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Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#RfC closure review request at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 433#Closing (archived) RfC: Mondoweiss

(Initiated 19 days ago on 16 April 2024) - already the oldest thread on the page, and at the time of this comment, there has only been one comment in the past nine days. starship.paint (RUN) 03:15, 4 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Place new administrative discussions above this line using a level 3 heading

Talk:Indo-Pakistani_war_of_1947–1948#RfC_on_what_result_is_to_be_entered_against_the_result_parameter_of_the_infobox

(Initiated 135 days ago on 22 December 2023) No new comments for over 45 days. Ratnahastin (talk) 07:24, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Awdal#RFC - Habr Awal/Isaaq clan

(Initiated 132 days ago on 24 December 2023) ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 21:17, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:International Churches of Christ#RfC on Singapore court case

(Initiated 115 days ago on 10 January 2024) RfC template expired on the 10th of February 2024. TarnishedPath^talk 13:15, 2 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

RfC: Tasnim News Agency

(Initiated 82 days ago on 12 February 2024)

Closure request for this WP:RSN RfC initiated on February 12, with the last !vote occurring on March 18. It was bot-archived without closure on March 26 due to lack of recent activity. - Amigao (talk) 02:33, 1 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk: Interstate 90#RFC: Infobox junctions

(Initiated 65 days ago on 29 February 2024) Discussion is about to expire and will need closure. RoadFan294857 (talk) 15:37, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:2024 United States presidential election#RFC: What should the criteria of inclusion be for the infobox? (Question 1)

(Initiated 52 days ago on 14 March 2024) It's been about two weeks, since the RFC tag expired. GoodDay (talk) 14:07, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

RfC: Change INFOBOXUSE to recommend the use of infoboxes?

(Initiated 50 days ago on 15 March 2024) Ready to be closed. Charcoal feather (talk) 17:02, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Russo-Ukrainian War#RFC on Listing of Belarus

(Initiated 50 days ago on 16 March 2024) Hello, this RFC was started on 16 March 2024 and as of now was active for more than a month (nearly 1,5 month to be exact). I think a month is enough for every interested user to express their opinion and to vote at RFC and the last vote at this RFC was made by user Mellk on 15 April 2024 (nearly two weeks ago and within a month since the start of this RFC). The question because of which this RFC was started previously resulted in quite strong disagreements between multiple users, but I think there already is a WP:CONS of 12 users who already voted at this RFC. Since the contentious topics procedure applies to page Russo-Ukrainian War, I think this RFC must be closed by uninvolved user/administrator to ensure a valid WP:CONS and to prevent further disputes/edit warring about this question in the future. -- Pofka (talk) 09:50, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Will an experienced uninvolved editor please close this RFC. If there is a consensus that Belarus should be listed, but not as to how it should be listed, please close with the least strong choice, Robert McClenon (talk) 17:08, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think it should not be closed with the "least strong choice", but instead with a choice which received the most votes (the strongest choice). The most users chose C variant (in total 6 users: My very best wishes, Pofka, Gödel2200, ManyAreasExpert, Licks-rocks, CVDX), while the second strongest choice was A variant (in total 5 users). So I think the WP:CONS of this RFC question is C variant. -- Pofka (talk) 18:33, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:SpaceX Starship#RfC on IFT-3

(Initiated 44 days ago on 21 March 2024) This is a contentious issue with accusations of tendentious editing, so the RfC would benefit from a formal closure. Redraiderengineer (talk) 14:48, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A note for the closing editor... an inexperienced editor attempted to close this discussion and didn't really address the arguments. There's been some edit warring over the close, but it should be resolved by an experienced, uninvolved editor. Nemov (talk) 19:28, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Another note for the closing editor: beware the related discussion at Talk:SpaceX Starship#Do not classify IFT-1, 2 and 3 as success or failure. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 00:44, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That discussion has only been going for two weeks and closing the RfC will not preclude editors from coming to a consensus on whether or not to remove the categorization entirely. voorts (talk/contributions) 01:28, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Libertarian Party (Australia)#Conservatism

(Initiated 36 days ago on 29 March 2024) RfC template expired. TarnishedPath^talk 01:22, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk: Elissa Slotkin#Labor Positions and the 2023 UAW Strike

(Initiated 36 days ago on 30 March 2024) RfC expired, no clear consensus. andrew.robbins (talk) 04:05, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Brothers of Italy#RfC on neo-fascism in info box 3 (Effectively option 4 from RfC2)

(Initiated 27 days ago on 8 April 2024) Clear consensus for change but not what to change to. I've handled this RfC very badly imo. User:Alexanderkowal — Preceding undated comment added 11:50, 1 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Place new discussions concerning RfCs above this line using a level 3 heading

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 24#Category:Asian American billionaires

(Initiated 11 days ago on 24 April 2024) HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 20:38, 4 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 8#Category:French forts in the United States

(Initiated 27 days ago on 8 April 2024) HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 20:38, 4 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 8#Medical schools in the Caribbean

(Initiated 27 days ago on 8 April 2024) HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 20:38, 4 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Place new discussions concerning XfDs above this line using a level 3 heading

Talk:Killing of journalists in the Israel–Hamas war#Merge proposal (5 January 2024)

(Initiated 120 days ago on 5 January 2024) The discussion has been inactive for two weeks, with a preference against the merge proposal. CarmenEsparzaAmoux (talk) 19:39, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Eat_Bulaga!#Merger_of_Eat_Bulaga!_and_E.A.T.

(Initiated 120 days ago on 6 January 2024) The discussion wasn't inactive for 7 days. It seems there's no clear consensus on merging those two articles into one. 107.185.128.255 (talk) 18:16, 3 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's been over a month. So, it could be a good time to close that discussion. 107.185.128.255 (talk) 17:55, 28 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Saleh al-Arouri#Merge proposal

(Initiated 114 days ago on 11 January 2024) Discussion has stalled since March with no new comments. It appears that there is no clear consensus. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aviationwikiflight (talk • contribs) 11:06, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Frederik_IX_of_Denmark#Requested_move_15_January_2024

(Initiated 111 days ago on 15 January 2024) – Requested move open for 2 months, needs closure.98.228.137.44 (talk) 18:36, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Now has been open for three months. 170.76.231.175 (talk) 15:17, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Maersk Hangzhou#Second merge proposal

(Initiated 102 days ago on 24 January 2024) Merge discussion involving CTOPS that has been open for 2 weeks now. Needs closure. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 04:46, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@WeatherWriter: I would give it a few days as the discussion is now active with new comments. GoldenBootWizard276 (talk) 00:00, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As nominator, I support a non consensus closure of this discussion so we can create an RFC to discuss how WP:ONEEVENT applies in this situation. GoldenBootWizard276 (talk) 21:56, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:1985_Pacific_hurricane_season#Proposed_merge_of_Hurricane_Ignacio_(1985)_into_1985_Pacific_hurricane_season

(Initiated 96 days ago on 30 January 2024) Listing multiple non-unanimous merge discussions from January that have run their course. Noah, AA^Talk 13:50, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:2003_Pacific_hurricane_season#Proposed_merge_of_Hurricane_Nora_(2003)_into_2003_Pacific_hurricane_season

(Initiated 95 days ago on 30 January 2024) Noah, AA^Talk 13:50, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Pharnavaz_I_of_Iberia#Requested_move_6_February_2024

(Initiated 89 days ago on 6 February 2024) Requested move open for nearly 2 months. Natg 19 (talk) 17:46, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:12 February 2024 Rafah strikes#Merge proposal to Rafah offensive

(Initiated 82 days ago on 13 February 2024) The discussion has been inactive for over a month, with a clear preference against the merge proposal. CarmenEsparzaAmoux (talk) 19:35, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Genital_modification_and_mutilation#Requested_move_26_February_2024

(Initiated 69 days ago on 26 February 2024) – Requested move open several months, needs closure. Natg 19 (talk) 22:29, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Afrophobia#Requested_move_4_March_2024

(Initiated 62 days ago on 4 March 2024) – Requested move open nearly 2 months, needs closure. Natg 19 (talk) 05:03, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Alexander,_Prince_of_Schaumburg-Lippe#Requested_move_10_March_2024

(Initiated 56 days ago on 10 March 2024) – Requested move open for nearly 2 months, needs closure. Natg 19 (talk) 04:55, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Rupert_Sheldrake#Talkpage_"This_article_has_been_mentioned_by_a_media_organization:"_BRD

(Initiated 18 days ago on 16 April 2024) - Discussion on a talkpage template, Last comment 6 days ago, 10 comments, 4 people in discussion. Not unanimous, but perhaps there is consensus-ish or strength of argument-ish closure possible. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:24, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Place new discussions concerning other types of closing requests above this line using a level 3 heading

Machine translation gadget

There is currently a gadget called GoogleTrans which allows the straight dropping of google translate into the content translation tool. (See here). I just did a test, and I was able to produce a machine translated article into english without leaving wikipedia using this gadget. Pinging the creator of the gadget: @Endo999:. I do not think this gadget should be present on the English wikipedia, and certainly not when it seems to explicitly endorse machine translations. Fortunately, it doesn't get around the edit filter, but it still sends a terrible message. Tazerdadog (talk) 09:02, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, I didn't remember about that gadget; I surely can make good use of it. That's the kind of tools that may be invaluable time savers in the hands of us who know how to use them, making the difference between translating a stub right now when you first stumble upon it (thanks to the kick-start of having part of the work already done), or leaving it for another day (and never coming back to it).

Given that the CTX tool has been restricted to experienced editors, and that the GoogleTrans gadget needs to be explicitly activated, the combination of the two won't be at the hands unexperienced newbies in the way that created the current backlog. The GoogleTrans doesn't insert translated content into text fields, it merely shows the translation in a pop-up; so I don't agree that it "explicitly endorses machine translations". Any editor with your experience should know better than copy-paste machine translated text unedited into an article. Diego (talk) 10:39, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I am the creator of the GoogleTrans gadget and it does do Machine Translation Under The HTML Markup when used in the Content Translation system. I have used this to translate 226 articles from the frwiki to the enwiki and got all of them reviewed okay. The Machine Translation is a starting point. You still have to manually change each and every sentence to get the grammar and meaning right. It's not very sensible to ban it because, without human followup, it produces a bad article. The point is that it is a tool to quicken the translation of easy to medium difficulty articles, especially for good language pairs like English-French. Wikipedia, itself, uses both Apertium and Yandex translation engines to do machine translation and these have been used to good effect in the Catalan and Spanish wikipedias. GoogleTrans does the same thing as Apertium in the Content Translation system, except it uses Google Translate, which most people feel is a better translation engine. As Diego says this needs to be explicitly turned on, so it tends to restrict usage to competent editors. To stress the point, Machine Translation, as done by GoogleTrans gadget, is a starting point, it is not the end product. Human intervention is required to massage the MT into decent destination language text and grammar, but Machine Translation can help start the translation quite a bit. Wikipedia feels that Machine Translation is worth doing, because it has it as a feature (using both Yandex and Apertium machine translation engines) Endo999 (talk) 11:45, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Except that we have a policy against machine translation on en.wikipedia, because the requirements for correcting its output are far higher than users tend to realise; in fact it is easier and faster to translate from scratch than to spend the necessary time and effort comparing the original with the translation to find the errors. Hence the whole long discussion above and the agreement that machine translations can be deleted as such. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:13, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There is no policy against Machine Translation on the enwiki. That would have to be posted on the Content Translation blog, and it isn't. I've done 226 of these articles successfully and I can tell you there is more editing for non text issues, like links around dates coming from the frwiki, editing getting references right, manual changing of TAGS because their parameter headings are in the origin language. The actual translation work postprocessing, when polished up by a person competent in the destination language is far less than you say. But style differences between the wikis take more of the editors time. Endo999 (talk) 19:44, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The policy is at WP:MACHINETRANSLATION, and has been in force for a decade. ‑ Iridescent 19:49, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The policy is against unedited machine translation. It doesn't apply to using machine translation as a starting point to be cleaned up by hand. Diego (talk) 20:12, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

