are having people I trust to nudge me before I wander too far off the path and who can count on me to do the same for them. But this doesn't seem to be how all friend groups operate. I see people who so evidently have so much to contribute but who wear out the community's patience for them and end up indeffed or desyopped and wonder if some earlier efforts from friends couldn't have stopped that sad outcome. As to the matter at hand, I hope Clem is receiving help now from the people who care about him. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:49, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Ritchie333, you know how much I respect you, and I'd urge you to look at this exchange and in particular this response. That is not "an acceptable paraphrase", as CR is calling it. He is trying to argue there is no alternative to using certain terms (which isn't even true, I can think of alternatives to most of the ones he calls out) and that because of that, the entire thing is okay. He's ignoring the fact the paragraph structure is identical, down to asking rhetorical questions. Clearly this was cut-pasted and a few words changed. It's very troubling, especially because he is defending it as an acceptable paraphrase, and then later in the exchange he's talking as if everything's been worked out when it clearly hadn't. —valereee (talk) 17:07, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ritchie333, I agree with the editors in this thread who characterize your comment as "stinking of corruption", "troubling aspersions" and a "reprehensible attack". It represents one of the worst problems of Wikipedia - veteran editors reflexively defending their friends even if they're clearly in the wrong. That's how we get the unblockables. As admins, we owe it to the community to do what's best for the encyclopedia, rather than for any one editor. Please draw the appropriate consequences from this feedback. Sandstein 20:47, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

+1 to DanCherek, Barkeep49, valereee and Sandstein (or should that be +4?). — Bilorv (talk) 21:28, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ritchie333, with this edit, you removed the part of your comment at issue in which you wrote "the actions of Diannaa look like hounding - another admin could have placed the block and the warnings", and replaced it with other text. As an administrator, you must know that WP:REDACT directs: "if anyone has already replied to or quoted your original comment, changing your comment may deprive any replies of their original context, and this should be avoided". To me, this looks like you seek to avoid taking responsibility for your poor conduct in this thread. Please amend your edit to re-insert the removed text, and apologize to Diannaa. Sandstein 08:34, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sandstein, I apologise to any offence caused, as none was ever intended. I do not have any more time to deal with this today, sorry. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 08:37, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• With so few editors who really understand the CCI process, other admins may not tend to take this seriously. I think if the admins and editors who are involved in this process are telling us they need help, we need to listen.

In general I feel if there aren't enough volunteers to do a job, it's either not worth doing, or it's worth paying to have done. This problem is actually one WMF does care about, and there's plenty of money. —valereee (talk) 11:24, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That's a very good point - some of the very large CCIs are too big for the small portion of the volunteer community that is active in the area to deal with in a reasonable time, or is reliant on checking off-line sources that are not necessarily easily available. Some sort of full time support with access to big public libraries and the like would be of benefit for these large cases.Nigel Ish (talk) 12:05, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The W?F cannot help directly because that would expose them to legal liability. The W?F can invest in software that isn't shit so that our workflows are faster, our bots are better and copyvio users don't create sockpuppets, and reduce or stop growth rates in certain parts of the world that have a general disrespect for copyright laws.

On our end, it is long-established policy that major contributions of copyright violators can be removed indiscriminately (or deleted through Wikipedia:Copyright problems if it's the entire article). We don't use this policy enough. Sockpuppets? Presumptive deletion. Promotion, original research, BLP issues or other content problems? Presumptive deletion. Difficult to verify offline sources? Presumptive deletion. Remove first, rewrites can wait. Five warnings? No, one is enough, then an indefinite block. No communication? Block.

We are also losing the battle against spammers, for the exact same reason. MER-C 15:52, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No books are fabulous. Not everything is online, often the best stuff isn't. Secretlondon (talk) 16:15, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

They can be great sources but are difficult to access and verify any infringement. That's the problem. It takes too much time. MER-C 17:01, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Also against POV pushers.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:16, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We desperately need more editors from many regions of the world. The solution is to better help new editors understand how importantly we take copyright issues, not to reduce or stop growth rates in certain parts of the world. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:04, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nope, we can't even do that, again thanks to the W?F. MER-C 19:16, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I've had a go and its a horribly convoluted process going through someone's entire edit history. There has to be a better way than this - picking through ancient diffs. Secretlondon (talk) 16:43, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The diffs wouldn't be that old if we were serious about copyright infringement. MER-C 17:01, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

One obvious point - why are you going through things on commons? That's up to commons, which has its own processes. Secretlondon (talk) 17:06, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

because commons cares about copyright more than here. The images need to be cleaned up too. The admins have been generally appreciative of the cci work and we take it through commons deletion processes. It's just like crosswiki spam and abuse. You follow the processes. Sennecaster (Chat) 17:50, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ritchie, my respect for you is greatly diminished. To be a copyright editor is to walk through brambles, as this thread shows. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 13:58, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In regards to reducing the CCI backlog, you guys might want to look into doing a backlog drive. This has worked well for some WikiProjects I've been involved with. You pick a month, you announce/market the backlog drive to folks (via mass message sending, noticeboard posts, watchlist message, etc.), then folks work on reducing the backlog for a month. You make sure there is a leaderboard so that people can see who is being most productive (the competition aspect is motivating). At the end of the drive, you give out barnstars depending on what numerical targets people hit. Sounds dumb, but it creates focus and motivation, which really boosts productivity. I've seen stubborn backlogs completely cleared via a backlog drive. Could organize it via a WikiProject such as Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Copyright Cleanup. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:51, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ritchie333, you've been asked by at least two editors to retract your slur against Diannaa, but I don't see any acknowledgement that you've even seen those requests. In case it's not obvious to you, a statement that "Clem is a real-life friend of mine and one of the few Wikipedians I would trust to look after my children" could reasonably be followed by something like "so I can't make any comment here", or perhaps "so I'll try to help him to understand the problems with his edits", but not by any kind of innuendo against the admin who's been trying to make sure that Rutter understands and follows one of our most important policies. Please strike that unacceptable remark. In case others are not aware: Diannaa is not the only admin who works on copyright (my thanks to the others, you know who you are), but she carries a massive load with exemplary fairness and reasonableness; she deserves our thanks, not a stab in the back.

On the wider issue: this is the second time in a few weeks that a legacy admin (thanks to them for long service!) has come out of the woodwork to unblock without consultation with the blocking admin. Would it be worth a reminder in the next admin newsletter that this is not current practice? And perhaps also that it is not acceptable to unblock any user that you know personally? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:11, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Justlettersandnumbers, Good idea. Please, something in the newsletter (no idea how that is done); it's not a panacea, but it would be something worthwhile to come out of this. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:30, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have long thought that Diannaa and Moneytrees are two of the three biggest saints on this website, and I have no idea how they do it. (And I extend this to anyone else who's a regular at CCI but who I may not have bumped into as much.) CCI is the worst embarrassment of the project, but it is not because of the people who work there, but the people who don't. This essay by Moneytrees is actually quite tame IMO when you actually consider the burden that has been placed on them and how much of an amazing job they have been doing, with no complaints, kind words and a smile at least 99% of the time.

If you're looking for a way forwards, Moneytrees, I'm not sure whether you've seen the recent AFC Backlog Drive but in June AFC was our third-worst embarrassment of the project and the backlog was completely wiped, even though the backlog was (being brutally honest) planned ad hoc and the programming behind it was not present until late in the drive. Now, I think that's way, way more than you could get from a CCI Backlog, but it proves that backlogs can succeed beyond your highest expectations, and it's worth having a go even if you don't have a perfect plan right from the start. (And upon edit conflicting I notice Novem Linguae has brazenly beaten me to the suggestion of a backlog.) — Bilorv (talk) 21:28, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I've tried CCI in the past, and I've got one point that I get hung up on that I would really like some advice on. The CCI is Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20190125, and primarily involves an editor that copy and pasted material from unreliable sources in what is one of my prime areas of interest (Trans-Mississippi Theater of the American Civil War). Most articles also have copy-and-paste of PD sources in there. It doesn't feel right butchering the articles to leave only the PD material with gaps, but the sources used are so bad that it also doesn't feel write "using" them to rewrite the content. For the most part, I don't have access to replacement sources. I would be doing more there, but I just can't get past how to handle this point without leaving either half-articles or using horrible sourcing. Hog Farm _Talk 04:05, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It really sucks, but sometimes, if you're unwilling or unable to rewrite, you just have to gut an article of the CV and leave the wreckage. And I mean that goes for lots of areas, not just CCI - if you encountered these terrible sources in a MilHist article outside of a CCI, would you feel guilty stripping the content out, knowing that it was likely to have errors or inaccuracies? If better sources exist but are not accessible to you, maybe someone at RSX or MilHist could help you get them. If that's not plausible, you could leave talk page notes, or invisible comments in the parts you removed so later editors can see what you did and why. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 05:59, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The core of the problem is people adding material to articles without sources. Unsourced material is worse than none at all. It's worse than vandalism, because vandalism can be quickly removed. If the source is provided, then the facts can be verified. If it's not, we cannot be sure. (It also opens us up to citogenesis.) I am often relieved to find that material has been copypasted from a PD site. (This happened to me yesterday.) Otherwise, even when I know what it says to be true, I am forced to rewrite because I cannot be certain it is not a copvio. We need admins to take unsourced additions as seriously as vandalism. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 06:23, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Unsourced statements are Wikipedia's #1 problem.^{[citation needed]} Levivich 06:56, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I would say that more than half of CV diffs that I encounter actually cite the source. That's not to say that unsourced edits are not problematic, but I would strongly disagree that unsourced edits are the core of the copyright violation problem. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 07:31, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Premeditated Chaos, In the case of the Edelmand CCI I mentioned below, the copyvios cited an offline source, that I only spotted because I have the same book, so the plagiarism sat in Wikipedia for years and years. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 07:33, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Right, but they did cite a source. In my experience a lot of people doing serial CV are acting in good faith and literally have no idea that copy-pasting (or, yes, laboriously retyping from a book) content into Wikipedia is wrong. They cite their sources because they think that makes the direct copying okay. On the one hand it does make it easier to check for violations because you have something to check against, but you're right that when it's a book source it is harder because books are often less accessible. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 18:58, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

When I remove a large block of copyvio from a draft, I'll usually replace it with {{expand section}}. That might be a good solution in some cases. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:32, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have not had a chance to look at this thread before now, as I was out working (and hence off-wiki) yesterday from about midday to 2am. Anyway, I have reworded the above comment to better express what I meant, and would suggest that people consider that I might just not have expressed myself as well as I could because I was online for about ten minutes yesterday. The main point stands - as I consider Clem a friend, I do not feel I can offer any meaningful views on sanctions for them as I don't have a neutral view on the subject.

Of the more general issue, copyvios are one of the most misunderstood parts of the project. Most of the time, from my experience at working at AfC, is that close paraphrasing and plagiarism is added by new or inexperienced users, which is why I ended up writing User:Ritchie333/Plain and simple guide to copyvios after people got annoyed that I refused to restore articles or drafts that I'd deleted as WP:G12. Admins working in copyvios are as rare as hen's teeth and we need more Diannaas and Moneytrees working on the project. Personally, I've chipped away at the odd CCI case such as Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Edelmand but I just find it tedious - I can cope with reviewing ten articles, but five hundred is just too much. If we got more people helping out, then we might be able to make a dent in the backlog. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 07:30, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ritchie333, I believe what you meant to do was strike what you wrote rather than delete it after others have replied to it and commented on it. 28bytes (talk) 08:06, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No doubt. This is too strange. An inappropriate removal rather than a strikethrough (what?) coupled with a the main point stands follow up (again, what?). Ritchie333, I dislike a pile on and forced apologies almost in equal measures, but your initial accusation and your latest follow up suck, well, almost in equal measures. You fire-and-forget some accusatory nonsense, hurtful nonsense, without basis, and now this? What is happening? El_C 08:58, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with El_C. Ritchie333 you've been an admin for six years, you must be aware of the need to substantiate allegations of harassment and to follow WP:TPG. Not the end of the world but you dropped the ball on both of these in this thread. Gratuitous and unintentionally patronising advice: do better next time. And with that, enough said. -- Euryalus (talk) 10:25, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I got more too say. Sandstein, I apologise to any offence caused, as none was ever intended — I'm sure that makes any offense feel better. Sheesh. El_C 10:29, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• It's hard but can brook no excuse. Let's not forget to stress why copyright issues strike at the heart of what this project is; we, Wikipedia, warrant our encyclopedia is freely licensed to copy (apart from NFCC) -- that's a trust we each take on, and cannot shirk. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:37, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Every editor has a responsibility to uphold the integrity of this project with every edit they submit. We preach to stop POV and RS and other issues, we have noticeboards for edit warring and neutrality issues. The copyright cleanup project is dead, the Copyright Problems is a "noticeboard" but is more of a dumping ground and a non intuitive design. CCI isn't a noticeboard. WP:MCQ is the closest we have to a true noticeboard on copyright, and this covers filespace only. There are hundreds of images needing a copyright confirmation alone, with most of them unsourced! There isn't enough people or time anywhere.

  We don't have time to slow down, to unblock people without proof of change, to open more CCIs on 30k+ edits. We're spread too thin. I've spent almost from the day I joined working on Copyright, with now more time spent on Ardfern than anything. I know that case better than I know GNG at this point! Fuck, this is so bad that I was forced to open a case on an entire wikiproject. I can't even begin to work on it, there's older cases with more blatant violations. The lack of care of both copyright and how serious this issue permeates every sphere and every editor. Even with new people, none of us "vets" can take a break. There's so much more to be done. This is barely the start.

