I am starting this ANI discussion regarding TenPoundHammer (talk · contribs). I am raising concerns about:

1. the large number of proposed deletions and AfDs,
2. the quality and accuracy of AfD nominations, and
3. canvassing

Numerous proposed deletions and AfDs

According to TenPoundHammer's last 5,000 contributions, between 12 May 2022 and 30 May 2022, TenPoundHammer nominated 637 articles for proposed deletion (based on a search of "Notification: proposed deletion"). In the same time period, TenPoundHammer brought 188 articles to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion (based on a search of "Creating deletion discussion page"). In the last 18 days, TenPoundHammer has averaged 35 proposed deletions a day and 10 AfD nominations a day. This is at too fast a rate. I am unable to keep up with finding sources for the numerous deletion discussions listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Television as most of these deletion nominations are for the work he is doing at User:TenPoundHammer/TV cleanup. I have had several articles I have wanted to write but have not written. In the past month, I have instead spent a significant portion of my time participating in the large number of television AfD discussions to find sources so that articles about notable television series are not deleted. This is a list of 24 television AfDs nominated by TenPoundHammer in late April and early May where I found sources and supported retention. This 1 May 2022 permanent link to Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Television can be used to find the outcomes of each of these AfDs. In the 30 days since, TenPoundHammer has created many more AfD nominations and proposed deletions.

Quality of AfD nominations

I have concerns about the quality and accuracy of the AfD nominations. In this AfD, his deletion nomination called MSNBC "a network nobody watches". In this AfD, TenPoundHammer called an Associated Press article "a press release" and said, "The network it's on doesn't even have an article, and neither does the host. There are literally no links inbound for this page. How much less notable can you get?" and "There is literally no other page to link to it. Do you suggest I just plop it onto some random page just to de-orphan it? I know, let's link it from Main Page!" Whether the article can be de-orphaned is irrelevant to notability and whether this article should be kept. In this AfD, he again called an Associated Press article a press release. Artw (talk · contribs) commented here and here about inaccurate AfD nomination statements such as "Deprodded without comment" even though the deprod was with a comment. In this AfD, he wrote "No sourcing found despite the show lasting three seasons" even though the deprodder had added a source.

Canvassing

I have concerns about canvassing. In a television AfD, TenPoundHammer pinged an editor who had previously supported deletion in other television AfDs but did not ping the editor who had removed the proposed deletion. In a large number of AfD nominations for "List of people on the postage stamps of" such as Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of people on the postage stamps of Jordan, TenPoundHammer pinged two editors who had previously supported deletion of "List of people on the postage stamps" articles but who had had no prior involvement in the "List of people on the postage stamps of Jordan" article. TenPoundHammer did not ping or notify the editor who had removed the proposed deletion he had added. TenPoundHammer did not ping the editors from this related AfD who had worked on improving the "List of people on the postage stamps of the Faroe Islands" article.

Multiple editors have asked for a slowdown in deletion nominations

In late April and early May, multiple editors asked multiple times for TenPoundHammer to slow down the number of deletion nominations. More recently, another editor asked TenPoundHammer on 24 May 2022 to slow down the number of proposed deletions but he did not reply. On 30 May 2022, I asked TenPoundHammer to significantly slow down the number of nominations he is making. I suggested seven proposed deletions per week and seven AfD nominations per week would be more reasonable numbers. He replied to another post on his talk page and made seven more proposed deletions in the three hours after I posted on his talk page but did not reply to the concerns I raised. I am therefore bringing this to the community for review.

Previous discussions

These discussions related to TenPoundHammer's AfD topic ban and unban are copied from this comment in this discussion:

1. 2012 understanding
2. 2018 topic ban
3. 2018 topic ban query
4. 2018 topic ban appeal
5. 2019 uncivil remark
6. 2019 topic ban appeal: "Consensus is to lift the topic ban. However, the community seems unlikely to offer another chance after this."

Cunard (talk) 07:38, 31 May 2022 (UTC) Modified to add "Previous discussions" section. Cunard (talk) 19:56, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• That quantity of prods and AfDs risks overwhelming the community's ability to respond to them. It would definitely be helpful if TPH would agree to cut back. We don't have enough AfD regulars to deal with those numbers any more; it's too resource-intensive for one editor to make this many nominations.—S Marshall T/C 08:14, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• I have skepticism that it is humanly possible for TenPoundHammer to be doing sufficient WP:BEFORE checks on the AFDs and WP:PRODNOM checks on the PRODs at their current rate of editing. (Note that PRODNOM requires evaluating WP:DEL-REASON, and the only appropriate reason in these TV article cases appears to be #7, Articles for which thorough attempts to find reliable sources to verify them have failed [emphasis mine].) However, nomination statements like here, here and here do at least indicate that they understand BEFORE and are completing some sort of checks. So the unresponsiveness to feedback is perhaps the most concerning aspect of this.
  I initially thought that a topic ban from AFD/PROD may be necessary at least in the short term, but TenPoundHammer's choices of PROD/AFD targets and rationales do seem valuable. Perhaps a rate limit of x AFDs and y PRODs per day (still enforced through a topic ban) is appropriate, since many editors have expressed concern that AFD and PROD processes are being overwhelmed, with the small number of active volunteers we have in these venues. — Bilorv (talk) 08:37, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• I'm also finding this to be a problem. Many of TenPoundHammer's deletion nominations are notable, but due to their age finding sources takes time. There are not enough patrolling editors or time in the day to improve all of these articles at the rate they are nominated. TenPoundHammer needs to do a proper WP:BEFORE and provide better deletion rationales instead of nominating articles because they are "unlikely to be sourced" or "tagged for notability". SailingInABathTub (talk) 11:05, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• I don't edit in his usual areas, but his Afd comments and noms have been at best sloppy for years, and he is rarely responsive to feedback. It is also concerning that he does (per his talk page) non-admin closes. Personally I think only a period topic ban is likely to solve the problem. Johnbod (talk) 11:32, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• In the parlance of deletion discussions, this seems to be little more than WP:IDONTLIKEIT. It isn't the fault of the nominator that there are scads of unsourced cruft within the Wikipedia project, it is the fault of the people who carelessly created such things over the years. If a deletion discussion is lightly-attended, that is why WP:SOFTDELETE exists. Zaathras (talk) 11:50, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• I'm afraid I disagree completely with Zaathras on this; WP:IDONTLIKEIT shouldn't be used to undermine the concept that we delete for a reason, not just willy-nilly. AfD exists so that deletions are carried out after debate, not just because one user is on a delete-spree. If we're going to allow so many nominations that no one has time to look at them, then we may as well abandon the concept of AfD, and allow willy-nilly deletion on the grounds that Wikipedia is full of stuff that needs deleting. That's too drastic for my taste.

Perhaps a limit on everyone's rate of AfD/PROD nominations would be helpful, if it's technically possible? I contribute regularly to AfD, and read it more. I'm increasingly worried by early-20th-C deletions where the sources were paper and obscure, possibly non-English, and those in favour of deletion are following a "Google-search-turned-up-nothing" argument, with a dollop of "only references are a newspaper article and an obscure book I haven't read". I'm uncomfortable about deletions where none of the pro-delete editors have actually looked at any of the sources. It's hard work doing this, and it also often requires particular expertise. For instance here's one that really needed someone who could read Greek and access Greek sources; there had been a serious suggestion that sources were available as on the Greek Wikipedia, but no one turned up to verify them, so deletion was inevitable [9]. When AfD is an enormous list, and some AfD-users are just drive-by endorsing anything, without actually doing any work, then we're going to get incorrect deletions. I used to get frustrated with Uncle G for posting complex comments at AfD where he discussed sourcing and notability in depth, but didn't actually give a !vote. I'm now realising that we need more people like that, and more time for them to do the foot-work. I hope you'll forgive me, UncleG!