MACHINETRANSLATION isn't a policy. It isn't even a guideline. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:14, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have never claimed that Machine Translation first drafts are good enough for articles on the enwiki. They aren't, but responsible use of Machine Translation, as a first draft, that is then worked on to become readable and accurate in the destination language is quite okay and even helpful. Endo999 (talk) 20:40, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The consensus is pretty clear that unless you are translating at a professional level, machine translation is a trap. It looks good at first glance, but often introduces bad and difficult to detect errors, such as missed negations or cultural differences. Even if a human caught 9 out of 10 of these errors, the translation would be grossly unacceptable and inaccurate. I'd request that this gadget be disabled, or at minimum, de-integrated from the content translation tool. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:33, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well. I'm pretty far from being a fan of machine translations, but it's always been possible to copy/paste from Google Translate. Anyone autoconfirmed can do that without going to all the trouble of finding and enabling this gadget. The problem is fundamentally behavioural rather than technological. The specific problem behaviour is putting incomprehensible or misleading information in the mainspace. Over-reliance on machine translation is a cause of this, but we can't prevent or disable machine translation entirely, and there's not much point trying. I think the position we should adopt is that it is okay to use machine-aided translations provided you don't put them in the mainspace until they've been thoroughly checked by someone who reads the source language and writes the target language fluently. I suggest the approach we take to Endo999's tool is to add some warnings and instructions rather than try to disable it.—S Marshall T/C 23:51, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Don't forget that the use of Machine Translation in the Content Translation system is expanding all the time, and I'm am pretty much the only regular user of my GoogleTrans gadget for translation purposes. Why is the gadget being singled out? Yandex machine translation is being turned on by the Content Translation people all the time for various languages, like Ukranian and Russian. The Catalan and Spanish wikipedias are at the forefront of machine translation for article creation and they are not being flamed like this. I reiterate that the majority of edits per my frwiki-to-enwiki articles are over differences in the frwiki for an article than for articles in the enwiki. The treatment of dates and athletic times is one such difference. You need to do postediting after the document has been published in order to please the editors of the destination wiki. This usually has nothing to do with the translated text but is actually the treatment of links, the treatment of dates, the removal of underlines in links, the adding of categories, the transfer of infoboxes, the addition of references (the fiwiki is particularly good for references of track and field athletes), and other wiki standards (that are different from the origin wiki). There's always going to be some postediting of translated articles because of these nontranslation specific items. It's just inherent in wiki to wiki article movement. Endo999 (talk) 00:24, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We don't care about what happens on other wikipedia language versions, basically. Some are happy to have 99% bot-created articles, some hate bot-created articles. Some are happy with machine-translated articles, some don't. It may be true that "the use of Machine Translation in the Content Translation system is expanding all the time", but at enwiki, such a recent "expansion" started all this as the results were mostly dreadful. "Why is the gadget being singled out? Yandex machine translation is being turned on by the Content Translation people all the time for various languages, like Ukranian and Russian." Your gadget is in use on enwiki, what gadgets they use on ruwiki or the like is of no concern to us. We "single out" tools in use on enwiki, since this is an enwiki-only discussion. And this discussion is not about the long list of more cosmetic things you give at the end (or else I would start a rant about your many faux-bluelinks to frwiki articles in enwiki articles, a practice I truly dislike), it is (mostly) about quality of translation, comprehensability and accuracy. Yours are a lot better than most articles created with ContentTranslation, luckily. Fram (talk) 07:07, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• @Endo999: I just happened to check Odette Ducas, one of your translations from French. You had Lille piped to read "Little". This is a good illustration of how easy it is to miss errors, and it's not fair, in fact counterproductive, to encourage machine-based translation and depend on other editors to do the necessary painstaking checking. Yngvadottir (talk) 17:20, 6 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for catching that error (Lille translated at Little). I had seen and corrected that problem in a later article on a french female track athlete from Lille, but didn't correct the earlier translated article. Don't forget that Wikipedia is about ordinary people creating Wikipedia articles and through the ARGUS (many eyes) phenonmenon having many people correct articles so they become good articles. This is one example of that. Wikipedia is not about translation being restricted to language experts or simply experts for article creation. Your argument does tend towards that line of thought. Endo999 (talk) 18:56, 6 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it does (for one thing, all you can know of my level of expertise is what I demonstrate). The wiki method is about trusting the wisdom of the crowd: this tool hoodwinks people. It's led you to make a silly error you wouldn't have otherwise made, and it's led to at least one eager new editor being indeffed on en.wikipedia. It rests on condescending assumptions that the editing community can't be left to decide what to work on, in what order. (Not to mention the assumptions about how other Wikipedias must be delighted to get imported content just because.) Yngvadottir (talk) 19:04, 6 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'ld like to retract my compliment about Endo999's use of his translation tool. I have just speedy deleted his machine translation of Fatima Yvelain, which was poorly written (machine translation) and a serious BLP violation. Fram (talk) 08:01, 12 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Almost everyone of the articles I have translated, using the GoogleTrans gadget, has already been reviewed by other editors and passed. I can only translate the existing French, which is sometimes not well written. In Fatima Yvelain's case I transferred over all the sources from the frwiki article. Can you tell me which reference didn't work out. You've deleted the article, without the ordinary seven day deletion period, so you deleted the article without any challenges. Are you and a few other reviewers systematically going through every article I have translated looking for things to criticize? Endo999 (talk) 01:54, 13 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That's how Wikipedia rolls; it's the easiest way to demonstrate supposed incompetence, and since incompetence on the part of the creator reflects on the tool, it is therefore the easiest way in which to get the tool removed (along with phrases such as "I'd like to retract my compliment", which I hate as much as Fram hates faux-bluelinks). Simples. jcc (tea and biscuits) 11:00, 13 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Having just checked the article for myself, if it was really "reviewed by other editors and passed" it reflects just as badly on those other editors as it does on you, given that it contained an entire paragraph of grossly libellous comments sourced entirely to an alleged reference which is on a completely unrelated topic and doesn't mention the subject once. (The fr-wikipedia article still contains the same paragraph, complete with fake reference.) Checking the review log for the page in question, I see no evidence that the claim that anyone else reviewed it is actually true. ‑ Iridescent 15:46, 13 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I realise this isn't a vote, but I agree with Tazerdadog that having such a tool easily available is sending the wrong message. It needs to be restricted to experienced users, with plenty of warnings around it. Deb (talk) 13:28, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You are all panicking. There's nothing wrong with using the GoogleTrans gadget with the Content Translation system if the appropriate editing happens alongside it. The ordinary review process can uncover articles that are not translated well enought. I'm being punished for showing ingenuity here. Punishing innovation is a modern trait I find. Endo999 (talk) 07:31, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No, our reveiw processes are not adequate for this. Both the problems with translated articles, and the unrelated but similar problems with tool created articles (now discussed at WP:ANI show the problems we have in detecting articles which superficially look allright (certainly when made by editors with already some edits) but which are severely deficient nevertheless, and in both cases the problems were worse because tools made the mass creation of low quality articles much easier. While this is the responsability of the editors, not the tools, it makes sense to dismiss tools which encourage such creations. Fram (talk) 09:19, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

User:Fram per "We don't care about what happens on other wikipedia language versions" please speak only for yourself. Some of us care deeply what happens in other language version of Wikipedia. User:Endo999 tool is not a real big issue. It does appear that the Fatima Yvelain needs to have its references checked / improved before translation. And of course the big thing with translation is to end up with good content you need to start with good content. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:41, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We, on enwiki, don't care about what happens at other language versions: such discussions belong either at that specific language or at a general site (Wikimedia). These may involve the same people of course. 19:45, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Do people feel that a RFC on this topic would be appropriate/helpful? The discussion seems to have fixated on minute analyses of Endo999's editing, which is not the point. The discussion should be on whether the presence of the gadget is an implicit endorsement of machine translated materials, and whether its continued presence sends the wrong message. Tazerdadog (talk) 22:33, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I believe an RfC would be helpful assuming it is well prepared.--Ymblanter (talk) 05:49, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The GoogleTrans gadget has been running on the enwiki for the last 7 years and has 29,000 people who load the gadget when they sign into Wikipedia. It's quite a successful gadget and certainly, wiki to wiki translators have concentrated on the gadget because while they may know English (when they are translating articles between the enwiki and their home wikis) they like to get the translation of a word every once in a while. Endo999 (talk) 17:05, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion on this matter seems to have mostly died down, but I was unaware of this discussion until now and I feel the need to speak up on behalf of translation tools. I don't believe the tool being discussed here is the one I am using, since *it* does not provide a machine translation into english. However. I do put english into French based on the machine translation. I repeat, *based on*. Many of my edits to date have been translation and cleanup after translation, so I am probably close to an ideal use case. The tool, Yandex.Translate, appeared on my French wikipedia account and I do find it useful, although it produces text that needs to be gone over 4-5 times, as, yes, it sometimes creates inappropriate wikilinks, often in the case where a word can mean a couple of different things and the tool picks the wrong one. And it consistently translates word by word. I have submitted a feature request for implementation of some basic rules -- for example in German the verb is always the last word in the sentence and in French the word order is almost always "dress blue" not "blue dress". But there are many many MANY articles with word order problems on Wikipedia; it's just usually more subtle that that when the originating editor was human but not a native English speaker. So it's a little like fixing up the stilted unreferenced prose of someone who can't write but yea verily does know MUCH more about the topic than I do. And has produced a set of ideas, possibly inelegantly expressed, I would not have conceived of. The inelegant writing is why we have all this text in a *wiki*

For the record, I agree that machine-translated text is an anathema and have spent way too many hours rescuing articles from its weirdnesses, such as "altar" coming through as "furnace branch" in Notre-Dame de la Garde. BUT. Used properly, machine translation is useful. For one thing it is often correct about the translation for specific obscure words. I deeply appreciated this when, for example, I was doing English into French on a bio of a marauding Ottoman corsair who, at one point or another, invaded most of the Mediterranean. I am an English speaker who was educated in French and has spent years operating in French, but the equivalent terms for galleon, caravel, Papal States, apse and nave, for example, not to mention Crusader castles and Aegean islands, weren't at the tip of my tongue. Its suggestions needed to be verified, but so do Google Search results. I could look these words up, sure, and do anyway, but Yandex gives my carpal tendons a break, in that I can do one thing at a time, ie translate a bit of text like "he said" then check to make sure that wikilink is correct, move down to the next paragraph and do some other simple task like correcting word order while I mull why it is that the suggested translation sounds awkward, walk away and come back... All of this is possible without the tool, but more difficult, and takes much longer. I have translated more articles in the past month, at least to a 0.95 version, that I had in the entire previous several years I've been editing wikipedia. Since the tool suggests articles that exist on one wikipedia but not the other, I am also embarking on translations I otherwise would not, because of length or sheer number of lookups needed to refresh my memory on French names for 16th-century Turkish or Albanian settlements or for product differentiation or demand curve or whatever. Or simply because while the topic may be important it's fundamentally tedious and needs to be taken in small doses, like some of the stuff I've been doing with French jurisprudence and which is carefully labeled, btw, as a translation in progress on those published articles that are still approaching completion.