  I'm cynical this AN will change anything; this work is hard and very few actually stick around and grind the case out to the end. After people do a few, will they continue to stay and continually help out? We relied on MoonRiddenGirl in the early days, now it's Diannaa we rely on. This isn't sustainable. We need admins, but every time someone runs for copyright it's harrowing and every other admin is too hesitant. We can't afford to be more careful, work slower, we can't be afraid to remove content wholesale. Moreso, we are expected to be accurate. We cannot make mistakes, it's drilled into our heads from the start. Moneytrees is right. This cannot be swept under the rug any longer. We are beholden to uphold the integrity of the encyclopedia as editors, and for too long we've let that slip with CCI. Sennecaster (Chat) 14:51, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Not a subject I'd typically comment on, having far less experience with it than many others here, but a thought on the subject of everything that comes before a CCI and the framing of CCI:
  The thing which IMO should most contribute to a decision to indef/ban a user for copyright reasons isn't having made the mistakes (even over a long period of time, even prolifically), but refusing to put in the effort to learn where they went wrong and then clean it up themselves. I don't know why we would allow someone to continue being an editor in good standing if they create a massive backlog for other people to go through and don't spend as much of their volunteer time as possible cleaning it up.
  And a big reason, as I see it, why someone might not want to do this is if they feel humiliated by the process or otherwise feel like it's something being done to them rather than with them. The way it's set up, as a formal "investigation" that often involves posts about the person on noticeboards, seems like a law enforcement/suspect relationship whereby someone is expected to sit back and watch the gears of justice (even if they're invited to help, by that time they may feel sufficiently stigmatized to have difficulty doing so). Of course, by the time a CCI is filed, presumably people have received several warnings with clear examples and instructions and have either failed to clean up or continued to add violations, but it seems worth reiterating that the top priority should be retaining the copyright violators to get them to clean up their own stuff, thus avoiding the giant backlog to begin with (to whatever extent possible). Maybe there's a special mentorship sort of program that would be useful to precede any formal investigation and keep the user involved without attaching their name to an investigation. That would require volunteer time, too, but perhaps less? For those active in the area, is this too optimistic? Are we only really talking about backlogs caused by the worst offenders who contributed maliciously and/or have no interest in being an editor in good standing? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:28, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  The CCI backlog runs the full gamut between good faith editors to those banned by the W?F. Serial copyright violators with a complete lack of communication occur far too often, where the only remedy is the banhammer. MER-C 17:05, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  This is my experience as well. Established editors especially will always pull rank, unless their name is Rodw. We are not taken seriously. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 18:22, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  I was going to suggest very much the same approach as @Rhododendrites, at least as far as Good Faith editors with a serious blind spot on copyright violations go, like Clem. So finding a way to guide and encourage them to come back and continue editing, and to recognise and address the problems they hadn’t even realised they”d created seems a win-win, if we can manage it. Sadly, like most people, I have little interest in many topics where copyvios occur, but presumably the offending AGF editor does? I would far rather check and mark their revised work than do that work for them. So finding a way to support and rehabilitate certain types of cv offenders so that they feel they can return and address the work they’ve created seems a worthwhile goal - assuming we can find a way to achieve it without shaming them into disappearing forever. Nick Moyes (talk) 07:37, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Oh, by the way, it's worse than this. I also maintain the contribution surveyor, the tool that generates the CCI listings (we had a contribution surveyor before then, but it was authored and maintained by someone who got banned by the W?F). And then there's the whole other existential fight, the one against UPE spamming. MER-C 16:15, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • @MER-C: Not to turn this ANI thread into "people with no experience in CCI make suggestions about CCI", but... have you tried taking the output of your tool and having a bot spam the talk pages of the affected articles with a notice along the lines of "Due to [link to CCI page] the following edits may have introduced copyright violations into this article: [diffs from CCI listing]. For instructions on how to investigate and repair the problem, [link to instructions]"? I just looked at a couple of the open cases in my areas of editing interest and found articles I've edited or have on my watchlist, but would never have known to look for possible old copyvio in them. Opabinia regalis (talk) 06:40, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'd support this, but be prepared for people to not like the explosion in their watchlists. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 07:05, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      • This does have the advantage of possibly reaching people who may have access to offline sources who have the articles watched. It will reduce the problem of the first thing people know about an article having possible problematic content is when the article is deleted. More communications with Wikiprojects would be good as well where they are active - again if we can engage with editors who have knowledge of the subject and have access to sources, then there is more of a chance of saving the articles.Nigel Ish (talk) 08:34, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yes, some editors could find explosions on their watchlists if it spammed all talk pages for a given CCI at once, and the potential violations were all in one or two areas of interest. Would be great if such a bot could work through multiple CCIs but each in small chunks. NebY (talk) 17:16, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    I support this proposal; it allows us to leverage the capacity of editors who already know the articles at issue and are best placed to fix existing problems. Sandstein 08:50, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  I also think this is a great idea, assuming it's practicable to automatically template the relevant articles. I see no problem if people's watchlists are hit with such notifications. If, as has been highlighted, we have a desperate backlog of unresolved and unaddressed copyvios in articles, we need to mark all these articles for editor attention. Simples. Nick Moyes (talk) 20:16, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is one of the symptoms of having insufficient administrators. This problem continues to get worse. The solution isn't finding more people to process the CCI investigations. The solution has to involve preventing them from happening in the first place. The project is failing. It's never going to fail with a bang, but with a whimper. Each day forward, it whimpers a bit more. Like lobsters in the slowing boiling pot, nobody really notices. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:54, 31 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Bull. The project, Wikipedia, is not failing. Main problems I pick up on is that "Wikimedia" editors are spread too thin among too many projects and would be nice if many of them focused on Wikipedia again (always remember, Wikimedia was set up to aid and uphold Wikipedia, if there are signs of thinning-herd failure look at project distribution), some very good editors have been blocked or banned (a "day of forgiveness" would be nice for long-time editors and controversial blocks, Jimbo can do that with a wave of his arm onto a keyboard), and not enough emphasis on getting more professional writers and researchers to come on board (via media interviews, talk show appearances, talks to professional groups at their conventions etc.). Just some quick ideas. Randy Kryn (talk) 21:09, 31 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The long term trend of administrator decline (now well over 10 years) has seen many attempts at reversal. Nothing has worked. A year ago this day, we had 517 active admins. Now we have 469, a 9.3% drop in the active admin corps. This is unsustainable. --Hammersoft (talk) 21:25, 31 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Which of course must be reversed. Maybe a "Class of September '21" with nomination of 21 new admins (many long term editors who've expressed interest, and re-nom many who failed before at admin admittance). Jimbo will save us (of course) if he uses some of those magic-wand powers that he has - maybe we can come up with a list of ten suggestions that he can act on as long as he's still active and has some good level-10 powers. Randy Kryn (talk) 21:49, 31 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This idea will go about as well as introducing a handful of sodium into a fish tank. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 06:17, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I absolutely oppose this. This mindset, the "day of mercy" as you call it, is why we are in this situation. This is yet more sweeping under the rug of our problems, especially incivility and copyright violations. Blocks such as Clemrutter's don't come out of nowhere. Neither do community bans, which I think we should consider for Clemrutter. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 06:17, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That really seems unnecessary. This was a productive and committed editor who has certainly had a serious blindspot regarding close paraphrasing and copyright, and that is unacceptable. But if we can get that addressed -and if they'd also be willing to help resolve it, I see no reason to community ban them in the way you suggest. Nick Moyes (talk) 20:32, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Actually we can sweep copyright problems under the rug - that's what people like Google/Youtube and Facebook do by insisting that they will only look at such problems if you provide strong evidence that you are the copyright holder. The question is more whether we should sweep them under the rug. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:47, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  This is incorrect. My Facebook account was disabled after somebody sent a false copyright claim from three different junk e-mail addresses claiming I infringed on their property. Since I was posting my own photographs (currently available on Commons and uploaded by me) they obviously could not provide a strong evidence the photographs is theirs. This was in 2018, and I was not able to get the account unbanned.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:12, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Pardon my personal commentary here, but that's just scummy that Facebook couldn't do anything for you. What a joke that our copyright system has become. WaltCip-(talk) 14:33, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  I sent several complaints (counternotices) according to their policies, the complaints were all answered (presumably by robots). All the answers were identical, that they do not see any reasons to think that I own rights to the material I posted (which, again, were my own photographs), and that I should check with the complainant. Given that the complainant also sent me threats by e-mail (so that I had to report them to the police) and perfectly knew that I own the copyright, I obviously did not follow up with them. May be they meant I should go to the court, but in my country this is not possible.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:41, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal to facilitate speedy deletion of unprocessed CCI entries

The above discussion shows that the amount of material at WP:CCI exceeds our ability, as a volunteer community, to process it in a timely manner. I therefore propose adding something like the following as a new speedy deletion criterium:

G15. Unprocessed possible copyright violations

This applies to pages that meet the following criteria:

• they have been listed as possible copyright violations at Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations for at least a year, and
• they have not been marked as processed by an editor to indicate that any copyright violations have been removed.

If feasible, it is preferable to remedy the possible copyright violation by removing the content that was added in possible violation of copyright, but administrators are not required to attempt to do so. Pages deleted according to this provision will be restored to draft space on the request of any editor who credibly represents to Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion that they will promptly check for and remove any copyright violations, after which the pages may be restored to their original location.

Any suggestions or comments? If people like this, we could make a formal RfC proposal out of it. Sandstein 11:36, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This should probably be crossreferenced to WT:CSD. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:56, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Many things listed at CCI are not wholesale violations, they are articles where at some point large pieces of copyrighted text were added. I do not think deleting them is such a good idea, as opposed to deletion of articles with the foundational copyvio and hardly anything else.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:01, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ymblanter, for the latter case we already have WP:G12. But if nobody is willing to do the CCI work and untangle the copyvio from the good content then in my view we are required to delete the whole article, unless we want to violate our foundational commitment to free content and be complicit in ongoing copyright violations. Sandstein 12:19, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but I would say if we go for this solution it must be a revert to the pre-copyvio case (possibly followed by a revision-deletion), not the deletion. Imagine I die tomorrow and someone adds copyvio to Krasnoborsky District, I am not around to remove it and nobody else cares - should the article be deleted then?--Ymblanter (talk) 12:33, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. Perhaps it's better to restrict wholesale deletion to instances where the suspected edits include the page creation. And to use reversion+revdel if not. I note that WP:CCI does say If insufficient volunteers are available to manage clean-up, presumptive wholesale removal is allowed. but apparently that's not enough. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 12:44, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We already have this process - I'd push the deletions through Wikipedia:Copyright problems. These listings are not onerous to process - check history of each article in a batch to see if the copyvio editor is the main contributor and the page cannot be reverted (if it can reasonably be reverted, it can be done so on the spot), then Twinkle batch delete. It takes about five minutes per 20 articles. I deleted over 500 of Billy Hathorn's articles via this method last year. MER-C 14:17, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think we need something like this, but that the specifics should originate from discussion among those who work most in CCI/copyright and therefore know what will most help them. (Not a comment on Sandstein as I've no idea how much copyright experience they have.) — Bilorv (talk) 22:44, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Don't think this would be particularly helpful. Most CCI entries aren't pages which were created by the subject but pages which they edited, so if necessary content added by that person can be removed. Presumptively deleting every page edited by a CCI subject would be extremely damaging as there are about 164,000 of them and the vast majority are clean. Policy does already allow for the presumptive removal of content added by someone with a history of copyright problems. Hut 8.5 12:28, 31 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah. Presumptive deletion would make only ~5% of the backlog go away faster. MER-C 17:23, 31 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. If it can be resolved by indiscriminate reversion, then do that and revdel the intermediate diffs. Otherwise, G12 applies. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:29, 31 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose: This is what WP:CP is for. What we require is more admins to delete articles and revisions, and not-admins to write replacements. –♠Vami_IV†♠ 06:00, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - seems to be overkill. WP:CP functions for presumptive deletion if needed. I know from my experience that the CCI I've worked on there's a lot of ones that are actually copied from PD sources or just aren't copyvios or are only an easily-removable or rewritable single sentence or two of violation . This seems like too blunt a weapon to handle the situation. Hog Farm _Talk 06:07, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose That's what wp:CP is for, like Vami said. With this proposed speedy deletion a lot of good articles could get deleted because of easily fixed problems. Signed,The4lines |||| ^{(Talk) (Contributions)} 00:09, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I am usually deep down in the mines digging for information to improve articles with, so I may have missed this topic being discussed here. I frequently come across OR, or POV-pushing where the sources referred to either don't contain the information at all, or actually say the opposite of what they are claimed to say. I am getting more and more concerned by this and I wonder what kind of administrative sanctions that would be suitable for editors who are caught adding fake references or change referenced information in non-trivial ways.--Berig (talk) 08:04, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Fictitious references suggests that users found to be deliberately adding false citations should be warned suitably and blocked if the behaviour persists. I agree with that approach; the {{uw-error1}} series of warning templates seems to cover this. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 08:10, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks!--Berig (talk) 08:11, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I personally have very little patience with users who falsify content or lie about citations. Unlike obvious "lol penis lol" vandalism, this has the potential for lasting harm, and blocks should be made quickly. —Kusma (talk) 08:35, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. I am tempted to just give these editors indefinite blocks.--Berig (talk) 08:37, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I see no point in warning a user that intentionally corrupting articles with false references is wrong, this is something people already know is wrong. I do see the need to determine if it was intentional though. HighInBC ^{Need help? Just ask.} 09:26, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tend to agree. An immediate indef seems more appropriate. If some kind of "good reason" exists, this can then be used for an unblock. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:18, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, there was recently such an incident where I could assume good faith due to the circumstances involved.--Berig (talk) 10:17, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Berig, can you elaborate? I believe you, I just can't myself come up with a scenario under which deliberately adding information not included in the source could be good faith. I can see misinterpreting, but that wouldn't fall under 'deliberate'. —valereee (talk) 13:14, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Valereee:, in this case, it was a long time editor in good standing who tried to fix a few broken references, believing they were from a particular source that was already in the bibliography, and there were other issues about it. The result was unfortunate, but it is fixed now with the intervention of other editors. I think the editor who did it is embarrassed about it, and I am certain it will not be repeated.--Berig (talk) 13:28, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It is edits like these that make me really concerned. The last source doesn't even mention the topic.--Berig (talk) 13:42, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I see -- so certainly not deliberate falsification, just a misstep anyone could make. And, yes, it's often nationalistic POV-pushing where I see this, and it's especially difficult when the source is in another language and isn't available online in a translatable form. I've definitely had occasion where AGF seemed like it might just be credulousness. —valereee (talk) 14:06, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

WP:HOAX may be relevant and is an actual guideline. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 10:56, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I try to be fairly tough regarding warning and blocking editors who falsify references. Wikipedia is built around principles based on trust and honesty such as WP:AGF and WP:V, and people who make stuff up in the hope of tricking readers and other editors have no place here. Nick-D (talk) 11:20, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'd be OK with an immediate indef if you were certain that the person was doing it intentionally. I was trying imagine situations where it could be done inadvertently, when a warning might be more appropriate - say someone finds a bit of information in one article with a source, and ports it over to another article, citing the same source but not actually checking it. That's bad practice, but it's not intentional deception if it later turned out that the source was a dud. Similarly, if someone read something in the Daily Mail, which referenced some bit of scientific research, I could imagine them repeating whatever the DM said about it, but citing the original source without reading it - again, bad practice, but not intentional deception. But yeah - if they've set out to deceive, they have no business editing here. Girth Summit _(blether) 18:42, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's also more than possible for someone to read one source in a series of citations,^{[7][8][9][10][11][12]} verify that it contains some other bit of info they're seeking for some other article, and then accidentally Ctrl-C on the wrong cite in the series. Reyk _YO! 09:28, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This happens all the time in articles that are of interest to children. IP editors, mostly. Basically, they use citations as decorative elements to give their edits more credibility. What sometimes happens is that a reliable source says that a cartoon first aired in 2018. Our IP editor knows this is untrue because they clearly remember watching that cartoon in 2017. However, they're savvy enough to know that someone using Huggle will insta-revert them if they change the date without a citation. So, they replace the existing source with some random citation, preferably one that goes to a paywalled website. Voila! The correct information is now on Wikipedia, and it's even sourced. Outright vandalism is rarer in my experience, but it definitely happens. I tend to range block those as I find them. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 09:08, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