Unrelated: I'm also curious as to whether some people at AfD are motivated by a desire to improve their record in order to be accepted as new page reviewers at AfC. The trouble is, if you're the sort of person who goes looking for sources to rescue nominated articles, or who enters into debate on the complicated cases, you're more likely to have a poor record of agreement with the final outcome than if you simply endorse anything that has already got a string of keeps or deletes. And yet it's those who are prepared to discuss the borderline cases, the poorly-sourced-but-could-be-improved, who are making the more useful contribution to the encyclopaedia. Elemimele (talk) 12:15, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think that applying a limit to everyone would be an excellent idea especially as there have been a handful of ANI reports recently due to people submitting a large number of deletion proposals. The best thing would be for someone who spends some time in the AfD neck of the woods to create a proposal at the Village Pump (WP:VPR) and then let people here and a couple of others know about it. Gusfriend (talk) 12:50, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I would also support such a limit. We have other processes for handling potentially harmful content and hoaxes and thus I don't see any need for an individual to nominate articles for deletion at such a fast rate. NemesisAT (talk) 13:06, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for saying this. It is clear to see the pattern of people quick to support any delete only for careful people to come along later and point out sources. I wish there was some sort of competency test, or if people whose entire contribution to AfD is one liners that are 99% endorsing deletes, they could be less prominent than the careful people who so WP:BEFORE type work before commenting. CT55555 (talk) 20:56, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• I too have noticed issues with Ten Pound Hammer's deletion nominations. A recent one I participated in is this one, for Marble Blast Gold. Using a quick search the creator of the article provided three links to molbygames's database of reviews, showing dozens of pieces of coverage of the game. Ten Pound Hammer then came back to question if molbygames was a reliable source, apparently completely misunderstanding what had been linked to, suggesting to me that they hadn't even looked at the links the creator provided. 192.76.8.78 (talk) 12:38, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Until the recent success of their serial deletion nominations of various "lists of people on postage stamps of countryx", the success rate of their nominations was well under 50 percent. They seems either to have a lack of understanding about what notability is, a refusal to believe that WP:BEFORE applies to them, or a belief that their opinions override Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. I hate ANI, but I was considering bringing this here myself. It seems as if they prod huge numbers of articles, and when the prod is removed just flip it to AfD without any research. This huge flow of nominations is so overwhelming that it has become disruptive. Please, please show some self-control and throttle it down. Perhaps you could perform BEFORE and fix the more notable articles? That way we could all add more value instead of just trying to hold on to notable articles that have been started. Jacona (talk) 12:40, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• I can't speak to the years in the interim (maybe things changed and issues have crept back up recently, I'm not sure), but concerns with TenPoundHammer and XfD go back at least as far as his seventh RfA back in 2009, when I myself said "Behavior at various XfDs leaves a lot to be desired." JPG-GR (talk) 12:57, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• I've also been frustrated at the rate of PRODs and AfDs from TenPoundHammer. They also redirected an article with the summary "unless someone wants to add sources" after their PROD was contested and their AfD closed as no consensus. From this and other actions (I can't find them now due to the sheer volume of TenPoundHammer's edits), it appears TenPoundHammer believes it is up to AfD participants to improve the article. This is the wrong way round, the nominator should carry out a full WP:BEFORE search and attempt to improve the article before considering nominating it for deletion. There is a high risk of notable subjects being erased from Wikipedia if TenPoundHammer is allowed to continue with their spree of deletion nominations and PRODs. NemesisAT (talk) 13:01, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• As a comment, while what TPH is targeting do seem like good targets to remove the page about them, several of those on TV series would maje for excellent redirects (to the network page or list of original content from those networks) rather than deletion. These shows existed so they are likely search terms, and it would be better to handle them this way than the more complicated process of AFD. --Masem (t) 18:41, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Again, literally every time I make a redirect, someone undoes it seconds later. What am I doing wrong there? Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 18:51, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  You are redirecting things that have 3+ sources listed. You seem to judge them to be irrelevant or not meeting your standards and you redirect them, which is a way to circumvent the PROD/AfD process. If it has citations, don't redirect without a discussion. And, what happened to your statement below "My hope is to establish a more measured approach by relying more on the list. Maybe sticking to the list will get me in the habit of slowing down." DonaldD23 talk to me 18:56, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• These nominations have become overwhelming on the daily AfD log, and despite asking them to pursue other means of resolving issues (redirects to network programming lists), along with this nom where they furiously dismiss everything brought up as not meeting unknown and imaginary standards, it feels like trying to get an article to an acceptable state to withdraw is insurmountable even as N has been proven. Then there's this nom, where the redirect decision was basically killed by a later unnotified PROD nomination, along with TeenNick Top 10, where I was a constant contributor to and received no notification whatsoever to try to RESCUE the article, as advised by PROD guidelines. Also, many of these articles were created by editors no longer here, so for TPH, PROD has become 'silent SPEEDY' for them because they only notify the original contributor, even if they disappeared in the mid-2000s. Nate • (chatter) 19:33, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• It's worth noting prior discussion at User talk:Andrew Davidson#Jealousy in art, which itself lists a number of earlier discussions. (Perhaps the people involved in that discussion should be pinged?) Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:08, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• I would like to point to a few recent examples. Everyone else in an AFD says to keep, he arguing nonstop with them, then gives up and closes the AFD as "whatever". [10] Then at [11] everyone else says Keep to his deletion nomination, that the coverage found proved it was notable, he arguing nonstop about that. If people show up to notice what's going on and look for sources, then his bad nomination are stopped, otherwise perfectly valid articles get deleted. At another article he nominated for deletion, he went through and removed dozens of links to it from other articles [12] with the message (Removing link(s) to "Search Engine Watch": unlikely to be saved.). The AFD for the article ended in Keep. [13]. Then there was a massive number of perfectly valid television episode articles he just went through and turned into redirects. I undid him in a number of places, pointing out that two reliable sources had reviewed the episodes, and they listed in the article already. [14] [15] [16] and many others. Other television articles he sent to AFD ended without everyone else saying Keep. [17] [18] The point is if someone is around to notice, perfectly valid articles get deleted. I don't have time to write down how many times this has happened right now, but the same day I reverted him for some of those bad examples, I did others, and then again days before or after that. Dream Focus 19:47, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  [19] He says in his edit summary (not notable). I say in my revert (Undid revision 1086104042 by TenPoundHammer (talk) 9.34 million people watched it, so of course it got reviewed. Two reliable sources are listed as having given it significant coverage).

  I reverted him at [20] and he then redirected it again and I reverted him again [21] he then sent it AFD where it ended as Keep. [22] Note that the article reads "On the episode's original airdate, Heroes attracted 16.97 million viewers." and has reliable sources reviewing it already.

