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

Talk:Anatolia#RfC:_Should_the_map_be_changed?

(Initiated 117 days ago on 18 February 2024) RfC tag has expired and there haven't been new comments in months. Vanezi (talk) 09:40, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

 Comment: The RfC starter, Youprayteas, did not include any sources when starting his request. Multiple new sources have been added since February. Bogazicili (talk) 18:42, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

RfC: Change INFOBOXUSE to recommend the use of infoboxes?

(Initiated 91 days ago on 15 March 2024) Ready to be closed. Charcoal feather (talk) 17:02, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Ariana Grande#RFC: LEAD IMAGE

(Initiated 72 days ago on 4 April 2024) This RFC was kind of a mess and I don't think any consensus came out of it, but it could benefit from a formal closure so that interested editors can reset their dicussion and try to figure out a way forward (context: several editors have made changes to the lead image since the RFC discussion petered out, but these were reverted on the grounds that the RFC was never closed). Note that an IP user split off part of the RFC discussion into a new section, Talk:Ariana Grande#Split: New Met Gala 2024 image. Aoi (青い) (talk) 22:52, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

 Doing... Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 22:18, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Aoi:  Done. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 21:03, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Chess Thank you for closing this discussion! And thank you for the suggestions you provided in your close regarding potential next steps. They are very helpful. Aoi (青い) (talk) 22:00, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WP:RSN#RFC:_The_Anti-Defamation_League

(Initiated 69 days ago on 7 April 2024) Three related RFCs in a trench coat. I personally think the consensus is fairly clear here, but it should definitely be an admin close. Loki (talk) 14:07, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• FYI this discussion can now be found in Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 439. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:22, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• As an update, it's been almost two months, the comments have died down and the discussion appears to have ended. I suggest three or more uninvolved editors step forward to do so, to reduce the responsibility and burden of a single editor. Either taking a part each or otherwise. I'm aware that's not the normal procedure, but this isn't a normal RfC and remains highly contentious. CommunityNotesContributor (talk) 13:45, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Bump nableezy - 19:02, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Part 1: Israel/Palestine" has been closed by editor TrangaBellam – "part 2: antisemitism" & "part 3: hate symbol database" remain open. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^{put'er there} 19:24, 12 June 2024 (UTC) 20:59, 13 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Enforcing ECR for article creators

(Initiated 68 days ago on 8 April 2024) Discussion appears to have died down almost a month after this RfC opened. Would like to see a formal close of Q1 and Q2. Awesome Aasim 00:11, 8 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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

(Initiated 67 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]

 Comment: The RfC tag was removed the same day it was started. This should be closed as a discussion, not an RfC. voorts (talk/contributions) 22:03, 18 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Mukokuseki#RfC on using the wording "stereotypically Western characteristics" in the lead

(Initiated 65 days ago on 11 April 2024) ☆SuperNinja2☆ TALK! 09:41, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See Talk:Mukokuseki#Close Plz 5/21/2024 Orchastrattor (talk) 20:34, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Climate_change#RFC:_Food_and_health_section

(Initiated 59 days ago on 17 April 2024) This was part of DRN process (Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard/Archive_245#Climate_change). It is ready to be closed [1] [2]. Bogazicili (talk) 18:39, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:International Churches of Christ#RfC: Ongoing court cases involving low profile individuals

(Initiated 44 days ago on 2 May 2024) RfC template has been removed by the bot. TarnishedPath^talk 13:21, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Andy Ngo#RfC: First sentence of the lead

(Initiated 42 days ago on 3 May 2024) Discussion has slowed with only one !vote in the last 5 days. TarnishedPath^talk 11:09, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 440#RfC: RFE/RL

(Initiated 38 days ago on 7 May 2024) Archived Request for Comment. 73.219.238.21 (talk) 23:32, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Weather#Discussion -- New Proposal for layout of Tornadoes of YYYY articles

(Initiated 35 days ago on 10 May 2024) RFC outcome is fairly clear (very clear majority consensus), however, a non WikiProject Weather person should close it. I was the RFC proposer, so I am classified too involved to close. There were three “points” in the RFC, and editors supported/opposed the points individually. Point one and three had 3-to-1 consensus’ and point two had a 2-to-1 consensus. Just need a non WP:Weather person to do the closure. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 14:39, 13 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Russian Civil War#RFC: Choose an infobox

(Initiated 24 days ago on 22 May 2024) I have ended this RFC a week early per WP:RFCEND. Because of a history of edit warring over this, I would like an uninvolved editor to provide a clear statement about what editors prefer (even if it's not one of the 'official' two options). Thank you, WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:27, 13 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

•  Done.—S Marshall T/C 19:20, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 21#Category:Crafts deities

(Initiated 72 days ago on 3 April 2024) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 22:53, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 23#Category:Mohave tribe

(Initiated 69 days ago on 6 April 2024) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 22:53, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 27#Category:Unrecognized tribes in the United States

(Initiated 69 days ago on 7 April 2024) This one has been mentioned in a news outlet, so a close would ideally make sense to the outside world. HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 13:56, 17 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 27#Category:Indian massacres

(Initiated 68 days ago on 7 April 2024) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 22:53, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 27#Category:Volodimerovichi family

(Initiated 68 days ago on 8 April 2024) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 22:53, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 29#Category:Muppet performers

(Initiated 63 days ago on 12 April 2024) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 22:53, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 30#Category:First Nations drawing artists

(Initiated 62 days ago on 13 April 2024) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 22:53, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 30#Category:Neo-Latin writers

(Initiated 61 days ago on 15 April 2024) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 22:53, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 May 13#Category:Pocatello Army Air Base Bombardiers football seasons

(Initiated 51 days ago on 24 April 2024) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 22:53, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 May 4#Category:Fictional West Asian people

(Initiated 49 days ago on 26 April 2024) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 22:53, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 May 4#Natural history

(Initiated 49 days ago on 26 April 2024) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 22:53, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 May 13#Roman Catholic bishops in Macau

(Initiated 47 days ago on 28 April 2024) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 22:53, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 June 3#Frances and Richard Lockridge

(Initiated 45 days ago on 30 April 2024) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 22:35, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Amina Hassan Sheikh

(Initiated 39 days ago on 6 May 2024) If the consensus is to do the selective histmerge I'm willing to use my own admin tools to push the button and do it. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:07, 24 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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

Talk:Rupert_Sheldrake#Talkpage_"This_article_has_been_mentioned_by_a_media_organization:"_BRD

(Initiated 59 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]

It doesn't seem to me that there is a consensus here to do anything, with most editors couching their statements as why it might (or might not) be done rather than why it should (or should not). I will opine that I'm not aware there's any precedent to exclude {{Press}} for any reason and that it would be very unusual, but I don't think that's good enough reason to just overrule Hipal. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 01:01, 13 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Fwiw, one more comment in discussion since this comment. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:09, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Press_Your_Luck_scandal#Separate_articles

(Initiated 43 days ago on 2 May 2024) Please review this discussion. --Jax 0677 (talk) 01:42, 11 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Notifying_Wikiprojects_and_WP:CANVASS

(Initiated 18 days ago on 28 May 2024) Latest comment: 3 days ago, 79 comments, 37 people in discussion. Closing statement may be helpful for future discussions. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:29, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Israel–Hamas war#Requested move 29 May 2024

(Initiated 17 days ago on 29 May 2024) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Josethewikier (talk • contribs) 01:31, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2024 June#X (social network)

(Initiated 12 days ago on 3 June 2024) - Only been open three days but consensus appears clear, and the earlier it is resolved the easier it will be to clean up as edits are being made based on the current result. BilledMammal (talk) 08:06, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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

X2-nuke interim period

Wow, cool! Glad we made some progress, and just trying to nail down the next steps to keep things moving smoothly. To recap my understanding:

• we are now in the "inoculation period" with a fortnight-timer which expires 23:22, 6 May 2017 (UTC) an interim period where we figure out how to implement this.
• during this period, anyone may tag articles in the list at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review with the proper tag to prevent nuking two weeks hence

A couple of questions:

• do we have to recruit someone to write a script to do the actual nuking?
• what form should the actual "vaccination" tag have? In the proposal above, I just kind of threw out that expression: {{bots|deny=X2-nukebot}} but I have no idea how we really need to tag the articles, and maybe that's a question for the script writer?
• will the bot also observe strikeout type as an indicator not to nuke? A possible issue is inconsistent usage among editors: for example, some editors have not used strikeout for articles they have reviewed and clearly wish to save (e.g. see #1601-1622)

As for me, I will continue to tag a couple hundred more articles with language-tags as I did previously in the 1301-1600 range, to make it easier for everyone to find articles translated from languages they are comfortable working with, and that they therefore might wish to tag. Mathglot (talk) 02:28, 23 April 2017 (UTC) Updated by Mathglot (talk) 09:02, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Let's make two lists, one of articles to delete and the other of articles to retain for the moment. I don't think that it will be necessary to formally request a bot. We have quite a few sysops who could clean them all out with or without scripted assistance.—S Marshall T/C 15:55, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  I would implement it as a giant sortable wikitable - Something that looks like this:

Tazerdadog (talk) 17:17, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't the current list easier to deal with than creating a new table, or two new ones? Can we just go based on strikeout type, or add some unambiguous token like, nuke=yes in the content of the items in the enumerated list that need to be deleted? I'm just trying to think what would be the least work to set up, and easiest to mark for those interested in vaccinating articles.

If we decide to go with a table, I might be able to use a fancy regex to create a table from the current bullet list. Although I definitely see why a table is easier to view and interpret once it's set up, I'm not (yet) persuaded that there's an advantage to setting one up in the first place. For one thing, it's harder to edit a table than a bullet list, because of the risk of screwing up cells or rows. Mathglot (talk) 18:59, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The real advantage of the table is the ability to sort by language. This way, if we have a volunteer who speaks (for example) only English and Spanish, they can just sort the table by language, and all of the Spanish articles will be shown together. It's harder to edit, but in my opinion, the ease of viewing and extracting the information far outweighs this.

I have created a list that removes all struck items at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review/Tazerdadog cleanup list. I'm currently working on getting rid of the redlinks as well. Once that is done, we can move to a vaccination model on the articles that have not been cleaned up in the articles thus far. The vaccination can take virtually any form as long as everyone agrees on what it is - I'd recommend that we vaccinate at the central list/table rather than on the article however. Once the two weeks expire, it's trivial to extract the unvaccinated articles and poke a sysop for deletion. Tazerdadog (talk) 00:07, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tazerdadog: This was posted over at Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review as well but wanted to mention it here. Timotheus Canens has created a language-sortable table in their sandbox at User:Timotheus Canens/sandbox that I think is similar to what you were thinking. Mz7 (talk) 04:06, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

And we may have to recreate the table, as I didn't notice it and have been continuing to mark language codes on the main list (and shall continue to do so, unless someone yells "Stop!"). Also, not sure how trivial it is: given a full set of instructions what to do, then, yes, it's trivial, but this is not formatted data (yet) and there are all sorts of questions a sysop might have, such as, what to do with ones marked "moved", or "redirected", and other situations I've come across while going through the list that don't spring to mind. We don't want to burden the sysop with an illy-defined task, so all of those situations should be spelled out before we ask them to take their time to do it, as if there are too many questions, they'll either give up, or they'll do whatever they feel like. Mathglot (talk) 06:20, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Timotheus Canens: Tazerdadog (talk) 05:55, 26 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

And am still doing so on the main page, and so have at least six others since the message just above this one was written. Mathglot (talk) 11:53, 4 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

X2 countdown and vaccinate indicators

Floating a proposal to get the clock started on the two weeks. Any user can write "Vaccinated" (or anything equivalent , as long as the meaning is understood) on the list on the same line as the Strike out any article they want to vaccinate. I can then go through and use regex to remove the vaccinated articles line-by-line from the delete list. I will then separate out the articles with no substantive commentary attached (anything beyond a language or a byte count is substantive) for an admin to delete or draftify. Any article which has been individually substantively discussed will be evaluated independently. If this is OK, we can start the clock. Tazerdadog (talk) 22:23, 6 May 2017 (UTC) Updated Tazerdadog (talk) 06:07, 7 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

People are already using strikeout type as the "vaccinate" flag so no additional method is needed though I see nothing wrong with using both, if someone has already started with the the other method. Mathglot (talk) 22:51, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I have been placing substantive commentary on plenty of articles, with the intention of facilitating the work of the group as a whole, in order to aid people in deciding whether that article is worth their time to look at and evaluate. In my case at least, substantive commentary does not indicate a desire to save, and if you intend to use it that way in the general case, then you need to suggest another indication I can use as a "poison pill" indicator to ensure it is nuked despite the substantive commentary. Mathglot (talk) 23:31, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mathglot: Strikeout works even better than my idea, as it is easier to write the regex for. I was figuring that substantive commentary at least deserved to be read before we nuked them, although unless a comment was actively positive on the article I would have sorted it as a delete. If you want every article you commented on to be deleted, I can use your signature as the poison pill. Otherwise, use what you want, just make sure it is clear what it is. Ideally, place it at the start of a line, so I don't have to think when writing the regex. Tazerdadog (talk) 06:07, 7 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tazerdadog: If you need a tester, feel free to shoot me a pattern; I'm a bit of a regex wonk myself, plus I have a nice test app for it. Can't use my sig as poison pill, cuz often my commentary is unsigned cuz I did them 20 or 50 at a time, with the edit summary carefully explaining what was done, but no sig on the individual line items. Beyond that, quite a few have commentary by multiple people, so even if I did comment (and even sign) others may have, too. The only clear way to do this, afaics, is to have an unequivocal keep (or nuke) indicator (or more than one is okay, if you want to OR them) but anything judg-y like "substantive commentary" seems risky to me. In the latter case, we should just get everyone to review all their edits they forgot to strike, and strike them now, or forever hold their peace. In my own case, no matter how positive my comment, or how long, if there's no strike on the article title, it's a "nuke". It occurs to me we should poll everyone and get positive buy-in from all concerned that they understand the indicator system, to make sure everyone knows "strike" equals "keep" and anything else is nuke (or whatever we decide). It won't do to have 2,000 articles nuked, and then the day after, "Oh, but I thought..." Know what I mean?Mathglot (talk) 06:50, 7 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mathglot: I think the solution is to draftify until everyone agrees that no mistakes have been made, then delete. I'm happy to do the grunt work of the manual checking of longer entries, and I don't think it is particularly risky to do so. However, the vast majority are short, and can and should be handed with a little regex script. We do need to make sure that the expectation of strikeout = delete instead of strikeout = resolved was clear to all parties. As for a deleteword, literally anything will do if it is unique and impossible to misinterpret. I would recommend "kill" as this deleteword, as it is clear what the meaning is, possible to write the regex for, and currently has only a couple of false hits in the page that can be worked around easily. Does this work for you?