An example: LouisAlain

Let me give an example of a prolific editor (whom I'll notify directly) who does this (the mild version). User:LouisAlain translates biographies from German (dewiki). In the past, they also translated unsourced BLPs, which got them into trouble. They then started adding "random" sources at the end of paragraphs: sometimes about the subject of the article (but not the paragraph), sometimes not even that. I repeatedly warned them about this in January[3] and again[4], with many examples. To no avail, as a few weeks later the same happened again[5]. When I look at their creations now, I see Thorsten Pech, which had only a few refs in the original German article. LouisAlain adds some to his translation, but again uses random refs in random places, with this to source a biographical paragraph, and this Reddit discussion of a Youtube video to source a further biographical paragraph. At least in this case, both sources are about the same person, not some random namesake, but the end result remains: unacceptable "fake" referencing, to give the impression that all paragraphs are sourced when in reality they aren't. Fram (talk) 15:48, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I regularly improve new translations by LouisAlain which show up on my watch list, and have not noticed what you call "fake referencing" recently, examples Leo Kestenberg (there was a long passage without refs, now commented out, - please look in the history if you can help sourcing it) and Josef Friedrich Doppelbauer which came with few references. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:24, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There are also articles that are at best lazily translated without checking the sources. Roman Sadnik (from 2021-09-01): second ref, although claimed to have been accessed on the same day, does not mention the article subject. (If you accessed the page, why did you not read it?) Third ref: dead link, marked as dead on dewiki more than two years ago. LouisAlain, I am shocked to see that you have been here 10 years and have 60000 edits but still make this kind of mistakes: why would you ever cite an irretrievably dead link with no known archive, and not even tell people that you know the link is dead? —Kusma (talk) 23:31, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that not only don't they check the sources, but they pretend to have checked them anyway. In Udo Schneberger, they claim to have "retrieved" the sources on "19 August 2021", but the first source doesn't work because they made an error when copying it, and the second source no longer exists. The original, German article had these sources in January 2015, when they were working. Claiming that you have retrieved a source when translating an article, when in reality that source is no longer available, is again fake referencing. Sung-Hee Kim-Wüst, sentence about her early career, sourced to her Shazam profile (!) which contains no biographical information at all[6]. Third source, again a paragraph of biographical information, sourced to this which has nothing of the sort. Johannes Cernota, first source should be about their studies with Luciano Ortis, but that source succeeds in not having any information on either of them[7]! And the second (and final) source for his biography is ... Napster[8], which again has no information relating to anything in the preceding paragraph. It looks as if this is a constant in nearly all their creations (or at least way too many of them). It has often been suggested that they should work through AfC / Draft space instead of creating articles directly: perhaps it's time to turn this into an actual sanction? Fram (talk) 08:20, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sung-Hee Kim-Wüst has an interesting history: The German article was originally copied from [9]. The text was donated, see de:Diskussion:Sung-Hee Kim-Wüst. So while it is not copyvio according to that talk page post (can't check the OTRS), it relies only on a single self-published source, and the English version now does so as well. (The "Institut-fuer-bildnerisches-denken" ref is just a copy/paraphrase of that). This is nowhere close to acceptable sourcing for a new BLP. —Kusma (talk) 09:05, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Kusma, I've removed the website autobiography from that article and sent it to AfD. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 13:36, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going through his last 100 creations one by one (bottom up), and nearly all of them have these issues. Typical examples are Franz-Josef Birk, sourcing a full paragraph to this and one to this. Gereon Krahforst, the first section on his training is only sourced to this. Many of their creations have already been moved to draftspace (e.g. Draft:Hans Robertson or Draft:Friedrich Schirmer, see [10]) where LouisAlain so far refuses to edit. 08:50, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Proposal on article-creation for LouisAlain

Proposal: LouisAlain must create all new articles in draft space, and they can only be moved to the mainspace by AfC reviewers. Fram (talk) 08:50, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Support, although I don't care too much who does the moves as long as it is not LA. The responses to concerns (sometimes promises, sometimes just attacks against the editor pointing out problems) like this look like LousAlain either doesn't understand the problem or chooses to ignore it. In either case, things can't just continue like this. —Kusma (talk) 09:16, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  I think we have two problems, one is adding references that don't reference, and another is to detect that an article written in a foreign language is a copyvio. The first can be avoided by LouisAlain not adding any references, and for the second, Fram would be a good help. All in draft would make it very difficult for me to detect the new ones, - please spare me that trouble if it can be avoided. I'd have to follow contribs, which means several articles per day. I'm just grateful he does it! Many of his creations have been rescued from draft space where nobody watches and nobody is invited to improve. I suggest we help each other. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:26, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  LouisAlain not adding references would definitely solve the problem of fake references, but then these pages clearly won't be in a state acceptable for mainspace. Having his page creations in draft space wouldn't necessarily have to mean more work for you: I think there could be easy ways to alert you and other interested people of LouisAlain's new drafts (say, a page where announces them to a WikiProject or to all interested people). —Kusma (talk) 11:54, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't want to be alerted 5 times a day, having my own work. I notice new articles on my watch list, and then look if I will expand. I do one article per day, and can't keep up with the speed. Isn't this Wikipedia, where all can help. You see an article without refs, and decide to tag it or find one. I can't help thinking that finding one might be easier. In German articles, often making a further reading (Literatur) a ref and cite it inline does the trick. - LOOK. Two DYK articles today, and both created by LouisAlain. We'd miss a lot without him. How about more thanks on his talk. I fail to see how admins could help at all in the process of making this corner more collaborative. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:08, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

LouisAlain, sorry, I have no time to read all this (but hope writing it was good for you), because today it's not only one of your articles but also a violinist who died and has a miserable article - all referenced but not doing justice to what he meant to the world - and there's RL. I like your list of articles, - how about putting just the names of those you plan to do on your talk, and Fram can make a tick if copyright free, and I can make a tick for "will expand", and others can comment as well. - Please, everybody: don't use "<br>", ever, it ruins the colours in edit mode. Alternatives: a blank line, bullets, or close it: "<br />". --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:05, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Gerda Arendt:: the corrida goes on ! LouisAlain (talk) 08:36, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

So you are bad at finding references. OK. One of the things we've been talking about is that your new articles come with <ref> tags and external links that do not work or that (no longer) link to anything related to the article subject. Can you tell whether a link that somebody else (for example, an editor on the German Wikipedia) has suggested supports the content preceding it? —Kusma (talk) 21:01, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Kusma. I used to delete dead links on the German Wikipedia until someone over there told me not to. So, What am I supposed to do ? I thought I had answered all of your remarks but of course, as is usual, to no avail. Intellectual dishonesty runs deep among some administrators. I raise the issue of the point of my articles being submitted to rewievers. What was your answer (as well as other close friends I have on this site) ? None. Zilch. Zero. The sound of cricket. And I'm supposed to take you seriously ? Comme on. LouisAlain (talk) 08:36, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Not to be mean, but if you can't find good references, you shouldn't be writing a wikipedia article. I get that you're translating, but asking others to find the references is going beyond collaboration and into making things more difficult for the other editors. The way to write a wikipedia article is to find the good sources, read the good sources, and THEN write the wikipedia article from the sources that you find that are good. If you're translating an article, presumably those non-English articles have sources - in which case you should read THOSE sources, make sure they support the information in the article you're going to translate, and then translate the article, using those sources over here in the English wikipedia. It's immeasurably harder for other articles to take unsourced wikipedia articles and then have to find sources that support the unsourced information - because it's not the best way to make sure that the information is sources and paraphrased properly. What you seem to be expecting is that you translate the article, and then some other editor comes along, goes out and finds the sources that support the information you've added, and then they have to make sure that the way you translated things actually fits the sources they found. Do you see how that's a lot more work? Whether there are other articles that don't cite sources is immaterial - we shouldn't be ADDING to that number of articles that are going to make folks have to work harder to find sources and then shoehorn them in. Please don't expect other editors to clean up after you... that's not collaboration. Ealdgyth (talk) 01:11, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ealdgyth. You shouldn't be writing a wikipedia article. Now we're going further in the process to eliminate me. A simple thing to do is to delete all my translations; sorry about having polluted the project with my filthy contributions. Also, I raised the issue of hundreds and hundreds thousands articles without the slightest reference and with no substance at all. What was your answer ? The sound of cricket of course! What you are suggesting is that participating to the project requires an intellectual scope well above mine. Can one be more discrimating ? LouisAlain (talk) 08:36, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not saying you shouldn't be here, I pointed out the correct way to write a wikipedia article. And how to properly translate one. I get that you're trying to improve Wikipedia - what I'm trying to do is improve your editing so that you don't feel like folks are harassing you and following you around. So... for example - Tag des offenen Denkmals, which you just translated today. In it, it has the sentence "In 2006, the Tag des offenen Denkmals was awarded as an "Excellent Place" of the Germany – Land of Ideas campaign." with the source here. I note that you included the source because it was in the German article. All well so far. When you translated the article, you said that this source was "365 Orte 2006: Deutsche Stiftung Denkmalschutz. In: land-der-ideen.de, retrieved 6 September 2021." When you put in "retrieved 6 September 2021" you are implicitly saying that you checked that source and it supports the information you're saying it sources - that "In 2006, the Tag des offenen Denkmals was awarded as an "Excellent Place" of the Germany – Land of Ideas campaign". Unfortunately, this is not the case. The solution to this is not to quit wikipedia, but to change your workflow in translating. You should check the sources in the articles you're translating before you bring them over to the English wikipedia. If the sources in the German (or whatever article) do not support the information ... you should NOT attach them to the English translation. This is the problem. You're falsifying references ... even if you're taking the "good faith" approach and assuming good faith on the part of the editors who originally added them in the non-English article. If you'd just not do that, a large chunk of your problems would be gone. You'd still need to find sources for the information, but at least you wouldn't be misleading others that there ARE sources that support it, when they do not. Ealdgyth (talk) 12:52, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Support restricting creating new articles in mainspace (but I don't agree with requiring afc; any editor should be allowed to move them to mainspace). I just can't wrap my head around someone saying they are bad at finding good sources but are still creating articles. Finding sources is Step #1 for creating an article. If you skip that step and still create the article, you're only creating a problem. Levivich 13:46, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Levivich And now I'm learning I am creating problems on the en. Wikipedia; Thanks for the recognition of all the work I have done here. With friends like you...

• Maybe they should be required to provide sources before they are even allowed to create an article.... Rgrds --Bison X (talk) 14:37, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Who's "they" ? When I started learning English some 60 years ago, the pronoun for the first person in singular was "he or him" The times, they are a'changing... No wonder I'm lost in this jungle.

Bison X. But what a good idea ! Creating second rank users who will beg for the possibility of participating to the project. And I thought even correcting a typo was worth intervening. But Bison has his own criteria mind you ! You also show you haven't even read my former answer: So I'll repeat it: I decided two or three days ago I won't translate any article from German, French, Italian, Spanish etc. if it is not accompanied by sufficient online references. Here they are :

• Horst-Eberhard Richter
• Jeanne Barbillion
• Armin Thurnher
• Elfriede Hammerl
• Brucknerfest
• August Bauer
• Willy Spatz
• Max Martersteig with references found haphazardly on the net.

My last 25 artices:

• Tag des offenen Denkmals
• Henri Boncquet
• Emil Jungblut
• Gerda Kratz
• Malkasten-Redoute
• Johannes Radke
• Eberhard Westhofen
• Hermann vom Endt
• Willi Hoselmann
• Alte Tonhalle
• Karl Friedrich Wunder
• Irmtrud Wojak
• Gerlinde Haid
• Susanne Scholl
• Hans Haid
• Waldemar Titzenthaler
• Siegmund Labisch
• Albert Zander
• Zander & Labisch
• Edgar Weil
• Doris von Schönthan
• Franz Danksagmüller
• Wolfgang Glüxam
• Elke Eckerstorfer
• Christoph Wigelbeyer

It's references that you want ? There they are. Now, I'm sure you all guys won't be deterred to attack me on other points some wicked people never fail to find. At least, have the courage and honesty to write you want me to be banned. Also I have de:Friedrich Wilhelm Graupenstein with 69 references in view. Does Bison X have the magnanimity to allow me to take my chances ? Some minds are inebriated with hubris as soon as they smell an opportunity to devour their next.

• John B123 : Please, no need to keep on rewieving my publications, some nice fellows here are showing me the way out. Fram has already showed them the way (blocked twice for peccadillos, and simply ignoring the "Suppose Good Faith" mantra). They don't read my answers, don't take them into consideration, ignore my questions and will pursue their drive to crush me until I'm given the boot. I've been here before and nothing can surprise me from people I'm no match to, intellectually speaking.

• The lengh some people with an ounce of power will go to assert their will on others is simply flabbergasting ! Homo Homini Lupus. Of course we're all equal on Wikipedia except for those who are more equal than the others.

• Plato had a perfect quote for this kind of interlocutors but it would take too much time to unearth it; Too bad, but if you insist (knowing perfectly well you won't) I'll will deliver. In the meantime I have this : Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughter house and thinks : They're only animals (Theodor W. Adorno)

• Forgive them Lord, they don't know what they're doing. LouisAlain (talk) 08:36, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• I've just clicked on the 'random article' button only to immediately land on Archaeologia Polona. 2 references repeated twice. I'm sure the bright minds associated against me will rush to correct the situation (Actually, I don't hold my breath. Nothing will be changed : I'm their target, and nobody else). How pathetic and morally corrupt some people are. LouisAlain (talk) 09:03, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've reverted it as a copyright violation. I don't think insulting people left and right is your best way forward here. What also won't help is simply continuing with the problematic behaviour: you created Henri Boncquet (translated from dewiki), and added one source to the 1 1/2 sentence "[...]then moved to the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels for a few years. He received his first official commission in 1894: the bronze eagle in the botanical garden at the Schaarbeek Gate in Brussels"[11]. That source has no information on the preceding paragraph at all, so why add it there? (The second source in the article is equally bad, but you copied that, you didn't add it). Fram (talk) 09:14, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • In Gerda Kratz (very poor sourcing, but that's in the original), you claim that you retrieved the 6th source yesterday. I doubt it[12]. Claiming that you have checked a source (or at the very least its existence) when in fact you haven't again is faking references. The article should probably be moved to draft as a very poorly sourced, partially translated, unverified article. Fram (talk) 09:19, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Susanne Scholl, created by you two days ago: In this edit, you claim that the statement "Her temporary arrest by the Russian authorities while reporting from Chechnya caused a sensation." is supported by this. Not there (apart from the fact that this isn't a particularly good source). If you can't read French, you should not use French sources. —Kusma (talk) 09:59, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  @LouisAlain, if you do not address your own behaviour, you will not get anywhere here. This is not because anyone is out to get you, it is because the quality of the sourcing you use is consistently terrible, and you regularly present wrong references that do not support what you claim they support. If you are unable to tell that, well, Wikipedia:Competence is required from all editors here, and those unable to read the references they cite should be shown the door. —Kusma (talk) 10:09, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As I wrote before : a dialogue of the deaf. I've alredady wasted too much time on this thread which shows how biased some here are. It's blatant that my translations are under fire (probably rightly) but not the other horrors I find everyday on the main. Why am I singled out when thousands other users do far more worse than me ? I'll never know since questions aren't answered here. Does Der Process ring a bell Kusma ? What's the use of being rewieved ? Still waiting for an answer. Why did you wait nearly 6,000 articles to discover my incompetence ? (Sorry, my I.Q has only two digits). There are hundreds and hundreds of thousands articles like Archaeologia Polona that I had to bring to you attention so that Fram intervened. Fram, if you're unsatisfied with Gerda Kratz or Susanne Scholl, please delete, delete, delete. It won't take you more than one second. And since you're at it, delete also all the crap that are on the main (it will take you several month now) and at least 4,000 of my translations. Kusma, please, spare me "your competence is required from all editors here" whereas it is obviously an all-out lie. I've lost complete trust in the way Wikipedia is run by people who behave like Chief human resources officers treating users like their employees to whom orders are given. I now know for a fact that whatever the quality of the sources and references, some will always find something to object to. I'll have to find this quote from Plato which fits so perfectly with someone's behaviour here. It's an everyday psychological mindset around the world.

you claim that you retrieved the 6th source yesterday. I doubt it. I affirm I did, now of course only me make mistakes. And you once again spit on one of the founding principles of Wikipedia : Assume good faith by suggesting I'm a liar and a cheater at that. The man is frontly insulting me and nobody cares. Ô the confort of being part of a corporation where "scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" is the keywod at the expense of good faith editors.~Withour Jimmy Wale's support on my side. This whole business is so, so, so amateurish and dishonest.