  Just some of the times I reverted him, and he then sent it to AFD. I'm not going to waste time digging through more edit contributions, this takes long, and I think I've made my point. He is determined to argue with everyone and keep trying to get what he wants, and just far too many redirects, prods, and AFD nominations at a time for anyone to sort through. Dream Focus 20:00, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I am active at AfD and have also seen the same problem of very high volume of nominations and, importantly, that TPH seems to get it wrong the majority of the time. From the editor's last 200 participations at AfD:

• Voted delete 99.5% of times and never once voted keep. Imagine that, never once thinking an article was worth keeping. Never once having your mind changed in that direction
• Got it wrong 55.8% of the time. That does suggest a competency issue.

I have raised what my perceptions about competency with the user here and got no reply. In that AfD the TPH has renominated an article a few weeks after it was speedy kept/withdrawn, and argued with people that a peer reviewed academic source wasn't a considered reliable, and/or missed the fact it was raised in the AfD. The user seems to miss basic stuff, despite being maybe the most prolific nominators of articles for deletion. Of course I note the regular requests for them to slow down and agreements to do so which do not seem to be honoured.

Debating with this editor feels like debating a brick wall that will never listen. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_Led_Zeppelin_songs_written_or_inspired_by_others_(2nd_nomination) Can TPH show us any recent examples of them being convinced to keep something that they originally proposed to delete?

It seems to me that someone with this much experience ought to be at least able to correctly identify articles for deletion and get it right most of the time, probably more like 75% of the time or 90%. CT55555 (talk) 20:42, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Note that even during this discussion about his problem, he is still doing the same thing! [23] He prods an article, the editor Lurking shadow removes his prod with an edit summary pointing out there is sourcing, he then replaces the article with a redirect. A redirect should not be a chance to try to delete an article again after a prod fails! If the community agrees to limit his prods and AFDs please limit redirects as well that he uses for the same purposes. Dream Focus 21:25, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Again. Why is it literally every time I redirect something in good faith, someone else undoes it literally SECONDS later? Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 22:37, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  The other editor rejected your prod, then three minutes later you redirected the article so they noticed and reverted you. How is that "good faith"? Dream Focus 22:40, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  WP:BLANKANDREDIRECT applies. Which states: "Removing all content in a problematic article and replacing it with a redirect is common practice, known as blank-and-redirect. If other editors disagree with this blanking, its contents can be recovered from page history, as the article has not been deleted. If editors cannot agree, the content issues should be discussed at the relevant talk page, and other methods of dispute resolution should be used, such as restoring the article and nominating the article for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion."

  Obviously other editors disagree with your redirect. DonaldD23 talk to me 22:51, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  How is a one-sentence stub worth preserving? Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 00:49, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  When there are sources available that can be used to expand the stub. DonaldD23 talk to me 00:57, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Recommend TPH, promise to stay away from prodding articles & nominating articles for deletion, for up to six months. It would help get him out of the fire & show that he's capable of restraint. That would be better then any type of community enforced restriction. GoodDay (talk) 22:45, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal

Ten Pound Hammer is restricted to one PROD and one AfD nomination per day (defining a "day" as a rolling 24 hour period).—S Marshall T/C 12:50, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose If we don't have limits on everyone's page creations, which vastly outstrip our ability to monitor and discuss them, I can't really gin up that much concern about one editor devoting their time to AfDs and Prods. I would advise Ten Pound Hammer that if they slow their rate they're likelier to get proportionately more people involved in the AfDs and get more meaningful outcomes, but I don't see any policy-based reason to sanction them. There's no evidence of bad faith editing here. As has been discussed before with other editors, if the community wants to get together and decide that you can't participate in AfDs pr need to be sanctioned if your win% is ≤ arbitrary threshold, then this can be revisited. (And if their rationales are spurious, that's something the closing admin using their brain can take into account, the same way they are free to not weigh poor keep arguments.) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 12:55, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • This proposal is meant as a flood defence, not a punishment. To an extent it does represent a sanction on TPH, and I regret that and would prefer something that didn't. The sanction element is an undesirable side-effect. If there was a wish to avoid any appearance of sanction at all, then we could potentially make it a rule that nobody could make more than one AfD nomination a day. Only a very small number of users would be affected.—S Marshall T/C 13:57, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • Only if no one can create more than one article per day... We have way too many problematic articles (new ones and very old ones) for such a rule to be acceptable. If there aren't enough people working AfD, then recruit more people, but don't make proposals that boil down to accepting more problem articles to remain. If I am doing my bit of new page patrolling, and I notice Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Byzantine Reconquisita, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/O Beto de Cascais, and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Aliyaanwar, then I'm not going to choose between these three which one needs deletion the most. Fram (talk) 14:13, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • Outside of hotbutton topics is "too many articles are being created" an actual problem that exist in wikipedia in 2020? And are targeted deletion sprees like the one addressed here actually a solution here? Mainly it appears to be TV shows of the 90s that are being mass deleted right now, I very much doubt there's a mass creation problem relating to them. Artw (talk) 14:36, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
        • I replied to S. Marshall who made a general comment about a rule applying to all editors, for all topics. And there are still many unacceptable articles being created (though considerably less than before the article creation restrictions were finally implemented), and there are many problematic older articles as well (which may not be draftified, where tagging them for speedy is heavily frowned upon except for the most egregious BLP or copyvio issues, and where Prods are dependent on the whims of deprodders). A one AfD per day limit for everyone, because of one editor, is the wrong solution. Fram (talk) 14:53, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
          • "Recruit more editors", says Fram, exactly as if that were easy or straightforward. Editor numbers are in a slow but long-term and entrenched decline, and processes like AfD assume that we have an infinite amount of volunteer time to spend on detail. With the resources we actually have, the options are: (1) allow an unrestricted number of AfDs and accept that many will be of very poor quality even after multiple relists, or (2) put in some kind of throttle to help us focus. Having said that, there clearly are editors who should be allowed to start an uncapped number of AfDs.—S Marshall T/C 15:11, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
          • Would agree that one a day is too low, would strongly disagree that it's just one editor or that the problem AfDers in any way restrict themselves to problem articles, or even hold truly problematic articles as a concern outside of as a stick to beat other users. Artw (talk) 15:05, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Support From their past actions it is clear that TenPoundHammer isn't willing to limit their PRODs and AfD nominations to a reasonable amount by themselves. Many of their nominations are being closed as "keep" and thus if allowed to continue, there is a high risk of notable subjects being deleted from Wikipedia. TenPoundHammer ought to focus on article improvement instead. NemesisAT (talk) 13:03, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Have you ever heard the expression "people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones"? Your behaviour at AFD is far from exemplary and in many cases is just as disruptive, the only difference is that your disruption is from an "keep everything" perspective. 192.76.8.78 (talk) 17:28, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  My actions do not carry the risk of notable content being deleted from Wikipedia. Your comment is nonsense. NemesisAT (talk) 17:36, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Voting "keep" on every nomination you come across regardless of the merits of the article or the sourcing available is disruptive. Of the 532 AFD's you have participated in you have expressed an opinion that an article should be deleted twice eight times. Only around 50% of the discussions you participate vote keep in in actually close with a consensus to keep. Looking through your comments it is trivially easy to find examples of you making non arguments that have no basis in policy, e.g. vague assertions that sources must exist but which provide no evidence of them actually existing [24] [25], acknowledgments that pages don't meet notability policy but votes that they should be kept anyway [26], voting to keep spam articles sourced to press releases, paid coverage and database entries [27], claims that blogs are usable sources because they have more than one contributor [28], supporting keeping an article on a marginally notable person on the basis of an interview after the subject had requested deletion (WP:BLPREQUESTDELETE) [29] and on and on it goes. Do these kind of votes and those statistics look like the contributions of someone who has a good understanding of policy and is carefully and considerately weighing up policy and the available sourcing before arriving at a conclusion of whether an article should be kept, or do they look like someone trying to find any justification to keep any article on the basis of their ideological views? 192.76.8.78 (talk) 18:14, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  You really should try and be truthful when accusing other editors of being disruptive, the numbers you shared above are false. I stand by my previous comments. NemesisAT (talk) 18:54, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Fixed, yes, that 2 should have been an 8, and "participate in" should have been "vote keep in". 192.76.8.78 (talk) 19:10, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  IP 192, if you have issues with @NemesisAT's conduct at AfD, please raise a thread. Otherwise I think it's time to move on from this subthread. Star Mississippi 20:12, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Hold on, please. I share many of the concerns raised, and may post some additional diffs later, but TenPoundHammer is entitled to a reasonable opportunity to respond to this thread before we start !voting on proposals. Newyorkbrad (talk) 13:04, 31 May 2022 (UTC) Striking as TenPoundHammer has now responded. Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:37, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Amen. It is way too early for this proposal. Jacona (talk) 13:10, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• We all need to encourage the habit of uninvolved editors waiting to comment on a thread until after the involved editors have commented. Levivich 13:23, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose I concur with Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs that it's incomparable that pages can be created in bulk but cannot be deleted or often discussed in bulk. If this is just meant as a flood defense, 1/day cuts that to a trickle and is perhaps too low (btw calendar days may be easier to comply with than rolling 24h periods). Reywas92^Talk 14:11, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment FWIW this user is far from the only mass deleted exhibiting signs of sloppiness in AFDs, and will at least correct them when called on it instead of doubling down. Would suggest a less target solution that encompasses them over one that restricts them but leaves others free to behave worse. Artw (talk) 14:17, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Feel free to bring these other editors to ANI (of at the very least, if that hasn't happened yet, discuss the issues with them on their user talk page). But arguing for broader restrictions without providing any evidence is not really how things work here. Fram (talk) 14:56, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • Suspect dragging the most recent offender into someone else's AN/I would be considered rude and likely to rebound. Nethertheless I can assure you I have dropped a note into their talk and I will probably be bringing them up here soon enough. Light monitoring of AfD in general should be more than enough to find others doing the same thing. Artw (talk) 15:09, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose As I would prefer this to go to the village pump for a wider discussion. Part of the issue is the number of AfDs in any one area overwhelming editors interested in that topic so perhaps limits per area would be something worth considering. As an aside, at least when it comes to the AfC process it is relatively rare for an individual to submit more than a handful of articles per day and the flood of new pages that come through AfC are 80ish% biography articles (or at least it feels that way). I suspect that the numbers coming through that are deleted later on are through the autoconfirmed people creating pages but a new page patroller would be better placed to answer that. Gusfriend (talk) 14:55, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose Wikipedia is full of unimportant cruft, and 10lb hammer needs help finding and outing more bad articles. I have trouble finding sympathy for "we just need more time to find sources" when we are discussing 12 year old articles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:2C3:57F:3F80:2CF6:872A:911D:531B (talk) 14:59, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Many of the articles they nominate have been found to be notable. It is clear they're nominating the wrong articles. NemesisAT (talk) 17:33, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  The way you say "we just need more time to find sources" suggests that the people arguing to keep notable articles are 12 years into their efforts. That's not what is happening. It's not the original authors who dominate the discussions, but people who keep an eye on AfD to try and make sure encyclopaedic content isn't deleted. CT55555 (talk) 23:06, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose - One AFD per day is too restrictive even if there are problems with the AFD nominations. Not commenting at this time on whether some other restriction would be in order. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:34, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose, there's no evidence that this was intentionally disruptive, I think the TenPoundHammer's acknowledgement of the issue and commitment to moderate deletion nominations in the future is sufficient. SailingInABathTub (talk) 16:28, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose as overly restrictive, I mentioned above that I had issues with a couple of their deletion nominations above but 1 AFD a day is unworkably few for large scale cleanup. I might be willing to support some other restriction. 192.76.8.78 (talk) 17:22, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Support something, the battleground attitude is exhausting, as I commented on here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Taking On Tyson when he was assuming that no one would do the leg work. If sources exist, it should not be at AfD and TPH's BEFORE are decidedly lacking, which there has been relative consensus for. Often, TPH is the only one arguing with sources presented. AfD participants and patrollers (and probably true for PROD) cannot keep up with the volume, which is more of the issue than the battleground. I don't know if one AfD/day is the answer, but something less then the current volume is needed. Similar to there being no deadline for creation, there is no rush to delete these articles. If an article is truly awful, it will be handled. Too many TV shows? Not a crisis. Star Mississippi 17:25, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Can we do something to break the chain of

  1. Article nominated for deletion
  2. Several people in AFD say "keep, I found sources"
  3. AFD closed as keep
  4. No one adds sources to the article, meaning they suffer from link rot and the article is still an unsourced stub 15 years later
  5. Lather rinse repeat

  This endless loop of everyone expecting everyone else to do something, and nothing happening as a result, needs to stop. It absolutely infuriates me every time I see it. What else can I do to break this chain? Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 17:36, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  add the sources yourself? I don't mean it to sound glib, but if sources have been proven to exist (c.f. @Cunard's input) it's just as easy for you to add them and help create more well-rounded articles. Star Mississippi 17:39, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  There are times when I feel like I am literally the only person on all of Wikipedia who knows how to add a source to an article, which just makes things even more frustrating. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 17:41, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  You and I have been here a very long time. If there are fewer nominations, people have more time to focus on providing input. A forced seven day "deadline" is directly against AfD not being for clean up, which is what you're doing whether you like it or not. MSNBC not being a watched network? You know better than that. You're fried, which is coming through in your noms. I suggest a break (and am not advocating a block - to be clear) for your own time to breathe. Star Mississippi 17:49, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  I agree with SM above. If you think an article needs to be improved, go ahead and improve it. But also, as someone whose frequently engaged in discussions with you at AfD, I spend more time improving articles at AfD as I do discussing them, often adding sources before I enter the discussion, so the suggestion that nobody does this shows that you are not paying attention. CT55555 (talk) 21:02, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  TPH has shown in this discussion that they cannot or will not stop themselves from nominations. Therefore anything short of a technical solution seems unlikely to work. Star Mississippi 22:41, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Lather rinse repeat - This isn't a step. If no one adds them to the article, you're in that "no one", too. If you really want them added, as with anything else, you can fix it.