The reasoning for checking longer entries is to try to catch entries like this:

|Battle_of_Urica -seems fine, at least not a translation issueElinruby (talk) 19:14, 3 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Tazerdadog (talk) 08:02, 7 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tazerdadog: If by "draftify" you mean quarantine, i.e., staging/moving all the to-be-deleted files someplace prior to the hard delete, I totally agree. (Whether that should actually be the current Draft namespace is debatable, but might be the right solution.) As far as regexes, I count 738 <s> tags, 732 </s> tags, 587 keepers, and 2785 nukers as of May 7 ver. 779254187. Mathglot (talk) 22:40, 7 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mathglot: Ok, sounds good. By draftify, i meant "Move out of mainspace to a different namespace where the content is accessible for translators, but unlikely to be stumbled upon accidentally by someone who thins they are reading an actual encyclopedia article." it also should be noted that when any of these pages are deleted, it should be a WP:SOFTDELETE, i.e. if someone asks for a small number to be restored after they have been deleted so that they can work on them they can just ask any admin to do so. I think that's all that needs to be resolved for now, so I'm going to go ahead and start the two week countdown until someone yells at me to stop. Pinging some participants: @S Marshall:@Elinruby:@Yngvadottir: Tazerdadog (talk) 23:12, 7 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

For clarity, the process is: At the deadline, June 6, 2017 all struck articles listed at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review will be retained, and all unstruck articles will be deleted. Articles with significant commentary attached will have the commentary read before the deletion, but the default is the struck/unstruck status unless the commentary indicates clearly the opposite result is better. The work "kill" may be added to unambiguously mark an article for deletion. On or after June 6th, the regex nerds will compile a list of articles to delete and retain. The delete list will be moved to draft space (or subpages of Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/CXT/Pages to review), where it will be audited briefly just to make sure nobody made a systematic error, then deleted. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:12, 7 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Per #deadline it's June 6. Your clarifications on "draftify" and the process all sound good, otherwise.
P.S. Note that one article matches /kill/i but none matches /\bkill\b/i. Mathglot (talk) 23:28, 7 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed, I was unaware of that discussion, thank you. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:34, 7 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mathglot and Tazerdog: so for purposes of making life easier I will strike what I think should be struck. At one point people were checking my work so I was rather tentative initially. I am following the regex discussion but haven't used it in a while so save me the trouble of looking this up -- did you conclude that "kill" would be useful, or not? Elinruby (talk) 00:58, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Elinruby: If the title is strikeout type, it will be kept; if it isn't, it won't. Placing "Kill" on an article has no effect at nuke time, but it does have a beneficial effect now:, i.e., it saves time for others. It lets others know that you have looked at this one and found it wanting, so they should save their breath and not even bother looking at it. For example: You marked #18 Stevia_cultivation_in_Paraguay "really, really bad". That was enough for me not to bother looking at it, so you saved me time, there. If you want to place "kill" on the non-deserving items you pass by, that will help everybody else. I may do the same. But in the end, on Nuke day, the "kill" markings won't have any effect. Make sense? Mathglot (talk) 01:20, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mathglot: yeah it does, thanks. And indeed I seem to be the most inclusionist in the discussion so if I think it's more work than it's worth I doubt that anyone else in the discussion would disagree. Elinruby (talk) 01:31, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Re-pinging@Tazerdadog: on Elinruby's behalf for confirmation. Due to the ping typo above, he may not have seen this, and it's really his call, not mine. Mathglot (talk) 01:35, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Mathglot's interpretation above is basically correct. Please do not duplicate work you've already done just to add the kill flag, but please strike entities that could be ambiguous (I will manually evaluate your intention based on comments that you left, but the default is the struck/unstruck status unless you are clear in your comments otherwise). Please do use these flags from now on, or on any where your intention is unclear. Tazerdadog (talk) 02:15, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tazerdadog I'm looking at formation of the strikeout tags enclosing the linked titles, and found 43 anomalies that might trip up the nuke pattern. I'll probably starting fixing these tomorrow. Mathglot (talk) 09:44, 14 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

assumption for User space items

@Tazerdadog: I notice that various contributors are strikeout-tagging Userspace items: see #14, 15, 691, and 695 for example. I have not been tagging any of them, my assumption being that all User space items will be kept automatically regardless of presence/absence of strikeout title (and ignoring any "kill"), and since it's trivial to skip over them with the regex it's not necessary to tag them. If you agree, please make a note at WT:CXT/PTR, or let me know and I will, so everyone can save their breath marking these. Mathglot (talk) 01:25, 9 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That was my assumption as well, all entries outside of mainspace should be fine. Tazerdadog (talk) 01:39, 9 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

rescuing clobbers by CXT

@Tazerdadog: I just rescued #2611 Garbacz. This was a good stub created in 2008, then clobbered in 2016 by ContentTranslation tool, leaving a rubbish translation deserving of deletion. I just rescued it by reverting it back to the last good version before the clobber, and struck it as a keeper.

I'm concerned that there may be an unknown number of formerly good articles of long standing in the list that we don't want to delete, simply because they got clobbered by CXT at some point and thus ended up in the list, and time ran out before anybody got a chance to look at them. If I can get a list of potential clobbers in the next week, I will check them all out. (Am betting it's less than a couple hundred, total; but maybe S Marshall would help out, if it turns out to be more than that.) Shouldn't be too hard to create such a list:

# Print out names of Titles in CXT/PTR that may be clobbers of good, older articles. 
# (Doesn't handle the case where oldest version is CXT, followed by user edits to make it good,
#    followed by 2nd cxt later which clobbers the good version; but that's probably rare.)
#
For each item in WP:CXT/PTR list do:
  $line = text from next <ol> item in list
  If the bracketed article title near the beginning of $line is within s-tags, next loop
  Extract $title from the $line
  If $title is not in article space, next loop
  Read Rev History of $title into array @RevHist
  Get $oldest_es = edit summary string of oldest version (last index in @RevHist)
  If 'ContentTranslation' is a substring of $oldest_es, next loop
  Pop @RevHist: drop oldest summary from @RevHist so it now contains all versions except the oldest one
  If 'ContentTranslation' is a substring of @RevHist viewed as a single string, do:
    Print "$title possibly clobbered by CXT"
End For

Are you able to create a list like this, or do you know someone who could? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 21:56, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Why not just ask the deleting administrators to check the translation is the first revision before they push the button?—S Marshall T/C 23:32, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That would be a shitton of work for the deleting admin. Tazerdadog (talk) 00:57, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

3.6 metric shit tonnes, to be exact. ;-) And thanks for the ping, Taz. Mathglot (talk) 01:56, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tazerdadog: I think I've maybe got your query: I see from Samtar's query that you use MySQL. If that's the case, then to do this, I think you can take Samtar's query 11275 exactly as it is, with one more WHERE clause, to exclude the oldest revision:

AND WHERE rev.date > @MIN_REV_DATE

where @MIN_REV_DATE is either separately selected and assigned to a variable [as there would be one min value per title, it would have to either be an array variable or more likely a 2-col temp table with title and MIN date, which could be joined to rev.] Edited by Mathglot (talk) 18:50, 19 May 2017 (UTC), or probably more efficiently, a subquery getting the oldest rev date for that page using standard "minimum value of a column" techniques. So the result will be a subset of Samtar's original query, limited to cases where ct_tag was equal to 'ContentTranslation' somewhere other than in the oldest revision for that page. (By the way, I don't have access to your file structure, so I have no idea if 'rev.date' really exists, but what I mean by that, is the TIMESTAMP of that particular revision, whatever the field is really called. Also, again depending on the file structure, you might need to use techqniques for groupwise minimum of a column to get the min rev date for each page.) Mathglot (talk) 03:09, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mathglot: Unfortunately, I've never used MySQL before. I was hoping I could muddle through with some luck and googling, but I had no such luck. Tazerdadog (talk) 03:53, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tazerdadog: And I could totally do it if I had the file structure but I don't; but my strong hunch is that this is very easy, and needs one additional "WHERE" plus another query (probably the groupwise MIN thing) to grab the min value to exclude in the new WHERE. OTOH, if you have access to Quarry, shoot me your query by email if you want, and I'll fix it up, and you can take that and try again, and with several back-and-forths I bet we can get it. Or if you've got zip, I can try a few establishing queries for you to try, and then we can try to build the real one depending on the results you get from those. (Or, we can just wait for someone else to do it, if they will; it really should only take minutes.) Mathglot (talk) 05:11, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tazerdadog and S Marshall: I don't think this is getting enough attention, and your previous request appears to have stalled at V Pump. This is not good. We need to get this list. Is there someone you can lean on, or request help from, to kick-start this? Alternatively, if someone will give me access to Quarry, a MySQL account permitting SELECT and CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE (or even better, MEMORY table) and a pointer to the file structure descriptions, I can do this myself and create a list to protect these articles. Mathglot (talk) 06:32, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

*Bump* Mathglot (talk) 18:19, 27 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Cryptic for db report 19060. We now have the list of clobbers, and can attend to it. Please see WP:CXT/PTR/Clobbers. Mathglot (talk) 05:18, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Someone already requested a closure of Wikipedia talk:Conflict of interest#Investigating COI policy, which concerns outing/paid editor/harassment/COI... whatever. However, Casliber says that more than one closer, preferably three-person, may be needed. I wonder whether more than one closer is necessary. If so, this indicates that the discussion would be another one of more difficult discussions we've seen lately. Thoughts? --George Ho (talk) 13:44, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's not obvious from the discussion and the number of editors participating and the number of proposals made that it's a difficult and controversial topic? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 19:59, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

To me, closing the whole discussion is very difficult because of the controversy of the topic. However, I concentrated more on milieus and proposals. To be honest, I saw two milieus and one concrete proposal receiving support from the majority. I concentrated on the straw polls and arguments. How about this: close separate milieus and proposals separately? They aren't that difficult to separately close due to other milieus and proposals not likely to pass. --George Ho (talk) 20:17, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Closing each one separately probably makes more sense from a numbers perspective. However, it should still be one group of editors that does it, since there is the possibility (mentioned on the discussion) that some of the milieus could contradict each other depending on what gets passed. Primefac (talk) 01:57, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Milieus 1, 2, and 5 are easy to close as the majority opposes them individually. Milieu 3 and concrete proposal 1 received majority support, so those would be also easy to close. But you're right; one same group of editors should do the individual closures. However, I won't be part of the closing group, so I'll await the uninvolved closers then. --George Ho (talk) 04:44, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I would be willing to be involved in a group closure on this. Tazerdadog (talk) 19:02, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I cast a !vote in the discussion which I had forgotten about - it would therefore be grossly inappropriate for me to participate in this closure Tazerdadog (talk) 01:04, 10 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I guess this means we're putting the band back together ;) Primefac (talk) 19:04, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We still need one more volunteer for this. Tazerdadog (talk) 10:01, 6 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'll step up, if you like.—S Marshall T/C 17:34, 8 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

And... we're back down to 2. Primefac (talk) 02:30, 10 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Needed: Another closer please!—S Marshall T/C 15:35, 11 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest you just go ahead with however many closers you have now. I further suggest that the "milieux" were intended to get a "general view of the community" and were very vaguely worded, so that if all you can say is "there was no apparent consensus", then so be it. As far as concrete proposal 1, which I proposed, the 28-6 result seems to make the close obvious. You might as well just go ahead and close it. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:53, 13 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• @Primefac: thoughts? Nobody else is stepping up.—S Marshall T/C 19:36, 14 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Meh, let's just go for it. I think I've still got your email kicking about. I'll send you my thoughts hopefully in the next 24 hours. Primefac (talk) 20:46, 14 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'll write mine independently over the same period, and we can see if we agree.  :)—S Marshall T/C 21:39, 14 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Sorry, I've re-opened the RFC. Re-opening interest for other editors willing to work on a close. Primefac (talk) 22:31, 16 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Take your time. ;) Meanwhile, what happened to closing separate, individual milieux and proposals? George Ho (talk) 10:35, 17 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'll go back to what I said 4 comment above. The milieux can be very difficult to close because of the wording. I thought the reverted close was a very good attempt to make sense out of M.3 in that it focused on what the consensus there actually agreed on, but that aroused a storm and nobody seems to be able to agree on what was actually agreed on. Concrete proposal 1, which I proposed, is very much the opposite and I think can be easily closed. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:27, 19 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'll help close it, but I think the section below the actual RFC should be considered as well, since they're actively discussing the RFC and how to proceed. Maybe we should wait just a little while longer to see how that develops. Katie^talk 23:23, 20 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm fine with that. No point in cutting off productive discourse. Primefac (talk) 11:48, 21 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Primefac, KrakatoaKatie, and S Marshall: I'm going to close a couple separate milieus that receive huge opposition. Casliber, the proposer, is fine with it. However, may I summarize the tally votes as just short rationales? I'll leave the others open. --George Ho (talk) 22:18, 2 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Fine by me, George Ho. It'll make the overall close a bit cleaner. Primefac (talk) 23:08, 2 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Closed milieu 1 and milieu 5. I closed milieu 2 as "no consensus", but I commented that another closer can summarize that better than me. --George Ho (talk) 00:51, 3 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I changed my mind and briefly summarized milieu 2. --George Ho (talk) 01:18, 3 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Milieu 3, Concrete proposal 1, and Concrete proposal 2 are closed by Winged Blades of Godric. Give Godric thanks for the closures. George Ho (talk) 19:08, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I've been thinking. After closing all the milieus and concrete proposals, I wonder whether closing the remainder of the whole discussion as a whole is possible. If not, how about separately closing "RfC discussion" (including Break 1), Break 2, and Break 3? George Ho (talk) 02:53, 25 April 2017 (UTC); rescinding this consideration. 18:22, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Milieu 4 and Concrete proposal 3 still remain. --George Ho (talk) 04:00, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to thank Gamebuster19901 for closing Milieu 4 (closed as "there is consensus") and Proposal 3 (closed as "no consensus"). Now I shall ping Primefac, KrakatoaKatie, and S Marshall about this, so they can do the teamwork closure more efficiently. --George Ho (talk) 03:07, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion "Wikipedia talk:Verifiability#Recent changes to policy about verifiability as a reason for inclusion" started in April. Then the discussion got larger and larger, making the discussion very complex. I discussed it with the proposer S Marshall, who says that several closers are needed. I welcome at least two volunteers. --George Ho (talk) 14:33, 2 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@George Ho:--I am willing to serve as a closer.Winged Blades ^Godric 09:06, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Godric, and I welcome that. I also need another or more closers for teamwork closure. --George Ho (talk) 15:07, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I created the subsection Wikipedia talk:Verifiability#How to best close this discussion? for team closers to discuss preparing the closure. --George Ho (talk) 02:51, 4 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@George Ho: I am willing to serve as a closer as well, but I will defer to almost anyone else who wants to do it. Tazerdadog (talk) 02:28, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Tazerdadog. I notified the participants about this. --George Ho (talk) 02:35, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Godric: Tazerdadog will team with you on the closure. George Ho (talk) 03:01, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If necessary, time for one or two more. George Ho (talk) 07:41, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Moved from WP:ANI § Reverting closure without discussion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Something I have noticed, which is tantamount to gaming the system, every time this escalates to a point where it reaches here or ANI, then they back right off. It appears like the need for admin action has disappeared and so nothing happens. Then its back to the same battlefield behavior again. WCM_email 07:47, 24 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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

After reading the concerns raised by others here, I'll say it needs to be discussed. It's high time you stop this behaviour. I suggest he requires good mentoring. This was the reason I first raised it at ANI but it was redirected here. An admin action is required now. Yashovardhan (talk) 04:15, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There is no point. He had a good mentor, who asked him to agree some conditions. He did so. He then ignored them. He didn't try and fail to make the standard. He made no attempt whatsoever to follow the conditions. The mentoring ended because the mentor decided that it could not succeed without Asilah's cooperation.