I thought the point was moot since I announced that I had changed my tack (my "behaviour" in Kusma's parlance) and will translate uniquely articles with correct sourcing in the first place. Is Tag des offenen Denkmals to your taste or do you still want to pursue this silly escalade to more an more references? I wasn't born last year, been around for some decades now and when I see a profile like yours, I know who is adressing me. Have a look at fr:Perversion nacissique (with a translating machine at the handy). I'll translate the French one (yes, I can read French) even if the 36 references are all in French (probably).

I've started translating de:Lorenz Cantador with 27 references. Please all you folks, tell me it's useless, the English version has already it's place in the paper shredder. I don't know about your "competence" Kusma (I wouldn't have had the crass audacity of using that term à propos you. A matter of education perhaps) but I admit you're a virtual Olympic champion at discouraging others. Rest assure you're not the only one. LouisAlain (talk) 12:34, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@LouisAlain, are you deliberately trolling? According to Tag des offenen Denkmals, you accessed this page today, which is a 404. You should be blocked from editing the next time you lie about sources like that. In fact, you should be blocked already, but I'll hide behind WP:INVOLVED instead of doing so as you have started insulting me. —Kusma (talk) 12:58, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Kusma, dear fragile carebear. Don't bother to banish me. I've left volontarily. I'm not up to your intellectual level. LouisAlain (talk) 13:32, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Time to indef block them, I think. Apart from source I highlighted above, and the one from Kusma (where LouisAlain claims in both cases that they were working just a few days ago, quite a coincidence), see e.g. also Hans Haid, where both the 1st[13] and 6th source[14] are not available, even though LouisAlain had no trouble accessing them 2 days ago. Combined with the more and more outrageous personal attacks and ramblings, I see no reason to let them retire now with the possibility of an unretirement whenever they feel like it. Fram (talk) 13:51, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. We have to be hard on fake referencing, especially if the person has been warned before. I can take care of the indefinite block.--Berig (talk) 13:57, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No, please. LouisAlain translated all Bach cantatas to French, DYK. And was banned there. Now he created thousands of translations into English. And you come with this proposal?? I thank LouisAlain, and would miss him. Just look for his name in Wikipedia:WikiProject Germany/DYK 2021 and its archives. If an estimated 5% of his translations cause problems, why not fix them, but thank him for the 95% others? Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:05, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If it were just 5%. Even now, with the articles he created during this ANI discussion, we get these issues on many of his creations (e.g. with the sources he "retrieved" during translation, but which are mysteriously unavailable days later, or with sources he added which don't support the preceding text). Perhaps the question should be why he was also banned at frwiki instead? Fram (talk) 14:11, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with an indef. He responded to the concerns raised here by making personal attacks and continuing to add false access-dates to references. Not to mention creating an article without checking the references. It's not acceptable. It's not helpful, it's unhelpful. He needs to stop making articles, and clearly he won't on his own. A block is the only way to prevent disruption such as giving false information to the reader and wasting other editors time. Sorry but not everyone who volunteers their time here is actually helping. We just don't need someone to translate articles without checking references; that must stop one way of another. Levivich 14:16, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If you have any influence on LouisAlain that can prevent him from deliberately trying to get himself blocked, please use it. Unfortunately I can't agree with your estimate of "5% cause problems"; there seem to be far more, and the deliberate lies about access date don't engender any trust. I didn't go out of my way to search problems, I opened just a few of the pages LouisAlain himself linked to and found that the sources did not work. Reading his French talk page, LouisAlain seems to have a way of being his own worst enemy (and of painting himself as a victim of an abusive system). The ban on mainspace creation proposed above looked to me as if it could provide a way out where LouisAlain does not need to change his way of referencing, with others helping. Sad to see this not working out. —Kusma (talk) 14:29, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose ban I protest a ban of LouisAlain strongly. He is good in translating, with a little weakness in referencing. Maybe there is a solution. I can do the referencing part (timeconsuming, please not so many articles). He can create an article in his sandboxes, I do the referencing. After that, the article can be released to mainspace. Grimes2 (talk) 14:48, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • It looks to me as if he is strongly opposed to any such solution, all similar suggestions have been dismissed. If you can get them to agree to such a condition, then that may be a possible way out. Fram (talk) 15:07, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • If he doesn't agree, a partial block from mainspace is another option, short of a sitewide block. Levivich 16:29, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

LouisAlain agrees. Important for him is, that he has the ability to release to the mainspace. Grimes2 (talk) 11:06, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Grimes2 Maybe there is a solution. I can do the referencing part this is exactly what can be done if they're creating articles in draftspace. Other users can improve references before it goes into article space, which would be better than having undersourced/incorrectly sourced articles in mainspace. Joseph2302 (talk) 11:15, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

My experience is, that an article is forgotten in Draftspace, and after 6 month it is deleted. What's wrong with an article that is well referenced. The article is only released to mainspace, if referencing is done. Grimes2 (talk) 11:25, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Grimes2, thank you for your work on this. It does not look as if LouisAlain has stopped creating poorly sourced articles in mainspace. Could you and @LouisAlain clarify what the agreement is here? @Fram just had to move Nicolas Mahler to Draft:Nicolas Mahler today, where LA had added an obvious non-source to his translation of the dewiki article. (Great Austrian comic artist by the way, I love his work and am slightly ashamed on behalf of the English Wikipedia that we don't have a decent article yet, but I don't see LA's first draft helping much). In the absence of a concrete agreement, the proposed mainspace creation ban still looks like the weakest sanction we can consider here, and we can't just continue to ignore this. —Kusma (talk) 16:56, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nicolas Mahler was my fault. This has been fixed. Please take a look at the article now. It can be released to mainspace now. Grimes2 (talk) 17:16, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Support ban on creating directly into article space. Forcing them to create articles in draftspace means that if they are undersourced, other editors can help fix them before they go "live" in article space. Or if they don't get fixed, they don't get published. Joseph2302 (talk) 17:15, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment An editor hasn't just had problems providing sourcing--they've been providing false sourcing, lying about it, and are deflecting when caught and insulting the editors who are raising concerns about this. How are we even talking about partial blocks, or accepting people arguing that LouisAlain is a productive editor with "some" sourcing issues? This is a major behavioral fail, which is causing, has caused, and will cause significant amounts of work and rework for other editors to clean up the "productivity". They should already be blocked. Grandpallama (talk) 15:34, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• AFC is not a solution. AFC reviewers won't be checking citations to see if they confirm the text. What is needed is an Apprenticeship with an extremely diligent fact-checker who will take it upon themselves to check every single citation in anything LouisAlain produces. And since he is apparently largely unable to produce even an accurately cited draft, he should do all these mock-ups in his userspace (subpages and sandboxes), and await the fact-checker who is mentoring him to do anything further. Lastly, If he sucks at citing, he should not be writing articles. It's just that simple. WP:V is the cornerstone of Wikipedia and indeed any encyclopedia. Softlavender (talk) 08:10, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  It's not just sourcing issues, the quality of the translations is also poor. The recently created Dietrich Meinardus, Ludwig von Milewski, Moritz Geisenheimer will all take more time to clean up than rewriting from scratch would, and it's less fun to do for most people. There's a recent warning by @Shirt58 about this on the talk page. LouisAlain creates far too many such articles; we'd need to clone Grimes2 and Gerda a few times to fix them all. —Kusma (talk) 10:01, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose editing restrictions.

  (written yesterday, trying to not participate in the "judgement" but adding information:) Today's pictured DYK was created by LouisAlain, DYK? He began working in a sandbox. I enjoy the work with him. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:19, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Today's DYK has Leo Kestenberg, created by LouisAlain, and its that type of article I'd miss much if he left. I believe that articles don't have to be perfect when created, - actually I believe that no article will ever be perfect. But together, we can do our best to make them good. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:52, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As can be seen in the abuse filter set up after the last AN discussion, there seems to be an uptick in #WPWP. Captions have not been improved. Having checked multiple editors, many seem to be literally copying the file name as captions, even if the file name is a French description. (This is explicitly outside of the rules at meta:Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos 2021, for what it's worth.) I am not sure if significant action could be taken at this point, as the contest supposedly ends on the 31st, but at the very least there should be a default message template explaining the need for appropriate images with good captions that could be placed on participants' talkpages. Would anyone have placed similar messages in the past which could serve as a base? CMD (talk) 15:31, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We throttle entries but I'm convinced many people aren't even reading the throttle message anyway, as they keep trying to make edits even though they're being disallowed with a message saying you can't make more edits. Eg here or here. So I'm not convinced talk messages will work. Still, I wrote up something at MediaWiki:Abusefilter-disallowed-WPWP for the abusefilter message that could perhaps be useful as a base for a talk page message template.

Solution 2.1 is difficult to do well with the current way the filter works (won't bore you with the technical details), but a small technical change to the AbuseFilter extension could make it easier to implement elegantly for next year. Other than that, I don't really see what else we can do. Personally I'd say enwiki is a work in progress and some imperfect changes being added, that can later be iteratively improved by other edits (and repeat), is (to some degree) how this project works. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:49, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If there's such opposition to this, why not simply ban it and block editors who violate? GiantSnowman 17:02, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Um, looking at technical contributors here, could we block any edits with a edit summary containing one of a defined set of hastags? Since the contests uses those for tracking it should A) get rid of most of them, and B) remove any incentive to circumvent it (since it wouldn't count). -- Asartea ^{Talk | Contribs} 17:42, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It is not the technical part that's a problem. Technically it is trivial to block. The dispute in the original discussion was whether we should block. It doesn't really matter this year since the contest ends in two days anyway. If work is done with the coordinators and perhaps with the devs, we could perhaps figure out alternate solutions for next year, if the community does feel like there is still a problem. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:50, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Some of the contributions from specific editors were valid additions/made in good faith/showed understanding of image rules. We don't want to discourage those, but we do need to handle those editors that added images without considering all factors that go into that. I think we need to make sure that the contest, if run again, includes warnings to all uses that there are image use polices on en.wiki that must be followed, that en.wiki admins will likely be watching for activity in that area, and editors participating that are routinely failing to follow the policies (rather than the one or two missteps) will likely be blocked because of this monitoring. If necessary, we can develop a standard warning for the contest (or tiers thereof) that tells editors that may be making missteps of our policies of what to do and not to do when they participate. --Masem (t) 20:28, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

ProcrastinatingReader Given that the co-ordinator at Meta is a banned editor on en.wp, the ddiscussion certainly won't take place here ... Black Kite (talk) 20:43, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is the throttling actually working? This filter, which has the throttle applied, has far fewer edits matching than this filter, which is tracking WPWP edits but isn't throttling them. There's certainly far more entries matching that filter than the 25 per day set as the throttle. Hut 8.5 20:09, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Won't the throttling filter only show the ones after the 25 limit (i.e. the ones that are disallowed)? One would therefore expect it to have a lot fewer hits. Black Kite (talk) 20:25, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Incidentally, this editor has worked their way around the throttle by lower-casing the hashtag. Black Kite (talk) 20:25, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The filters use irlike when checking for string inclusion, which is case insensitive so the fact they're using lower case hastags doesn't matter. I suspect this is a bug in the abuse filter extension, probably something to do with caching at a guess, there have been similar problems in the past (see e.g. Phab:T240951, which is still unsolved). It might be worth opening a phab ticket. 192.76.8.74 (talk) 20:43, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Black Kite is right about the mechanics of a throttle filter (it'll only show the hits that were throttled). Re the lower-casing issue; as the IP mentions, the filter is irlike so it should be fine with any case variant. I tried using the editor's edit summary at testwiki (filter is identical to enwiki's, but with a lower throttle quantity there) and they were correctly logged in the filter. So I suspect the IP is right about a caching problem with the throttle. Perhaps Daimona Eaytoy can confirm if this is related. Like the filter in the phab ticket though, this also works over a 24 hour period. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 21:06, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@ProcrastinatingReader Hey, I'm writing here, because I saw phab:T240951#7317222. Note that the current filter #1158 is set to throttle by both username and IP address. That means users on highly dynamic ranges will never get the throttle. That is the case for at least one of the users who appear to bypass the throttling filter.