• Oppose as written. I have communicated some thoughts to this editor about employing alternatives to deletion, to which they seem receptive, though somewhat dissuaded by experience. We do have far too many long-unsourced stubs on topics of questionable utility to an encyclopedia. It seems counterintuitive to penalize efforts to address that. BD2412 T 17:34, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• I liked most of the nominations by Ten Pound Hammer and it is true that they could have committed mistakes sometimes. I am not sure what will be the right action here. Azuredivay (talk) 19:12, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Support Per above and their issues with PROD notifications and creating new self-N guidelines on a whim. Nate • (chatter) 19:33, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose, nominations should not be based on whether there's enough participants, that's looking at the issue the wrong way. Instead others should be encouraged to participate or flush out articles. They're not acting in bad faith or being intentionally disruptive, they're trying to help clear out cruft articles. Hey man im josh (talk) 19:42, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Many of these "cruft" articles are about notable subjects. Per WP:BEFORE, If the article can be fixed through normal editing, then it is not a candidate for AfD. NemesisAT (talk) 20:06, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Support His long term behavior shows he isn't likely to stop his massive number of redirects, prods, and AFD nominations, no matter how many times he makes a mistake. Dream Focus 19:50, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• TPH has long been focused on deletion discussions, I think we all know that. It's a thankless job but it's one that should be done to help sort the wheat from the chaff around here, and one where we need more editors working - AFD is a ghost town lately, with many discussions being relisted two or three times before enough opinions trickle in for a closure. I suspect those delays, a lack of editors interested in working on these borderline articles, and general stress from being kicked frequently are playing in to TPH getting burned out, as evidenced by his overall tone recently. I have always felt that TPH is a great editor; I would support something encouraging him to take a breather and give the deletion space some room for a while, but I don't think quotas are the best way to do it. Tony Fox (arf!) 20:54, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose, but support alternative (#2) below. 1 per day is too few. — Bilorv (talk) 21:03, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Support I've not been impressed with the quality of TPH proposals and nominations and I am overrun by the quantity. I read here that this has been brought here before and now it has come up again so clearly there needs to be stronger action this time. I additionally propose that all current TPH PRODs and AfDs be closed so we can more quickly get out from under this and get back to improving articles. ~Kvng (talk) 22:36, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

:Weak Support One per day is fair. I'd support anything on a Zero to Two per day envelope. But also feel it is too early to propose solutions until others have had a chance to comment. CT55555 (talk) 21:10, 31 May 2022 (UTC) Sorry, weak oppose now that I read previous topic ban, appeal, years into this problem and even after the topic ban is continuing, even in the context of the appeal saying it as their last chance and TPH's comments here that they are "trying" to control their behaviour. CT55555 (talk) 21:40, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose No actual wrongdoing to be had here, just a system that can't deal with the own weight of its bad article volume. Not the fault of the user. Zaathras (talk) 02:18, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose - we need an iron clad commitment for the user to do a proper WP:BEFORE check on any article they nominate, and I would suggest they perhaps work with Cunard (if Cunard wishes to do so) on improving articles before nominating them. A second opinion from someone else may also help, I do not mean canvassing, I mean a genuine attempt to see if another editor would themselves consider the article unsourced (this being the main ground TPH tends to nominate on). I have already spoken with Cunard myself to get some advice on finding references outside Google, and I will be using their resources before nominating anything again after my recent nom was kept due to resources being found I did not. This really is about care, and realising that there is no timeframe to get rid of the chaff, as an open source encyclopaedia run by volunteers we can only do what we can do. The main priority is ridding Wikipedia of vandalism, copyright infringements, defamatory statements, spam, and confirming verifiability on controversial topics. Getting rid of non-notable content is certainly important, but we should not risk the deletion of good articles in a hurry. MaxnaCarter (talk) 02:35, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Support: The two instances I've met TPH during a deletion discussion gave me the inclination to agree that he should not be PRODing and be restricted in starting AfD discussions (Speedy deletions, which are used to prevent blatant vandalism and are first vetted by admins, are not included). During the first case I debated with him, (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Lick), he clearly was not willing to engage in thoughtful discussion or adherence to Wikipedia's sourcing guidelines, even after multiple editors told him that certain sources were valid. Half the discussion is him arguing that a peer-reviewed doctoral dissertation is the same as a high school paper. In another case, (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Punk jazz), he kept incorrectly citing certain essays incorrectly, even after I presented a handful of sources (this also leads me to believe he does not do proper BEFORE searches, as others have mentioned). Other editors have mentioned that TPH responds to criticism. Judging by the fact that this is a recurring issue, I don't believe he fully does. Why? I Ask (talk) 03:12, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose as written but some action is warranted I believe there have been a few times I've experienced TPH's PRODs and AfDs. The one that sticks out is The Bronx Is Burning, a 2007 ESPN miniseries about the big events of 1977 in NYC, with a focus on the Yankees, plus Son of Sam and the blackout, played by a cast including John Turturro and Oliver Platt, who are well known actors. His PROD rationale said Sourced entirely to press releases, nothing better found. That's not accurate on its face because you can see that, while there are four press releases as external links, the only inline citation is to the New York Post. Their news coverage is often disprovable right-wing propaganda, but their sports page is top notch. That's the Murdochs for you. I remember that show getting press at the time it was released, so I dePROD'd it almost instantly. I was on my phone at a pool on vacation (Wikiholic score high) and still found in-depth reviews on Google before finding more on Newspapers.com. He made another edit to the page adding some sources, and with the edit summary forgot to check proquest, oops. If you nominate that many articles, you're bound to get sloppy at times. I oppose the proposal as its written, at least in part because it seems like the backlog at AfD is all due to one editor (correct me if I'm wrong), and if that's so, individual sanctions would be a better route than overhauling everything. But I know that alot of TPH's nominations are sound, on articles that should be deleted. I think we need to have more of a quality check on his work before we do anything else. – Muboshgu (talk) 03:38, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  You can see their AfD accuracy here:

  tl;dr: it's not good CT55555 (talk) 03:42, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  A lot of these are good! The only problem I see is the sheer volume. I'd maybe approve a daily limit to how many articles TPH can nominate or propose for deletion, but I'm against straight cutting him off. – Muboshgu (talk) 16:30, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  I quote "Without considering "No Consensus" results, 39.6% of AfD's were matches and 60.4% of AfD's were not." i.e. the majority of times, TPH's nominations were assessed by the community to be incorrect." I'm often at AfD disagreeing with people (recently I've !voted keep 60.5% of the time) and I'm getting it right 91% of the time. That's about normal, from my analysis.

  TPH has engaged in AfD 12,627 times, voted delete 99.5% of the time in recent AfDs and is still getting it mostly wrong. Yes, there are some good ones in there, but I think I'm correct to point out that the big picture is not good. CT55555 (talk) 16:39, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes, my comment from earlier today focused too much on the nominations that are sound. But, I agree that the percentage match is subpar. – Muboshgu (talk) 01:36, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose No basis for a sanction. If creating, maintaining and deprodding pages in bulk is allowed, then prodding and nominating in similar fashion is permitted too. As one IP pointed out above, wikipedia is full of unimportant cruft, so, if anything, TenPoundHammer should be commended for doing the thankless task of helping distinguish what's salvageable from what's not, whatever his actual AfD success rate. In the small chance that something for which sources exist does slip through the cracks and gets hard- rather than soft-deleted, then it can be presumed that there is no prejudice to recreation with those sources. But, unless he's clearly going after stuff that is presentable and of enough quality, there's no evidence he's a negative. Avilich (talk) 20:54, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  f anything, TenPoundHammer should be commended for doing the thankless task of helping distinguish what's salvageable from what's not, I think that's the issue. He's not. His success rate is so poor that editors are forced to spend time defending articles that should never have been nominated, never mind deleted. Star Mississippi 21:25, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Not being able to keep up is a made-up concern: his nominations are all on record, so anyone can look them up and find sources at their own leisure even after articles are deleted, and recreate accordingly. Any valid (meaning, about a notable topic) article which somehow slips through the cracks will presumably be undersourced and of low enough quality that its temporary removal won't be a negative. Even if TenPoundHammer had a 0% success rate, all he's doing is causing a flurry of article-improvement and source-searching which should have been done by the creators of the articles he's nominated; the latter would most likely have remained untouched forever hadn't he identified them. Unless he's trying to delete sourced content, there's no evidence he's harming the encyclopedia, and thus no valid objection. Avilich (talk) 22:20, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I truly think you're missing the point and definitely are not the arbiter of a "valid objection". For this article, he said How is a one-sentence stub worth preserving? when that was blatantly untrue about the state of the article. The number of sentences is not subjective. Not being able to keep up is absolutely a valid concern for folks trying to close the discussions and contribute. It's not the creators doing the work to save the content either especially for long-standing stubs. Star Mississippi 01:37, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The last time I saw a trash article up for deletion which I could improve, I just let it be deleted and started the thing again from scratch (in compliance with G4). And that was it: no wasting time in AfD or DRV, no mourning over a trash article that was temporarily deleted, no whining about anything here at ANI. I've no need for a disposable article to remain on mainspace while I'm thinking of ways to improve it. Remove that condition, and the entire necessity for "keeping up" vanishes. It's a spurious grievance.