Unless there is a reason to assume that the same won't happen again, mentoring is a non-starter. Kahastok talk 21:17, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

[5] His latest comment on a talk page, this is words of encouragement to an editor trying to make sense of an awful article. I agree with the comments about mentoring, it would appear that mentoring was agreed to when a permanent block was being considered for disruptive editing. As soon as the focus was removed, they quickly reverted to the same behaviour elsewhere. WCM_email 23:26, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Is a ban or block being suggested here? I think a temp block will have no gain as he has a history of being block. If he is particularly disruptive in one field, a Topic ban may be a better alternative to an indef block. If so, we have to identify the particular field in which he is disruptive. Yashovardhan (talk) 13:58, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I would endorse a topic ban from topics related to the Iberian peninsula, broadly construed, until he demonstrates some vague understanding of WP:AGF. Calling people psychopaths is not on. Kahastok talk 17:34, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As a note, this post by Asilah1981 on WCM's talk page would have to rank among the worst types of personal abuse. Calling other editors a 'dick' and a 'psychopath' is totally unacceptable. Nick-D (talk) 06:54, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Nick-D. I was going to warn him for this but I think it won't do much good. Instead, its better to discuss this ban proposal here. I now think an indef block woulld have been a better proposal. Maybe WP:DNR is a good policy for him as well but now its too late for that. Yashovardhan (talk) 07:08, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Topic Ban proposal for Asilah1981

As suggested by Kahastok just above, I propose an indef topic ban for Asilah1981 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) for pages related to the Iberian Peninsula (interpreted broadly) (or until he stops his disruptive behaviour). To recap: The user has a history of disruptive editing and previous blocks have led to no good. The user has failed to assume good faith even when he has been told to do so on multiple occassions. Previous mentoring for the user has bought no good either. I propose that the ban may be lifted only when the community agrees that the user has stopped his disruptive behaviour. Pinging @Wee Curry Monster, Scolaire, and Kahastok: who have participated in this discussion here. Yashovardhan (talk) 17:58, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• I support the ban as proposer. Yashovardhan (talk) 17:58, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. I thought for a while before making this suggestion above because it's a tough action and I want to be fair to Asilah. But this has been going on, to my knowledge, for close to a year. How long should we have to tolerate an editor disrupting every attempt to improve a set of articles with such a resolute and unbending insistence that anyone who doesn't agree with him is acting in bad faith? I wouldn't bring this up but it is entirely typical of Asilah's behaviour for close on twelve months.

He's been indeffed once already. Mentoring has been tried and failed almost immediately. Something has to give, and I think this ban is proportionate. Kahastok talk 18:57, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry on what basis?

1) I have NOT made any edits to this article od my own. WCM began promptly edit warring with another editor (Anes pur sang) who was just trying to improve the articles, with what seemed like considerable effort and research in a completely non-political way.

2) I noticed the disruptive pattern and supported him.

3) I have requested (with strong words, he has done this too many times) WCM not to harass me on my talk page.

4) I have not broken the 3RR.

Two nationalistic editors disliking me is not grounds for a topic ban. Danke schon.Asilah1981 (talk) 06:25, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment I think an indef block will be better if this kind of behaviour (as pointed above by Nick and Kahastok) continues. A topic ban is a slightly lighter proposal if this personal attack is considered. Yashovardhan (talk) 07:08, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yashovardhan Indefinite block? Q? Mazaak band karo yaar... Asilah1981 (talk) 16:51, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Translation in English : Why? Stop this joke... --Yashovardhan (talk) 17:29, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Asilah1981: Bro, we are not joking here. Not meaning to insult you but you should have been more careful about these interactions. You already know that Personal attacks are strictly not tolerated here. Here's my suggestion, just read it once if you will, its for your own good :-

• Accept this topic ban
• Move away from all editors you have had major issues with and try moving into a field where they are not regular. (I know its hard but its not impossible, you can create a self imposed interaction ban if you want).
• Show that you understand what this ban is being proposed for
• Stop personal attacks altogether
• Make a good fresh record for yourself and come back in a few months to get this ban lifted.

I hope you understand that I have never interacted with you earlier so my opinion is as unbiased as it could get. I have the deepest respect for you and know that you can prove that you dont need an indef. Oh, and please do provide diffs for personal attacks that you alleged others have done against you, it will make your case stronger.

I wish you all the best of luck for your future endavours! Now if you could excuse me, its my birthday in a few minutes. Regards, Yashovardhan (talk) 17:29, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well happy birthday Yashovardhan but do not claim you have "never interacted with me and are unbiased" when only recently we have had a dispute over a questionable RfC closure as can be seen above, I believe. Its best to remain honest on these matters. Chalo, soja raha hoon. Mazaa karo.Asilah1981 (talk) 19:15, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Asilah1981: Thank you. What I meant was that I've not interacted with you before this issue. If you look again, i used the word 'earlier'. Sorry if I sent any wrong impression. Yashovardhan (talk) 19:29, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• CommentYashovardhan Excuse me?? Do you know how many times WCM has called me a Dick in discussions? He even has edit summaries calling me a dick and I'm pretty sure he has called me a dick a number of times on my talk page. Do you want me to post the diffs here? I'm getting tired of this cry baby attitude, the same two guys coming to this board over and over again after baiting and insulting me, hoping for a topic ban or block of some kind. All I ask from them is to be left alone, to not post on my talk page and to not track my edits in other articles. (They can call me a dick, Im fine with that). And please stop wasting the community's time with more Gibraltar-related moaning. I do not even edit those articles.Asilah1981 (talk) 10:05, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If you have been personally attacked, I dont see any reason for not sharing those diffs here. Yashovardhan (talk) 13:51, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yashovardhan I don't need to trawl through diffs looking for the number of times WCM has told me to stop being a WP:DICK, he knows it is true and he won't deny it, unless he feels wasting my time is worth him looking bad. I am not that thin skinned to consider it a personal attack though. If you think I'm problematic, have a look at my edits on the clusterfuck in Syria-related articles which is an outright warzone (no pun intended) and ask yourself if I'm really a conflictive editor. This entire thread is about editors having personal issues with me, not an edit conflict. It is over one fricking word I used in anger "psycopath" which wasn't even about an edit conflict but about posting on my wall. And yes I have been trying to stay away from WCM. Asilah1981 (talk) 19:29, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• For the record: I was briefly permanently blocked for accidentally revealing one of your names, under your past aliases while bringing up in a discussion that both of you have been topic banned on Gibraltar-related articles (not knowing your past aliases were your real names). So using this confusion against me is unwarranted. Also this happened over a year ago.Asilah1981 (talk) 10:05, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support It seems that no matter where this editor edits, he appears to engender conflict and often for either really silly reasons or for POV reasons. Just for information mentoring was previously considered at ANI as an alternative to an indeff block for this editor. I was happy for Irondome to try and mentor this user, especially if it stopped the personal abuse directed at me. However, it seems clear that they never had any intention of sticking to a mentoring agreement, it seems that it was used as an escape route to escape sanctions and once the focus on his editing behaviour was lost he returned to form. I see a topic ban as a last step before an indef block. WCM_email 13:37, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support: I have not interacted with this user. I noticed that he insulted WCM here, so I reverted him. Then I checked a bit more on the background dispute: he reverted the article Disputed status of Gibraltar three times in less than 24 hours, and then stopped. Right in the razor's edge of a 3RR breach, but as he did not revert a 4º time, he could not be reported. But, as I saw here, he has been using this method for a long time. Cambalachero (talk) 14:08, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • 'Interesting logic "Since he didn't break the rules we can't accuse him of breaking the rules, but since he nearly did, lets topic ban him anyways." By the way, the term DICK I used it paraphrasing WCM since he has been telling me "not to be a WP:DICK" repeatedly for months now, which is offensive yet not enough for me to consider wasting anyone's time over. Asilah1981 (talk) 14:27, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • See WP:GAME Cambalachero (talk) 15:26, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Given that you so strenuously objected to being warned of WP:3RR, it is surprising that you seem unaware of the part of the warning:

Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring—even if you don't violate the three-revert rule—should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly.

These warnings are designed to help you. I suggest you read them and heed them. Kahastok talk 17:00, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Kahastok and these rules don't apply to you? Because if we look through these articles you and WCM seem to be the most active reverters I have seen on Wikipedia.Asilah1981 (talk) 19:32, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Support. The user has a lengthy history of combative, POV, disruptive, gaming editing in the area. I'm sure Iñaki LL would agree. He's been blocked 8 times in 2.5 years [6], and is probably headed for an indef if he continues on his destructive course. Softlavender (talk) 15:39, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Softlavender Ask the editors who blocked me, but 4 of the times I was blocked were due to a single kafkian situation whereby the admins were forbidden by policy to tell me what I was doing wrong and why they were blocking me. It was a strange event. Eventually, they left me enough hints for me to work it out by myself.Asilah1981 (talk) 20:02, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Softlavender Pinging every single editor I have ever had a conflict with as is being done here is not really a correct way to go about these discussions. Yes, most of the active Wikipedia community knows Inaki hates me to death and has falsely accused me of sockpuppetry 4 or 5 times, so I steer clear of him. We already know his opinion. I understand it is fun to gang up on individual editors. This entire ANI discussion is the result of me responding negatively to unrelenting harassment on my talk page as user Valenciano succinctly summarizes here https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Wee_Curry_Monster&diff=783372115&oldid=783304313 and here https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Wee_Curry_Monster&diff=783384450&oldid=783382841. It should not serve as an excuse for "payback" for past feuds. Sure maybe I should have not called WCM a psychopath - But when someone claims to be "required to harass you by policy" (wtf?) and does it again within 3 hours of you asking him to stop is certainly not reasonable. WP:DICK does apply I believe, the first time I have used this expression and I responded in kind to the same accusation launched by this very same user. For the record, I don't like this concept of WP:DICK and have suffered it too many times. I use it once and somehow it becomes a shit storm. Talk about "gaming the system"....Asilah1981 (talk) 16:34, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Please provide a diff for your quote "required to harass you by policy". When doing so, bear in mind that editors are required to post certain notices by policy, that this is not considered harassment (a very serious accusation that itself requires evidence), and that you are not allowed to avoid admin scrutiny by banning people from posting those required warnings. Kahastok talk 17:00, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Kahastok The diffs are on my talk page. Harrassment involves repeatedly posting warnings on an experienced editors talk page when involved in an edit conflict when they have asked you repeatedly to stop doing so. And this is not the first time or the second.Asilah1981 (talk) 19:35, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I can't find that quote on your talk page. It should be trivial to post the link to the diff you are quoting?