I agree that such tools should not be available to people who don't have the vocabulary to use them. I don't really have suggestions as to what the criteria should be, but there is a good use for them. They -- or at least this tool -- do however make it possible to publish a fully-formed article, which reduces the odds of cranky people doing a speedy delete while you are pondering French template syntax for {{cn}} or whatever. This has happened to me. The tool is all still kinda beta and the algorithm does ignore special characters, which I hope they remedy soon. (In other words ê becomes e and ç becomes c etc.) Also, template syntax differs from one wiki to another so infoboxes and references often error out when the article is first published. Rule of thumb, possibly: don't publish until you can spend the hour or so chasing this sort of thing down down. And the second draft is usually still a bit stilted and in need of an edit for idiom. But the flip side of that is that until you do publish, the tool keeps your work safe from cranky people and in one place, as opposed to having to reinvent the version management wheel or wonder whether the draft is in Documents or on the desktop. Some people complain within 3 minutes of publication that the article has no references without taking the time to realize that the article is a translation of text that has no references. As the other editor said above, translation tools aren't magic and won't provide a reference that isn't there or fix a slightly editorial or GUIDEBOOK tang to language -- this needs to come next as a separate step. When references are present the results are uneven, but I understand that this issue *is* on the other hand on the to-do list. Anyway, these are my thoughts on the subject; as you can see I have thunk quite a few of them and incidentally have reported more than one bug. But we are all better off if people like me do have these tools, assuming that there is value in French wikipedia finding out about trade theory and ottoman naval campaigns, and English wikipedia learning about the French court system. Elinruby (talk) 08:39, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Articles created by block-evading sock using the WMF translation tool

My attention was drawn at a site I should not link to and therefore will not name (however, the thread title is "The WMF gives volunteers another 100K articles to check") to the fact that Duckduckstop created several articles using the WMF translation tool. They were blocked on 5 April as a sock of a blocked user, and their edits are thus revertable. I checked one translated article as a test, John of Neumarkt, and I've seen worse, but it is clearly based on a machine translation and contains at least one inaccurate and potentially misleading passage: "Auch in Olmütz hielt sich Johannes nur selten auf" does not mean "Also in Olomouc, John held only rarely"; it means he rarely spent any time there, but a reader might either not understand that or think it meant he rarely claimed the title. Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review contains thousands of pages, the vast majority still to be checked. Only a few of us are working there. I feel guilty having taken a few days off to write 2 new articles. I haven't looked through Duckduckstop's page creations to see what proportion were created with the translation tool, but that one has not been substantially edited by anyone else. I suggest that in this emergency situation, it and others that fall into both categories—translation tool, and no substantial improvements by other editors—be deleted under the provision for creations by a blocked/banned user. Yngvadottir (talk) 17:42, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there. I have had a look today at that list, but haven't really been posting comments since as far as I could see nobody else has been there in several days. I do not know what happened with duckduckstop but as to the articles on the list

- I do not understand why an article about a French general who invaded several countries under Napoleon is nominated for deletion as far as I can tell solely on based on authorship? Do we not trust the content because of the person who wrote it? Can someone explain this to me? I glanced at the article quickly and the English seems fine. This is a serious question; I don't get it. Also, why did we delete Genocide in Guatemala? It was already redlinked when I noticed it, but unless the article was truly astonishing bad, I would have made an effort to clean that one up. Personally. Considering that some of the stuff that's been on the "cleanup after translation" list the past few years --- we have had articles on individual addresses in Paris. We have lists of say, songs on a 1990s album in Indonesian, sheriffs of individual municipalities in Wales (one list per century), and government hierarchies in well, pretty much everywhere.

- I have a suggestion: The person who decides that we need a set of articles for each madrasa in Tunis, water tower in Holland or mountain in Corsica is responsible for finishing the work on the articles in the set to a certain standard. Which can be quite low, incidentally. I have no objection to some of the association football and track and field articles that are being nominated for deletion. They may not be sparking entralling prose but they are there and tell you, should you want to know, who that person is. Similarly the articles about figures in the literature of Quebec, while only placeholders, do contain information and are preferable to nothing. Although I don't see machine translation as the huge problem some people apparently do, the translation tool also does need work. It might be nice if it sent articles to user space by default, and the articles could then be published from there there after polishing. Elinruby (talk) 14:26, 8 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Guatemalan genocide was redirected, not deleted, for being a very poor translation, resulting in sentences like this (one sentence!): "The perpetración of systematic massacres in Guatemala arose of the prolonged civil war of this country centroamericano, where the violence against the citizenship, native mayas of the rural communities of the country in his majority, has defined in level extensivo like genocide -of agreement to the Commission for the Esclarecimiento Historical- according to the crimes continued against the minoritary group maya ixil settled between 1981 and 1983 in the northern demarcation of the department of The Quiché, in the oil region of the north Transversal Band, with the implication of extermination in front of the low demographic density of the etnia -since it #finish to begin to populate the region hardly from the decade of 1960- and the migration forced of complete communities to the border region in search of asylum in Chiapas, Mexico , desarraigadas by the persecution; in addition to becoming like procedure of tactical State of earth arrasada, tortures, disappearances, «poles of development» -euphemism for fields of concentration- and recurrent outrages against the women and girls ixiles, many of them dying by this cause, crimes of lesa humanity against of all the international orders of Human rights." Fram (talk) 08:56, 12 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Heh. That's not unusual. But see there *is* an article, which was my primary concern. I should have checked before using it as an example. Here is the point I was trying to make. Since apparently I didn't, let me spell it out. -- I have put in a considerable amount of time on the "cleanup after translation" list so yes, I absolutely agree that horrible machine translations exist. I have cleaned many of them up. But. Many of the articles we keep are extremely trivial. Many get deleted that seem somewhat important, actually, just not to the particular person who AfD's them. I have seen articles on US topics get kept because of a link to Zazzle. (!) Perhaps my POV is warped by the current mess I am trying to straighten out in the articles on the French court system, but it seems to me that the english wiki is rather dismissive of other cultures. (Cour d'assises != Assizes, just saying; this is what we call a cognate.) That is all; just something that has been bothering me. Elinruby (talk) 05:59, 13 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

But most articles have not been reviewed--it will apparently take many months. Of the ones still on the list that I have reviewed, I am able to find at least one-third which are worth rescuing and which I am able to rescue. We need a long continuation.If this is not agreed here, we will need to discuss it on WP:ANB. I would call the discussion "Emergency postponement of CSD X2" DGG ( talk ) 04:15, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding was that we were still working out how to begin the vaccination process. I'm happy if we simply moved to draft space instead of deleting at the end of the two weeks, but I'm not sure if that would address your concern. Tazerdadog (talk) 22:15, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@S Marshall, Elinruby, Cryptic, No such user, Atlantic306, DGG, Acer, Graeme Bartlett, Mortee, Xaosflux, HyperGaruda, Ymblanter, BrightR, and Tazerdadog:

I call "reltime" on the section title! ;-) But seriously, it does end in a few days, and although I've been active in pushing to stick with the current date (June 6) to finalize this, so I almost hate to say this, but I'd like to ask for a short postponement, for good cause. This is due to two different things that have happened in the last few days, that materially change the picture, imho:

• CXT Overwrites - this issue about CXT clobbering good articles of long-standing, was raised some time ago, and languished, but has been revived recently, and we now (finally!) have the list of overwrites we were looking for in order to attack this problem: around 200 of them. All that remains to completely solve this for good, is to go through the list, and if the entry also appears in WP:CXT/PTR, strike it. See WP:CXT/PTR/Clobbers for details.
• Asian language review - this was stalled for lack of skilled translator/proofreaders in these and other languages. In response to a suggestion by Elinruby, I made an overture a few days ago about starting a recruitment effort. Since time is so short, rather than wait for a response, I went ahead and started one at WP:CXT/PTR/By language. In just three days^[a] this has started to bear fruit, with editors working on articles in Gujarati, Hindi, Hungarian, Farsi, Romanian and Arabic; with over 50 or 60 analyzed. I'm ready to ramp up the recruitment effort on Turkish, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, and more European languages (hopefully with the help of others here) but this does need some time as it's only got started literally in the last few days.

A postponement would give us the time to save all the clobbers, and make a significant dent in the articles from Asian and other languages for which we don't have a lot of expertise. Mathglot (talk) 06:19, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding is that the clobbers have all been taken care of. This leaves the Asian language articles. I'm sure that if someone with the needed language skills comes along in the future, admins would be more than happy to mass-undelete the drafts so that they could be reviewed. However, I don't see a reason to postpone in the hope that this will occur. Tazerdadog (talk) 18:45, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Clobbers *are* taken care of, because we (two of us) have been taking care of them. Asian (and other) languages have plenty of translators td.hat could take care of them, it's not a matter of "hoping" for anything in the future, they exist now, so all we have to do is continue the effort begun only a few (5) days ago here. Going forward, this should be even more efficient, now we have the results of Cryptic's queries 19218 and 19243 created only today, and wikified here: WT:CXT/PTR/By language. We have editors working on Gujarati, Hindi, Bengali, Arabic, Romanian, and Hungarian, with more in the pipeline. This is a ton of progress in five days, and I wish it had been thought of a month ago, but it wasn't, and we are where we are. A postponement will simply allow ongoing evaluations by editors recruited less than a week ago and are delivering fast results, to continue instead of being cut off, and additional languages to be handled. Go look at WP:CXT/PTR/By language to see what has been accomplished so far, and at what speed. @Cryptic and Elinruby:. Mathglot (talk) 07:52, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Still need to recruit de, bg and ru. Also still very distracted by real life -- I have had one parent die and another go into hospice in the course of this project, and we have still gotten all this done, so it's not like we are dragging this out into never-never land. A majority of these articles are rescuable, esp as we bring in new editors who are not burned out by re-arranging the word order of the sentences for the 10,000 time. I think the really stellar articles have all been flagged now, but we have still found some very recently and I have said this before. Beyond the really stellar though are the many many not-bad articles and the more mediocre ones that are nonetheless easier to fix than to do over.I am in favor of an extension, personally, though as we all know I would not have started this at all if it were up to me. Many of the really bad articles were already at PNT.

I will be flying almost all day today but will check into wikipedia tonight. Elinruby (talk) 16:19, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm involved in many other things, and get here as I can, and each time I do, I find more than can and should be rescued. There are whole classes of articles, like those of small towns or sports stadiums, which have merely been assumed to be of secondary importance and not actually looked at. If we delete now, we will be judging article by the title. It is very tempting to easily remove all the junk by removing everything, but that;'s the opposite of sensibler ,and the opposite of WP:PRESERVE/ DGG ( talk ) 09:45, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I found a couple today that kind of amazed me, they were so good. But let's play out the chinese fire drill. I'm afraid we're going to find out that we've all done a huge amount of work to delete 30 articles that need to be deleted and 350 whose authors will will not contribute again. Anyway. I have not touched stadiums, personally, because I suspect they will be deleted for notability so why? Ditto all these people with Olympic gold medals because I already have plenty to do without getting involved with articles that are certain to be deleted, not to mention all the argentinian actresses and whatnot.... grumble. Gonna go recruit some chinese and norwegians, because the articles are just going into some other namespace we can still send links to right? Elinruby (talk) 02:14, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The plan is to draftify the articles prior to deletion, but I think deletion can be postponed basically indefinitely once they are draftified Tazerdadog (talk) 02:31, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tazerdadog: I'd like to be sure of that. This is why you lose editors, wikipedia... anyway. Am cranky at the moment. Let me get done what I can with this and then I'll have some things to say. Hopefully some intelligent and civil things. Are we really getting articles from PootisHeavy still? Elinruby (talk) 02:46, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Elinruby: Fixing pings like you just did doesn't work. Pings only work if you sign your post in the same edit and do nothing but add content. Pppery 02:49, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Elinruby: The second part statement I made above is a departure from the established consensus as I understand it. The plan which achieved consensus was to draftify, hold in draft for just long enough to check for massive clerical errors, and then delete. I floated the above statement to try to gain consensus to hold the articles in draft space for longer (or indefinitely). While it is important to get potential BLP violations and gross inaccuracies out of mainspace in a timely manner, i don't think it is nearly so important to delete the drafts, especially if salvageable to good articles are regularly being pulled out of them. Tazerdadog (talk) 03:06, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tazerdadog: Thanks for the suggestion. I think that would help limit the potential for damage and it would alleviate some of my concerns. My assessment differs widely from what I keep reading on this board, but, hey. If anyone cares I would say that 10% of these articles are stellar and very advanced and sophisticated translations. Don't need a thing. Another 10% are full or partial translations, quite correct, of articles that do not meet en.wiki standards for references or tone but do faithfully reflect the translated article. Many of these are extremely boring unless you are doing nitty-gritty research into something like energy policy in Equatorial Guinea, but they then become important... About another 5% I cannot read at all and let's say another 10% are heavy going and require referencing one or more equivalent articles in other languages. Say 5% if anyone ever gets around to dealing with PootisHeavy. The rest are... sloppy english but accurate, unclear but wikilinked, or some other intermediate or mixed level. This has not, in my opinion, been a good use of my time and I have stopped doing any translations, personally, until we get some sanity here. The whole process, it seems to me, simultaneously assumes that translation is easy and also that it is of no value. If wikipedia does not value translation then -- argh. It just makes me to see a good organization eat its own foot this way, is all. Off to see if I can catch us a nepali speaker ;) Elinruby (talk) 03:26, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Elinruby: No Nepali speakers needed, there are no Nepali articles in the batch, afaict. Also, Pootis stopped translating following a March 23 addition to his talk page, currently at #53 on the page.