Also, your selective quoting of him is less than convincing in trying to show he's incompetent to determine what is disposable. "one-sentence stub" is obviously not in the prod and is presumably a broad statement. Avilich (talk) 04:41, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think we'll agree to disagree, but that's literally how he responded to the challenging editor on this very page. I suggest you not label people raising legit complaints as whining though. Star Mississippi 13:40, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Avlich, I have seen you multiple times mis-state WP:NOTPLOT in order to try and secure a deletion while ignoring content and sources that made it inapplicable. In fairness to AGF to AGF you might have just been making the same mistake multiple times and somehow not noticing when it was pointed out, but I think you have to accept uou might not be a good judge of what is "trash", and what you perceive as whining may be other users trying to do good work who are just as deserving of an assumption of good faith. Artw (talk) 14:10, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose on principle, per Avilich. People are allowed to be wrong, and no evidence this is done in bad faith has been provided. Also oppose because one is really too low a limit without such evidence, even if "most" of them are wrong. I don't find nominating an article for deletion and it being kept to be disruptive or a nuisance, particularly if it forces people to actually improve it. Given the unending saga about mass-created stubs in this or that topic area, that is in fact probably a good thing for the encyclopedia. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 21:39, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Support absent a clear promise to voluntarily throttle rate in the future. Looking at TPH's AFD stats since 2019:

  Total noms: 498

  2019: 23

  2020: 34

  2021: 31

  Jan 2022: 8

  Feb 2022: 7

  Mar 2022: 22

  Apr 2022: 124

  May 2022: 247

  Today (June 1): 2

In terms of consensus-matching, over the last 500:

8 undetermined, 32 no consensus, and 128 not closed yet (mostly from May 22 or later)

Of the remaining 332 noms:

158 keep or speedy keep

174 delete, speedy delete, merge, redirect, or userfy

So that's a "success rate" of 52% (174/332), although that will change significantly based on how the 128 pending noms turn out. For years (2019 thru Mar 2022), TPH was fine with AFD nom rate, and then in April started nominating way too often. The match rate is basically 50/50, which is not really great, although not really terrible either. I haven't even looked at the PRODs issue but I imagine it would look about the same. Unless TPH clearly commits to reducing their rate of noms to something reasonable, I agree a sanction restricting the rate is necessary to prevent, you know, 247 noms in one month, ffs. The fact that there were 2 noms today makes me not really hopeful about the voluntary commitment thing. BTW, I don't really care if the rate restriction is 1 or 5 or whatever... whatever most editors support in terms of number, I would support, too. Levivich 22:56, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

So what? Do we really want to be sanctioning people for correctly nominating shitty unencyclopedic listcruft like this or non-notable TV series like Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alpha Mom (TV series)? Even of the 158 articles that were kept; many of them were in a pitiable state before the AfD, so TPH's nominations actually did improve the encyclopedia, however you take it. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 23:17, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

247 in a month is way too much. That's almost 60 a week, 10 a day. Like, you can't ask the community at large to please run BEFORE searches for 60 articles per week or else they will be deleted. That's demanding too much editor time, at the risk of actual harm to readers (articles being deleted because there aren't enough people to do BEFORE searches). Now if the match rate was really high, like 90%, then I'd say, well, OK, it's fine if we don't have a lot of people checking TPH's noms. But if the match rate is 50%, it's like, yeah, we need someone else to check each and every nom, or we're going to have over 100 notable topics deleted from the encyclopedia in May alone.