The obvious fix would be to just remove ip throttling, but...unfortunately, as https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/g/mediawiki/extensions/AbuseFilter/+/691e47a4a6c83ecc3213991a89ad83f145dec9aa/includes/Consequences/Consequence/Throttle.php#170 says, setting throttle only to user will give you only one throttle counter shared for all IP addresses. Not sure if that's intentional (maybe not?), but given this campaign is targeted at logged-in editors, it might not matter for this case. Martin Urbanec (talk) 21:47, 29 August 2021 (UTC)Edited --Martin Urbanec (talk) 21:55, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Martin Urbanec. I thought IP would've been blank for logged-in editors (thus only throttling by user, for logged-in editors). It seems looking at the code snippet, even for them it will still correspond to their underlying IP address? That behaviour doesn't seem ideal? From an abusefilter perspective, I'm not sure it makes sense as I don't see why the underlying IP a user account is connecting from should ever matter, but I may be missing a use case? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:14, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Another thought, why can't the user identifier just be by the username? Here is a change by an IP, and here is one by an account, with user_name filled in appropriately. Similar design can be used here? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:19, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@ProcrastinatingReader If you remove ip from the list of throttle rules, it will work (approximately) that way. Correct solution would be to change getId (which returns same value for all anonymous users) with getName (which returns username/IP address) in the user throttle mode, but that's a breaking change. See phab:T289954, where I suggested exactly that. Martin Urbanec (talk) 22:41, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Martin Urbanec: I already made the change for the filter here per your original comment; I was more referring to why the filter extension behaves like that in the first place, which will remain a problem for other (non-WPWP) filters, though I guess that's better off at VPT or phab (phab:T289954 sounds like a good change). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 00:43, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have adjusted ProcrastinatingReader's MediaWiki:Abusefilter-disallowed-WPWP into a shorter message at User:Chipmunkdavis/WPWP. Please feel free to adjust/use. CMD (talk) 13:33, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Chipmunkdavis: Not sure about that message. I think that any warning needs to clearly explain that the rate at which they can add images to articles has been limited, otherwise it's going to really confuse people when this message starts showing up and they find they can't edit anymore. 192.76.8.74 (talk) 14:14, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I was under the assumption that they automatically see the Abusefilter message if they are going at too high a rate? I am trying to create something that can be easily dropped on talkpages, rather than editors having to type out a new message each time. If others feel it needs to be sterner I would not object to a change. CMD (talk) 16:03, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Chipmunkdavis: Sorry, I misunderstood. I thought you were trying to make a friendlier message for use in the edit filter. 192.76.8.74 (talk) 16:16, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Regarding next year, the WMF Growth Team is currently working on an "Add an image" structured task, where they have been quite good about collaborating with us and trying to avoid the pitfalls of WPWP (see the mw talk page). I hope that by next year, the feature will be live, and any campaign will be run through that rather than whatever the current tool is. Hopefully that will minimize problems. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:31, 31 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Y'all want to know how ridiculous this crap is - See this diff (note, article is probably gonna be blanked soon as a copyvio). A WPWP editor adds an image essentially identical to an image right below it. The lack of care or even paying attention here blows my mind. If WPWP doesn't get its shit together for next year, I think it's time to ban the damn thing and hand out blocks like candy. If you're going to have a contest that promotes spamming images without paying attention to what you're doing, I think it's high time to run said contest out of a town on a rail. We're being used as a little game by WPWP, y'all. Hog Farm _Talk 05:55, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm inclined to agree. If the blocking procedure for this is trivial (presume something automated linked to the edit filter?) then why don't we simply...do it. Those that listen and pay attention can get unblocked. I doubt we'd allow a 'who can make the most page moves in a day' contest, why is this any different? GiantSnowman 06:46, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ridiculous is the right word. As well as not putting up with this next year, consider recalling this disruption the next time they apply for a WMF grant for it. – Joe (talk) 07:28, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, those newbies, so annoying. Let's just block them all and keep the site to ourselves, rather than welcoming them, encouraging them to contribute better, and growing our editor numbers. Mike Peel (talk) 07:30, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Not to worry, I'm sure you'd be along to unblock them all, Mike. – Joe (talk) 07:34, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Mike Peel: - I think there's a big difference between WP:BITE a productive newbie, and blocking someone who's spamming images as part of a cash contest. "Let's add as many of xxx as possible as quick as we can" is going to be disruptive, no matter who does it. You don't get an excuse to be disruptive just because your new and competing for a cash prize. Hog Farm _Talk 14:37, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As they're editing for (potential) money, do they have to comply with Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure? They are effectively being paid by the WMF to add these images (as there's a cash prize for it). Joseph2302 (talk) 14:44, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The question whether Wikipedians in Residence are paid editors is a perennial shit storm generation topic. I do not expect this one to be any easier.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:08, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is a good example of what I mentioned above, where the caption is literally just the image title. There must be a common origin to this bizarre practice, somewhere in the WPWP organisation. This obvious flaw continuing long after the WPWP organisers stated they would be involved in cleanup and monitoring is not positive for the outcomes of the initiative. CMD (talk) 15:23, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm wondering how they were planning on doing monitoring an cleanup when they're sitebanned from en.wiki..... Joseph2302 (talk) 16:43, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Lots of terrible captions. Here it is completely unclear to the casual observer why the image has been added and what it has to do with the article. (It it easier if you can read enough Japanese to note that the Japanese caption (written right to left) mentions Shitaya). Yes, we should teach the user and not just complain. But in a turn-newbies-into-editors contest, shouldn't there be some people connected to the contest working on this to provide targeted help and oversight so it doesn't have to be done by people who are annoyed by the incomprehensible hashtag edit summaries? (Short-time financial incentives, by the way, sound like exactly the wrong way to attract long-time volunteers. But maybe that's just me). —Kusma (talk) 21:19, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Let's make things even more complicated: the "Project Manager and Coordinator" of WPWP is Isaac Olatunde[16], account name T Cells, and previously known as Wikicology. Now, Wikicology is since 2016 community banned by ArbCom[17], and on top of this explicitly "topic-banned from images" as well. Seems like the ideal person to organise this campaign... Fram (talk) 15:09, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

So organising a contest encouraging people to add images here seems like a violation of meatpuppetry to me- he's encouraging users to add images to a project he's sitebanned from. Is there any way we can outright ban #WPWP event from en.wiki in future years? Joseph2302 (talk) 15:12, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yikes, that's quite concerning and absolutely a violation. Looking at grant proposal, was this just totally missed? Courtesy pinging Astinson (WMF), who is listed as the advisor—were you aware of the ban? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:03, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

FYI: I have notified the grant committee in a thread on the grant page on Meta. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:45, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No, this wasn't missed, but just ignored. Phil Bridger (talk)

Sandstein's read of the consensus at the last thread was to implement an edit filter with a cautionary message and a throttle, with banning the contest available as a last resort (and in the name of full disclosure: I voted for banning the contest in that discussion). I do not believe that the remedies we implemented have significantly improved the situation, and I think the harm and cost of volunteer time continues to outweigh the good. Also, to be blunt, I do not think this contest will significantly attract new editors - the quality of these edits suggests to me that most of these people just want the points (and, by extension, the money). Under any other circumstance we would just be handing out WP:NOTHERE blocks for that behavior. I move that we ban the contest on enwiki (setting the filter to disallow) until such a time as the organizers present a satisfactory plan to the community showing how they will modify the contest to reduce the disruption it causes. I considered BOLDly setting the filter to disallow, but given that we had a discussion just last month, I don't think it's appropriate for me to act unilaterally here. GeneralNotability (talk) 02:09, 4 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm still sceptical about the proportion of disruptive edits in this contest, but I see two aspects that mainly count against its continuation. The first, most participants are editing for the money, and that doesn't bode too well with the volunteer nature of the projects. Second, the contest has not really managed to convert people into enwiki editors. I skimmed through the contribs of the most prolific WPWP participants, and none have made non-WPWP edits. Which means we're effectively just paying for edits, rather than this being a lasting outreach effort. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 02:33, 4 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I left a comment on the talk page of the grant. It also seems, per the grant budget and talk page comments from the Grants Committee, that T Cells was paid $30/hr, 3 hours per day / 15 hrs per week, for a total of $7,200 USD. I will say that if one is being paid to run this project, then it is reasonable to expect greater effort/involvement in trying to resolve the issues. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 02:53, 4 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Support ban of #WPWP. No evidence it's produced much useful content, whereas it has created lots of disruption and unhelpful content. That's even before you considered the paid and possible meatpuppetry issues with this contest. Joseph2302 (talk) 12:35, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is a request to review the close at What is the Indian Medical Association's position on Ayurveda?. The issue the closer was to decide was, "What is the IMA saying about Ayurveda?" with focus around whether they consider only some ayurvedic practitioners as quacks based on certain qualifying criteria, or all ayurvedic practitioners as quacks. This has been a contentious topic with previous talk page discussions [18][19][20][21][22][23] and more that led to the opening of the RfC. The last vote on the RfC was one week before the closure, and the phrasing of the statement per the cited source continues to be contested even after the closure. The discussion with the closing editor can be found here. In the closure they applied guideline WP:FRINGE over wiki policy WP:NOR because they think the former was mentioned far more, even though that does not appear to be correct. Their close was based on some editors saying that the IMA's position is informed not only by the way that Ayurveda is practiced in India but also by the Indian legal environment without considering whether such a reasoning was backed by secondary WP:RS. Even if their assessment of predominance is assumed correct, core non-negotiable WP:NOR should have still been considered in assessment of all the arguments to correctly reflect IMA's stance with regards to qualifying their position. Furthermore, WP:FRINGE is not intended to decide on issues of what an association is saying, but only to establish if its position is not scientifically mainstream and may therefore be (re)moved from the lede or even the article. But the close does not contain any such conclusion either. -Wikihc (talk) 13:48, 31 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Just noting that, contrary to the huge yellow edit notice, Wikihc did not notify me of this. All of the above has been said already in the referenced talk page and they are attempting to re-litigate that discussion. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 15:54, 31 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Pardon for having an emergency in real life which precluded me from dropping an immediate notice on your talk page. Also, I find it strange that you accuse me for posting on AN per WP:CLOSECHALLENGE as you yourself recommended, since the issue was unresolved after talk with you (closer). -Wikihc (talk) 22:40, 31 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Also noting that users who considered that the article is misrepresenting the IMA source, discussed it with the closer early on during the RfC dispute[24][25]. On this, the closer labelled them as ayurveda proponents, whom the closer did not want to hear from, under an all caps title. Closer thus seems to have strong feeling about the topic and those who have a certain view in the dispute. -Wikihc (talk) 10:32, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, blatant context omission, where would AN be without thee? I have strong feelings about a group of anything proponents who randomly decide my talk page is the proper outlet for their anger against Wikipedia. [26], [27], [28], [29], etc. I am allowed to put a stop to disruptive edits on my talk. Not wanting people to continue disruption does not prevent me from summarizing an RfC, even a related RfC, accurately. I believe you have not demonstrated otherwise. Your arguments here and on the article talk are merely that I did not decide the RfC the way you wanted and must therefore be wrong. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 13:04, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

SkylerLovefist has in the last 24 hours added a remark on his user page that I believe is in violation of WP:POLEMIC. It is a generalised attack on WP users seen here. While user names are not used this is aimed at me, but I am not complaining about that. The complaint is the general conduct in violation of the policy linked. It should be removed in my opinion. Addicted4517 (talk) 08:55, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The statement was unacceptable commentary about other contributors. I've removed it and asked the user not to reinstate it. Best Girth Summit _(blether) 10:45, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A less inflammatory alternative would be to express that you are frustrated with other editors: "I feel frustrated that they would use source A instead of source B", but asking questions about policy and talking about content rather than editors is best MarshallKe (talk) 11:52, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I notice that Addicted4517 has neglected to mention his own behaviour which includes provoking an edit war, misquoting Wikipedia Policies, intentionally overwriting another valid source and proceeding to use a source which literally quoted the Twitter account he claimed wasn't an accurate source. Perhaps this user would like to learn to work with others before saying other users need to work on their behaviour. SkylerLovefist (talk) 16:59, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

SkylerLovefist, the statement on your userpage wasn't acceptable, regardless of other editors' behaviour. That said, provided you don't reinstate it, I'd say that matter is resolved. If there's anything that you think needs looking at urgently, you are at liberty to report it. Girth Summit _(blether) 17:25, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Girth SummitIf I was aware of how to do that, I would. And I'm not going to reinstate anything, I'd just like to see him being pulled up on what he did wrong instead of feeling like I'm being ganged up on when Addicted4517 was in the wrong with his edits to start with, and was clearly trying to undermine every edit I made. SkylerLovefist (talk) 17:27, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Girth Summit: - Thank you for your action. We can consider this particular matter closed. Addicted4517 (talk) 08:54, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

SkylerLovefist If you're in a dispute with another editor over content and/or sourcing, you can investigate dispute resolution channels. If it is their conduct that you are worried about - for example if they are making personal attacks or harassing you, you can start a thread at WP:ANI, but be sure to include diffs to provide evidence for the compaint. At the moment, I don't even know what the disagreement is about - I just looked at your userpage, and agreed that the statement you'd made there wasn't appropriate. Best Girth Summit _(blether) 09:00, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Girth Summit As seen by the above statement, Addicted4517 seems to be on the understanding his opinions are more important than those of other editors, at least based on my experiences. The issue is that I used Buddy Murphy's Twitter as a source to show he was using a new ringname. Addicted4517 chose to keep undoing my edits while incorrectly referring to Wikipedia Protocols which he claimed proved me wrong while being irrelevant to the situation at hand. Another user provided me some links, I used one, which was then followed by Addicted 4517 undoing THAT edit and using a source whose only citation was Murphy's Twitter, which Addicted4517 claimed wasn't valid which was the cause of the issue in the first place. So in the end, it comes down to Addicted 4517 undermining me, while being hypocritical at the same time, thus my frustration. SkylerLovefist (talk) 17:30, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I found my way here from a thread at WP:ANI. In a nutshell, SkylerLovefist is using inappropriate sourcing from social media, Addicted4517 removed them per WP:BLP explaining relevant policies on suitable sources and was rewarded with abuse and personal attacks. As far as I can see Addicted4517 has been nothing but helpful and civil to this editor who plainly doesn't understand what a reliable source is. WCM_email 09:02, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

1. Wikipedia:General sanctions/Units in the United Kingdom was authorised in 2014 and has had exactly zero logged actions in 7 years.
2. Wikipedia:General sanctions/Professional wrestling was authorised in 2018 and has had one TBAN and a couple of page protections, all were 3 years ago.

I'm proposing revoking the authorisation for both these general sanctions. The log evidences that these general sanctions are unused and unnecessary, and we shouldn't have permanent authorisations of unnecessary sanctions. Regular administrative processes could handle any future disruption that arises, as they do for most topic areas. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:49, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sanctions, like blocks and bans, are preventative. The knowledge that sanctions have been authorised and the actual alerts posted on editors' talk pages work to prevent the need for sanctions to be implemented by blocks and bans. If they're working well, you should find, as ProcrastinatingReader has, little sign of their working in the block logs. We no longer log those talk-page alerts either, though it might be possible to extract alerts for specific sanctions from the monthly hundreds of Edit Filter 602 tags. It's all very hard to quantify, so we have to fall back on long memories of previous disruption and also simply accept that the community, after due consideration, made a good decision which shouldn't be jettisoned in a clean-up. NebY (talk) 17:19, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Units in the UK

• Oppose. Removal of Wikipedia:General sanctions/Units in the United Kingdom was proposed on this noticeboard in April 2020 and the discussion closed as "At this time there is no consensus to lift these sanctions, with a majority opposed. People are concerned that disputes might flare up again if sanctions are removed: Give them an inch and they will take a kilometer ." The effectiveness of the existence of WP:GS/UKU doesn't justify abolition. NebY (talk) 17:45, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  The words "general sanctions" aren't some kind of magic pixie dust that, when authorised on a topic area, suddenly makes disruption disappear. It's a very real and definable thing; the ability for admins to make topic bans (etc) unilaterally without requiring ANI consensus. Which means any effects of this regime would be logged. Zero actions since the creation of a general sanctions regime (7 years ago!) means it is doing nothing useful. In that discussion you linked, it was said the GS should remain in place due to a then-ongoing MOS discussion related to UK units. Well, that discussion is long since concluded, and unsurprisingly the log remains empty and no sanctions were necessary. The more likely explanation for why there is no ongoing disruption is that the established editors propagating the conflict got bored and quit or went onto something else, same as with many other historical conflicts. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 19:56, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Actually the main reason is one of the worst offenders is currently indefinitely blocked with talk page and email access removed after they tried to use it to edit by proxy. But I'm sure they'd be back if this were removed. WCM_email 10:56, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Proc, just a suggestion, perhaps this should be broken into two subheaders, one for each GS, that way it will be easier to tally the outcome. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 19:58, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Good idea, done. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 19:47, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Support per nom. Also, no user talk page or archive includes the text of the gs alert for this topic area. See this empty search result. The search won't include alerts that have been deleted. Someone more experienced/empowered might find more useful data in the edit filter. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 20:11, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The alerts given predate the existence of the modern template that triggers an edit filter. See the log of alerts as listed at WP:GS/UKU. RGloucester — ☎ 20:24, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