@Tazerdadog: Whatever kind of draft/quarantine/hyperspace button you press, I plan to carry on with some of the Asian and other languages recruitment which we only recently got started on (which is going great, btw, and we could use some more help over at there if anyone wants to volunteer). I'll want to modify the editor recruitment template so that it can blue-link articles in whatever new location they reside in, so hopefully it will be a nice, systematic mapping of some sort so a dumb template can easily be coded to figure out the new location, given the old one. Just wanted to mention that, so that you can keep it in mind when you come up with the move schema. Naturally, if it's just a move to Draft namespace, then it will be an easy fix to the template.

There is one article in Nepali. I have not invited anyone for it yet, though I did do some of the less populated languages like latvian, indonesian and polish. I have several answers (da, es, pt as I recall) and most articles passed. I will put translated templates and strike those articles shortly. And yes, I just now struck one today. Anything about 3-d modeling is notable imho and I will work on it as long as I can read it at all. Also some of the bad translations about historical documents may be fixable given the response we are getting. If either of you gets enough help/time there are quite a few es/pt/de articles that I did that I believe to be correct but cannot myself certify in terms of the translated template Elinruby (talk) 00:29, 8 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@DGG: I withdraw my aspersions on the section title name. This offer valid for twenty-four hours. Mathglot (talk) 08:24, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I do not understandd what you mean by this. I assume you mean you are withdrawing the attempt to start mass deletions immediately. If not, please let me know--for I will then proceed to do what I can to prevent them--and , if possible to try to change policy so that no X- speedy criteria can ever again be suggested. The more of these translations I look at, them ore I find that should be rescued. DGG ( talk ) 23:59, 7 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hello all. Last week I closed this RfC on Template talk:Ethnic slurs. The debate concerned how ethnic slurs relating to Jews should be classified on {{Ethnic slurs}} - whether they should be a subset of Asians, Europeans, or a standalone category.

I have closed with the decision to classify them "standalone", in other words not as a subgroup of any continent-based ethnic groups on the template. I was an WP:ANRFC admin and was not involved in the debate before RfC closure. I closed the discussion based on my best-effort assessment of the arguments presented in the discussion.

Shortly after the RfC was closed, a long discussion Template talk:Ethnic slurs and emerged on my user talk page concerning the RfC outcome. I suggested that WP:DRN look at the issue but it was declined (my bad) as wrong forum. So I'm bringing the issue to AN for wider scrutiny. Deryck C. 14:29, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Participant summaries from WP:DRN#Template talk:Ethnic slurs

Discussion

• Endorse Closure of RFC Jews are a unique subset of people and in terms of slurs, should not be placed under a specific category, be it Asian or Black or African. They are Jews. When a slur is hurled at a Jew, it is not because of them being Asian or African, it is because of them being Jewish. That is quite different than when a slur is hurled at an Asian, etc. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 14:48, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Just to add, that there is a distinction between the slurs. I am an American, I can be called a Fat American and I can be called a Jewish slur, same as with a African-American. If the slur is based on the color or religion, then it's not an American slur, but if it's based on where they live then of course it is. In the case of Jews, it is because of their religion, not the history of where they might have come from 1,000 years ago. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 15:01, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse - Outcome was reasonable given the arguments (and relative strength of) presented. Personally I think anyone who seriously thinks Jewish ethnic slurs should be categorized as 'Asian' despite a significant amount of both Jews AND the people who started/currently using the ethnic slurs not being in fact, anywhere near Asia, needs a break. Only in death does duty end (talk) 14:55, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

User:Only in death With all due respect, this makes no sense. Since when does residing in diaspora (Jews outside of Israel are called diaspora Jews for a reason) negate an ethnic group's identity?ChronoFrog (talk) 20:40, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse numbers and strength of arguments make this a reasonable close. Both Arabs and Jews are standalone and for similar reasons. Other than grouping them together (middle easterners?) nothing other than standalone really makes sense and the discussion more-or-less reached that conclusion. A "no consensus" close would also have been possible, but not useful. Hobit (talk) 15:13, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse It seems the most reasonable outcome. Slurs against Jews are based on their religion. Doug Weller talk 16:15, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

User:Doug WellerA great number of those slurs were ethnic in nature, so this is not true. Also, as the sheer volume of RS raised in previous discussions demonstrates, Jews are an ethnic/nation group, not a faith. One can be an atheist, an agnostic, or even a Buddhist and still be recognized as a Jew.ChronoFrog (talk) 20:40, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse. I participated in the RfC after seeing the RfC notice, but I was not previously involved in the template page. I participated in the RfC over some time, responding to questions from other editors and also making some template edits that I hoped had been helpful and leaving a few unrelated suggestions on the talk page. I then took it off my watchlist, and was pinged to be aware of this discussion at AN. So that's my prior involvement. I observed that there was a real problem with the editing environment at the template page, and I ended up deciding that I should walk away because the editing environment was simply not worth my trouble (and I'm hardly an editor who shrinks from difficult editing topics!). The problem is that there is a very aggressive group of good-faith but inflexible editors who have extremely strong personal feelings about how the Jewish people should be classified, derived from their personal understandings of their own Jewish faith, and they are convinced that they are correct and that there must be no compromise over what is, in effect, divinely determined. When I came freshly to the RfC, my opinion was that the correct determination was what the close ended up being. And most of the other editors who came to the template page from the RfC notice as I did, also came to that conclusion. So that really was the consensus of editors who came to the RfC (as opposed to the editors who were already in the discussion before the RfC). But we were filibustered by editors who were convinced that they were right, based on things like their views that all Jews are really like citizens of Israel no matter where they reside, and should therefore all be classified as coming ultimately from West Asia. Just look at User talk:Deryck Chan to see what those arguments, and their verbosity, look like. The close was a good one. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:21, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse - While there are 1 or 2 very loud voices among the minority who have pursued this on Deryck's talk page and at DRN in what I view as an attempt at WP:FORUMSHOPPING the criteria at Wikipedia:Closing_discussions#Challenging_other_closures for challenging the closure have not been met. The closure and consensus determination were sound and all we've seen since the closure is a rehash of the same arguments over and over again. Electoralist (talk) 16:47, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose - After the RfC closed, I noticed a number of policy related errors (notably WP:RS, WP:UNDUE, WP:NOTDEMOCRACY, etc) with the final decision. I went through the proper channels to see what could be done about it, and this led me to contacting Deryck who set up a DRN yesterday, although it was locked after only an hour due to it being in the wrong forum. We were instructed to bring this to AN, so here we are. The reason I am writing this is because I want to preempt any accusations of WP:FORUMSHOPPING so that we may focus our attention on the underlying dispute.

To recap, the dispute itself was about whether or not Jews should be categorized as West Asian/Middle Eastern, as they had been for several years. A number of editors rejected this categorization on the grounds that A) Jews accept converts/newcomers, B) most Jews have lived in diaspora for centuries (primarily the result of displacement via foreign colonialism) and C) genetic admixture with non-Jewish populations. Others argued that, based on WP:RS affirming that Jews are a West Asian national group with ethnic ties/collective descent (as determined by countless genetic studies) from Israel, in addition to the anthropological criteria (notably UN criteria/Martinez-Cobo) utilized in every other case like this (see also: List of indigenous peoples), Jews belong under West Asian. In addition, points A, B, and C were contested on the grounds that A) all nations accept and integrate outsiders to varying degrees, and Jews are no different, B) living somewhere else, no matter how long, does not make someone indigenous to a particular territory (as this would mean that all colonial groups would eventually become indigenous); per Martinez-Cobo, indigeneity is defined through ethnogenesis, not longstanding presence and C) every nation/ethnic group has mingled with other ethnicities to some degree, and Jews are no exception.

None of these concerns were addressed in any meaningful way, if at all. Instead, the discussion petered out after a few weeks, seemingly with a consensus that the template was fine as it is (with Jews and Arabs both having their own categories under the larger West Asian umbrella) with no counter-response or RS beyond A ) a non-RS blog (which had immediately been called out as such, with no response) and B ) repeated assertions of earlier arguments (which, again, had been promptly called out with the same counter-points/sources as before, and again, no response). It also seemed as though many of the responses came from editors without much in the way of prior exposure to this topic, since there were a few editors who appeared to have backtracked on their initial support for the proposal as discussion wore on. I took it off my watchlist until I found that a final decision had been made seemingly based on majority vote.ChronoFrog (talk) 20:34, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose One of the main concepts that those who "Endorse" do not seem to realize remains that Judaism does not solely describe the Jewish "religion," but a Semitic Peoplehood, Tribe, Ethnoreligious group, and in some aspects a "Race;" but even being a "Race" would not mean that Jews did not originate as one people within the Southwest Levant; in fact, it would support Judaism's ethnogenesis within that region. Look at the culture, philosophies, phenotypical and genetic features that Jews have carried throughout the ages since their formation in the Land of Canaan. Look at Jews' relations to other Semitic peoples: Example 1, Example 2. Look at our languages and the various derivations as well as amalgamations to other languages (Yiddish, Ladino, etc.), we are a united people with core, root, Semitic/Afro-Asiatic, Ethnocultural beliefs (like Tzedakah, Tikkun Olam, and Torah) and yet different/intersecting branches that have branched out due to Diaspora, enslavement, intermarriage, etc. (One prominent example being in 70 CE when Titus besieged Jerusalem. Such variations occur within all Peoples, but every People has their own Peoplehood, even if they have mixed with other Peoples. Therefore, all ethnic groups within the ethnic slur chart should either be separated without umbrella ethnographic groups involved (e.g. not categorized by Asian (East, Central, South, etc.), African, European, etc.), OR Jews, Arabs, and other Afro-Asiatic Peoples should share an ethnographic umbrella of West Asians/North Africans, especially given the fact that Israel is a central part of what it means to be a Jew, whether by genetics, or sociopolitical affiliation (e.g. joining the Tribe, converting, etc.); on a related note, Israel is also located on the African Plate, so please also take that into consideration. Todah Rabah, and talk with you soon! Jeffgr9 (talk) 21:15, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

In addition, by not including West Asians/North Africans, the editors here exclude all Semitic/Afro-Asiatic peoples from having an ethnographic base for their ethnic slurs on the chart. Seriously, it would be omitting West Asian/North African/Middle Eastern as a possible region toward which people directed slurs (i.e. the term "Philistine," to connote Jews' longtime rival neighbor and for which their land was renamed by Romans after besieging Jerusalem; and the basis for the term "Anti-Semitism," coined by Wilhelm Marr, which should not mean to suggest Jews are not Semites, but rather, that Jews should not be negatively spurned for being Semitic. The Nazis'/Europeans' negative use for "Semite" and their negative attribution to Jews' Semitic origins, probably contributed a great deal to the miscommunication/miseducation that many of our people suffer today in terms of figuring out how to ethnically/racially describe our people). Again, Todah Rabah. Jeffgr9 (talk) 21:31, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

And another point, in case anyone is confused, "ethnicity" and "race" are not solely defined by skin tone. Again, Diaspora. Please make a West Asian/North African (Afro-Asiatic/Middle Eastern) umbrella category within the template for peoples like Jews, Arabs, Samaritans, Yazidis, Kurds, Druze, Bahá'í, etc. Jeffgr9 (talk) 22:49, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose Per Jeffgr9 and ChronoFrog.The Human Trumpet Solo (talk) 21:52, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse without bringing any new arguments in, as many opposers here are doing, the closure was reasonable for what was typed there. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:56, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