Combine that with not stopping after this ANI. Combine that with the PROD issues. Combine that with the past issues. Combine all that with no clear commitment to not nominate more than X articles per Y. So what? So, if TPH won't limit themselves, we should limit them to some rate that the rest of us can keep up with, because we need second set of eyes on anyone who's "hit rate" is 50%. Oh and I'll bet you that it drops below 50% when this current set of 128 is closed. Want to take that bet? :-) Levivich 23:26, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The community already deals with dozens (occasionally even above a hundred) of AfDs each day. I fail to see how a few more is problematic, particularly if they all do tend to involve articles which need some form of improvement, even if they are to be kept. I also strongly object to taking AfD as some game where the point is to "score" as many points by getting the highest "hit rate" with as many "votes/nominations" with the "correct outcome". The "correct outcome" is "improving the encyclopedia". Sometime that requires deleting the article. Sometime that just requires somebody spending time improving it. Sometime it is more of a philosophical debate as to what should and should not be in the encyclopedia. No evidence, not even the slightest shred of it, has been provided that TPH has not been (at least attempting) to improve the encyclopedia, or that they have been indiscriminately nominating such an excessive amount of articles which were so obviously not appropriate that this has become disruptive beyond a few people getting fussy because of it. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 23:35, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Support per this comment which seems to be an admission that TPH cannot dial this back on his own. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 23:46, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - my oppose was added to the accused's statement below - apologies if doing so created any confusion. Atsme 💬 📧 00:00, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose; just not enough evidence that Ten Pound Hammer's nominations are actually overwhelming the system. AFD defaults to no action if there's insufficient participation, and PROD only deletes if there is nobody willing to retain an article; I strongly believe that if an article has nobody keeping an eye on it who believes it should be kept, we are always better off deleting it - we need people watching and maintaining articles to keep up Wikipedia's standards; if there are not enough people watching the articles TPH prods then that is a serious problem that goes beyond just TPH and which is at least put in a safer state when the prods go through. The idea that we're better with no article at all than a totally unwatched one is central to how PROD works, after all. I also don't particularly buy the argument that a 50% rate is that bad, especially when many of them are salvaged by total rewrites. If an article can be salvaged by total rewrites (and someone is willing to do so) that is great, but it doesn't make the original deletion invalid - per WP:TNT, nothing would have been lost if the original version was rewritten. Furthermore, above, people talk about articles that lasted 12 years with no improvement, then were nominated for deletion and "rescued" by a rewrite and the addition of sources. In a situation like that their nomination was a good thing - without it the article would have, what, remained in that state for another 12 years? Finally, I strenuously oppose making WP:BEFORE something mandatory (ie. giving it teeth by sanctioning people who ignore it), since that would clearly violate WP:BURDEN - it is never the responsibility of people who want to remove something to search for sources for it, fullstop. It might be a nice suggestion but it should never be treated as a hard requirement, since that would be backwards and lead to there being no real incentive for anyone who wants stuff cited to actually cite it. --Aquillion (talk) 03:52, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Then of couse there is List of people on the postage stamps of Italy which has existed for over 17 years (since Nov. 4, 2004), it has 0 sources. No one has bothered editing the article at all since it was nominated for deletion. Someone may come up with some sources, but no one has actually in the deletion discussion identified any sources we can use to back the article, so I am not holding my breath that sources will be found.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:27, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  I have seen a lot of AfDs defaulting to soft delete through lack of participation. Artw (talk) 17:32, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Soft delete is, well, soft; it can be easily undone by anyone who objects and who wants to improve the article, without losing anything. I don't see that as a problem. --Aquillion (talk) 04:22, 9 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose: Per the points by Aquillion and there being no compelling evidence that TPH's actions, taken as a cure, are any worse than the treated disease, which is the deluge of subpar material flooding the project. TPH's 50% success rate means they are clearing out a phenomenal amount of crap, and likely prompting the betterment of the other 50%. Any AFD policy changes should be global, not targeted. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:32, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose This editor has done a huge amount of good to clean out of Wikipedia a huge amount of articles that have nothing even close to adequate sourcing. We need to stop putting up blocks in the path of improvement to Wikipedia. Some of the articles he has put up for deletion have literally existed on Wikipedia for over 19 years with no sources at all. Going after such articles is a long over due and much needed action, and should not be punished.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:21, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Even when TPH uses redirect as a way to circumvent the process? Multiple times TPH has put articles up for PROD, only for someone to remove them. The normal action would be to send to AfD, which TPH does quite a lot. But other times TPH just simply decides to redirect the article. Case in point Secrets of the Titanic. TPH had Proposed Deletion on May 28. Today (June 4), User:Kvng removed the PROD tag with the rationale "Deletion contested, unsourced is not a reason to delete". SEVEN minutes later TPH decided to redirect the article instead of having a discussion about it. I saw that, reversed the redirect, and within 5 minutes I had 2 reliable source citations added to the article. These types of things cannot continue to be ignored. DonaldD23 talk to me 21:02, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Exactly where is it policy that you can't redirect a contested prod? I see nothing at WP:PROD saying so. And you wonder why I keep complaining that my redirects keep getting undone literally seconds after I make them.... Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 21:22, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Also, one of the contested redirects, Shep Unplugged, is turning out to be a likely hoax. IMO that shouldn't even have been deprodded. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 21:23, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  If sources are as readily available as at Secrets of the Titanic the article should never have been prodded in the first place. Following your spree of over a hundred PRODs in a day (on subjects many of which turned out to be notable) and now this, I'm not surprised that nobody trusts your judgement with redirects/PRODs. NemesisAT (talk) 21:49, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  I agree. The editor probably removed the PROD because they no longer trust TPH's judgement. And, as for redirecting a PROD without a proper discussion, while it may not be explicitly prohibited right now, I will ALWAYS reverse a REDIRECT that happened after a PROD was removed without an AfD taking place. Simply because I have saved SEVERAL articles this way because of lazy BEFOREs. DonaldD23 talk to me 22:02, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  I DEPRODded because deleting unsourced articles on potentially notable subjects is not uncontroversial and PROD is for uncontroversial deletions. ~Kvng (talk) 22:42, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  It shouldn't be. Articles which fail WP:V are not suitable for inclusion even if they're on a notable subject; and they're usually not that good of a starting point even if they're about notable subjects. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 12:50, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  @RandomCanadian: My definition of controversial is that a non-trivial discussion (or WP:SNOW keep) would occur if taken to AfD. That's what I see here but if you don't trust my judgement, go ahead and do some AfD nominations. ~Kvng (talk) 16:27, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  I started a discussion about this at Wikipedia_talk:Redirect#redirecting_a_page_after_failing_to_delete_it_through_prod a few days ago. I had to revert him on many occasions from doing that for articles that clearly passed the notability guidelines. Dream Focus 21:29, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  @Johnpacklambert: sure, let's discuss deleting this cruft but PROD is for uncontroversial deletions, and these are not uncontroversial. Before you try to dispute that, please have a look at TPH AfD stats. We end up keeping an unacceptable number of articles he's PRODded. ~Kvng (talk) 22:26, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Support see Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2022 June 5 where he NAC's his own nomination. Not "withdraws" mind you, but attempts to call a SNOW in 16 hours. Jclemens (talk) 02:13, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose Artificial and destructive. scope_creep^Talk 02:31, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose; lack of useful participants at AfD is not a reason to restrict nominations. The fact is, the result of these nomination is always improvement of Wikipedia, either by having bad articles on non-notable subjects deleted or improved articles on notable subjects retained. Without these nominations, we would just be retaining more bad articles. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 15:07, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  They are not always an improvement to Wikipedia, as there is a risk of notable topics being deleted as there aren't enough people to patrol all the AfDs and PRODs TenPoundHammer is making. NemesisAT (talk) 17:08, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose, of course. Per my and others' arguments downthread, and per the very reasonable opposes above. JoelleJay (talk) 16:53, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose incredibly restrictive for an editor that helps to clear WP of long abandoned articles w/ 0 sources and 0 editors willing to pitch in. Cheers! Fakescientist8000 03:14, 12 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Statement from nominated

I agree that my nominations have gotten out of hand. I keep forgetting that I made User:TenPoundHammer/TV cleanup for this very reason, so I could single out articles and work on them individually. While that did work for a while, things like navboxes and stub categories kept sending me down more and more rabbit holes of poorly written articles. I fully admit I act in haste way too much. I'm going to ride out everything currently nominated and start using my personal cleanup list more so I can focus on articles at a more measured pace. Instead of instantly nominating, my plan is to put questionable articles on the cleanup list. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 15:33, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• I'd personally be happy with that, but this keeps happening over and over again. Rather than a community restriction, could you also commit to a maximum number of open AfDs or a maximum number/period of time that would be considered getting out of hand, so if you slide back into old habits, we could remind you that it's excessive? We need your work at AfD, so long as the workload remains reasonable. Jacona (talk) 15:41, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Just to be clear, you stated that you are going to "ride out everything currently nominated" and "Instead of instantly nominating, my plan is to put questionable articles on the cleanup list." Yet, after you posted this statement (15:33 31 May 2022) you nominated 2 articles for deletion. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Animal Face-Off (15:34, 31 May 2022) and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gorilla and the Bird. (15:36, 31 May 2022 (UTC)) Just curious, how is that riding out everything currently nominated when you literally nominated 2 articles within 3 minutes of saying you weren't? DonaldD23 talk to me 15:47, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  I meant that those are the last ones I was going to do. I had them lined up in another tab before writing that and forgot to hit the button. Until the queue is cleared of my deletion nominations, the only other AFDs I'm planning to make are those where I feel a prod was wrongly contested. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 15:50, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• To clarify: Until the current deletion queues are free of anything I nominated, the only AFDs I plan to make are those where I feel an active prod was wrongly contested. During this time span, if I feel an article is questionable, I will put it on the cleanup list. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 15:55, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Also curious, will you continue to REDIRECT an article when your PROD was removed? For example, today you redirected Chasing Nature when User:Ficaia contested your PROD [[30]], which they said "the one source already included seems substantial, so a prod is inappropriate"?