... where the most recent alert was given in 2018. The evidence suggests (not perfectly) that there are no editors who are currently "aware" enough to sanction, except those sanctioned in the original decision. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 20:29, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The relevant dispute involved a distinct group of editors, most of whom are still present on the encyclopaedia, and all of whom are distinctly aware of these sanctions mentally, if not 'officially'. It is precisely this regime, which took ages to establish, that put the kibosh on more than a decade of disruption. If you want to open Pandora's box again, feel free, but know that that outcome can be avoided. RGloucester — ☎ 20:32, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You mean the regime that has never been used? Not even in 2014? And heck, general sanctions are barely effective even at combating actual ongoing disruption, so this just comes across as FUD. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:40, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If you were not present during that time, it will be hard for you to understand. You might consider reading the old talk page discussions, such as the one that brought about the regime, or asking those present such as Kahastok. But, I think I've said enough. RGloucester — ☎ 21:24, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose – Per NebY, these sanctions serve as a valuable deterrent, and it does not harm anyone to keep them around. Everything that was said in the 2020 discussion is still valid now. RGloucester — ☎ 20:24, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose (not an admin, but believe I'm entitled to give my opinion)- this is sometimes useful as a deterrent to people who want to edit war over units. I've quoted this sanction at least a couple of times in the last few years, so it has some use as a deterrent. Joseph2302 (talk) 13:00, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per RGloucester and Joseph2302.  — Amakuru (talk) 13:02, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose The sanction was brought in for good reason, after a lengthy discussion and consensus forming to adopt it. The fact that there have been no actions since it was implemented means that the community hasn't need to waste its time on bringing sanctions against editors who ignore them. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 14:16, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. The problem here is editors systematically flipping units in articles from one system to the other, in attempt to create a WP:FAITACCOMPLI and use that to change the MOS to favour their POV on measuring systems. For example, if you look at articles on English football players, you will see that most give height and weight data in imperial measures, except for those active in the Premier League in 2011. That is because a single editor spent most of 2011 doing nothing but flipping the units on these articles into their preferred metric system, with no local consensus and directly against the advice of the MOS. They then spent the next few years at WT:MOSNUM trying to change the MOS on the basis of that change.
  This sanction is largely working at eliminating the worst of the disruption here. That said, I took this opportunity to review some edits of some of the worst flippers historically and I will be logging another notification today. Because clearly it has not all gone away. Kahastok talk 16:22, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose I hang around some of the MOS pages and saw the astonishingly passionate unit battles fought in real time. The people involved know that the existence of this sanction means that any continuation of their life-long struggle will be quickly terminated. The lack of disruption is a feature of the sanction and removing it would help nothing. Johnuniq (talk) 03:42, 4 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose for all the reasons previous editors have set out. Edit-warring over units has sadly not gone away, but the sanctions keep it at a lower level. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:05, 4 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose Absolutely not, units on UK related articles has been some of the most ridiculous and protracted disputes on wikipedia see WP:LAME. We have a minority of users obsessed with using wikipedia as a platform to promote metrication in the UK. If you remove this, they will be back with a vengeance. WCM_email 10:53, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Professional wrestling

• Oppose removal of Wikipedia:General sanctions/Professional wrestling. Editing on pro wrestling often combines high emotional engagement with statistics, rankings, titles, detailed accounts of matches and kayfabe, in other words endless opportunities for exhaustive documentation and exhausting conflict. It regularly spilled into WP:ANI and WP:AN and still does (see immediately above) but not as often since sanctions were introduced. NebY (talk) 17:19, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per NebY. There have been editors who have at times not been able tell the difference between real world and kayfabe and on numerous occasions don't even add sources at all. Without seeing other areas, I suspect professional wrestling may be the worst for this. I have tried to normalise source provision and have experienced pushback (see immediately above) in that effort to improve the encyclopedia. Areas where social media play a role in the subject matter needs to be watched closely and persistent disruption requires a sanction regime. Addicted4517 (talk) 08:26, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per the two posts, above, and similar comments I made about UK units, also above. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 14:17, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose Too much SNCA brought to AN/ANI over wrestling; this serves as a good deterrent, be it used or not. Rgrds. --Bison X (talk) 21:24, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't issue a lot of blocks except for vandalism so I wanted to bring this situation to admins who can either agree with me or decide I made an error either in being too lenient or too tough. In 2017, Picander Peerage wrote a detailed article, De Beaumont-Spain baronets, that over the years, didn't make much of an impression or receive many edits from other editors except for Martinevans123.

Four years later, they showed up to put a speedy tag on it with the rationale "I made this page years ago to test you. You failed. It’s all fake". I deleted the article as it was a request for deletion by the page creator and blocked the editor from Article space for a year. This block won't have a great deal of an effect because they didn't make a lot of edits but I felt there should be some response for an admitted hoax but it didn't warrant an indefinite block. What do y'all think?

As an aside, this isn't the first mischief I've come across regarding Baronetcies in the U.K., I guess it's an area where scrutiny on Wikipedia is lighter than some other fields. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:14, 4 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I would just convert the block to indefinite as vandalism-only account and let the user convince the community they can edit in a non-vandal way.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:08, 4 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I must be so gullible. And I feel a bit disappointed that I was taken in by a fake. I'm intrigued as to what my edits were - I can barely remember what I edited four months ago, let alone four years ago. Martinevans123 (talk) 09:17, 4 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Martinevans123: All your edits in the article were marked as minor and they were essentially copyediting such as unification of the baronet title which (according to your words) was consistent with the usage elsewhere on Wikipedia.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:36, 4 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ah ok, thanks for telling me. That's partially reassuring; I have a vague recollection. I wish I had examined any sources more carefully. Martinevans123 (talk) 09:42, 4 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If it makes you feel any better, Martinevans123, I deleted a talk-page article a bit ago that was gnomed by no less than three experienced editors who apparently didn't notice it was a) the user's talk page, and b) completely inappropriate for Wikipedia anyway. Primefac (talk) 12:02, 4 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for telling me. I now feel only one third of a prat. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:33, 4 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• How can the community ever trust this editor again? Every edit of theirs would need to be checked going forward, not just for a certain length of time -- they'd just wait for that time to lapse -- but forever. This user is a burden & a time-sink. If it was more than one article, site ban; since it was just one breaching-experiment article, indeff, per Ymblanter. Rgrds. --Bison X (talk) 11:04, 4 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Hello, it’s me. Don’t stress yourselves out- it’s not that deep. I now surrender myself to your judgement- do unto me according to thy will.

Your humble servant, Sir Picander Peerage (talk), 11th Bt.

Would you care to apologise? Martinevans123 (talk) 19:33, 4 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

They're a troll, probably a sock, trying to make a point. Reminds me of a banned user from WPO who used to do stuff like this. Fun times. Rgrds. --Bison X (talk) 19:45, 4 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Blocked for NOTHERE. We're being trolled, I'm pretty confident in that. RickinBaltimore (talk) 20:35, 4 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I should have indeffed. I guess I was a little impressed with his honesty about what he had done years ago. If he hadn't admitted to writing a fake article, it would still exist on the project. Most trolls aren't so honest, they lie and make excuses, and they don't quote Hamlet on their talk page. I wish he had used his writing skills for good instead of trying to fool Wikipedia. But, you're right, the trust is gone. I'm glad I brought it to this noticeboard. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 06:34, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• I wonder if there's any connection with Fawcett baronets! Usedtobecool ☎️ 07:56, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Difficult to say, but Fawcett baronets was created four times over the years by socks which are all presumably the same person, and none of whom managed to survive long.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:02, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  What I wanted to say is that the profiles of these socks were similar to this user.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:03, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The article Flag of South Vietnam have been vandalized in these days, an user using IP locations from Vietnam pretended to insert some contents for a fake history in the article, this was happened and reverted for more than three times, so I proposed a semi protect to prevent vandalism. --Great Brightstar (talk) 02:29, 4 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

 Done--Ymblanter (talk) 08:10, 4 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The similar vandal was also happened in List of flags of Vietnam. --Great Brightstar (talk) 03:45, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

 Done Mjroots (talk) 04:25, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have been dealing with this LTA for over two years now, basically reverting, blocking, and revision-deleting. In the last year or so they developed the habit of insulting me in each of their edit summaries. The most recent history is at Alina Kabaeva. Protections would not help, since they would switch to another article out of a large pool and eventually find one which I do not have on my watchlist. We probably need a range block, but the LTA is editing using a major provider in Rostov-on-Don, a city with a million population. Could somebody please estimate whether a range block (for example, using recent edits at Alina Kabaeva and possibly the IP addresses I listed at the LTA page) would lead to a huge collateral damage, and if not, block the range long-term? I am not sure why I have to read this bullshit about me every day.--Ymblanter (talk) 22:01, 4 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ymblanter, looking at this as a non-admin, unfortunately this person is leaping entire /1 blocks every time they edit; it's impossible to craft a rangeblock which will cover even the Alina Kabaeva IP addresses. They also don't seem to return to the same range that often (closest I've found is 46.41.64.0/18 which they came back to after nearly a year, nor do they rangehop when they're editing; they spring up, make their edits, and disappear, reappearing the next day from a totally different range. I'll dig a bit more later, but unless someone else is more effective at rangeblock-fu than I am, it seems that the current tactic of revert & block on sight is going to be the most effective method of tackling this (as edit filters appear to have been ineffective previously). I'm really sorry that you're being targetted in this way. --Jack Frost (talk) 23:43, 4 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No obvious rangeblocks here. How about applying a six-month semiprotection each time an article such as Alina Kabaeva is damaged enough to require revision-deletion? That would at least cut down on his repeat visits to the same article. (There were eight such visits to Alina Kabaeva in 2021). The IPs listed on the LTA page have made no edits in 2021. EdJohnston (talk) 01:10, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to both of you, I see. Concerning protection, I guess if I protect Alina Kabaeva they would just move to another article which is not on my watchlist, and I lose track of them - meaning their contributions might stay in the article for a longer period.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:01, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Last month I blocked 135.84.164.0/22 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), an IP range belonging to essensys, a company which provides VPNs for coworking offices, as a colocation host/VPN/open proxy. I discovered after a report that a small sock farm was using it for undisclosed paid editing, and further checks showed that it was being used almost exclusively for spam. Subsequently there was an unblock request and discussion about whether this was an appropriate block on a newly-registered account's talk page, which I would like to bring here for further review. I have copied the relevant discussions on Wolverine1203's and SQL's talk pages below. – Joe (talk) 08:47, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Joe Roe: you blocked 135.84.164.0/22 but the range appears to include addresses that are not colocation for websites. Please investigate. ~Anachronist (talk) 02:39, 20 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hm. Based on the data available to me, the ip in question does not appear to me to be a colocation / web host / VPN provider.

Whois | Spur | IPCheck | /24 range resolution | BGP Prefix Search | website

@Joe Roe: is there data that I'm missing? ^{!ɘM γɿɘυϘ}⅃ϘƧ 06:29, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Please look at the CU and contributions for the range. I went for the closest-sounding template so colocation may not be the best word for it, but it belongs to a company that provides a VPN for coworking offices. The result is multiple users from multiple locations in the US sharing the same pool of obscured IPs that geolocate to New York, which I believe violates both the spirit and letter of our proxy policy. With the exception of occasional use by (IIRC) one established editor, it has almost exclusively been used for spam, UPE and sockpuppetry. – Joe (talk) 13:57, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Joe Roe: Fair enough. At first glance it didn't look very webhost-ey. TY for the explanation. ^{!ɘM γɿɘυϘ}⅃ϘƧ 07:52, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

So I would argue that that's not really an "open proxy" - it obscures the user's location, sure, but is only available to a fairly restricted set of people. Not saying that there aren't problems on that range (obviously, I don't know which one, just going off of Joe's comment above) but I'm not sure that our proxy policy justifies preemptively blocking that. As a comparison, I'm pretty sure SubjectiveNotability's contribs (often made from my work computer) show up in a different state than where I'm actually editing from, since I think the company routes most traffic through one of the other offices. Doesn't mean anyone is trying to obfuscate anything. GeneralNotability (talk) 19:43, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Joe Roe, I'm inclined to treat this as a corporate ISP rather than a colo and unblock - while it is technically masking the user's location, I don't think it is going to be a source of abuse. Heck, the internet traffic from my office computer comes out in a different state from where I sit, but that doesn't mean my company is trying to hide my location. Is that okay with you? GeneralNotability (talk) 14:35, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. We have three separate administrators questioning this block, and it seems that the stated reason for the block in the block log isn't sufficient for blocking this range, in this case. Was there abuse coming from it? If so, can the blocked range be narrowed down? ~Anachronist (talk) 15:16, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Anachronist: On further discussion (on his talk page, since it seemed inappropriate to continue this on a new users' talk page, but here we are!), SQL dropped his objection, and with respect, neither you or GeneralNotability are checkusers, so you don't have the full picture. Obviously there was abuse coming from the range – why else would I block it? I am a little put out that both of you have assumed that I'm in the habit of making rangeblocks for no reason. – Joe (talk)

@Joe Roe: I apologize that my comment wasn't clear, probably because I wrote it hurriedly. I didn't mean to question whether there was abuse at all, but whether the abuse that was found was necessary to block that range, and whether a smaller range could be blocked to cover the abusive IP addresses to eliminate the collateral damage that started this discussion. ~Anachronist (talk) 13:21, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Anachronist, SQL, and GeneralNotability: Rather than clog up Wolverine1203's talk page further, I have copied this to AN. – Joe (talk) 08:47, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Joe Roe, my apologies. I do know that you're a CU and might be able to see things I can't, but since colos are usually block-on-sight, I didn't realize there was more to this block; I thought this was just incorrect identification of a colo. If there's CU data involved here, objection withdrawn. GeneralNotability (talk) 13:40, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In my opinion, the days of talking about colos and obscuring origins are long over. So, I've taken a look at the CU. I'm still digesting the information and I'm not going to get into whether the range should have some block, but I would definitely change the block reason. Reading the discussion above and using my knowledge of the available templates, I would suggest (if you're going to block it) CU-blocking the range, or range-blocking the range, specifically adding the real reason to the template, and offering IPBE to any collateral. I suspect there's a small amount of sharing and rotation in the range, and I'm still interpreting the other edits (many of which non-CUs can see), however, I do note that there seems to be approximately only two real problem IPs. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 09:36, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Could we get a team of uninvolved admins to close WT:MOSBIO#RfC on non-notable pre-transition names of deceased trans people, which is set to expire in a few days. Thanks. Blueboar (talk) 14:38, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I can do this at a scale of a week after the expiration date. Will welcome co-closers.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:43, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'd be happy to help. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:14, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm likely less happy to help than Roy, as I've got my own rather large discussion to ponder, but can sub in in a pinch and/or if absolutely necessary. Primefac (talk) 16:33, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I actually had w-pinged myself to keep checking in there, but it got more and more daunting. I've never co-closed before, but if y'all are willing to give me any necessary pointers, happy to help. —valereee (talk) 16:57, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I've only done one of these, but what we did was each of us went off on our own for a day or two to digest the material, then we got back together and compared notes via email. I guess we were lucky in that we were all more or less on the same page and it didn't take long for us to converge. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:05, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have done several in the past. The first thing we need is to establish contact and create an ad-hoc mail thread.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:09, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Concerning the topic-in-question. I don't envy the task of those who're going to tackle it. GoodDay (talk) 20:51, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Greetings. There is an error message in several pages (it could be in many or all of them) in the bio infobox, regarding the divorce date. Instead of the date, the message appears. Checked Gary Collins, Leonard Nimoy, David Carradine, Elizabeth Taylor. The only place I found mentions of this error are Fandom forums; one says the administrators must be notified: <https://community.fandom.com/f/p/1951276959006722176>
The other presents a solution: <https://community.fandom.com/f/p/2627649423802370196>
Which I don't know whether it works; that's for the ones who really understand coding. Good luck. Maykiwi (talk) 04:02, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It is possible that the problem is that the template {{Wdib|P570|fwd=ALL|maxvals=1|noicon=true|pd=yes}} is returning dates like 23' 'March' '2011. That is being fed into the #time parserfunction to extract the year, which is throwing "error: invalid time" (inside some HTML markup), and that in turn is being fed to #ifexpr. I don't know why {{Wdib}} is doing this, or if that is even unusual. I don't see any change to the template or the module backing it recently. ST47 (talk) 04:37, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have no idea what caused the issue, but this fixed it. ST47 (talk) 04:56, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thank goodness, I wasn't the only editor coming across this problem, now fixed. GoodDay (talk) 08:44, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@ST47: Greetings. Thanks for your efforts. Regarding the cause of the error message, it might be interesting to take a look at this video from the YouTube science divulgation channel Veritasium, about ionized particles that by changing single bits in the memory of a computer or server can cause strange behaviors in them.<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaZ_RSt0KP8> It could be a thing to consider regarding the physical integrity of Wikipedia. Maykiwi (talk) 23:20, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Maykiwi: You may rest assured that the issue here wasn't a rogue cosmic ray, but rather a rogue Template Editor on Commons, who made a change to some data file on which we rely, failed to test it, and restored a broken version even after being notified that it had caused issues on multiple wikis. Their privileges have been revoked, though I still question the wisdom of such a reliance on a Commons to store a data file that really should never need to be changed. ST47 (talk) 23:31, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Also discussed at Template_talk:Marriage#Malfunction_inside_of_infobox? and Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Date_formatting_and_WikidataIB. ST47 (talk) 23:33, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Arbitration Committee is seeking to appoint additional editors to the Checkuser and Oversight teams. The arbitrators overseeing this will be Bradv and KrakatoaKatie. The usernames of all applicants will be shared with the Functionaries team, and they will assist in the vetting process. This year's timeline is as follows:

• 6 September to 18 September: Candidates may self-nominate by contacting the Arbitration Committee at arbcom-en-c@wikimedia.org.
• 19 September to 23 September: The Arbitration Committee and Functionaries will vet the candidates.
• 24 September to 26 September: The committee will notify candidates going forward for community consultation and create the candidate subpages containing the submitted nomination statements.
• 27 September to 6 October: Nomination statements will be published and the candidates are invited to answer questions publicly. The community is invited and encouraged to participate.
• By 17 October: Appointments will be announced.