Note that I find nothing in WP:HARASS that would endorse your contention that it is harassment to post warnings on user talk pages in circumstances in which they are required or strongly recommended by policy or common practice. Kahastok talk 09:54, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Support. Thanks for calling me to this unsurprising new incident. I have been largely inactive lately in the EN WP: like many editors of Spanish topics who prefer to dedicate to more productive things than permanent litigation with ubiquitous editors, I am less and less active. I quitted the article Basque conflict for Asilah1981's conspicuous battleground approach defying all patience, the editor in question seems to thrive in litigation and all red hot topics of present-day and long-running Spanish politics, e.g. historical memory, historiography, terrorism/politics related violence, national (Spanish, Basque, Catalan) and territorial (Gibraltar) issues, Spanish race or no race,… POV pushing that puts all patience to test. For what I read above, the editor in question continues set in his ways with an ad hominem, judgemental, divisive approach, parroting the same old generic partial truths… Four months ago, he conspicuously breached a constructive, well-meant sanction (cited above, cf. Irondome), and nothing happened whatsoever, total impunity. Gaming the system is one phrase that suits well his behaviour, for what I can see he has not learnt anything, only more sophisticated ways to circumvent the system. Iñaki LL (talk) 21:07, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

So I think that's it. That's all of you who have either falsely accused me of things I haven't done (Inaki's favourite method is accusing half a dozen of unrelated editors of sockpuppetry) or who have a long standing grudge against me. Shall I now ping the dozens of editors with which I have edited constructively and thanked me for my work over the last 5 years and turn this into a battle of meatpuppets or shall we just forget about this ridiculous incident?Asilah1981 (talk) 04:46, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

O actually, I read Asilah1981's latest personal attack as pointed by Yashovardhan above. It just confirms there is no learning whatsoever. I was subject to serious personal attacks addressed to me in Spanish some time ago in his own talk page and MLNV prisoners page, and veiled threats in an ANI one-two years ago, although he has refined his ways of addressing to me in the course of time. Due to his inability to refrain, I should rather support a complete ban, with topic ban as second option. As I have said other times, there is the edit record for everyone to check. Regards Iñaki LL (talk) 09:25, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Support. I outlined Asilah's tendentious editing at Catalan Countries in my post in the previous section. I have seen similar behaviour at articles with which I have not been involved, e.g. this at Disputed status of Gibraltar, this at Basque conflict, and this at ETA. He was also involved in this discussion at ANI over edit-warring to replace a copyrighted image in several Iberian-related articles without a proper fair use rationale. Asilah has a problem with objectivity, and a problem with unemotional, rational discussion. He does game the system by withdrawing at strategic moments so that right now, for instance, he could not be blocked because he's not doing anything blockable (his last revert at Disputed status of Gibraltar was two days ago). A topic ban seems the only answer. Scolaire (talk) 12:21, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Scolaire why on earth would anyone block me Scolaire? Because you don't like me? Nothing in policy allows a group of editors to come together on the basis of their opposition to one editor's views on a range of different topics to "topic ban" him. On what topics? "Asilah is banned from editing on anything that WCM, Scolaire, Inaki and Kahastok feel VERY strongly about". The basis of this decision was that Asilah was rude when asking WCM for the nth time to stop posting on his talk page. Really? That is the expected outcome? You think that is how wikipedia works? And you accuse me of gaming the system? This IS gaming the system. Asilah1981 (talk) 13:11, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Read your response again, Asilah. It sums up exactly what the problem is. There was a number of ways you might have responded, but the only way you know is to go on the attack with shouty bolded sentences. Scolaire (talk) 13:49, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Support No basis in policy, Asilah1981? On the contrary, the actual policy states: The purpose of a topic ban is to forbid an editor from making edits related to a certain topic area where their contributions have been disruptive.emphasis added. In the areas cited above, there is evidence of tendentious editing, failure to engage in consensus, and attempts to drive other editors away from an area of editing. This is behavior that falls within the definition of disruptive editing. Rather than address these complaints, you have chosen instead to attack the other editors as your personal enemies. I am posting this here in the (possibly vain) hope that input from an editor who has not previously interacted with you may have some positive effect. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 14:43, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Eggishorn Ok fine. I'm done with this issue. Just make sure this guy doesn't harass me on my talk page again and I'm happy. Its ironic that two editors who had to open new accounts to circumvent long-term bans on these very articles, are trying to get me topic-banned. I barely edit them anyways, technically I didn't edit them at all. I just briefly supported the latest of the dozens who has been hounded out by these editors over the past decade. Have a nice week. Asilah1981 (talk) 15:17, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think WP:SPI is pretty good in dealing with these situations. Did you consider filing a case there with the evidence you might have to make such accusations? Yashovardhan (talk) 17:36, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yashovardhan Its not an accusation, its a known fact by all admins. The reason I was blocked was for outing their former accounts, not knowing that they were their true names. I cannot discuss this topic as per Wikipedia policy, would get me blocked - this time permanently.Asilah1981 (talk) 11:10, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Asilah1981 I think you should know WP:CLEANSTART then. Yashovardhan (talk) 14:04, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I do know WP:CLEANSTART, Yashovardhan simply see little change in behavior between then and now... anyways, I have other issues to worry about these days.Asilah1981 (talk) 15:10, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Support Asilah has long been a disruptive influence in these articles and his responses here are classic examples of a WP:BATTLEGROUND mentality. Rather than acknowledging there may be a problem, he launches into attacks on other editors, suggesting that they are just bad faith editors, sockpuppets, " Two nationalistic editors" who dislike him etc. One of the latest controversies involves him edit warring against consensus, during an RFC which disagreed with his view and adding pointy tags then responding with refusal to get the point when editors took the time to explain why the tags were inappropriate. Now we have WP:GAME examples, making 3 reverts then stopping short of a fourth. Since this part of a long pattern rather than an isolated incident, an enforced break from these articles would be best. Valenciano (talk) 18:08, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support indefinite topic-ban from all topics related to the Iberian peninsula, broadly construed. The disruption has been repeated over a very long period of time and consistently involves personalizing disputes with editors that Asilah1981 disagrees with. Asilah1981 states above that he 'barely' edits articles in this topic area anyway. If true, then the topic ban will have little to no impact on his editing. But based on the editing history I think this claim is more a case of another example of the tendentious approach to editing that this editor has. MPS1992 (talk) 18:55, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• I would support a wider topic ban related to any political subjects Here is their latest edit. He tells that members of "fact checking organizations" "celebrate public executions with militants". What? This is not supported by any reliable sources, to tell this politely. My very best wishes (talk) 15:28, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• I don't know if I support this--I do know that the "dick" comment came after a. Asilah asked WCM to stay away from their talk page and b. WCM didn't honor that request--so it seems pretty clear who was in the wrong here. Drmies (talk) 15:42, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I only saw their edits in the area of Syrian war, such as this ("fat unemployed blogger" in edit summary; being "fat and unemployed" is not a reason for removing anything), or that doubtful usage of Amnesty statement [7]. In the last diff he (mis)represents views by Amnesty International and EU as something opposite to the views by US and UK governments. In fact, they are not opposite. But whatever. I have no strong opinion about it.My very best wishes (talk) 21:31, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Next comment by Asilah: [8]. He refers to this propaganda "source" by David Icke to connect to a video of public execution by Islamic militants. I do not think this is anything appropriate. My very best wishes (talk) 02:41, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

And now he violated 1RR restriction on the page to insert a poorly referenced statement by Assad Here his edit was reverted by another contributor. And what he does? revert (note the reinserted phrase about Assad), and reinserts it again. Note that his sources are questionable. And he does it while his editing is under discussion on WP:AN! I think he is simply WP:NOTHERE. My very best wishes (talk) 13:32, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Just for clarity, first revert 17:59, 5 June 2017 (UTC); second revert 05:24, 6 June 2017 (UTC). I don't know whether 1RR violations are supposed to be reported to EWN (or AE) while there is an ongoing discussion at AN. Scolaire (talk) 16:08, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I previously requested closure of Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#The criteria of WP:NSPORT here are too inclusive at WP:ANRFC because someone said one closer is enough. However, another person said that more than one closer, i.e. two closers, may be needed. Therefore, I'm re-requesting a closure here but for two-person teamwork. --George Ho (talk) 18:23, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@George Ho: I'd be happy to work on this one wit one or two partners. Tazerdadog (talk) 02:46, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you again. I notified those about this, and I'm awaiting more if necessary. --George Ho (talk) 02:53, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Eggishorn is going to be another team closer. Two should suffice unless third closer is proven necessary, which I would also welcome. --George Ho (talk) 05:06, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Masoom.bilal73 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Phalia (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

This user is effectively de facto banned already, in that no sane administrator would ever unblock them, but I'd like to propose a formal ban anyway. . Main target for this user is Phalia which they have repeatedly edited to insert their own name, and/or make generally incompetent edits of other types. They have even gone so far as to upload an image of a landmark in Phalia at Commons (now deleted) where they added their own name as a watermark not one but four times over what turned out to be a copyright violation anyway.

I don't believe this is trolling, it is more of a WP:CIR issue. This person seems manifestly incapable of understanding that Wikipedia is not a place to promote themselves, and there is an obvious language issue as well. Their unblock requests make it clear they have an extremely poor understanding of the English language, to the point where it si unlikely they even comprehend the majority of messages they receive.

Part of the reason is simply to get more eyes on them, I seem to be the only admin fully aware of them and if I'm not around the socks tend to go unnoticed even though they are extremely obvious. The other reason is the probably vain hope that maybe, just maybe, a formal ban will drive home to them that they need to stop what they are doing. If one of my fellow checkusers would be willing to look into a rangeblock that might also be helpful. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:19, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• If it'll help, I'll support this. I also added Phalia to my watchlist, but my watchlist is getting a bit too large for me to notice everything that happens on it. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 19:56, 24 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that' something, I was rather hoping to get more than one comment here.... Beeblebrox (talk) 18:03, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Beeblebrox, isn't your semiprotection of Phalia likely to address the problem? If you have a rangeblock in mind, can you say what it is? Extending the semi to indefinite is one idea. It is easily justified since the problem has been happening since 2015. Another option is WP:ECP since socking is a justification for such a protection under the community rules. For what it's worth I would support a ban on User:Masoom.bilal73. There is a sockpuppet category at Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of Masoom.bilal73 and an SPI at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Masoom.bilal73. EdJohnston (talk) 02:59, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't run a CU (the socks being rather obvious on behavioral evidence) so I can't say for sure if a rangeblock would be effective, Most of the socks never get to the point of being autoconfirmed, so semi seems like a better fit than ECP. Some of the socks have edited other articles so it is still possible protection won't put a complete stop to it. Beeblebrox (talk) 15:39, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know why, but I have some red flags going up on this user. Seems like they're WP:SOCKing. I have no evidence, and I don't want to accuse them of being a sock. But I would like some further input.—CYBERPOWER (Around) 21:53, 30 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think you just have accused them of socking :) GiantSnowman 22:01, 30 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Not meaning to sound accusatory. Call it a suspicion since I have 0 experience with socks. Hence me asking for more input at AN. :p—CYBERPOWER (Message) 23:03, 30 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• (Non-administrator comment) Was blocked for disruptive editing by Berean Hunter. I have no idea about if the user was socking, but my concerns were mostly promotion and original research... — PaleoNeonate — 02:22, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Indeffed for disruptive editing. We were certainly being messed with...he wrote a bizarre rant over an article submission with this. I imagine that he confused the COI editor whose article he overwrote. The books on his userpage that he authored (?) do not seem to exist. This is certainly a sock.
   — Berean Hunter (talk) 02:27, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Wow, yeah, I can see the COI editor getting confused. "What happened to my article? Bad enough that someone wants it deleted, but then someone else puts gibberish on top of it?" Nyttend (talk) 04:12, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Thanks for the comments.—CYBERPOWER (Message) 04:24, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Would an uninvolved admin like to try asking them about the overwrite or their editing in general? They have offered some kind of explanation and an unformed unblock request on their talk page. I don't see a reason to unblock so I'll let others consider it.
   — Berean Hunter (talk) 19:23, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't know that I'm strictly uninvolved, but I suppose I was a little short with them on my talk page, so I should probably try to explain things a little more. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 19:27, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Need a clear community consensus. We have a long-standing troll, documented at Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Best known for IP.

It's a tough issue. He's now landed on a few difficult to block, high traffic ranges. His MO is the same as it ever was; pick random articles that use superlatives, then fix them. Not a bad problem to have, except that when he runs into a content dispute, he'll inevitably freak out, leading to personal attacks and eventually death threats. There have been thousands of blocks, and dozens of community discussions. The community ban is here.

He also will return to every single content dispute he's been in. An an example will be the article at Greece national football team. He's been removing a questionable section there for a year or so. He's been reverted in the past by Jdcomix, Keri, Andy Dingley, Sro23, Exemplo347, ScrapIronIV, Bretonbanquet and triggered a semi-protection by BU Rob13. He returned yesterday and I reverted him twice, blocking the IP and noting the reason for the revert in the edit summary and explicitly in the block message.

Admin Fenix down reverted me as he liked the article without the content. This is reasonable, and usually I'd just leave it. Unfortunately, I hit the revert button reflexively and immediately self-reverted when I noticed it was not just a rotated IP. Also, unfortunately, I was given a 24 hour block for "edit warring". No attempt at communication or clarification; simply a block for reverting his content decision. He unblocked when he noticed the self-revert which occurred prior to the block.

Follow-up discussion on his talk page was fruitless. He's unwilling to look in to the long-term issue "based on my word". He also does not recognize that by making that last content decision, he's an editor in the article and should not be placing WP:INVOLVED blocks against those who reverted him, mistake or not.

So I'd like a discussion here on 1) Review of Fenix Down's block 2) how best to handle the LTA issue. Happy to stand down from dealing with that particular banned editor until there's some consensus on how best to handle. Obviously, my approach to this LTA issue can be modified based on feedback. Kuru (talk) 13:13, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Ooof, that conversation on Fenix down's talkpage makes painful reading. You can't have it both ways, I'm afraid - if you're restoring a banned editor's non-trivial edits, you're taking responsibility for them, and that means you're WP:INVOLVED as regards that article. Blocking an experienced editor (and admin, which is relevant here - this is someone who should know LTA accounts) whilst involved and not even bothering to check the LTA status of the IP/editor who was removing the material strikes me as very, very sub-optimal indeed. Fenix down is probably quite lucky that Kuru self-reverted, because I suspect if he had not, he would still be blocked, and that wouldn't turn out well. Black Kite (talk) 13:29, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• (EC - I see Black Kite made essentially the same point) Assuming 'Best known for' is actually banned, all their edits may be reverted on sight. Likewise they may be reinstated by any editor who is willing to take responsibility for the edits. This would be a content dispute. By taking ownership of a banned editors edits, Fenix clearly WP:INVOLVED themselves in a content issue, and then used their tools while involved in a dispute. From their talkpage they also seem to not understand 3rr, what involved actually means, or how banned LTA editors are dealt with. There is also the issue that in a content dispute, unless there is a reason why information should be removed (BLP, copyvio etc) the status quo should remain until the dispute is resolved. But frankly they cant have it both ways, either you were reverting the edits of a banned editor - which are exempt from 3RR, or you were subsequently engaged in an edit war over content with Fenix, in which case they should not have even thought about blocking. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:38, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Fair enough, at the time I read banned as blocked and was not aware that this was the best known for IP banned user as these edits were not aligned to what I understood to be his usual behavior. Appreciate that this block was therefore totally not called for and happy to take admonishment for it as incorrect and too hasty. I do however stand by my points below though that regardless of the status of this user, the actions of a number of editors over a long period of time in blindly reverting a banned user have led to the repeated reinsertion of a significant element of OR/NPOV content that should never have been there. Fenix down (talk) 13:54, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A couple of points, firstly, I reversed the block as soon as I saw the self-revert and would not have blocked had I seen this first. Perhaps a little hasty on my part. However, I'm not really interested in the LTA angle here. Whatever this IP has done in the past, their edits to Greece national football team have merely been to remove a section of "Notable matches" which contain no inclusion criteria nor any sourced prose outlining why they are there.