User:Graeme Bartlett These are the same arguments that appeared in the RfC (same sources, too).ChronoFrog (talk) 22:00, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly, you are simply rehashing the same arguments over and over again in the hopes that if you repeat yourself enough you will wear everyone else down. That's precisely why you have no valid reason to reopen the RFC. Electoralist (talk) 22:10, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If anyone had responded to (let alone debunked) the RS and arguments the first time, I would have no need to bring them up again. But nobody did, and I'm increasingly beginning to understand why (obviously, because they *can't* respond to them).ChronoFrog (talk) 22:17, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. Virtually no one has responded to most of my points. It is insulting, and does not make sense how people can move forward without addressing everyone's points. Jeffgr9 (talk) 22:24, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You and ChronoFrog are completely missing the point of this discussion. This is not a rerun of the RFC. No one will respond to your points because what is being assessed here is not the content of the RFC but whether the close of the RFC was appropriate. The closing admin is expected to read through the arguments made in the RFC and the sentiment of the contributing editors. Any admin that discusses the content becomes involved and cannot make a close. As long as you approach this discussion as a rerun of the RFC, all that will happen is you will become increasingly frustrated because your expectations are not, and cannot be, met. Blackmane (talk) 02:32, 10 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse. There appears to be a generally even balance between giving the Jews a separate line and not giving them a separate line, but the latter is split between Europeans and Asians, with occasional other stuff, and giving the Jews a separate line appears to be the closest to getting consensus. As a Christian from a Levitical family, I'm familiar with a lot of these ideas, and as I read through the discussion, I found myself first agreeing with one side, then the other, then the first, then the other, etc.; everyone's arguments tend to make sense, so we have to find a way to accommodate all of them as well as we can. "No consensus" generally defaults to status quo ante bellum, but if there's reason not to close this in favor of a separate line, there's even better reason not to close it in favor of the pre-discussion form. WP:NOTAVOTE, but as I noted above, it's not as if any position is making significantly stronger arguments than the others; all of them make good points, but since we have to adopt exactly one of the positions (putting them in both places would be an absurd misapplication of WP:NPOV), the best way to do this is going first past the post and allowing the weight of numbers to count. Nyttend (talk) 22:30, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

User:Nyttend While I don't agree with your position (the consensus prior to moving Jews and Arabs to standalone was that they should stay under a Middle Eastern category; also, the side with RS should, as a general rule, trump the side without it), I appreciate that you *at least* read and considered our arguments. That seems to be something nobody else in here is willing to do.ChronoFrog (talk) 22:36, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment It appears that most of the "Endorse" comments in here are drive-by votes. That is, they dismissed the ideas/RS brought forward by the "Oppose" side without giving any reasons, or participating in discussion here. This is the same problem that caused me to challenge Deryck's decision in the first place. The strength of arguments is determined through debate and dialogue, not simply repeating one's pre-deliberative opinions and intuitions. I have addressed, and refuted, every single argument against categorizing Jews and Arabs as West Asian/Middle Eastern, but there are no responses to be found (with few exceptions, and I refuted those too). That is deeply frustrating to me, and not conducive at all to genuine consensus building.ChronoFrog (talk) 22:48, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The reason for this is that this section on AN is supposed to be assessing the close, not to repeat the debate. A new debate should probably happen at the same talk page, but listing it here has brought in a new audience. Those opposing are not saying why the close is wrong, just repeating or boosting the argument that should have gone into the RFC. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:13, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

User: Graeme Bartlett Would it be possible to start a new RfC on this issue in the future, per WP: CCC?ChronoFrog (talk) 23:37, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. For many of the reasons already stated by others, primarily the error in viewing Jews as strictly, or even primarily, a religious group. Jews are a nation, and an ethno-religious group. Jews who are Jewish by birth and perhaps by culture, but not by the practice of religion, are still subjected to the same slurs as religious Jews, which clearly blows apart the notion that the slurs are religious. I have also noticed that those who are endorsing this decision have not provided any legitimate responses to the numerous points raised by the "Oppose" side - they simply keep repeating the same arguments that have been amply refuted by ChronoFrog and Jeffgr9. I agree with those who have suggested going back to a separate grouping for the Middle East, as opposed to the rest of Asia, but in the absence of a Middle Eastern category, it makes logical sense to group both Arabs and Jews as (west) Asian. PA Math Prof (talk) 22:58, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That's because the purpose here is not to repeat the debate but to assess the closure. That the oppose side insists on doing the former is indicative of there being no actual criteria met for reopening the RFC under Wikipedia:Closing_discussions#Challenging_other_closures. Electoralist (talk) 00:59, 9 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Part of that assessment entails examining the policy-related errors made in said closure, including the dismissal of WP:RS and violation of WP:UNDUE. Aside from that, most editors who have posted here gave their opinions on the subject, and thus I responded.ChronoFrog (talk) 01:12, 9 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. With all due respect to the dedicated volunteers who maintain Wikipedia, I must say, the bureaucracy here is terrible. How is it possible to expect even the experienced editors here to make real decision? An huge debate has been dumped on their laps that's been active for more than six weeks on five different forums! This is not fair to the newcomers and isn't fair for the topic itself. I preferred the earlier discussion at the DRN, which was much more promising. There, the original participants were invited to present their summaries before discussion began, and real discussion was taking place before it got shut down. Though much damage is already done, I'm copying that discussion here above, since that content should have been here from the inception. Musashiaharon (talk) 01:16, 9 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse close I read through pretty much all of the RFC (except for the last third that degenerated into little more than a shouting match) and on the whole find Deryck's close reasonable. Also, please do not try to engage me on the specifics of the debate as that is not the point of this closure review. Blackmane (talk) 02:53, 9 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse close. Deryck Chan's reasoning makes sense to me.

Regarding the original RFC: Like Tryptofish, I had no previous involvement with the template and joined the discussion after seeing the RFC notice. As I said there, I agree with the reasons Electoralist stated for having a standalone category. Having read through this conversation (and much of Deryck Chan's talk page) hasn't changed my mind. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 11:17, 9 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

User:BlackcurrantTea You won't explain why you disagree with the sources or policy based arguments which the "Asian" side has provided an abundance of, and you are unwilling to discuss it. How exactly does this help us reach an agreement?ChronoFrog (talk) 11:30, 9 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• {{Do not archive until}} added. Please remove the {{Do not archive until}} tag after the review is closed. (I am adding this because RfC closure reviews frequently have been archived prematurely without being resolved.) Cunard (talk) 05:55, 9 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Seems like it might be time to ban anyone who participated in the RFC (on either side) and who has already commented here from further comment in this close review; they're sucking all the oxygen out of the room. If you haven't been able to make your point (repeatedly) by now, you're probably doing more harm than good by continuing to try. --Floquenbeam (talk) 11:39, 9 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Use your mop and hat all the discussion that isnt a direct support/oppose? Only in death does duty end (talk) 11:53, 9 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • I was tempted to hat the wall of text directly above my Endorse but as I had !voted it wouldn't have been appropriate. ChronoFrog's fervour and zeal has long gone over the edge into badgering. Blackmane (talk) 12:37, 9 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
      • I have no idea why you are singling me out. Either way, if Wikipedia guidelines had been taken into account during the course of the RfC and in its closure (instead of relying on a majority of mostly hit-and-run "votes"), nobody would be raising a fuss about this. At this point, I honestly do think there is an issue of WP:Systemic bias on here.ChronoFrog (talk) 16:11, 9 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
      • I haven't !voted, so I've hatted the rehashing of the debate. I think I got it all, but if someone with a mop wants to edit/add/remove it, knock yourself out. If you aren't an admin, or if you participated in the original RFC, do not modify it. I think I can safely speak for fellow admins when I say that would be considered disruptive at least and tendentious at worst. We need to review the RFC close here, not restart the RFC. Katie^talk 12:50, 9 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
        • @ChronoFrog:The point of this thread was raised by Deryck Chan to review the closure of the RFC. It is not to rehash the RFC here. WP:AN is not and never will be the location to decide content issues. You have responded to virtually all of the commenters here as if another RFC was being run. If it's a few comments here and there, then that's no problem but badgering every single !voter is disruptive.

Let me repeat we are not here to go over the RFC material again. Deryck closed the RFC, you among a number of other editors raised concerns about his closure on his talk page and after an extended discussion he brought his closure here for review. Many of the commenters, myself included, will have read the RFC and we came to our own conclusions. If consensus here is that Deryck's close was appropriate then that is that. However, you are more than welcome to attempt a new RFC at some point in the future because consensus certainly can change but be warned that repeatedly opening RFC's within a short space of time to try and get your POV across is disruptive and can lead to sanctions. Blackmane (talk) 23:58, 9 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse Close. Standalone seems to be the closest thing to consensus (with a non-insignificant minority suggesting that slurs be disassociated from geographical region altogether for everyone, not just Jews). Alternatively no consensus could be supported, but to me despite the massive walls of text from a couple of vocal advocates, Standalone is the best close option. As with others, I'm not interested in entering the debate on the issue, because this isn't the place to reopen it - my opinion is regarding the close only. PGWG (talk) 12:59, 9 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse the closure - We should not be discussing the issue of how to categorize ethnic slurs against Jews. The only issue is whether the closure of the RFC was reasonable, whether the closure could reasonably be justified from the statements by the participants. To the extent that anyone is trying to re-argue the issue, that is forum shopping. I closed the attempt to discuss either the closure or the original issue at WP:DRN because DRN is not a forum to review an RFC closure; in dispute resolution, an RFC "trumps" any other content forum. DRN sometimes resolves a dispute by opening an RFC. An RFC is not followed by DRN. The issue should not be discussed further. It was already discussed adequately in the RFC (and DRN would have a smaller audience than RFC anyway). The only issue is whether the closer used reasonable judgment. The closer did use reasonable judgment in finding that there was rough consensus (a small majority) that ethnic slurs against Jews should be categorized in a stand-alone category. The only question is whether the closer used reasonable judgment, and the closer used reasonable judgment. Any other effort to discuss is just a waste of time. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:18, 10 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse closure, as being a reasonable interpretation of the discussion. Obviously the whole Judaism topic area is more likely to generate strong emotions one way or another than most topic areas, and I think Deryck did a good job of digging through that stridency to work out what was going on. A lot of the arguments being made here that look for the discussion to be overturned are just rehashes of the same arguments that failed to gain consensus in the RFC itself. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 04:35, 10 August 2016 (UTC).[reply]

Hello AN crowd. You're invited to participate in the discussion at WT:DYK which concerns a proposed amendment to the restrictions on User:LavaBaron's participation at DYK. The discussion is cross-advertised here because the relevant restrictions were originally enacted as a result of this AN thread. Deryck C. 17:06, 9 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note that apart from an amendment, there is now also a proposal for a full lifting of the restrictions being discussed. Having the opinion of some people besides the DYK regulars would be helpful. Fram (talk) 11:38, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Why not move (or transclude) the discussion over to here? Rgrds. --64.85.216.14 (talk) 14:35, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Majora: and 64.85.216.14: I posted the amendment proposal on WT:DYK as the most relevant forum and cross-notified here instead of the other way round. I personally take responsibility for any false impression of circumventing AN that my course of action might have given. Deryck C. 11:05, 12 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

    I've just figured out that enwp has installed mw:Extension:Labeled Section Transclusion so I've transcluded the WT:DYK thread below. Deryck C. 11:19, 12 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

hi all EnWiki sysop , Bitafarhadi is back (1) , in checkuser is confirmed he is used sockpuppetry for trolling with have new sockpuppets (SuksGu , Glayol , PersianGuyz , AmirMuhammad1) --Florence (talk) 14:57, 10 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Is this something a local check user would have to look at too? I'm also surprised the accounts weren't globally locked since the sock master's account is a globally locked account. --Cameron₁₁₅₉₈ ^(Talk) 21:09, 10 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

 Note: SuksGu is not a registered account. --Cameron₁₁₅₉₈ ^(Talk) 21:11, 10 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