For the Arbitration Committee, Katie^talk 11:38, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard § 2021 CheckUser and Oversight appointments: announcement

Moved to ANI, unarchived to wrong place. SpinningSpark 07:06, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Giving this announcement wider visibility. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:31, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

An article accuses a (presumably) living person in a criminal act, which is basically its only content. The person used to be a parliament member. As far as I understand, the case has never been brought to the court (at least not in relation to the subject of the article). The article was created in 2011, the creator last edited Wikipedia six years ago. There are five references to confirm this; four are dead and unrecoverable; one has been arxived, but only one part out of three. It is in Albanian and contains indeed the statement about the criminal act, but the status is unclear, it might be someone's private opinion. What do we do? Delete it as an attack page? AfD? --Ymblanter (talk) 18:44, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Ymblanter: I will always advocate for removing such content if given the opportunity. AFAIK, we do not cover accusations unless there is a "due weight" impact verifiable, ie- lost job because of an accusation, a major policy change made in real life due to the accusation, etc. AFAIK, the rule of thumb is to await a conviction to present such in Wikipedia's name. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 18:52, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Remove the negative bits until we have better sourcing. Though this at least seems to confirm he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment: "Ra në rrjetën e OFL/ Kush është 'i tmerrshmi' Met Bozi, që dha urdhër të digjeshin 6 gardistë" [Fell into the net of OFL / Who is the 'terrible' Met Bozi, who gave the order to burn 6 guards]. Shqip (in Albanian). 18 August 2020. Retrieved 7 September 2021. But it does not give a detailed description of his life. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 01:05, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

And this: (translation) "... Met Bozi is known as one of the persons involved in the Cërrik massacre where 6 guards were killed and 16 others were injured. The gruesome event took place in May 1997 while according to witnesses who survived the massacre, Bozi had ordered the guards to be burned alive. Bozi was sentenced to life in prison in 2011."[30]. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 01:21, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Deepfriedokra and Malcolmxl5. I will look at this source and see whether anything can be reliably confirmed.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:33, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• I've deleted the article per G10. Of the five sources that "sourced" the allegations against him, four are no longer available online, and the fifth simply describes his defence to the accusations. The article may well be completely correct, but this isn't good enough for a BLP, sorry. Black Kite (talk) 22:04, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Thanks, this solves the problem (and saves some of my time) in the short run.--Ymblanter (talk) 05:45, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

He moved pages without discussion or whatever and creates useless redirects. Can a admin look on this? Shadow4dark (talk) 21:16, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alerted to the WP:KURDS DS and warned: User_talk:Afroditeiraq#Discretionary_sanctions_alert_and_warning. El_C 02:24, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

After Zefr was reported for violating WP:3RR at Ginkgo biloba (which seems to be a pattern), he canvassed four other editors to join the content dispute[31][32][33][34], some of which have helped him edit war participated in similar disputes in the past.[35][36] I asked them to recuse themselves from a straw poll, but they are participating anyway and will likely determine the outcome. I don't believe that this is how Wikipedia is supposed to work, and I would like to ask that an uninvolved admin take a look at this situation and either take some corrective action or give me advice on how to handle it. Also, I fully expect that Zefr will defend his actions here by saying that he was just enforcing WP:MEDRS, which is a gross mischaracterization of the situation (and not a valid excuse for vote stacking and violating 3RR anyway). Nosferattus (talk) 22:31, 6 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Those are fine editors to "canvass," though, each and every one of em... @Roxy the dog, Psychologist Guy, Girth Summit, and Alexbrn: suck up pings. El_C 00:48, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

But is there a clause excusing canvassing if you like the editors, unwritten or otherwise? Because if so, I think anyone can see that’s a recipe for disaster. And not a good look at the very least. petrarchan47คุก 01:16, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No, there is no such exemption. El_C 02:02, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There’s a big difference between “Some new editor is trying to advance a nutty proposition that Novaya Zemlya is an independent nation, and I want others in this topic area to help me oppose it” (which this is not) and “Hey, this topic is under discussion; just wanted you to know” (which this is).

Zefr is an unimpeachably conscientious WP:NPOV editor in this topic area.

Quite a lot of our Northern Hemisphere ‘’’’’volunteer’’’ editors’’ are offline for big chunks of late August and early September, given national holidays and school resumption and the like. We may not be looking at Wikipedia even if we’re spinsters-with-cats who are just focusing on home plumbing improvements and hiding our electronics in our garages. But we probably check email, and a message like Zefr’s appropriately provides a NEUTRAL alert that maybe we might like to look in on a discussion of interest, which discussion might be arguably subject to time limits that might be over before we’re home from the beach. Julietdeltalima (talk) 02:01, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

How dare you besmirch the fine nation of Novaya Zemlya. It's just a little glowy, it's still good, it's still good. El_C 02:07, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nova Zembla patriots love you. - Julietdeltalima (talk) 16:51, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's still canvassing if you're sending messages only to editors who you think will agree with your position. Looking the other way because it will lead to the "right" outcome is a pretty slippery slope. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 02:08, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. A neutral notice at a relevant wikiproject should serve as notification. Pinging only like-minded users, even if one contend it being a FRINGE matter is, indeed, a slippery slope. El_C 02:16, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, it's circumventing the process and might make others feel like they would need to or are supposed do the same thing (on the opposing side) and Wikipedia could turn into something we don't want. Pyrrho the Skeptic (talk) 02:42, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I hear all of you! I just hate, as a 50-year-old person with a new highly time-demanding job, that I end up not knowing that some article in which I was interested was up for AFD or whatever—just because sometimes I'm doing a stressful business-management thing all day Monday to Friday with about four minutes merely to go through my watchlist for presumptive schoolchild vandalism while I'm shoving a sandwich into my face, and then can't log into WP at night because the iOS app is so jacked up, and it turns out some AFD got closed as "delete" when I haven't even had time to dig in and notice it, because I'm a volunteer and my very demanding job has to come first.

Gosh, but some of us need to be able for somebody to let us know about these things! It's really difficult for me to spend the time any more to noodle about and find, e.g., AFDs about articles in which I'm interested in the course of life without somebody sending up a signal.

Do I need to figure out, somehow, whether and how to do an RFC about this? This is a volunteer project. I'd kind of like to think I'm a mature and helpful volunteer. It's very difficult these days for me to know about stuff like RFDs and RFCs unless somebody who's seen my handle in the edit history sends me a message—re: which I get an email! e.g. "El C sent you a message on Wikipedia". I don't have as much time as was once the case to loll about reading WP:RFD and the like.

And, again, if I'm miscoding this re: indents, etc., please refactor. I'm sitting in the restroom doing this on my phone. That's how I engage in my volunteer work for WP, by and large. The challenging mechanisms of the iOS app regarding WP administrative functions are more than I have time to winkle out. I am here to do what I think I'm good at doing: copyediting and proofreading especially in my greatly appreciated presumed designation by User:EEng as part of the "hyphen police", which is the second-nicest compliment I've been paid in the past 2 years, right after "I can't BELIEVE you figured out how to accessorize masks!").

I get that canvassing is a huge problem. But there's got to be a distinction between excluding figurative Nova Zembla separationists and just sending a neutral talk-page message of "hey, I know you're busy: you've been in the edit history of this article and there's an AFD that you might not see in time."

I'm just sayin'. You want Wikipedia to be inclusive? VOLUNTEERS ought to know that a thing they're interested in is up for discussion! I get that there are a lot of abuses, but there's got to be a middle ground to accommodate those of us who are extremely grateful for WP:NODEADLINE.

Thanks for hearing me out. I am here when I can be here because I think this is a joyous project. I just, you know, can't always be here. This "personal relief break" has taken about 0.4 of an hour longer than I can justify, but I thought this point needed making. Thanks for letting me share. - Julietdeltalima (talk) 16:51, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't accept that there was anything improper in my responding as I did. This is Zefr's message to me on my talk page. That was the only edit they have ever made to my talk, and I have never edited theirs: I'm not aware of them having any particular reason to think of me as anything other than an uninvolved admin. I was not aware they had messaged anybody else, and viewed their post as a simple request that an admin take a look at a content dispute which was becoming unhealthily personal on one side. Here is my response, which was met by a remarkable level of ABF on the article's talk page, and on my own talk page.

Here's my take on it: Zefr should have used a Wikiproject talk page notice instead of reaching out to individuals. Zefr has also been edit warring on the article, which they should not do even when they are correct on the content/sourcing matter. Nosferratus has also been edit warring, has been inappropriately personalising a content dispute (which I do not see Zefr doing anywhere on that talk page), and has been far to willing to assume bad faith on the part of others. Girth Summit _(blether) 06:03, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Girth Summit: It is trivial to prove that these statements are false. You have edited Zefr's talk page, and interacted with Zefr substantially in the past, mainly in disputes similar to this one. I've been personalizing the dispute because people keep lying and breaking the rules. As an administrator, I would think you would understand that. Nosferattus (talk) 15:25, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Is it the number of editors that Zefr asked that is the probem? I have certainly asked admins from whom I have received help or advice in the past to look at a dispute in which I was involved. Is that wrong? Any dispassionate examination of this dispute would, I believe, reach the same conclusion that Girth Summit has above concerning the behaviour of Nosferratus and Zefr. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:32, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Peter coxhead: No, it's not the number of editors, it's who Zefr invited. All four of the editors that were invited have interacted substantially with Zefr in the past including on his talk page and have participated in similar disputes in the past.
    • Evidence that the canvassed editors were chosen for their POV:
    • Psychologist Guy: They have had numerous discussions on each other's talk pages, often about disputes similar to this one: [37][38]. They have edited 121 of the same pages.[39]
    • Roxy the dog: Here is Zefr inviting Roxy to join a dispute at Paul Stamets: [40]. Here's Zefr and Roxy reverting the same edits at Oil pulling: [41]. They have edited 196 of the same pages.[42]
    • Girth Summit: Despite Girth's false assurances above, he has had substantial interactions with Zefr including a discussion on Zefr's talk page about a very similar situation to this (removing material related to alternative medicine due to sourcing concerns): [43]. Here is Girth and Zefr helping each other edit war reverting the same content at Cranberry juice: [44]. Here is Girth supporting Zefr's opinion at Herbal medicine: [45]. Here is Girth supporting Zefr's opinion at Traditional Chinese medicine: [46]. Here is Girth and Zefr warning the same user within seconds of each other: [47]. Here is them again warning the same user within seconds of each other: [48]. They have edited 246 of the same pages[49]
    • Alexbrn: Here's Zefr inviting Alexbrn to join a dispute at Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard: [50]. Here's Zefr inviting Alexbrn to join a dispute at Honey: [51]. Here's Zefr inviting Alexbrn to join two other disputes at the same time: [52]. Here is Alexbrn giving Zefr a barnstar for deleting dodgy medical claims: [53]. They have edited 695 of the same pages![54]
  • This canvassing behavior has been going on for years. The claims that these were just innocent invitations of 3rd party neutral editors is absurd and disingenuous. Sadly, I doubt anything will change as the enforcement of rules on Wikipedia seems to be strongly dependent on seniority and who you know rather than treating editors equally and fairly. Nosferattus (talk) 15:10, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    Nosferattus, I encourage you to strike your comments about "helping each other edit war". You have a solid point about Zefr's canvassing, but you are diluting it with aspersions alleging tag-teaming (though not named so explicitly). Firefangledfeathers (talk) 15:20, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    I have struck the comment. Thank you for the feedback. Nosferattus (talk) 15:27, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    Appreciated! You have a similar comment in your original post. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 15:32, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    Looks disingenuous to me, for example the not-so-subtle twisting of my barnstar to Zefr for deleting dodgy medical claims, into being for deleting plain "medical claims". This should be corrected. I'm on holiday at the moment so can't really look at this, but even from my distant hotel balcony, my spidey-sense is tingling something rotten about this whole complaint (though, granted, Zefr would do better simply to get more eyes by posting to noticeboards). Alexbrn (talk) 16:16, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    @Alexbrn: I added the word "dodgy" as if that made any difference. My point is that you and Zefr know each other and support each other (usually for very admirable reasons like keeping herbal quackery off of Wikipedia). That in and of itself is fine. What isn't OK is Zefr canvassing his friends to win an edit war after violating 3RR. Does that seem reasonable to you? Nosferattus (talk) 17:01, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    The two examples of Zefr invitking Alexbrn to join a dispute are the same link from 2016 (a neutrally-worded statement about a noticeboard discussion). XOR'easter (talk) 20:49, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    @XOR'easter: Thanks for pointing that out. I've fixed the link and added another one as well. Nosferattus (talk) 21:53, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    Looking at the diffs presented above, it seems that I did indeed leave two notes on Zefr's talk page in 2018. I actually checked the Editor Interaction Analyzer tool before posting the above, just to see whether we had actually communicated in the past - for whatever reason those edits didn't show up. I'll just have to ask people to believe that I'd forgotten about them.