Sections of "Notable foo" which have no clear inclusion criteria, nor any sourced prose to back up the claim of specific notability are by definition original research and not neutral as it is impossible to ascertain why any element has been included / excluded and what, if anything another edit might add to the section. In my opinion, in this specific instance unless editors can show that this section is not in direct violation of these key policies, then they had no right per BANREVERT, to revert their removal, as the edits were obviously helpful, and were therefore edit warring. Arguably edit warring in good faith, but nonetheless, Kuru, and a number of editors listed above, were simply blindly going through the motions of reverting without considering what they were actually doing.

This was my stance when I blocked Kuru. I felt that there was no justifiable reason per BANREVERT and he was therefore just edit warring. My revert was there in my opinion not INVOLVED as it was of a purely administrative nature; namely to remove content that was in clear contravention of fundamental WP policies. The fact that he immediately then reverted me without attempting to discuss further or even add an edit summary suggested that he was edit warring, hence the block. As soon as I saw the self-revert I unblocked. I accept if I had take a minute or so longer then this could have been avoided.

However, in this instance it is important to separate the wider LTA issue from edits to this specific article, as a significant number of editors have been adding back OR / NPOV content simply because it is being removed by a banned user. The series of edit wars could have been avoided had any one of these editors actually stopped to think about what they were doing rather than blindly reverting and either not reverted or at any point bothered to seek consensus either on the article talk page or at WT:FOOTY then they may well have found that editors preferred not to have a meaningless OR/NPOV list of matches in an article. Fenix down (talk) 13:31, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"However, I'm not really interested in the LTA angle here. "'

Then you need to get interested in it sharpish, or you should no longer be an admin.

Quite obviously you did not block Kuru for edit warring, but for lèse-majesté by reverting you, not LTA. I would remind you, reverting an admin is not a crime. But you blocked immediately, thanks to the red mist of having been reverted yourself, and you did this without any discussion, against another admin, and without even bothering to read the edit summaries of the preceding edits.

If you blocked "for edit warring", that is a claim by yourself that you have looked at the history of the article - but clearly you hadn't.

The block is bad enough, but now you're making excuses for it on the basis that you're not intending to observe WP:DENY. Are you planning to block any other editors who do observe it? I for one am very concerned about such a threat - there are already plenty of admins who think that DENY is withheld when it's applied to their banned friends, but here you seem to be stating that you're just not interested in LTA at all and clearly you're happy to block people regardless.

DENY applies to you too. Editors (and not just admins) are at liberty to enforce it on problem editors such as LTA and we do not need a block-happy admin deciding to block other gf editors for cleaning up their mess. Even if the "change" might be "a good one" (stopped clocks being right twice a day and all). Restoring such content is a matter for Talk: discussion, but that has to recognise all through that process (per DENY) other editors are still at liberty to remove it, and it is not a blockable offence to disagree with you as to its virtues.

As an editor who does a lot of cleanup work around persistent trolls and socks, I want to see a clear statement from you here and now that you have read WP:DENY and that you are going to observe WP:NOT3RR §3 in the future. Otherwise this needs to start a desysopping. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:15, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Feel I have made that statement above, but happy to reiterate that I read "banned" as "blocked" and if I had realized that this IP had a community ban I would have seen that DENY and NOT3RR#3 were relevant and would have spoken to Kuru rather than assuming edit warring. Fenix down (talk) 14:40, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Fenix down, suggest you read WP:3RRNO again. "Reverting actions performed by banned users in violation of their ban, and sockpuppets of banned or blocked users." But really, this is a red herring. You made a content edit so you are precluded from using the tools against an editor reverting you, period. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 14:46, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Acknowledged, I won't act incorrectly in such haste in future. Fenix down (talk) 14:51, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Fenix, this is the second time I've seen your name here lately, on the wrong side of good judgement (Month or so ago). If you have an issue with another admin's admin actions and it isn't urgent that you block to prevent damage, you take them to WP:AN for review. Your explanation of WP:involved is labored, to put it mildly. Blocking him without discussion was just plain stupid. Good judgement is a requirement for keeping the admin bit and acts like this put that bit in peril. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 16:11, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You're right it was totally the wrong thing to do, I should have discussed it with him in the first place. Fenix down (talk) 16:26, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The point is: While it's true we have an enforceable policy against too many reverts, it's also true that there's an exception for Reverting actions performed by banned users in violation of their ban; if a user clims to be doing that (and you need to check the edit summeries for such a claim), there is no justification for blocking the user unless either the claim is obviously wrong (and with an admin you'd better have extremely good evidence), or you've tried to discuss it with the user and got no reasonably satsfactory answer. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 04:55, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know where else to post this because I'm not even sure what's causing the problem (can't find any issue with the template, nor with the bots that tagged these). The following files seemingly refuse to show up in Category:Non-free files with orphaned versions more than 7 days old no matter how many times I purge the pages involved or make null edits:

• File:Windows 95 Desktop screenshot.png
• File:Windows NT 4.0.png
• File:Windows NT 3.5.png
• File:Windows 3.0 workspace.png

Modernponderer (talk) 13:55, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe I'm missing something, but the first one shouldn't show up in that category because it doesn't qualify. That category is for images where prior versions have not yet been deleted. This particular case all the prior images have been deleted.--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:25, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

User:Sphilbrick, the revisions were deleted after I posted this. But there still seems to be something very wrong with the category: it looks like it doesn't list the files beyond a certain number of them, as I'm seeing an alphabetical order that ends with D, with no option to go to the next page.

If someone with technical knowledge could take a closer look at all of this it would be appreciated, as I'm almost sure the problem is not fixed. Modernponderer (talk) 14:32, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm fairly sure that there is no problem. I work with that category extensively. It is quite common for the entries in that category to appear to be a nonrandom subset in terms of initial letter for two reasons. If the newly populated items are roughly a consistent reflection of the alphabet, when I work on deleting them I often start on the second page and go to the end, which means early part of the alphabet is overrepresented. A second reason more likely to be the case here, is that the bot that populates these entries is generally picking them up from a bot that does the reduction. Those bots typically have some throttling to make sure they do not send too many images in a large batch. While I haven't checked the gory details, my assumption is that the bot doing the reduction, or the bot identifying images needing reduction doesn't identify all available images but only a subset per throttling rules, and this is likely to produce a set of images from a narrow selection of initial letters. I have often seen a new population of images from a narrow selection of the alphabet. As an aside, someone is supposedly working on a bot to carry out the removal, which I hope happen soon because manually clearing them is mindlessly numbing.--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:49, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

User:Sphilbrick, that may indeed be a reasonable explanation for the category behavior I was seeing. But I still do not understand why these images that I had periodically monitored for several days never showed up in it. Again, I had tried purging the pages (images and category), making a null edit to the template, etc. Nothing worked, even though most of them were long past the initial 7-day period after tagging. If you can think of a reason for this phenomenon as well, do let me know, as I'm completely baffled about it at this point. Modernponderer (talk) 19:55, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

(previous discussion: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive953#Editor "translating" person's names and other problems from early May 2017)

Multiple users have contacted User:Carolus about issues with his article creations and additions, including (but not limited to) sourcing problems. One such problem is that sources like "RD 8.4.1932" or "RD 21.7.1924" (only source on Hubert Krains) are not understandable to our readers at all. This has been noted during the past few days by User:Reb1981, User:Andreas Philopater and myself, while User:Boleyn has tagged similar articles for sourcing issues as well (see e.g. Werner van den Steen de Jehay). User:TonyBallioni has also suggested that Carolus should change his approach to article creation and perhaps develop them in draft space first. Carolus' response to this polite and patient editor was "If you want it back, then stop crying, i have other things to do. sorry, but do not delete and come back crying" which was completely missing the point.

Now, his latest reply to the requests to change his "RD date" sources to something readable and understandable is "No, i will do as i like, evreryone understands the meaning of an RD in Belgium."[9] Never mind that we don't write for people in Belgium but for people around the world, and that both I and (I think) Andreas Philopater are Belgians and still had trouble understanding what was meant...

Considering this reply, his approach to editing, his manner in other discussions (see the previous ANI discussion, and see User talk:Carolus#Belgian monarchs and related pages for another recent good example), I think it is time that some sanction is implemented. I don't know which sanction, apart from a block, would prevent all these problems though, as they are not all limited to e.g. article creation. A topic ban from the main space (forcing him to use either draft space or article talk pages) may be a solution. A good mentor, assuming that Carolus is willing to be mentored, is also a possibility. But seeing that his userpage states "This user has been on Wikipedia for 11 years, 9 months and 22 days." I fear that no swift and easy change should be expected. Fram (talk) 11:57, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You choose Fram, 1/ i leave EN wiki, or you leave me in peace, no other options; you decide. Do not wast my time, and say what you want. I have a problem with you as well, but i do not cry like a child. So let me know your decision. --Carolus (talk) 12:07, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Fram: The most cursory of checks would have verified that this user has been on Wikipedia for about 2 years. --Izno (talk) 12:09, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

And a somewhat more indepth check would have verified that this user has been on Wikipedia for 11 years, with the first 6 or so on nlwiki (where they got indef blocked), then a hiatus, and now 2 years on enwiki. Fram (talk) 12:11, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Izno, don't you understand Fram?? He is very clear? But i don't get the point if someone is blocked elsewere? If Fram does not see that a Knight Grand Cross in the Order of Leopold II is enough notability, then he has a serious issue about the facts of wiki. --Carolus (talk) 12:13, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As I can see the situation: A user gets blocked on Dutch Wikipedia for sock puppetry (the block reason includes a URL to their equivilent of our WP:SPI), joins us a couple of years later, and creates pages with cryptic source data, and he says that No, i will do as i like, evreryone understands the meaning of an RD in Belgium [sic]. We need sources to be understood by English-language readers, not by Belgians; amd sockpuppetry elsewhere is clearly a red flag, IMO. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 12:22, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I am not a sockpuppet? I am Carolus? what is your point?--Carolus (talk) 12:30, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

OK, forget other solutions, time to indef block them for WP:CIR. His latest claim is that he doesn't write full biographies because "people will change them anyway because of 1/ their oppinion, and 2/ the spelling errors. The last one is discriminating people who do not speak fully english"[10]. Yep, you read that right, correcting spelling errors in encyclopedia articles is now a form of discrimination... Fram (talk) 12:39, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Not sure if "mentor" is the word, since Carolus has been active longer than I have, but I would be willing to partner with him – for example if he's willing to create new articles in draft space I'd be happy to check them through and move them to main space. His interests to some extent overlap with mine, and I've effectively been revising his work as and when it shows up on User:AlexNewArtBot/BelgiumSearchResult anyway. (I'm not actually a Belgian, but I did spend a year in Belgium as a student, and have been working in Belgium for the past couple of years.) --Andreas Philopater (talk) 13:14, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• I've left Carolus a final warning. If they carry on editing like this, I'll simply block them. Black Kite (talk) 13:17, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• This was the response to the final warning. I think we're quickly approaching a CIR block for not wanting to work with the community on the issues presented. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:08, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • i don't get the point? being blocked for a sockpuppet of 5 years ago? Ok, then block me please.--Carolus (talk) 14:10, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As for the Belgian monarchs situation, I agreed to compromise on that topic (even though we don't chronologically number monarchs), in order to stop the edit warring. PS - Again, Philippe's title is "King of the Belgians", not "seventh King of the Belgians".

GoodDay (talk) 14:15, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Carolus You really might want to tone it down, you're not going to win any allies by issuing ultimatums. Also, the RD (Royal Decree - which you explained on your talk page ) isn't referenced anywhere online, nor is it referenced as a printed item (no ISBN numbers or anything ) so I'm not sure it can be used.

Regarding R.D's, if this was the Dutch Wikipedia you could possibly get away with "everybody knows what RD's are, however on the American English Wikipedia, none of us really knows what that is, you would need to explain that, otherwise someone could, potentially remove it as "unreferenced".  Ҝ Ø Ƽ Ħ  14:19, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@KoshVorlon: I didn't realise that wall had been built already  ;) I think it's still the English Wikipedia though :D  !!! — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 14:24, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Wall? Fortuna_Imperatrix_Mundi , BLP violation removed  !  Ҝ Ø Ƽ Ħ  14:43, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• In online discussions it's often helpful to sleep on things before reaching a decision. Carolus isn't a vandal, and a tetchy response in not unusual online even from the calmest of characters. As to the American Wikipedia – I'll bite my tongue. --Andreas Philopater (talk) 14:28, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • OK guys? what is "tetchy", me no speak uk?? and who is Carlous?--Carolus (talk) 14:31, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Carolus: "Tetchy" is not "uk", tetchy is English. I'd like to see a clear response from you regarding the sourcing concerns others have brought up, please. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 14:41, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • If you expect me to change my sourcing, sorry, no can do. There are no other sources. But that is not my problem. If you realy think you can do better, yourself, please be me guest. If you don't like it, please delete them, no problem. Better it it is not getting, but your choice. Some people like to make a point by deleting articles, i like to create articles to make my point. that is all. So, perhaps you should only allow UK people to write, then the world would be happy. So, now my question, again, what has an old sockpuppet here to do? What is that point?--Carolus (talk) 14:55, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Creating articles to make a point, could be seen as a violation of WP:POINT, however. GoodDay (talk) 15:00, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, indead, so please block me, naughty me. :D--Carolus (talk) 15:11, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• • • • • @Carolus: I expect you to provide enough info about a source so that a competent English reader can discern what the source actually is so they can find it if they should choose. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 15:16, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Carolus as you've shown on Augustine Kasujja, you do in fact know how to create articles with better sourcing. Like I've said to you on your talk page: the articles you create are almost always notable, but also almost always not fully in line with what we expect for an article in the main space. I'd really suggest working in the draft space to develop the articles first, or even send it through AfC. We want your contributions here, but when they involve living people in particular, and biographies in general, we tend to prefer clear sourcing upon creation. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:18, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Carolus, the editors here want you to use a standard format for citing a Royal Decree. I don't personally know what that is, maybe someone else could link to a guide? Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 15:20, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Carolus has in fact been improving these references over the course of the day, e.g. this diff. It's an improvement, although it still isn't optimal. --Andreas Philopater (talk) 16:02, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Right, they're referring to specific source material although not in a standardized citation format. I imagine there is one for this type of source, probably similar to citing a legal statute? But I don't know what to suggest. {{cite act}} maybe? It would also be helpful if Carolus could provide a link to where they're finding these sources, if they are online. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 16:13, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The standard format in Dutch would be "KB 1923-7-21", in French "AR 1923-7-21" (with KB/AR standing for "royal decree" in the respective languages). Carolus's attempt to translate this into English as "RD 21-7-1923" is what triggered this round of scrutiny of his editing. --Andreas Philopater (talk) 16:24, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