User:PersianGuyz does say at the bottom that they are an alternate account of User:AmirMuhammad1, they are apparently an earlier account and were disclosed as such by Amir. AmirMuhammad1 was renamed yesterday by the frwiki bureaucrat and global renamer Céréales Killer to User:TheStrayDog. None of these accounts are locally blocked. I cannot speak Farsi; is it somewhere said that these accounts are linked to the Bitafarhadi sockfarm? Ruslik0? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:29, 10 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I am not familiar with Bitafarhadi and all old accounts are stale by now - it is impossible to check them. Ruslik_Zero 18:10, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@AFlorence: hello , you mean User:Bitafarhadi might hacked my user name?? cuz i haven't been for two days here .. for what reason?? who is User:Bitafarhadi and what is the relation among he/she and my former accounts in Persian wiki ?? please inform me what is going on right now? by the way i signed in with my second account and said that is an alternative of me officially, but i informed Gonzo fan27(an admin) before about my second an he/she said you better dont edit with your second. thanks anyway The Stray Dog by Sadeq Hedayat 15:42, 12 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@AFlorence: is this a frame-up, cuz you are saying a claim i have relation with a suck puppetry , i didnt know before. this is just my opinion and maybe it isnt real: i think you wanna hunt me cuz you and me started an edit war at Ahvaz article but i invited you for discussing and stopping edit warring in its talk page here , am i right ?? why you didnt reply me? and then you are starting a frame-up against me? i dont have any relation with any suck puppet in En wiki . yes i did a suck puppetry in Persian wiki and i have been punished at that wiki for that, but first this is an another independent wiki and second i didnt suck puppetry here anytime. please stop claiming against me otherwise i will want an admin to check my IP's actions and show you its just a frame up and personal vengeance (i think) but if you dont have any bad reason and my opinion isnt right then i dont have any complaint against you , cuz we are all fellows and friends here . health and wealth The Stray Dog by Sadeq Hedayat 16:06, 12 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

investigation about this frame-up against me

hello dear admins it seems User:AFlorence dont want to reply about his/her action against me! ( i left a talk back in his talk page). i said i dont have any kinda relation with User:Bitafarhadi and its sockpuppetry and other accounts of it . but he listed my accounts and my sockpuppetry in Persian wiki which i have been punished for it in Persian near by bitafarhadi's user name. i didnt any sockpuppetry in English Wiki . but he sentenced me and related me to another material in . also im so confused and i dont know what i can do to show i dont have any relation with Bitafarhadi and why AFlorence listed my accounts nearby Bitafarhadi and why he/she want to say i am Bitafarhadi!!!. i think its a frame-up and needs an investigation because i invited him to stop edit warring and disscuss about the subject in Talk:Ahvaz i think maybe he is angry about that and want revenge on his acts but i stopped editing there and he didn't reply to my discussing(?) anytime . thanks any way. The Stray Dog by Sadeq Hedayat 18:05, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

IP vandalized the boxscore of the tour. I don't know how to edit the information quickly because IP changed information consecutively so the page's history like this https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Red_Tour&action=history. Can someone help the article??? Sorry because I don't know how "undo" work so I tried to do 2 times and now I am so worry about 3RR Phamthuathienvan (talk) 15:11, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Fixed. Katie^talk 16:22, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I feel there is too much battleground and tendentious behavior on articles under Discretionary Sanctions relating to American Politics, e.g. Talk:Donald_Trump_presidential_campaign,_2016. I am surprised that we do not have Admins monitoring those pages. I encourage one and all to keep an eye on them and exercise the authority delegated to you by Arbcom if appropriate. SPECIFICO talk 17:20, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

FYI, there's two admins in just the most recent thread. TimothyJosephWood 17:33, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Never enough admins, I say.Anythingyouwant (talk) 18:07, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Admin eyes are always welcome and helpful on contentious pages, and American Politics is a particularly contentious area these days. SPECIFICO may not have realized that there are two admins who participate regularly at the Donald Trump articles (I am one). Personally I consider myself involved so I limit my admin actions to deleting and blocking trolls, and issuing warnings. I know of at least two other admins who do not contribute but monitor the page SPECIFICO mentions. I think SPECIFICO is referring to a recent sarcastic comment on the talk page, but IMO it did not rise to the level of needing an official warning or admin action. I should also note that at least four editors have been placed on topic bans from some of those articles, and their absence has contributed to a fairly collegial atmosphere considering the highly charged subject matter. --MelanieN (talk) 18:13, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm the other admin, but like MelanieN I consider myself involved re: Trump-related pages and limit admin actions accordingly. I do encourage more admin patrolling in this area. Neutrality^talk 20:02, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I am uninvolved admin who monitors Trump and Clinton pages and have protected, warned, and blocked. But I'm not blocking because of a "hint of snark". --NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:17, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I agree. Neutrality^talk 20:46, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've already received a taste of what it's like to edit these articles and it isn't good. Content creators cannot edit in good faith in these areas without encountering a host of tendentious and poisonous behaviour by people who are not interested in contributing, only wanting to push their point of view and create drama. I've come across people making false claims, doing drive-by citation-needed tagging on already sourced content, deleting sourced content with spurious and false reasoning, and using their own personal opinions as justification for how articles should be instead of policies and guidelines. People are able to do this freely without any ramifications and it just makes real editors annoyed and not want to edit, because they're spending all their time dealing with troublemakers. The end result is that these articles are absolutely dreadful, because all the good writers have been pushed away and only the troublemakers are left. TradingJihadist (talk) 20:03, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

TradingJihadist, you started editing with this account yesterday and have focused on Murder of Seth Rich. So what are you basing your observations on? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:27, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've experienced all those behaviours while editing that article and dealing with the consequences of editing that article. It makes me not want to waste my time and I imagine it's the same for others. But don't you think it's true? TradingJihadist (talk) 20:33, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

TradingJihadist, looking at your edits, the pushback and warnings you received were well-deserved. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:41, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If that is the case, then you would be able to justify that, but I doubt you can. You're just making vague assertions. All my edits have been sound. TradingJihadist (talk) 20:47, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

TradingJihadist, let me ask you straight up. Is this your first account? Volunteer Marek (talk) 21:47, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"Content creators" is not a term brand new editors know... At least not with the quasi-political meaning it has on Wikipedia EvergreenFir (talk) 23:57, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ditto for "doing drive-by citation-needed tagging".Volunteer Marek (talk) 00:05, 12 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: TradingJihadist has been blocked per WP:NOTHERE. MelanieN alt (talk) 19:27, 12 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe some Admins could also take a gander at Murder of Seth Rich and its talk and AfD pages, too. SPECIFICO talk 19:42, 12 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

By motion of the Arbitration Committee:

For the Arbitration Committee, Miniapolis 17:28, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Archived discussion at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/GoodDay#Amendment request: GoodDay (August 2016)

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Arbitration Committee motion amending the GoodDay arbitration case

User:Therequiembellishere is actively removing degrees earned and leaving an edit summary "removing clutter", see this edit and this edit and this edit. Naming an institution without the accompanying degree does not serve the reader and is against the parameter instructions on the template documentation page. The parameter usage states to use the "alma mater" (singular in Latin) field for the last institution attended if that is all that is known, and use the "education" field for degrees earned and year of graduation. I noticed the deletions at Franklin D. Roosevelt when I looked to see where he went to law school. This editor is also changing law schools and medical schools to the parent university in multiple entries using piping. See here for instance. I expect to see a law school or medical school for those degrees, not the parent university. I find it confusing to click on a link and take me to a different entry: "| alma_mater =[[University of Virginia School of Law|University of Virginia]]" I can see using the piping in the reverse, say, if we do not have an entry for a medical school, display the medical school and pipe to the parent institution: "| alma_mater =[[Trump University|Trump University of Real Estate and Law and Medicine]]" Seeing the names of two universities and not knowing the degrees earned there, is confusing to me as a reader. I could use help in reversing their changes. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 02:34, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

On the one hand, Therequiembellishere is correct in that the alma_mater parameter should contain only the schools last school attended, but if more information (graduation date, degree) is available, it should stay in the infobox and the parameter should be changed to education, which the documentation at {{infobox person}} suggests is appropriate for more detailed information. clpo13_(talk) 23:13, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Actually the template instructions say alma_mater is singular and only the last school attended should be listed. Now I see he is reverting the changes made by a third party, who converted the field to education. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 23:26, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, so it does. clpo13_(talk) 23:29, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It is ridiculously redundant to education. I think someone just wanted to show off their mastery of Latin. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 23:57, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Help is need to rollback migrate his changes to the "education=" field: massive number of changes --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 00:33, 12 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• RAN, you have been here long enough to know that you must notify the other editor of a discussion here. I have done that for you. I can't tell if this is behavioral or a simple content dispute, but I'm inclined toward the latter at this point. Katie^talk 23:16, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Content dispute. Therequiembellishere has been removing/changing entries for Alma mater field to display only the institution (where previously they may have had degrees, the law school etc) which is correct *for that field*. Alma mater should list institution only. However where degrees etc are known, the education field should be used instead. A better action would be (where education is known) to swap the alma mater to education. However that is a content issue. There is a discussion on the template talk page, which is where it should stay. RAN wants to use rollback to remove all Therequiembellishere edits, despite their validity, which would be an inappropriate use of rollback. Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:35, 12 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' noticeboard is the perfect place to discuss this. I don't want to "remove all Therequiembellishere edits". Despite your hyperbole, I just want to fix his egregious errors that violate consensus on the template instructions. Especially where they reverted changes back to the wrong format multiple times. I count over 100 removals of the information and I need help doing it. Wikidata uses this field for importing. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 15:12, 12 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Dont be disingenous. You stated you wanted to rollback their (perfectly valid on the face of it) edits and linked to their contribution history. Any half-intelligent person knows you meant 'the edits which offend me' not 'his entire edit history' despite that being what you linked to. This is a content dispute. You think the infobox should say one thing that is in disagreement with another editor who has been making good faith edits that are not incorrect - keeping in mind in many cases they are reversing the edits of User talk:Masageee33 who was blocked for making those edits in the first place. You would prefer alma mater gets changed to education. Well go ahead and do it and stop wasting people's time. Only in death does duty end (talk) 16:01, 12 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You are ranting, and misspelling too. Change "Dont be disingenous" to "Don't be disingenuous". If you want me to take you seriously, start with taking English grammar seriously. User talk:Masageee33 was blocked improperly without an ANI report, that editor was correct, User talk:Masageee33 is incorrect. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 17:19, 13 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

And yet they were still blocked. Perhaps you should go whine to the admin who did it and tell them they were wrong. Only in death does duty end (talk) 03:31, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've been going through some files in Category:Non-free files with orphaned versions more than 7 days old to delete old versions per F5. Some files e.g. File:Virtue97.jpg have very old versions which have been selectively deleted, but this method of applying F5 has been deprecated since I don't know when (it was before my time, anyway). This means that if, say, the file is renamed in future, the file history is not kept with the page history. Obviously these moves have gone on for a long time and it's not really worth a massive clean-up job. Going forward, though, when I come across such a situation, I plan to undelete old versions so they can be RevDeled instead. I guess I wanted to check if that's OK and to suggest it to other admins who handle this. BethNaught (talk) 11:45, 12 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Pure technical change the way I see it. Do as your time schedule dictate, I don't think such a change has any major benefits or drawbacks. Only thing, check that the selectively deleted file/revision doesn't contain something terrible that must not be shown to the public for even a split second. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 11:53, 12 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Members of the community in general, and admins in particular, may be interested in the outcome of Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Extended confirmed protection policy. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 18:50, 12 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

 As per RamblingMan, no further attempts to stop removal of address will be attempted; a discussion on removing the "location" field from the Infobox Organization will occur at Template Infobox Organization. LavaBaron (talk) 19:25, 12 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

WP:CFD has been running a large backlog again lately, as is usual. If any editors (especially admins and experienced closers who may not have worked with categorization in the past) are interested in helping to work on the backlog but don't feel they're prepared to jump right into closing discussions at CfD, please feel free to message me on my user talk. I'm happy to help you get started via mentoring. Non-admins are able to close most discussions at CfD, so that's not a barrier, although the mop is useful. All that's required is a basic knowledge of how consensus operates, a willingness to read policies/guidelines and discuss at length, and a decent amount of CLUE. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 21:08, 12 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe there are plenty of admins who said in their RfA that they'd address backlogs who could roll up their sleves and get stuck in. Unless, of course, they told porkies. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 08:04, 13 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

StuRat (talk · contribs) is a long-established, and extremely prolific, contributor to the Reference Desks. His contributions cannot really be classified as "vandalism", he does not (unlike some contributors) espouse any particular political agenda, he does not engage in debates on controversial issues, and he does not have a history of making personal attacks on other editors. However, the vast majority of his contributions are an expression of his own opinions and speculations, without any sourcing or references (to Wikipedia or elsewhere), and are very frequently inaccurate. This is not the purpose of the Reference Desks, which is to provide sourced information to people who ask questions. The matter has been raised repeatedly with StuRat over the years, but he shows no apparent intention to change his behaviour.