    Cranberry juice has been on my watchlist since I made this edit in 2018; here is my first edit to Herbal medicine; here is my first to Traditional Chinese medicine. None of these edits were in any way related to anything Zefr was doing on those pages, but it means that the articles were put onto my watchlist. I do indeed occasionally revert dubious changes to articles on my watchlist, and I might occasionally comment on their talk pages. Zefr has made nearly 50,000 edits to this project, and I've made closer to 60,000: it would be remarkable if there were not some overlap. That is not evidence of collusion, or even that we are particularly aware of one another. All I can say about Zefr is that I've seen their name around a few times, I know that they are an experienced editor - and that's about it. I've no idea what they think of me.

    Now look at what Nosferratus writes: ...these statements are false..., ...Girth's false assurances..., ...people keep lying..., The claims that these were just innocent invitations of 3rd party neutral editors is absurd and disingenuous. - this is exactly the kind of ABF, hostile attitude I am talking about. People should not have to tolerate attacks on their integrity or their motivations. Girth Summit _(blether) 16:22, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    Oh, and as for having edited 246 of the same pages - you are including in that count project pages such as this one, user talk pages, and many articles that we edited months or years apart from each other. If you restrict it to article space, where we have edited within a week of each other, the count is 34, out of the 22,529 pages currently on my watchlist. Girth Summit _(blether) 16:29, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    So pointing out that demonstrably false statements are false is being "hostile"? That's very Orwellian. Nosferattus (talk) 17:04, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    Nosferattus, yes, I view the phrase 'false assurances' as hostile. More importantly though, I view accusations of lying and being disingenuous as direct attacks on my integrity as an honest person who is acting in good faith. You have worded those complaints in such a way as to avoid naming those who you claim have lied - would you care to be specific? Girth Summit _(blether) 17:14, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    You are welcome to demonstrate that you are acting in good faith by recusing yourself from the straw poll that you were canvassed to. Nosferattus (talk) 17:50, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You are welcome to withdraw the personal attack on me. -Roxy the grumpy dog. wooF 17:55, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I may have misinterpreted that comment you left on Zefr's talk page, so I'm going to delete it from the evidence to be on the safe side. Nosferattus (talk) 18:52, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• • I don't need to demonstrate that which should be patently obvious to any impartial observer. I am still waiting for you to be explicit about who you are accusing of lying, and of being disingenuous. If you aren't willing to stand by that verbiage, you should strike it. Girth Summit _(blether) 20:08, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    I'll let the admins come to their own conclusions based on the evidence. Nosferattus (talk) 22:04, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    Nosferattus, how can anyone come to any conclusions if you refuse to be clear about the accusations and evidence? Who do you think has lied? Who do you think has been disingenuous? Be specific and provide evidence, or withdraw your accusation.

    Let me be clear about the gravity of your accusation. I have given thousands of hours of my time to this project. Reverting vandals, deleting spam, blocking LTAs who abuse our contributors,, writing content that has been reviewed by my colleagues as meeting FA standards - I try to contribute to the project to the best of my abilities, and I always act in good faith towards that end. None of that gives me any special rights to say what a particular article should say, but I think I have a pretty good understanding of our content policies as a result of it all.

    You have impugned my motives as an editor. You have accused me of editing in bad faith. You have made vague accusations about lying, which I think refer to me. I am deeply offended by your comments here, and on my talk page. I ask that you make it very clear exactly who you are accusing of what. Thank you Girth Summit _(blether) 22:25, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    Fine. I accept that you don't remember any of your previous interactions with Zefr and that your statement that you had never posted to Zefr's talk page was just an error. This complaint is about Zefr, after all, not you. Nosferattus (talk) 23:32, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    Nosferattus, who, then, is the liar? Who has been disingenuous? You can't throw accusations like that around as if they don't matter. Be specific, or withdraw them by striking them - they are deeply offensive Girth Summit _(blether) 23:45, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    I struck through those comments. And for the record, the only person who has been specifically accused of being disingenuous here is me, but I doubt anyone cares about that. After all, the rules of Wikipedia are only enforced for the benefit of long-standing editors. Nosferattus (talk) 00:07, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    Nosferattus, I haven't seen anyone accuse you of being disingenuous - I may have missed that though can you provide a diff? I would not support anyone saying that about you - for all I have said that I think you are too quick to assume bad faith, I do not think you are a liar.

    Our sourcing rules are there for the benefit of our content, not our contributors. We can disagree on content all day long, but if you impugne someone's motives you are going to a very different level Girth Summit _(blether) 00:16, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    [55] Nosferattus (talk) 00:19, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    Nosferattus, fair enough, I'd missed that. I'll leave it to Alexbrn to expand on that, I have no comment to make on your motives. I just hope that you now understand how offensive it is to have someone call you a liar (or make vague insinuations to that effect). Girth Summit _(blether) 00:28, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(←) I'm seeing a WP:BOOMERANG headed Nosferattus' way for assuming bad faith. Miniapolis 22:55, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Please remember that many editors have already commented on this thread that Nosferattus is correct that Zefr should not be reaching out to individual, like-minded users, and should instead be using the proper channels. I think Nosferattus has every right to bring up past behavior to make the case to admins. How else can one bring attention to this kind of behavior, which we can all agree is not good? Pyrrho the Skeptic (talk) 00:02, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What past behaviour are you talking about here? Be specific about what you think has been problematic. I'm not saying that I, or anyone else, is above reproach, but it is unaccepable for you and N to keep making vague statements that concern other editors' conduct. If you are talking about me, I want to know that; I'm sure that goes for everyone else named in this thread Girth Summit _(blether) 00:10, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for the confusion. I am not talking about your behavior at all. I am referring to the canvassing by Zefr and the comment just made by Miniapolis, and hoping to refocus the issue on what the complaint is. There is nothing vague about the canvassing accusations (against Zefr, not you) that were documented by Nosferratus. Pyrrho the Skeptic (talk) 00:17, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Seems like blatant canvassing to me without even considering past interactions at all. There doesn't appear to be some context here where the people notified were all of those involved in a previous discussion on the same topic. Instead, this seems to be the notifying specifically of the people who would support the notifiers' position. Even if the notification is a neutral template, that is still canvassing. Such notifications are meant to go on Wikiprojects, not specific editor's pages. Silverseren^C 18:43, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Let's set the record straight. WP:APPNOTE, the process followed to invite the review of a medical edit on Gingko biloba by three experienced medical editors and a neutral general admin. The four editors have their own interests and extensive editing experience which my invitation alone would not influence, i.e., not 'vote stacking'. All have had little or no activity on the gingko article, but have edited other herbal articles, having relevant background. I could have chosen from dozens of medical editors who previously coedited herbal articles with me over the past 16 years, but for such a conspicuously incorrect, extraordinary, and unsourced claim here, four reliable reviewers were sufficient. APPNOTE says "Notifications must be polite, neutrally worded with a neutral title, clear in presentation, and brief", all followed with the same message to each editor. I did not post the dispute on WT:MED because the proposed information was minor, unlikely to be of general interest, and obvious misinformation. Note that N did not start a discussion on WT:MED, where such a meritless edit would receive no favorable reception. On the gingko talk page, N initiated a straw poll which has been decisively defeated by consensus. N and supporter Pyrrho the Skeptic (P) are novice medical editors with only a few dozen medical edits combined, most of which have been reverted (many by me) due to low-quality content and absence of good sourcing. There is an air of vengeance-seeking by N in this discussion and many other recent talk page edits. On medical topics, N and P appear to be outside of their competence, WP:CIR - perhaps they would enjoy Wikipedia participation more without such frenetic arguing by staying within their knowledge base. Zefr (talk) 20:57, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for taking the time to explain that. Please note that Votestacking is defined as selectively notifying editors who have or are thought to have a predetermined point of view or opinion. Medical editing experience aside, I think it can be argued convincingly that you are counting on these particular editors to weigh in on one particular side of a topic. Pyrrho the Skeptic (talk) 21:10, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In addition to kind of admitting to canvassing, your post came across as extremely arrogant and BITEy. Next time, I think it's better if you post a neutral notification on relevant wikiproject pages instead of contacting selected editors who you know will see the disputed content as obvious misinformation. Levivich 21:41, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Didn't need to persuade anyone - review the discussion and poll at the Gingko biloba talk page or go to WT:MED to start a discussion. Better to side with experience and honesty. N and P apparently have a desire for controversy to engage in smearing and disguise the plain fact that both were in error arguing persistently for a baseless medical claim, then seeking some kind of retribution here. Own it and WP:DEADHORSE. Done. Zefr (talk) 23:01, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Zefr, just don't invite individual editors to ongoing disputes, especially like-minded ones, as that is text book canvassing. Use neutral notifications at relevant wikiprojects, okay? Because repetition of this behaviour would be a cause for sanctions. Thank you. El_C 11:25, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

N and P apparently have a desire for controversy to engage in smearing and disguise... is a clear personal attack. Levivich 15:43, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There's a lot to be desired, in general, with your conduct thus far here, Zefr. You're kind of at the brink, I'm sorry to say. A calm perspective is needed for you to correct your approach (separate from the contested content, as counterintuitive as that may seem). The time to pivot is now. No sense in crashing and burning when a number of different remedies exist when at an impasse. El_C 17:59, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'd definitely agree that calmness is to be encouraged, but I'm disappointed that editors such as ElC and Levicich, for whom I have enormous respect, have no comment to make on the repeated and sustained personal attacks upon myself, here, on the article talk page, and on my own talk page. I'm not asking for sanctions - they have eventually been withdrawn, at least partially - but to paint Zefr as the only party in the wrong here is very hard for me to understand. Girth Summit _(blether) 00:26, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Girth Summit: No one is painting Zefr as the only party in the wrong here. Commenting on one party's conduct isn't blessing everyone else's. If we had to comment on everyone's conduct imagine how long the comments would be :-) But hasn't Nosf. stricken everything that they need to strike? I'll admit I haven't looked at any page except this thread, so if there's stuff on your talk page or the article talk page I haven't seen it. But I see multiple editors in this thread who have made either false statements or personal attacks (either way, should be struck). Nosf. is one of them, but Nosf. is the only editor who has actually struck anything. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Nosf's transgressions were already dealt with (by you, directly, here in this thread, and I agree with how you dealt with them and everything you've said about them), whereas Zefr's PA I commented on (which is not the only PA in this thread, by far) occurred after Nosf's transgressions were dealt with. As I understand it, Nosf's conduct is not ongoing (which is why I didn't comment on it), whereas Zefr's is (which is why I commented). Levivich 00:49, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

GS, I'm sorry, but you're doing Zefr (and yourself) a disservice here with such a dividing line. If you felt that the strikethroughs and retractions weren't enough, you should have said something other than fair enough, etc., because to me it looked like that part of it was resolved. Whereas Zefr seems entirely unrepentant about their canvassing, a misstep which, for all we know, they may well do again, and next time, they will definitely be sanctioned for. And if you even give them the hint that they could get away with it next time, you're inadvertently leading them off of a proverbial cliff, I'm sorry to say (truly). El_C 06:06, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What I'm trying to say is that the process gets tainted when only like-minded editors are contacted about a dispute, even if one is right on the science/content (excepting bonkers fringe positions, obviously). In this case, editors who are likely to support views held by medical orthodoxy (hey, I count myself among them) were notified to this dispute. That's a problem because it brings the canvassed side (for convenience, orthodoxy) under a cloud in the dispute, even when the strength of their argument/sources is likely to win the day.

Now, if members of the adventurist (for convenience) side are engaging in inappropriate advocacy elsewhere or anything else problematic is happening wrt them, rather than addressing that through a passing comment, it needs to be outlined through the format of a separate report (in this case, a subsection will do), with evidence and summaries that can be easily parsed. And expressed in a detached tone.

The sense I got is that, like Zefr, Nosferattus kneecapped themselves with various aspersions about some of the canvassed editors (as mentioned in my opening, all of whom I, myself, hold in high regard). It was dumb. It brought discord for naught. It muddied the waters and made this thread much more impenetrable and unfocused. But they have apologized and retracted. Enough? Not sure. The whole thing is a bit long, so maybe I misread. But what is clear is that the canvassing issue remains, because Zefr does not acknowledge it as being so (i.e. risk of repetition). And that's where we are now. Fair assessment? El_C 08:29, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The personal attack N made on me is still extant in this thread. I also note that the article concerned has been on my watchlist for years and I was already at the article when Z's note appeared, having edited it in the past. I'd like to thank Z for defending the project from the inexperienced editors we have seen at Ginko and elsewhere, and perhaps ask him to be a little more circumspect in his communication to fellow editors. Remember that we have some of the strangest policies on teh Internetz, and intimating, accurately, that a page is under threat from people who would degrade the project, is frowned upon FGS. -Roxy the sceptical dog. wooF 09:03, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Why are editors being referred to by capital letters in this thread? It's very odd and confusing. Also, what's FGS? El_C 10:25, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, for God's sake, right. G is for God — even God isn't immune from this, it seems... El_C 10:27, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Y'all can we just TBAN Zefr from contacting individuals to polls and stop the petty bickering? It has been asserted that Zefr has also done this in the past, and Zefr's explanation of why he did not put a note at WT:MED rather than contact specific individuals does not seem to fly, after the fact. He has also not stated that he will no longer do this (contacting individuals to polls). Therefore a TBAN, which he can appeal in six months, should resolve the issue. NB: The TBAN and my proposal do not reflect in any way on the quality of Zefr's wiki participation or his motives in contacting specific people. Softlavender (talk) 10:56, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• • Can we not just do that and close the thread? It's more complicated than that. There's been canvassing, but there's also been behaviour by others, and on the content dispute I do rather think Zefr had it right. Gingko biloba isn't a therapy.—S Marshall T/C 12:33, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    WP:CANVASS is the classic example of what paves the road to hell. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 13:56, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Following a request to the committee, the Oversight permissions of Callanecc are restored.

Katie^talk 13:09, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard § Changes to functionary team

I have notified CY of this thread. Looking into this a bit, I see CY's revert of a talk page post at Special:Diff/1040946408 mentioned WP:BE in the edit summary. If this is BE, the IP should be blocked. If it's not BE, then the IP's talk page posts shouldn't be reverted. We probably need some admin and maybe CU attention here. Levivich 17:54, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I will appreciate if an admin can block this IP. The earlier investigation identified the IP as a blocked user but as their edits were concentrated on a single article (and the user's history of IP-hopping on mobile to evade), that article was page protected rather than play whack-a-mole. Cambial foliage❧ 18:14, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Following the successful closure of the recent RfC to permit preemptive use of ECP on templates, I'm here as promised to discuss how we want to change the thresholds for User:MusikBot II/TemplateProtector, which automatically protects highly transcluded templates based on the configuration.

Skimming over the RfC, it seems most people are content with leaving the template protection threshold at 5,000 transclusions. Meanwhile a 2018 RfC showed consensus to permanently semi-protect templates with 200-250 transclusions. With that in mind, I propose this configuration:

• autoconfirmed – 250 transclusions
• extendedconfirmed – 2,500 transclusions
• templateeditor – 5,000 transclusions

So the only changes are to lower autoconfirmed to 250 from 500, and add in ECP at 2,500. I'm happy to keep at autoconfirmed at 500 if we want, but I do think we should take advantage of ECP now that policy allows it. Thoughts? — MusikAnimal ^talk 18:20, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• The most important aspects from my point of view: Not increasing any existing limit, adding ECP somewhere between the existing limits, and happily lowering any limit. The proposal meets my criteria. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 18:32, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• I am fine with these numbers--Ymblanter (talk) 18:48, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• What my learned colleagues said. El_C 21:14, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 21:18, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]