tetchy = irritable --Andreas Philopater (talk) 14:35, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• • I will just add, as I've already mentioned on my talkpage, I once put a new article on nlwiki. Within minutes it was at AfD with people mocking my poor Dutch rather than discussing the substantive merits. My response was, I have to admit, not dignified. Hitting the right tone in a foreign language in an online forum is very tricky, especially when people seem to be knocking your good-faith efforts. --Andreas Philopater (talk) 14:33, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• On Belgian Royal Orders as sources: these are published in the Moniteur belge (or Belgisch staatsblad - basically the Belgian Gazette), which is only online from 2003 onwards (barring some scans of 19th-century copies that crop up unsystematically on Google Books or Internet Archive). Going by deeds rather than by words, Carolus has in fact made an effort to improve these references, and as they are to paper-only sources it is true not much more can be done to improve them, but they should ideally include a reference to the issue number and/or date of the Moniteur belge in which they appear. If "RD 21.7.1923" in fact means "Royal order as published in the Belgisch Staatsblad/Moniteur belge of 21 July 1923" then something like that would be best as a reference. --Andreas Philopater (talk) 16:17, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Andreas, you are almost Correct, the date is when the King has signed the koninklijk Besluit, but this can be put in the Staatsblad on a different date. You should ask concrete someone who knows the procedure of the procedures of a Koninklijk Besluit. I am not a Legal specialist, but i know that only after they appear in the Staatsblad, the royal decision is legal. I realy am suprised nobody never heard of this basic rules of Belgian law.--Carolus (talk) 19:20, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Not having the paper publication myself, I cannot know whether you are giving the date of the decree or of its publication (this is why references are important: so those of us who don't have the publication in front of us know where to look!). So the ideal reference would be: "Royal order of 21 July 1923, published in the Belgisch Staatsblad/Moniteur belge of xx [month] xxxx"--Andreas Philopater (talk) 19:34, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ok then i wil stop writing those articles, because that is realy impossible, i do not have time for that. --Carolus (talk) 19:58, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That's your call. But you could keep the format handy as <ref>"[[Royal order (Belgium)|Royal order]] of [date], published in the ''[[Belgian official journal|Belgisch Staatsblad/Moniteur belge]]'' of [date]"</ref> (on your user page, say) and just copy/paste it and fill in the dates when editing. --Andreas Philopater (talk) 20:24, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Carolus, you have been offered some really excellent advice, and I ask that you please please please consider carefully following it, or adapt in some other equivalent way. As a reader, I would have had no idea what a reference reading "RD 21-07-1923" or something like it actually meant. I would find it useless for either trying to find or verify, or to use to obtain further information (wording, for example). I would be stuck, and I doubt that you would want every reader who is trying to understand it to come and ask you, potentially years after you have made the edit. By contrast, if you follow the advice from Andreas Philopater, you would leave a reference that tells me that the source is a Royal order from the Belgian monarch, and I could follow a wikilink to find out more about what that is. It would be clear that 21-07-1923 was a date and not some sort of file reference. I would know that it would be published in the Belgisch Staatsblad/Moniteur Belge and the wiki article or a google search would tell me that it is only available offline for that date. I would have a concrete date to start searching. If you happened to have the title of the royal order, providing that would be helpful too, but even if you don't, the reference would give me an excellent starting point. If you don't know the date of publication, you could at least note "and published shortly afterwards" as something like:

• <ref>"[[Royal order (Belgium)|Royal order]] of [date], published in the ''[[Belgian official journal|Belgisch Staatsblad/Moniteur Belge]]'' shortly afterwards"</ref>
• <ref>"[[Royal order (Belgium)|Royal order]] of [date], titled [title], published in the ''[[Belgian official journal|Belgisch Staatsblad/Moniteur Belge]]'' on [date]"</ref>

For the ones available online, using a {{cite web}} template would provide a link and all the bibliographic information. It is great that you are adding sources to Wikipedia, and I thank you for that, but it would be much more helpful to add them in a way that what they are is clear to a reader... it is really not fair to expect others to change your "RD XX-XX-XXXX" references to something like that shown above, especially as you only need copy and paste the code and insert your XX-XX-XXXX where it says [date] in my first dot point. Please, this is not difficult for you and would be helpful to others. I understand that you may feel stressed / targeted for adding references, but now that it is clear what the references are, might I say that we are all working towards a common goal – high quality and source encyclopaedic content? Please, you are only being asked to make a format change that is for the benefit of readers now and in the future readers. EdChem (talk) 00:31, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Entirely off-topic. In my time here I have got on with contributing with a minimum of interaction. After finding myself pinged in this discussion I also found myself involved in an editing dispute that I have taken to Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/Noticeboard (hopefully the correct forum). Since this has so far been my only experience of dispute resolution, I have put notifications of that other discussion on the talk pages of a number of the people who took part in this one, in hopes of generating a speedy response (it is somewhat time sensitive). I am not sure where else to ask (and should perhaps have asked first), but I hope this will not be regarded as spam or as undue canvassing? I'm not asking people to agree with me, just to take a look. --Andreas Philopater (talk) 00:36, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Question - Why are we bending over backwards to keep an editor who is carrying a chip on their shoulder, won't listen to good advice, is combative and issues ultimata at the drop of a hat, and clearly wants to be blocked? Especially since they have been indeffed for socking on another language Wikipedia, and don't appear to have an especially good grasp of English? What is it we're getting from this editor that makes all this effort worthwhile? Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:11, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Considering that his latest edit was this, where "replying" to a question about a 1432-1508 person, he insists that his pre-move name for the article was right, pointing to a source about someone with that name in 1632[11], I second this question. He wants to contribute, but only on his terms and even then with many competence issues. See also Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Charles-Joseph de Hénin-Liétard d'Alsace, where his "contribution" to the AfD is "This has been nominated way too fast.", ignoring completely the many errors he made which resulted in the AfD (I have nothing to do with this article and AfD, so it seems that others are observing the same issues independently). Fram (talk) 07:22, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • I just took a quick look at their edits/the chats on their talk page, and the first three 'positions' of theirs I saw that I can myself competently assess (the Belgian monarchs, plus the Swedish dowagers and orgs with Thai royal patronage) are frankly very weird, to the point of being dispositive as far as WP:Competence is concerned, especially once you take into account their penchant for fossicking about with actual (alleged) letters patent and other (allegedly) promulgated primary sources. Having a mediocre command of English doesn't account in the least for all the idiosyncratic and (seemingly) arbitrary takes on perfectly straightforward things. Advocata (talk) 12:12, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW: I'm considering removing the numberings from the intros of the Belgian monarchs articles. As again, it goes against our practice on monarchial bio articles. GoodDay (talk) 12:18, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed that and was curious: did you mean the lower-case ordinal prefixes, or the regnal numbers, or both? I above was only referring to the bizarreness of suggesting that ('upper-case') ordinal prefixes were actually part of the sovereign title, as opposed to a (lower-case) description. Advocata (talk) 12:46, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Examples: In the intros - "..third King.." at Albert I of Belgium, "fourth King..." at Leopold III of Belgium, etc. These won't make much sense, when a female ascends the throne. GoodDay (talk) 12:50, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that's what I thought, but wanted to make sure you didn't mean the I and III, etc. You can of course rescue the wiki-convention by describing that future Elisabeth as the 8th monarch + first queen regnant, but there doesn't seem much point to it. It only seems to be a thing on the Belgian monarchs' articles because of the comparative newness of the Belgian throne. Advocata (talk) 12:58, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Carolus' combative nature, didn't help either. GoodDay (talk) 13:00, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have been doing new page patrolling for a while now. Recently on a hunch, I started digging around new pages and I have noticed a pattern. A lot of questionable pages are created by the new handles, if I check their contributions, they are limited to just one page they created. Some of the pages were created in March, April and those users have been silent since then. When I PROD a page, after being silent for 2-3 months, they just surface to delete the PROD without giving a reason or improving the article. These users are clever enough to not keep names related to the article in order to avoid potential WP:COI or WP:SPA, but their behaviour clearly makes it evident. I have no option but to go AfD route and in my experience, due to lack of participation, a lot of AfD close in no consensus. I am not sure how to deal with this. I have not linked pages or users because I do not have clear evidence that these are indeed paid editors. Coderzombie (talk) 12:48, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Coderzombie: Can you giive one or two examples of these pages? It sounds like paid editing to me; they (the ones that know what they're doing, anyway) tend to load a new page 'ready made' into user / article space as their only edit under a disposable account name, and then disappear. Staying below the r radar, see. — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 13:19, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Some examples I have noticed recently. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Coderzombie (talk) 13:27, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that. Well, 1, 2, and 4 are probably just fans- they're not written well enough to be paid for. But #3- compare the history to what I said above- an account created a new article about a Pharma in one big, clean edit. Paid editor. Although, ironcally, what you were saying in your OP doesn't seem to apply- the PROD is still there! But the others, meh. They want their favourite songstress to have an article- their 'work here is now done'- it gets PROD'd- they get an email telling them so, they come back, you go to AfD instead. The songstress loses articlespace. — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 13:38, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Could we add a log-onlytag edit filter for PROD template removal by new users anyone? —Guanaco 13:33, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We have tags for CSD removal and AfD removal, so I don't see why not one for PROD removal. Ask at WT:EFM or on the mailing list. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 15:28, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with it is that removing CSD and AfD tags are not legitimate ways, in those cases, to object to deletion, whereas removing a PROD template is a legitimate way to object to deletion. An edit filter that shows the removal of PROD templates by non-autoconfirmed users who have at least one warning on their talk page might be useful, though. RileyBugz^会話_投稿記録 16:45, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

My thought on this is that if one person objects to the deletion, consensus on AFD might still be to delete. Whether the removal is in good faith or not, the tag would identify these so we can decide whether to list them at AFD. —Guanaco 16:54, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• This is an old pattern. Typically paid editor/socks. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 17:37, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The solution we won't gain consensus on (it's probably perennially proposed/rejected)is to allow only auto-confirmed editors to deProD. The policy of allowing anyone to do so is based on AGF and assuming members of the community that understand/share our goals are the only ones doing the detagging. This (obviously) allows SPA's and PAID's to game the system.Dlohcierekim (talk) 12:31, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yup. One reason I wrote WP:IP addresses are not people. Some want to extend the phrase "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit" to doing things that IPs do not need to be doing since there is no accountability, and pulling CSD and PROD tags means it has to go to AFD, an inconvenience for an article that should be deleted. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 14:31, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I thought there was already a filter for deCSDs. dePRODs do not justify a filter in my opinion as PRODs can be removed by anyone. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:25, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I support keeping track of PROD's somehow, in a way that's completely transparent to the remover (after all, anyone is allowed to do it). Either an edit filter, or a bot similar to User:FastilyBot/Recently Untagged Dated Deletion Files. – Train2104 (t • c) 12:43, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We've got about 90 articles that need to be deleted (or otherwise dealt with) after a massive AfD; some have been tagged for G6 and they've been slowly whittled down from about 120 over the last week, but could an admin or three please deal with this so that the list isn't overwhelmingly big? Thanks, ansh666 19:24, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I did about 40 of them...now I see 200x's allover...Lectonar (talk) 20:14, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Twinkle's dbatch is a marvellous thing... Primefac (talk) 20:20, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! ansh666 23:10, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What are the guidelines or rules regarding obvious but undisclosed machine translations (or obvious but undisclosed translations in general, come to think) from foreign-language Wikipedias? There's this initial version of a page which is obviously a this page run through Google Translate (go ahead and compare). The editor who did this is relatively new but has already had stuff deleted as copyright violations. --Calton | Talk 19:53, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The obvious thing would be to list them at WP:PNT....and a little discussion concerning machine translations in general can be found here: Wikipedia talk:Translation#Machine-translations and Wikipedia talk:Translation#RFC. Unfortunately, there is no consensus to delete them outright as for now. Although I will use this occasion to leave this little titbit of information: stumbled upon this on It-Wikipedia....a speedy deletion tag which kind of expands our A2 here: "(C3) Pagina scritta in un'altra lingua o tradotta con traduttori automatici" which is "....page written in another language or translated by machine translation...". You think we should try to expand ours too, or is this actually perennial? Lectonar (talk) 19:59, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) "Wikipedia consensus is that an unedited machine translation, left as a Wikipedia article, is worse than nothing". Prod them on sight unless you feel they're salvageable. ‑ Iridescent 20:01, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Wouldn't there also be a copyright issue since they didn't properly attribute the source? Yes, easy to fix, but that is still a problem. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 22:07, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  There is in fact a copyright issue. Lots of people think that "free use" means "unconditional use". Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 22:26, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2017).

Administrator changes

Doug Bell • Dennis Brown • Clpo13 • ONUnicorn

ThaddeusB • Yandman • Bjarki S • OldakQuill • Shyam • Jondel • Worm That Turned

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC proposing an off-wiki LTA database has been closed. The proposal was broadly supported, with further discussion required regarding what to do with the existing LTA database and defining access requirements. Such a tool/database formed part of the Community health initiative's successful grant proposal.
• Some clarifications have been made to the community banning and unblocking policies that effectively sync them with current practice. Specifically, the community has reached a consensus that when blocking a user at WP:AN or WP:ANI, it is considered a "community sanction", and administrators cannot unblock unilaterally if the user has not successfully appealed the sanction to the community.
• An RfC regarding the bot policy has closed with changes to the section describing restrictions on cosmetic changes.

Technical news

• Users will soon be able to blacklist specific users from sending them notifications.

Miscellaneous

• Following the 2017 elections, the new members of the Board of Trustees include Raystorm, Pundit and Doc James. They will serve three-year terms.