His most recent contributions, all examples of the pattern, are given below. Emphasis added.

[1] "I would think banning one particular retailer... This seems patently unfair to me..."

[2] "A proportion of those presumably were contracted..."

[3] "...maybe 10 minutes at normal temps... might have eventually died." (This is the worst recent example, IMO, as he's discussing a subject (electrocution) about which (a) he evidently knows very little, (b) has potential to cause death or serious injury).

[4] "Visually, I'd go with tardigrades."

There are many thousands of similar postings in the Reference Desk archives.

Recently, Adam Bishop proposed that we establish a template to disclaim the accuracy of any answers that StuRat gives on the desks ([5]) - this proposal may not have been entirely serious and was quickly closed, but it was supported, while it was open, by Viennese Waltz.

This proposal is entirely serious. In view of his persistent unhelpful behaviour, and his failure to take notice of many criticisms of this behaviour over the years, I would invite community discussion, in accordance with WP:CBAN, on the community banning of StuRat from the Reference Desks. If a less drastic sanction that prevents him from posting unsourced speculation in answer to serious questions is available, I would support that - but I believe the time has come to prevent him from doing it, and a WP:TBAN may be the only effective option. Tevildo (talk) 18:17, 13 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Support complete ban from the reference desks and all associated pages. I withdrew entirely from the reference desks out of frustration at constantly coming across StuRat posting his (generally ill-informed) opinions as fact and his total inability to comprehend the notion that the Reference Desks are a place for people to provide answers not conjecture, and being faced each time with having to decide whether to challenge or remove his opinions (and face the inevitable backlash from him, as even when he clearly knows nothing about the topic in question he dislikes anyone pointing it out), or letting it slide despite the near-certainty that whatever advice he's giving is wrong. Regardless of whether the proposal was a joke, if he's not banned from treating the Reference Desks as his private chatroom I'd endorse the creation of a {{don't trust anything StuRat says}} template and an explicit permission for anyone to append it to any of his Ref Desk posts without being accused of personal attacks. We're not talking the occasional blip, we're talking literally thousands of problematic comments. ‑ Iridescent 18:40, 13 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Simply linking to my edit history in no way proves that I have thousands of BAD edits. StuRat (talk) 18:48, 13 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose - While StuRat may be one of the most prolific offenders, the Reference Desks have for many years been little more than forums, places to engage in stimulating discussions of various topics. Attempts to reform the desks, including one by me, have received responses ranging from "Meh" to "Best not to offend experienced editors". Until such time as there is a more serious approach to RD in general, it is unfair to single out any participant for criticism. The problem is with the community's laissez-faire attitude to RD, not with any individual, and StuRat should be viewed as a symptom, not the illness. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:15, 13 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose - If anyone has a problem with any editor, take it to that editor's talk page. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:39, 13 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose a ban, but support any intervention that could make StuRat admit that there is a problem here. Idle speculation on the RD's is not helpful, and bland dismissal of the complaint here is not helpful, either. It would be eversonice if StuRat could (a) say "Okay, I'm sorry, I'll try to tone it down a little with the speculation", and then (b) for questions where he'd like to think he knows he answer but in fact doesn't, just sit back and let someone who does actually know the topic, answer. —Steve Summit (talk) 21:15, 13 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • If only as a thought experiment, I would suggest an alternative sanction, posed as a challenge: for a period of N months, StuRat is to construct his RD answers without using the words "I think", "It seems to me", "presumably", and "speculate". —Steve Summit (talk) 21:19, 13 August 2016 (UTC), edited 21:55, 13 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Isn't it better to explicitly say so, whenever one speculates ? StuRat (talk) 21:25, 13 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Absolutely. And I know you're honest enough that you wouldn't speculate without saying so. —Steve Summit (talk) 21:32, 13 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose there are plenty of other "contributors" to the ref desks who actually state falsehoods as fact, they don't even try to cover the fact they are ignorant of the subject matter. Moreover, when they're picked up on it, they descend into walls of text and never accept their discretions nor improve from it. That's considerably worse than using the language that StuRat is being hung, drawn and quartered for employing. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:31, 13 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose, the problem (which does exist, it's not just StuRat here, most editors there include myself are contributing to the problem to some degree) is caused by the way the Ref Desk is set up, which invites forum like discussions. So, what is happening is to be expected. People who have the time to invest a lot of time in the Ref Desk will end up giving their opinions more. If we take a look at the StackExchange website, you see that the format chosen there works better to address this problem. Comments are separated from answers, answers are judged by a voting system and the OP can choose the best answer. Answerers gain reputation points based on the points they get for their answers. What makes the Ref Desk particularly vulnerable to this problem is the fact that there aren't a lot of questions asked compared to the number of contributors. This makes each new question a de-facto new forum topic for the regulars to start posting on. Perhaps we can do one simple thing to improve things, if all Ref Deskers also start to contribute to StackExchange like I've been doing, then that may change the way answers are given in general. At least that's my personal experience. Count Iblis (talk) 23:03, 13 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Support - my original proposal on the RD talk page was indeed not meant to be taken seriously; I just meant to point out again that we've tried and failed to deal with this in the past. I don't expect anything to happen this time either, but I support this proposal anyway. It's possible that StuRat does actually give factual answers on the desks I don't visit (computers, math, science), but I would support a ban from Humanities and Language, at least. At the same time, to echo the comments above: no, it's not just StuRat, and yes, to some degree we all sometimes treat the RD as a forum for inside jokes (including me). But StuRat definitely sticks out as the contributor with the least useful input, and the least self-awareness about it. Adam Bishop (talk) 23:48, 13 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• For a few of my factual answers on those two desks, see User_talk:StuRat/lang_correct and User_talk:StuRat/hum_correct. StuRat (talk) 13:52, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose, see my reasons in the subsection below. StuRat (talk) 13:56, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose An insulting bit of overkill. While we don't need this at this time,but fewer "I suppose" based unreferenced answers in areas outside the contributor's area of experience and training would improve the Ref Desk. It is annoying when a naive answer conflates the low amperage high voltage shock from a fence charger with the electrocution from a 120v appliance dropped into a bathtub. A contributor should not assume he knows everything about everything. One RefDesk regular snarls at questioners that they could have Googled their question and gotten the answer in 10 seconds. A Ref Desk regular could similarly Google the question or search Wikipedia for an article with an answer rather than just pulling the answer out of his ass and saying "I suppose...". We already prohibit our volunteers from giving legal or medical advice. Some contributors are subject matter experts within some subject areas, and have dealt with some areas of discourse professionally on a daily basis. But I have often found that a family member or friend who is a lawyer, doctor,or chemist of great experience will hesitate to give a definitive answer to simple questions similar to those on the Ref Desk. They would want to hit the reference books or online resources before giving an answer someone relied on in guiding their actions. We already prohibit our volunteers from giving legal or medical advice. Edison (talk) 14:30, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I agree with Edison's viewpoint, but StuRat apparently does not. What, if anything, can we do about it? If a TBAN is overkill, what alternatives are there? Tevildo (talk) 17:24, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • If a user states something that's clearly incorrect, you could say "That's not correct" and cite a reason why. Or, go to the user's talk page and talk about it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:30, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment I saw this thread yesterday and I was very surprised to see it. I occasionally edit at the Science ref desk where I see StuRat. I have thought in the past that some of their edits were less than "well informed", but to be honest, I never perceived them as a major problem. However, it is clear that some members of the community do see a problem. One alternative to a TB is to restrict the number of edits per day to a specific ref page. For instance, they could be restricted to 3 edits per day on the science ref page. This potentially reduces the workload on those who feel they have to correct or comment on StuRat's edits. DrChrissy ^(talk) 17:41, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. Some questions can't be taken seriously. The questions do not need to be removed from the reference desks. They have to be handled differently. When an editor weighs in on a poorly positioned question, they are not necessarily "answering" it. Consider the question on "Three second rule", found on the Miscellaneous desk, and cited above. StuRat wrote "A proportion of those presumably were contracted..." Here is the discussion in Archives. Do we seriously care if, in the course of such a discussion, one of our contributors uses the imprecise language of presumably? This falls under the heading of conversational English. Here is the discussion on "Minions", on the Science desk. Yes, StuRat said "Visually, I'd go with tardigrades." But the question is not to be taken seriously. It poses What are these supposed to be? Bus stop (talk) 18:14, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose - Anyone who doesn't want to read StuRat's guesses is free to ignore them, and anyone is free to provide better answers. No one has said that StuRat is giving legal or medical advice, which would be a real problem. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:50, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

StuRat's response

• These are downright trivial complaints. For the most part, these Q's had already been answered and we were down to the friendly discussion that often happens at the end. Read the rest of each post, and you will see what I mean.

• Tevildo apparently wants a Ref Desk totally devoid of anything other than references, which would make it so boring that few would stick around to answer a Q.

• Even though Tevildo cherry-picked my responses to try to make me look as bad as possible, note that I had provided refs in a couple of those links, to tartigrades and fibrillation. Let me provide a few of my more helpful responses, for balance:[6].

• As for what government actions can ban a particular retailer from a city, this was a rather off-topic side discussion after the Q had been addressed.

• As for food-borne illnesses occasionally causing fatalities in dogs and cats, do we really need a source to prove that ? By what magic would this be true in humans but not in dogs and cats ?

• As for the discussion on the electrocution of fish, I discussed the mechanisms of death from electrocution, and certainly didn't advise anyone to bathe with a toaster. To say that my comments were dangerous is absurd.

• As for which microbes resemble the animated movie "Minions", I provided refs, including a pic. Not sure what else I could have done to try to answer in accordance to the guidelines.

• If Tevildo or anyone else is unhappy with another editor's Ref Desk answers, then the constructive action is to add to them, such as with sources, where Tevildo thinks they are lacking. Complaining here is a waste of everyone's time, and not at all constructive. StuRat (talk) 18:48, 13 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• • (A). The electrocution question is admittedly what prompted me to make it official, but we have more than ten years of this sort of thing ("Those onboard a yacht are probably willing to spend more per person for meals than typical airline passengers"). Please can you stop doing it? (B) Those were just the most recent postings you made, "cherry-picked" only by the order they appear on your contributions list. If it were the occasional lapse into speculation among a reasonable number of good, referenced, answers, nobody would mind. But it isn't. Tevildo (talk) 19:09, 13 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• (A) That yacht one is a good example of something so obvious it doesn't require a reference. You apparently think "1+1=2" needs a ref, at least when provided by anyone other than yourself. Your recent contributions to the Ref Desk at Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Science#Interesting_Bacterial_or_Viral_Infection certainly contained many links, but none of them established that any of those infections were "interesting" (some type of survey would be needed for that). So, you just supplied your personal opinion for which were interesting. Are sanctions in order ? (B) It's still cherry-picking to select any 4 contiguous edits which you think best illustrates your point. I do have many good/referenced answers, and I provided a link to a few of them above. StuRat (talk) 20:31, 13 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The underlying refdesk problem, of which this is just a symptom

If you read the refdesk, you will occasionally run across answers that you believe are wrong.

The right way to deal with this is to give what you believer to be correct answers, with references to back up your claims.

The wrong way is to try to control the behavior of other editors.