Having taken a quick review of Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons and I see nothing that indicates it does not apply to WP:ANI and this page. I just removed three BLP comments, two of which sat for 24 hours, and the editors concerned notified. However, you feel about the man Wikipedia is not the place to be making derogatory remarks. People need to pay more attention to what is written and remove glaring violations. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 22:43, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, but some admins prefer to help their wikifriends have a laugh at the expense of easy targets instead of upholding our policies no matter who the target of the violations is. Fram (talk) 07:35, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm one of those that had his comment removed. I'm not so sure it qualifies, as it was a direct quote from Stephen Colbert, but I won't revert you either. Yes I know what that sounds like, but remember, we have quotes from other notable people about notable people in other articles, some are less likeable than others, but does that give us cause to remove them?

I would actually say no. However, I won't revert you, it not worth any extra drama  Ҝ Ø Ƽ Ħ  12:21, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

KoshVorlon If you had made it clear that it was a quote then I wouldn't have removed it. Negative remarks like that require solid sources. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 12:28, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

CambridgeBayWeather Stephen Colbert made the news with that comment. It was reported , pretty much everywhere in the US, so I expected that phrase would be well known, but yes, I should have made that a bit clearer - my bad ! PS: I loved your old tag "have a gorilla" any chance of you bringing that back ?  Ҝ Ø Ƽ Ħ  12:40, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

But that is the problem. I know of Colbert but I've never watched him nor do I pay a lot of attention to foreign news (I live in Canada). I had at least one complaint about the "have a gorilla" tag as misleading. And given that it wasn't sourced to The Goon Show I probably should not have used it either. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 12:58, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Charles lindberg (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Howdy. Would an administrator please restore the article Ministry of Sir Robert Borden to 10th Canadian Ministry? The article was moved (originally to 2nd Ministry of Sir Robert Borden), without discussion. GoodDay (talk) 22:53, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Fixed and I dropped a note, in a rather ironic discussion. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 23:20, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Holy hell, he has done a TON of these. EdJohnston please take a look at his user page, where I linked the SPI on him. I'm about to be busy, but we need an admin to revert a bunch of moves. I blocked him for WP:DE with the moves and concern over this] but I need a clean up on isle 4 via his contribs and the moves. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 23:29, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Any admin is free to unblock or whatever, btw, as I'm about to be away for a bit. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 23:31, 1 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

User:Charles lindberg has been a problem for some time now. As seen by their talk page competence concerns have been raised multiple times. Their involved in slow edit wars all over......not a new editor. --Moxy (talk) 00:25, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

To add on to this, they've uploaded a bunch of copyvio images screenshotted from Youtube videos using clearly incorrect CC tags, which have all been deleted at Commons. [12] ---- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 00:45, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Leaving aside the SPI concerns, I agree that an indefinite duration block is justified here on the grounds of disruptive editing (barging into contentious infoboxes and making major changes, etc) and general competence. Nick-D (talk) 02:08, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It appears that he might be dabbling in editing signed out, as well. GoodDay (talk) 01:05, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is |Light2Shadow......the War of 1812 infobox edits gives it away.--Moxy (talk) 01:19, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

For other background, see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/96.54.184.11 and Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RRArchive340#User:Charles lindberg reported by User:Simplexity22 (Result: 72 hours). Based on the huge number of non-consensual page moves from the last few days I support Dennis's indefinite block. I don't know if this is the same person as was operating the Alberta IPs in the SPI case, but there is overlap in behavior.The IP was systematically changing the numbering of Canadian prime ministers, and Charles lindberg was altering the numbering of federal cabinets. EdJohnston (talk) 01:56, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• The more I look, the more confident I am in the block but the circumstances are unusual enough I did want it reviewed here. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 09:50, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Good block. Bishonen | talk 21:55, 3 June 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Hello,

To answer a request from the 2016 Community Wishlist for more user control of notifications, the Anti-harassment tools team is exploring changes that allow for adding a per-user blacklist to Echo notifications. This feature allows for more fine tuned control over notifications and could curb harassing notifications. We invite you to test the new feature on beta and then discuss it with us. For the Anti-harassment tools team SPoore (WMF) (talk) , Community Advocate, Community health initiative (talk) 16:26, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

 – This isn't an AN issue. Primefac (talk) 13:09, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Over on quarry there is a report :https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/19295 which lists redirects which eclipse commons.

As updating these to use the relevant Commons file directly might be thought controversial, I'd like the opinion of the admins first. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 08:45, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

ShakespeareFan00, maybe I'm missing something, but those look like redirects on both Commons and Wikipedia. So what's the issue? Primefac (talk) 12:50, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If there are redirects on both sites, there is no issues, it's determining which are in fact "local" redirects and thus are "eclipsing" otherwise useful files at Commons. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 12:52, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well, you need to update your search params, because out of 100 pages I found exactly 1 redirect on-wiki that was an actual image on Commons. Primefac (talk) 13:04, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm marking this as "resolved" (not quite hatting) because this isn't really an admin issue. If there's a redirect on Wikipedia that shouldn't be there, then it should be nominated for deletion. Primefac (talk) 13:09, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved by motion at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment:

In the interest of clarity, the discretionary sanctions procedures described at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions are modified as follows:

• In the section Appeals by sanctioned editors: Appeals may be made only by the editor under sanction and only for a currently active sanction. Requests for modification of page restrictions may be made by any editor. The process has three possible stages...
• In the section Modifications by administrators: No administrator may modify or remove a sanction placed by another administrator without...

For the Arbitration Committee, Miniapolis 14:00, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Arbitration motion regarding discretionary sanctions

Third Second time this week for me to ask for review. This is a block of an alternative account that I did, Franzboas, who was using this alternative account for WP:Advocacy and likely breaking the policy on good hand, bad hand accounts. His input at Talk:Zionist Occupation Government conspiracy theory, Talk:Jewish Bolshevism and User talk:Newyorkbrad were not the only factors, but they do frame the situation well. This block wouldn't extend to his primary account, just to the alternate account, which I do not have dots connected on anyway. It isn't often I block an alt account only, so wanted a review by my peers. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 14:04, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Unusual indeed, and a novel situation. I'm not sure but I believe the subject are is also under discretionary sanctions, in which case I believe a block would apply to the account owner and hence to all their accounts. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:36, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the intersection of race/ethnicity and human abilities and behaviour, broadly construed, is under discretionary sanctions,[13] and Franzboas was alerted to that fact on 17 May.[14] However, Dennis hasn't framed this block as a discretionary sanctions remedy. I don't think discretionary sanctions blocks are supposed to be indefinite, so an ordinary oldfashioned indef as placed by Dennis may be preferable. The option of blocking the main account as well is something that can be discussed here. (The main account isn't known, but a CU can presumably find it if they want.) Bishonen | talk 14:57, 4 June 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Oh, and I support this block, did I forget to mention that? Bishonen | talk 15:10, 4 June 2017 (UTC).[reply]

You are correct, that often it is better to push the boundaries of admin discretion and put it to community review than to deal with the limitations of Arb restrictions. My actions may not extend to the parent account, but that doesn't stop anyone else from acting on that account, ie: a CU, who might have a better view. My goal was only to stop the immediate disruption as it wasn't likely he would make the same edits with his main account. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 15:21, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict):::A CU could run a check and issue a Check user block without necessarily disclosing the main account. I contend that PoV/Advocacy is related to the owner of an account, in which case such an attitude exists in the person, not just in one of the accounts they use.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:28, 4 June 2017 (UTC).[reply]

• Good block. Saves ArbCom some trouble. There seems to be no inappropriate overlap right now so let's put that to rest for the time being. Drmies (talk) 15:50, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support block. See User talk:Rockypedia#Jews in cultural anthropology and ethnography, where the editor falsely asserted that I "supported" her or his antisemitic vandalism. — MShabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 15:54, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Good block. This was a classic example of tendentious editing at its worst. GAB^gab 16:11, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• I thought about proposing an indef topic ban for Judaism for the unknown parent account (either as Community or WP:AE), but this would drag us pretty deep in the weeds as far as enforcement is concerned. They should understand that they may not create a new account and do the same thing. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 16:15, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Good block. Thanks for taking it upon yourself to do what needs to be done. El_C 16:49, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Obviously a good block. Neutrality^talk 17:09, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Good block - this user got my radar over on Race and intelligence, a page known for sockpuppeting by Mikemikev. Given that Mikemikev likes to rail against Boasian anthropology, I thought this account was a sock of theirs but apparently​ there's a legit main account. Anyway, the block is needed given the comments on Newyorkbrad's page. EvergreenFir (talk) 17:35, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Good block - I knew it would come to this after the arbitration request. My only question is why this wouldn't extend to the primary account, since it is the person who made the edits, not the account. {Which I've just seen is a point that Kudpung makde above. Obviously, I agree with that.) It concerns me that the editor involved is still free to edit with their main account, and even to make another so-called "legitimate sock" to continue their advocacy. In my experience, it's rare that people with hardline POVs such as shown by Franzboas are able to edit in other areas without being influenced by those strongly-held opinions. Of course, we don't know if that's the case, because we can't check their editing because we don't know who they are a sock of. This penalizes the community, and potentially the encyclopedia, in order to provide putative "protection" for an editor who has now been blocked for illegitimate editing destructive to the neutrality of the encyclopedia. That doesn't seem right to me. Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:14, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Commment No need for a CU as the main account is known. I won't comment on the issues as who knows, it might come to the committee. Doug Weller talk 18:28, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Fair enough. Perhaps someone who does know can spot check their contributions? Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:31, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Beyond My Ken, I presume checking the contributions of the two accounts was what Drmies, who is a CU, was indicating above that he'd done: "There seems to be no inappropriate overlap right now".[15] Bishonen | talk 18:54, 4 June 2017 (UTC).[reply]

• Thank you, Bishonen, I missed that part of Drmies comment. Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:59, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Beyond My Ken, it was one of those situations that I decided to deal with this as a non-Arb sanction because that actually freed me up to do an indef block instead of limited blocks and because the behavior (while perhaps violating Arb restrictions) was already covered under standard policy, so I wasn't forced to act under Arb authority. To do this, I felt I needed to limit it to the account that was being misused. Since I don't know the master account, that was the strongest sanction, and method, I had at my disposal. Obviously, I knew that Arb or CUs would review and take other actions if they deemed it necessary, but that is beyond my control. My actions were limited to stopping the disruption. In short, there is a dash of WP:IAR thrown in but given this is an unusual circumstance, it is warranted. And that is why I put it up for review myself. The net of my actions is to remove their ability to use a second account to do this. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 18:50, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Thank you, Dennis. My apology if it appeared that my comment was a criticism of your action, as that was not my intention. I fully understand what your options were, and I think you acted in the best interests of the encyclopedia with the tools that were available to you.
  I have just posted a suggested addition to WP:LEGITSOCK which would void the privacy provision of that policy if the sock is shown to have violated basic policies and been blocked for it. I don't know if it will fly or not, but this instance is certainly a good illustration of the need for such a change. Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:57, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• No offense taken, I know you better than that. I agree that was a limiting factor, since I couldn't compel them to expose their primary account and I thought taking it to Arb was just overkill. If he starts a new account and does the same, he's been warned that it would be truly socking since this alt was blocked, which would mean his real account WOULD be exposed. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 19:23, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• If the "other" account is a POV pusher, they'll run into problems on their own merit. I saw no need for further investigation by others, though of course it's possible that if someone digs deeper they find trouble. It is also no secret that I have plenty of problems with Franzboas's editing, but, I repeat, I did not see such problems in the other account and thus saw no need for anything else--and that's all that needs to be said about it. Let the other account do whatever it was doing; as far as I could tell it was contributing positively. I know it's an odd situation, and it's the first time I see something like this, but hey, the world is a big place. Dennis, thanks again; I am so happy to see you back. Drmies (talk) 22:11, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

He says he isn't going to fight this now, but adds: "@Dennis Brown: I think this is an abomination, but I'm not going to fight it. Not for now, at least. The depth of the bias here genuinely confuses me. Are you aware that one of the people opposing my edits, an administrator, identifies themselves as a "third-gendered sex worker" on their user page and recently defended using euphemisms like "revolutionary action" for ambushing and assaulting unarmed peaceful conservative speakers? (To ice the cake, that admin can and did look at my log information to identify my main account.) Did you know that much of the Frankfurt School conspiracy theory article was written by a user who identifies as an "androgynous British Marxist"? (Amusingly, this image gets passed around on right-wing social media.) Why are these people judged by their individual edits while I am harassed and deemed entirely malicious and unwelcome? Why is an androgynous British Marxist allowed to edit a contentious article about LGBTQ-friendly British Marxists? Are these people not fringe? Or are they just on a fringe that better fits most Wikipedians' tastes? Franzboas (talk) 9:08 pm, Today (UTC+1)" Doug Weller talk 20:39, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• I replied there, as I should since I did the block. It is my opinion that now that the review has taken place at WP:AN, any appeal should be conducted by Arb (or any subset) itself. This is the only way to guarantee his privacy in an unusual case like this. I'm happy to live with whatever conclusions they draw. I would in fact, encourage Arb to review this case before it is requested, and act if they feel it serves the interest of Wikipedia. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 20:42, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, the quote Doug Weller have is too far. Attacking people's identities, suggesting they should not edit Wikipedia because of it... That's some bullshit. This editor should be blocked, not just the alt account. The issue is with their behavior and comments now, not the purpose of the alt account. EvergreenFir (talk) 23:21, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The issue has always been with 'their behaviour and comments' EvergreenFir. The ZOG filth was my straw, so I have been watching since. A comprehensive block is overdue. Irondome (talk) 23:44, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• I have removed his talk page access for reasons that are obvious. I again would encourage Arb to review this case and consider blocking the parent account. This is not something we can do at WP:AN or as an individual admin as we don't have access to the data needed to do this, so this should fall squarely in the realm of what Arb is here for. Drmies, Newyorkbrad, GorillaWarfare, Doug Weller or another Arb, perhaps you can do this without a formal filing in public, which would defeat the whole purpose of privacy in that account? Dennis Brown - 2¢ 21:29, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • User:Dennis Brown, Doug knows the other account, and I'll be happy to confirm this to the other arbs (I might change to "active" soon), or they can run their own check. I repeat that I didn't see problems, certainly not these kinds of strange, strange problems, with the other account. Drmies (talk) 22:13, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Drmies, my block was never meant to prevent blocking the master, and given what he has said since, I think Arb should consider it. We are still policy bound to protect his privacy, so Arb is the only mechanism available to do review and take action, if they deem it necessary. Personally, I think we have crossed the threshold where the parent account needs to be blocked, but the community lacks the tools to effectively do this. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 22:20, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Because they were made for purposes of WP:ADVOCACY, I have rolled back a number of Franzboas' edits. Any uninvolved editor with no bone to pick who believes that an edit I rolled back improved the article it appeared in is welcome to restore it without protest from me. I would suggest, though, that admins might want to look closely at the motivations of any editor who restores all (or very many) of the edits I reverted. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:40, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse block and thanks to Dennis Brown for decisive action. I saw some of the advocacy and it was corrosive. Johnuniq (talk) 23:32, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• The main account should be blocked as well. Not sure why it hasn't been. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 23:58, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Main problem is that we can't link the master and this "legit" sock publicly. This is why I'm trying to get Arb to look at it. Even blocked editors get the same right of anonymity. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 00:02, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Dennis Brown: It's not a "legit" sock per WP:SCRUTINY. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 00:06, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • He declared it for a editing in a sensitive area, something we allow. Had he made good edits, there would be no issue with the second account. I didn't block him for creating the account, just for what he did and what the account became. He's been warned if he creates another account to bypass this block, they will all be linked. And yes, I agree blocking the master is a good idea, but my opinion is that Arb should do the dirty work here, given the totality of the circumstances and his expectation of privacy with the account. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 00:12, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        • I agree that if he had made good edits then there would be no issue. But he didn't, so the legitimate part goes away. We're not going to have editors creating attack accounts and claiming an expectation of privacy and having the main account remain in good standing, their reputation untouched. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 00:22, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
          • • When I blocked him, and now, I just felt that was a decision best not made by a single person. Particularly since Drmies check the "real" users other contribs and they weren't problematic. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 00:49, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
              • I understand Dennis's actions and reason for not blocking the main account. And I agree that the arbs would be the best folks to deal with this. But NeilN is correct: abusing a legit alt account voids the protections that come with it. The issue is the user, not the account, and so the user must be dealt with. Trying to game an alt account to shield yourself from repercussions of what the user clearly knows is unacceptable behavior is not okay. EvergreenFir (talk) 04:19, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Whomsoever the ultimate jurisdiction should fall to, I am increasingly inclined to expect a siteban. There is no place for (fairly open) antisemitic fascists on WP, who are now openly attacking other vulnerable minority groups. No place. Zero tolerance. Irondome (talk) 00:28, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Question: It seems to me that the block of Franzboas is well supported by policy (based on the account's actions) and the increasingly robust consensus of uninvolved editors here. However, I am wondering if the two apparent views of the main account – privacy prevents action so long as that account edits unproblematically and it is the editor who took the actions so the main account should also be blocked – are truly the only available options. Could not an AN consensus impose a topic ban on the main account, to be informed to the editor off-wiki? Presumably the accounts are notified to ArbCom, so the ban could also be noted on the Arb wiki. Notification by an arbitrator who knows the identity of the main account could be accompanied by a strict warning that (for example) the topic ban will be noted on the main account on wiki and an AN thread to consider a block / ban started if problematic edits are found (in other words, privacy can't be used to protect an editor from prior advocacy problems on an alternative account being considered if the same problems appear on the main account). Or, that a violation will see the main account blocked for violations of the sock policy? Or, whatever other policy-compliant conditions that an AN consensus might support? I recognise that monitoring the account is an extra burden for arbitrators / functionaries who know the identity of the main account, but practically, any editor causing serious problems within the topic will ultimately be called out at a noticeboard at which point someone in the know will see it and a quick check would allow the imposed conditions to be triggered. To me, this approach would formally register to the editor the community's disapproval of their actions and keep whoever is behind the Franzboas account away from the topic. It would also reaffirm to everyone that the community does not approve of using alternative accounts for advocacy (ie. this is not a legitimate SOCK under the policy) and that advocacy and POV editing reflect the views of the editor. Is something along these lines possible / viable / desirable? EdChem (talk) 00:48, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I thought of that and even typed it out and reviews a few times, but in the end, felt Arb was best to deal with this, and they can do it in private, then decide (based on what policy and community expectations are) what to do. I don't want the bad deeds of one person push us to violate our own rules on privacy. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 00:52, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • (e/c) Just on Neil's T/P. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Daniel_Craig&diff=prev&oldid=783834101. Who the hell is this? Irondome (talk)
  • A topic ban probably wouldn't do anything as this alt-account was specifically created to edit on this topic, shielding the main account. Also, we are talking about behavioral problems here, not only advocacy. It is well understood that behavioral problems in the past usually result in a (sometimes much) shorter leash in the future, even in unrelated areas. A private topic ban does not address this, unless the Arbs are willing to monitor future behavior in all areas. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 01:00, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• As I mentioned above, I posted a comment on WP:Sockpuppetry suggesting a change to the privacy provision in which a violation of policies by the "legitimate sock" would void the privacy. (The thread can be found here.) An editor expressed the opinion that "This is all already covered, albeit less specifically than in your proposal." So at least one editor believes that violating Wikipedia policies voids the privacy provision. I'm not sure what, exactly, the editor feels covers this (I've asked them to comment here) but it's worth looking into. Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:05, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Although there was no privacy issue, Til Eulenspiegel's alternative and harmless account was also blocked[16] , by User:The Bushranger. Doug Weller talk 05:55, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Restrictions are against the editor, not the account. The current situation is that the editor is unrestricted from editing in the same area, as their main account has not been restricted in any way. If there is a genuine privacy need to keep the accounts separate, then someone with CU access needs to email the main account and let them know formally any restrictions to the Alt-account also apply to their main. Only in death does duty end (talk) 11:13, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Personally, I would be looking at blocking the main account as well. It is utterly ludicrous that the misuse of a sock implies some sort of privacy. Failing that, what I would certainly be doing is informing the two editors attacked by Franzboas on his talkpage of his description and attack on them, and if I was them I would have every expectation of being told the master account name as well, given that they appear to also be engaging in off-wiki harrassment ("Did you know that much of the Frankfurt School conspiracy theory article was written by a user who identifies as an "androgynous British Marxist"? Amusingly, this image gets passed around on right-wing social media.") The editor lost any claims they might have to privacy when they posted that - regardless of the fact that the sock was not SOCK#LEGIT compliant anyway, as it was only revealed when another editor forced them into it. I have no idea why we're tiptoeing round this elephant in the room. Black Kite (talk) 18:20, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• @Black Kite: I agree with you. I have in fact contacted RGloucester about that photoshopped image. Of course it's a lie that he wrote much of it, see his edits here. Doug Weller talk 19:44, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Doug Weller I've pinged some Arbs but no reply. Do I need to file a formal case here, or will Arb simply look into this privately? As the blocking admin, who is limited on what he can do, I can't help but think this is a reasonable request, for an answer. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 19:46, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • ArbCom are discussing this. Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:48, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yes, although I have no objection to this being handled by the community. Doug Weller talk 20:09, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        • Hiding behind an alternate account for veiled antisemitism - coupled with the personal attacks - really does render privacy a moot point. Sanctions on the master are the only real path from this point. GAB^gab 20:36, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        • It's rather hard for the community to handle it, since we don't know who the master is. I take Drmies' word that the editing of the master doesn't show signs of the advocacy of Franzboas, but I think the issue has now gone beyond that to: do we want the editor who spews personal attacks and antisemitic editing under a mask to be allowed to edit here at all? We could, in essence, try the master in absentia, and call for a block, which could then be implemented by an Arb without public announcement, but that rather flies in the face of the culture of transparency that WP generally runs under. In any case, I would think that many people would be uneasy about passing judgment on another editor based on less then the totality of their contributions, which would, again, make it difficult for the community to reach a decision and "handle it". Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:32, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
          • • Bingo. Thus my harping about Arb reviewing it. They review stuff in private all the time, I would trust them in this. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 23:47, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
              • It's not a question of trust; it's a question of need. Incidents should be reviewed in private only when there's an overriding need to. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 03:41, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • Thank you Newyorkbrad. I had a feeling, but no one told me as blocking admin. This is one of those times that really does require Arb. If you decide to link them publicly, not to, block, don't, whatever, that is fine but only you guys can really review it properly. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 21:33, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! I discussed a proposal involving a push to eliminate the backlog of unpatrolled new pages, and it seems that those on IRC are ok with it. So, I am posting it here. There should be a push on July 15 for people to spend as much time as possibly cleaning up and reviewing (if they have the permissions and knowledge to do so) new pages. Hopefully we can get the backlog down significantly. RileyBugz^会話_投稿記録 16:52, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hey y'all! I've started a requested move to rename Template:2016 US Election AE. Just thought I should leave a notice here since it's a discretionary sanctions page restriction template. Ks0stm ^{(T•C•G•E)} 23:06, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

DFTT. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 18:39, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved  – Attention given. Even if he had been misusing the tools, which he clearly hasn't, there is nothing that we could do about it at this noticeboard. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 12:42, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply] This is to bring to everyone's attention that User:BradPatrick was granted admin privileges without passing any Wikipedia:Requests for adminship and without the English Wikipedia's community approval. Brad Patrick was granted admin bit in April 2006 because he was the interim Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. He resigned on March 22, 2007 and it was effective from March 31, 2007 but the admin bit was not removed. Even executive directors like Sue Gardner, Lila Tretikov and Katherine Maher were not granted admin bit just because they held the post of an executive director, then why is Brad Patrick allowed to hold and retain the admin rights. This is totally unfair to those people who go through a very tough community process in getting elected. No one can imagine that userights like Bureaucrat, CheckUser, Oversight and Steward are granted without approval from the Wikipedia community and the Arbitration Committee. I would request the community to open a Request for Comment on this matter and either make Brad Patrick to resign the admin bit or it be removed from his account if he does not resign on his own. If Brad Patrick wants the admin privileges, he must go through an RfA and pass it. No one can be allowed to have admin privileges without passing an RfA. Username person (talk) 11:18, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply] @Username person: Brad probably just forgot. Have you tried asking him directly before coming here? Regards SoWhy 11:36, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply] Many people already did that before User_talk:BradPatrick#Your_admin_bit. Username person (talk) 11:41, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply] Re "I would request the community to open a Request for Comment on this matter" - You *are* the community, so go do it yourself. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:44, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply] @Username person: Is this your first account? Marvellous Spider-Man 11:47, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply] Yes it is. How is it related to the question? Username person (talk) 11:53, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply] That may have been the wrong question as it's certainly not a new user. Only account? It looks a little unusual, that's all. -- zzuuzz (talk) 11:57, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply] Is there any evidence of misuse of admin tools, or conduct which would be considered inappropriate for an admin? Has his general conduct as a Wikipedian been reasonable? If there's no evidence of problems, I don't believe solutions are needed to something which has existed for over 10 years. Murph9000 (talk) 11:51, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply] Is it necessary for abuse to occur and then only admin privileges can be removed? Why should anyone be granted admin rights without community's approval on RfA? Username person (talk) 11:55, 5 June 2017 (UTC) Also just because something has existed for 10 years doesn't mean it is correct, it is wrong. Username person (talk) 11:56, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply] (edit conflict) There were 'discussions' here and here. Less input anywhere on the matter from the editor himself, it must be said! — O Fortuna semper crescis, aut decrescis 11:59, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply] If Username person wants to start an RFC to try to get the admin bit removed they should do it. Otherwise there is nothing to do here. ~ GB fan 12:09, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply] As far as I can see, BradPatrick is a benevolent editor who has done nothing to bring into question his administrator status. Let's not forget, this granting was 11 years ago, when the project was in reletive infancy, and I'm damned sure that if he were to have misused the tools, he'd have done so by now. As we all know, the RfA process is a flawed and completely corrupt time sink which is infested by sycophantic admin-wannabes who flock to the stage, without doing very little or no research, to support the nominee by leaving a kiss-arse comment in the hope that they can call on them in the future to have little favours be bestowed upon them. Time and time again we see the wrong people being given the tools as a result of this misguided premise. What makes you, Username person, think that it would be in any way beneficial to the project to make this long established administrator of otherwise good standing, have to sit through the humiliation of bowing to the crowds and justifying themselves to a load of strangers? CassiantoTalk 12:24, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply] @Cassianto: I rather fancy a 'tumbril rolling towards the guillotine' analogy  ;) — O Fortuna semper crescis, aut decrescis 12:49, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply] It was granted in 2006 so 10-11 years later it's hardly worth caring over now .... As noted above by all means start an RFC however that will probably be closed as "Support leaving the admin bit" so all in all it's probably best you forget this and concentrate on constructively editing the encyclopedia. –Davey2010Talk 12:41, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply] Rather it would be closed as "There is no community-based desysopping policy, so we literally can't do anything." ~ Rob13Talk 13:00, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply] You are right, this would need to be raised with ARBCOM or Brad would need to voluntarily resign. ~ GB fan 13:05, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply] By why should he have to? And why should those at ARBCOM even be bothered with something like this? This smacks of someone bitter trying ton mete out some kind of revenge. If I could be bothered, I'd investigate why they've brought it here in the first place. CassiantoTalk 13:13, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply] He could always volunteer to a confirmation RFA and he would very likely pass. I would support. I can understand why people would be uneasy with an unvetted Admin that isn't working for the Foundation. I question the person who filed all this, but that doesn't mean the concern is without merit. Technically, the Foundation *requires* that all persons with access to delete material be vetted through a process like RFA, so he is actually out of compliance for that. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 13:14, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply] Oh look, an account that was created today. I wonder who the sock master is? CassiantoTalk 13:18, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply] Created in 2006 as noted above. Started editing today. --NeilN talk to me 13:23, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply] That'd be one helluva sleeper! — O Fortuna semper crescis, aut decrescis 13:39, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply] Brad has been an admin for 10 years without problems. I became an admin in 2006, when RfA was a lot easier to pass than it is now. Letting Brad (who is well known to the community and known to the Foundation in person) keep his bit doesn't seem like a much bigger problem that letting me (some pseudonymous dude who has only met a handful of Wikipedians in person) keep my bit. —Kusma (t·c) 13:30, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply] Looks like someone is not here to build an encyclopedia -- John Reaves 13:53, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]