The exception is when someone is so disruptive that a report to ANI results in a block. This is true for all Wikipedia pages, and is not at all the same thing as the constant attempts to control the behavior of other editors that plague the refdesks.

comment by User:Guy Macon

• Agreed. There are many editors whose behavior I disagree with, mainly due to a lack of civility/respect for others. But I don't often take those complaints to ANI (for one thing, many of the worst offender ARE Admins). StuRat (talk) 18:49, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• No – it's more like a symptom of the wider problem that this place doesn't have really any effective method to deal with "good faith" but still moderately disruptive editors. Whether it's the Ref Desks (which, for the record, I think should either be spun out as a separate entity from Wikipedia, or shut down entirely...) or ANRFC or In the News, a lot of these problems could be solved with either a simple Page Ban or with tailored editing restrictions. But experience shows us again and again that no action will be taken against editors like this as long as their edits are perceived to be made in "good faith". So the problems are never solved... But, like I said – the way to solve the Ref Desk problems is simply to get rid of them: I don't consider them to be part of Wikipedia's "core mission" anywho... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 05:13, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think we should get rid of the Reference desks. I find them to be a vital community composed of all stripes of people in a healthy, competitive environment. I learn a lot from the Reference desks in a rough-and-tumble environment that is in some ways more conducive to learning than the more staid encyclopedic component of our project. One thing I constantly learn is that a lot of people are a lot smarter than me. It is my privilege to add my two cents when I am able to. We've got a good thing going and we should pat ourselves on the back for it. No need to shut it down or spin it off. Bus stop (talk) 13:49, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Then spin them off. But they're not part of this site's core mission, and issues like this one have flared up again and again (I seem to see Ref Desk problems cropping up here and ANI more than any other part of the project) making them a perennial distraction from what we should really be doing here. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 15:08, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The most common problems brought to ANI are vandalism, edit warring, incivility and sockpuppetry. Ref desk issues don't turn up there very often. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:11, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We used to have the exact venue for seeking resolution to editors that were somewhat disruptive but not to the levels required admin involvement, that being Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct, but that was closed down due to several issues. --MASEM (t) 14:27, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The "core mission" under the umbrella of Wikipedia is education. The encyclopedia is of primary importance. But the reference desks are inarguably important too. They are different from the encyclopedia. One can get feedback from conversational individuals who are willing to field questions. There is an element of role playing. Some people both ask and answer questions. One is a supplicant when asking a question. One is beneficent when answering a question. There is undeniably real human interaction at the Reference desks. The same cannot be said for article space. Bus stop (talk) 03:54, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Bottom line: our En Wiki administrators should not have to continually deal with the drama coming from the Ref Desks. That's not why most of us are here. If the Ref Desks were spun out, like Wikitionary, or Wikiquote, or Commons, then Ref Desks could then get their own set of Admins to deal with the very specific issues that come up at the Ref Desks (and hopefully draft new policies to deal with them). But it doesn't need to be "here"... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 04:44, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There are 4 diffs, corresponding to 4 sections on 2 different Reference desks. For context, we need to look to those sections. At the Miscellaneous desk we find Fresh & Easy. Also at the Miscellaneous desk we find Three second rule. At the Science desk we find Electricity and fish. And finally, also at the Science desk, we find Minions. In my opinion, by looking at StuRat's participation in those threads, we find "offenses" ranging from insubstantial to nonexistent. Bus stop (talk) 13:12, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If not this, how to address the "bigger problem"?

• Saying StuRat is "just a symptom" seriously underplays his role. It's not just the off-the-cuff respond-to-everything approach, despite years of discussions and people complaining. It's that plus the fact that he is the dominant voice of the refdesk. With 64,000 edits there, I don't think anyone else comes close to him in prominence -- and thus what newbies would model their behavior after. When the most prolific contributor treats the refdesk as Yahoo Answers, others will, too. I'm not saying StuRat was the first one to do this, of course, nor that he is the only, but that he is, in my experience (and my experience at the refdesk is indeed less than some of the other participants here), the most consistent offender in addition to being the most prolific. I would probably !vote support if that weren't already snowballed, so we might as well turn to this section and the "bigger issue". — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:22, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• I moved this from under the previous subsection, which I misinterpreted as seeking to fix something rather than a "just ignore him and do the best you can" sort of approach. Those familiar with him can ignore him (and I know you didn't say "just ignore him", Guy, but it's in line with that sentiment and several of the comments above), but those who are not familiar with him are susceptible to his answers that are sometimes false, almost offensively unhelpful, or even harmful. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:28, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  Change refdesk rules so any editor can hat a comment that answers a question without containing a reference (either to a source or a wikipedia page that is sourced). StuRat's (and others) nonsense will soon disappear. Only in death does duty end (talk) 14:17, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  Including hatting situations where an editor attacks an established editor rather than addressing the OP's question. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:08, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  From browsing the ref desks occasionally, the situation you name tends to happen when said established editor replies with uncited bollocks. If an option was there to just hat said bollocks in the first place, I doubt any subsequent 'attack' would take place. But yes, I would favour hatting anything that wasnt a direct (supported) answer to a question or clarification thereof. Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:12, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  And if the hatting were accompanied by a comment like you just made, the attackee would be justified in un-hatting it, or hatting the hat. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:19, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  I am pretty sure most people can be more diplomatic and manage 'Hatting - unsupported'. Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:22, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  Some will, some won't. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:24, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  Well I am sure you can think of many hypothetical problems to enable the ref desks to continue to be used as a chat forum where people give entirely made up and unsupported answers. Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:35, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  Or curious tirades like these.--WaltCip (talk) 15:26, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  Given he was responding to StuRat's complaint about travel which contained such gems as 'hotels are unsanitary' and 'as a tourist you are more likely to get robbed', 'I dont like strangers' 'I dont like communicating with people who dont speak English'... Had someone hatted/removed his response (which by the way was to a non-question, entirely a conversation) it wouldnt have been around for someone to get annoyed with. And frankly, I am *glad* StuRat does not like to travel, with that attitude I would hate for him to visit my country, and if (god forbid) he is from my country, I would hate that sort of person to be an ambassador elsewhere. Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:35, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  The topic question was "Why are some people so closed minded about the rest of the world? Should I try to motivate them to travel or should I give up? Please share your experience if you have some related to this topic." It was actively soliciting opinions. Either we enact policy stopping these sorts of questions and blocking repeat offenders, or we let the ref-desk be the unregulated mess it has always been.--WaltCip (talk) 15:41, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  Well quite, I have not supported any sort of ban or restriction on StuRat above precisely because the current RefDesk management enables his sort of nonsense. I would also be perfectly happy with the ability to nuke 'topic questions' like the above as a preventative measure. If you cant ask stupid questions, you cant get stupid answers. This is of course, entirely open to more subjective 'what is a stupid question' however I think 'share your experiences of why people dont like travelling' falls squarely in the 'needs to go to a chatroom/discussion forum' area. Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:49, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  But to quote the ref desk page directly "We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate." And keep in mind the Ref Desk guidelines already state what the purpose of the ref desks are, and what answers are permitted. I am merely suggesting we actually enforce them. Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:54, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  I can do no more but enthusiastically second this. There is no point in having guidelines that are completely ignored by many of the most frequent contributors. The general theme seems to be "The Reference Desks need improvement, but we're not prepared to do anything to improve them." Removal of unsourced speculation would be an improvement: persuading StuRat, and other similarly-situated contributors, to make posts that comply with the guidelines would be even better. But "covenants without the sword are but words" (Hobbes) - if we have no means of enforcing the few rules we have, then there seems to be no point in maintaining them at all. Tevildo (talk) 20:43, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  In addition to Only in Death's comment (attacks only occur when the editor is making us all dumber with their answers), Baseball Bug's usual phrase "established editor" is pretty meaningless. Even if we assume that it does mean something, what difference does it make if you're an "established editor"? It makes absolutely no difference. If your answers are crap, your answers are crap, I don't care how long you've been here or what else you do. Adam Bishop (talk) 16:59, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  As opposed to IP-hopping trolls which turn up every day or two. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:42, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  What gets me are the ones who ask "So how many Jews really died in WW2?"--WaltCip (talk) 18:03, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  That's one of them, and that would be one of his least-offensive posts. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:24, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  Well there are the IP-hopping trolls, which is a totally separate issue and has nothing to do with this; and there are the anonymous IPs who tend to call you out giving useless answers, who you either delete or dismiss as trolls, and then there are people with actual usernames who call you out too, and then you claim you're an established editor who is being unfairly attacked. Adam Bishop (talk) 18:30, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  The IP-hopping gnats are of no importance. But established editors attacking other established editors in front of the OP is extremely uncivil. If you've got an issue with an editor, take it to the editor's talk page. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:33, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  Taking it to the editor's talk page has never worked in the past and I don't see why it would now. No, public shaming is much more useful. Adam Bishop (talk) 01:25, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  And you can see how well it works. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:09, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  It started this conversation...that's something. Adam Bishop (talk) 11:23, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  Which has led us to what exactly? "Ref-desk is broken! Harrumph! Harrumph! What should we do about it? Hmm, well, er..."--WaltCip (talk) 12:33, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  Well you could start by not posting inane crap like this. Only in death does duty end (talk) 12:59, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  Oh hang it in your ear, you. That's hardly the worst of the shit I've seen on that board.--WaltCip (talk) 13:46, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If StuRat doesn't like to travel, then the problem may be as simply as that. He needs to get out more, leave his computer and do something else besides posting on the Ref Desk. :) Count Iblis (talk) 21:13, 15 August 2016 (UTC) [reply]

Only in death's suggestion of a rule to allow hatting unsourced comments isn't a bad one. I'm skeptical it could be effectively applied, though. Too much [need for] gray area. I don't know how many people would actually argue that there should be no unsourced comments. What about instead treating it like Wikipedia content under WP:BURDEN. If you see a comment that seems dubious, you're free to remove it and the burden is on whoever would like to restore it to make sure it's properly sourced. That's so logical that I can't imagine it hasn't been proposed before, though. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:18, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm familiar with (some of the) prior discussions of how to lighten admin workload, but I believe I may possibly have made a proposal that in this specific form has not been made before, to extend rollback rights in a very small but potentially useful way. Background is that I had to clean up after a page creation vandal today and found that there was no rollback button available and rather, pages had to be deleted individually. As a side effect of the proposal, ideally admins should get a rollback button to remedy page creation in the simple scenario of a page consisting of just one edit, or, (let's call this version B of the proposal) where the page has only one editor. Please comment at the proposal thread on village pump, thank you. Samsara 19:25, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Samsara, something seems to have gone slightly wrong with your proposal. Above you say "ideally admins should get a rollback button to remedy page creation [vandalism]" which would almost certainly be accepted as a proposal if they don't already have that ability, but on the proposal page I only see a proposal for non-admins to delete those pages, which is a perennial proposal that is rejected every time it appears. I suggest proposing the admin version (after checking to see if they can do that already). --Guy Macon (talk) 16:44, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, here's my understanding. Rollback quickly restores the version of the article prior to the edit or edits of a certain user. It doesn't work with new articles because prior to the article creation there is no version of the article. Samsara's idea seems to be that if an admin rolls back an article that has only one editor, instead of making an error message the rollback performs a deletion of the article. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:59, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Except an admin can just delete the article if they want to do that. I read this like Guy Macon, as another of the proposals to give *all* rollbackers the ability to effectively delete vandalism/nonsense articles with only one editor - effectively deletion-by-rollback. Which has been shot down justifiably everytime it comes up. If a proposal for a *new* unbundled 'Delete page if no edits except one user' on a par with the page-mover right level of 'trustedness' - it might get somewhere. Only in death does duty end (talk) 17:02, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

After going to another page and checking off a few boxes. Possibly they first need to realize that the page needs to be deleted rather than rolled back. All this adds extra time, which may be harmless in cases where the vandalized title is not widely watched but if it is a lot more people will see the vandal page. Or attack page if that is what the page is. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 17:28, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. This. Thank you. Samsara 18:00, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I believe I used to have the username 'tjfs' but I can't reset the password as there is no email address stored, can you assist me? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sipder~enwiki (talk • contribs) 13:23, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]