  You're response was not to send to AfD, but to just redirect it because, as you stated, "redirect stub" with this edit [[31]].

  Just my opinion, but that feels like you are trying to circumvent the deletion process. DonaldD23 talk to me 16:00, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  This is why I don't redirect stuff. Every time I try, someone undoes it seconds later. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 17:06, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  And once the queue is cleaned up, will you return to nominating 30 articles a day? Or will you commit to showing some kind of restraint? Jacona (talk) 16:01, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  My hope is to establish a more measured approach by relying more on the list. Maybe sticking to the list will get me in the habit of slowing down. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 17:09, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  FWIW this one [[32]] seems to have some WP:BEFORE problems, particularly in the claim that there's nothing in Google Books, and should probably be withdrawn. Artw (talk) 16:34, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  That person only said they might have found sources. I'll see what they're able to find. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 17:08, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Whatever. This time I'm not going to play some stupid game where the nominator gets to turn into The Riddler and pose cryptic challenges to every posted source, I'm just going to say you are acting in bad faith even after all of the above and should be INDEFFED, and you existing AfDs closed. Artw (talk) 17:35, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  That seems extremely incivil and overreactive. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 17:37, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  While an AN/I is in flight you literally just lied on an AfD request, changed the AfD so it was slightly less of a lie, then made a response quoting the new version as if it was the original in an attempt to gaslight. That seems pretty incivil to me, as well as a demonstration that you actually can't be trusted around the AfD process at all, since this is you at your most scrutinised. Artw (talk) 18:30, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Because nobody has ever left out a word when typing before? You seem to be the only one here with any sort of hostility toward me, and your call to have be blocked is extremely tendentious. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 18:35, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  I believe people need to be reminded to assume good faith. Hey man im josh (talk) 19:44, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  As an update to this I have added sources to the article that I am pretty certain are sufficient to pass WP:N, a chapter of a book that comes up as one of the earliest GBook hits being particularly helpful in this. I consider the BEFORE claim, that nothing was found on Google Books, and the second edited BEFORE claim, that nothing useful was found on Google Books, or the statement "Everything I've found on GBooks appears to be a mere directory listing" all to be implausible. To my knowledge at no point has TPH acknowledged that the article might be valid or engaged with any effort to improve the article in anything other than a scornful, hostile way. ~~~ Artw (talk) 19:53, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@TenPoundHammer: when you say that your nominations have gotten out of hand, is that a quantity problem (too high a volume of nominations), a quality problem (nominating some articles where a WP:BEFORE would have shown you could instead improve them), or both? — Bilorv (talk) 21:06, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Probably both. It seems other editors such as Cunard have access to resources that I don't and are able to find sources I can't through Newspapers.com, ProQuest, and other resources provided by Wikipedia. Other times I admit I just don't dig deeply enough and other times I just automatically assume that a one-sentence article that's had an {{unreferenced}} since 2008 can't possibly be notable, otherwise someone would have done something about it by now, right? And when I find an entire category full of such articles all at once, then it's just as likely that those can't be notable because otherwise, someone would have fixed them, right? Well, if I speed through them all at once, it's sure gonna seem that way until source sleuths like Cunard jump in and unfuck things. tl;dr: it's probably both. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 21:09, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, TenPoundHammer, I think I'd agree with your assessment. The thing about notability is that no amount of experience can substitute research. At least, that's what I've found: with AFC and NPP and AFD skills I've encountered peaks in my areas of expertise, where I can't really optimise my process further or gain more intuition. At a certain point, you just have to be willing to do the research (which for me only works when I'm in the mood for it). I don't think we can expect that nobody will ever find sources that you don't, but you can stop yourself from making the assumptions about sub-stubs from aeons ago. A lot of times they are harder to prove non-notable than it appears—the other side of the coin is that if they were obviously non-notable then someone would have done something about it by now, right? — Bilorv (talk) 22:29, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@TenPoundHammer, you just said If it's not available online, then it fails WP:V. Based on what you've learned in this discussion do you understand what's wrong with that statement? I have concerns that an editor as active as you are still does not understand basic policies. Star Mississippi 13:15, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

TPH clearly hasn't read WP:PAYWALL which states "Do not reject reliable sources just because they are difficult or costly to access. Some reliable sources are not easily accessible. For example, an online source may require payment, and a print-only source may be available only through libraries. Rare historical sources may even be available only in special museum collections and archives. If you have trouble accessing a source, others may be able to do so on your behalf."

TPH thinks if they can't find it online then either 1. It doesn't exist or 2. It is only 1 sentence. DonaldD23 talk to me 22:18, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• I adamantly OPPOSE any restrictions that would create more harm than good to the project, and that is exactly what some of the suggestions would do if accepted. While I can't speak to all of TPH's AfD noms/actions, I am aware that he has been very productive overall, and I share his concerns about reverted redirects and PRODs. NPP has an atrocious backlog, some of which results from reverted redirects. I'm thinking TPH is quite capable of self-pacing without any community imposition or setting of limits that impede necessary clean-up. NPP is currently discussing how best to create some form of automation that would handle a significant portion of these issues, but it's not going to happen quickly. Furthermore, we do have issues with UPEs creating noncompliant articles and stubs, and new editors creating 2 sentence stubs that are unsourced. These problems are not shrinking, rather they are growing with advancements in technology as more people globally learn the benefits of a WP article. NPP reviewers are not here to create, expand, source, and fix articles for the creators of those articles – be they UPE or newbies. At least TPH is addressing some of those issues and doing a damn good job of it. I'm of the mind that we need to respond cautiously to the criticism here, and not be too hasty. Atsme 💬 📧 02:47, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Are we being hasty, though, Atsme?
    This is an editor whose behaviour at AfD has been problematic, and specifically called out by admins as problematic, for the past fifteen years or so. The last time TPH was topic-banned from AfD lasted from 2017 to 2019. He appealed in 2019 saying: I understand why my topic-ban was imposed in the first place, and I will chalk it up to an overzealous attempt to clear out cleanup categories which led to a great deal of reckless nominations.... I think that my above-mentioned method of watchlisting articles or other content that I find suitable for deletion, and watching them for a period of time before determining whether or not to nominate, will help me take a more measured, uncontroversial approach to the isuses (sic) that led to this ban in the first place. The community decided to give him one more chance.
    Fast forward to 2022. He's making upwards of thirty AfD nominations a week with an accuracy rate of under 20%. I think those are extraordinary statistics, far outside the norm. How many more last chances do you feel we should give him?—S Marshall T/C 16:49, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • The more I pay attention, the more I wonder if we are being "played" by a player who seems to have no interest in honest discourse. There are statements like this, there's a promise to not delete any more immediately broken by deleting two more, then an excuse. When asked directly, repeatedly whether they would voluntarily show restraint to a certain number of AfDs, they've just ignored it. When their nomination success rate is under 20%, I question competence as well and question whether it is worth our time to give one more "one more chance". Jacona (talk) 17:26, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • There was never any sanction though. Let's at least try one, ok?Lurking shadow (talk) 17:36, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

        Apart from the "The last time TPH was topic-banned from AfD lasted from 2017 to 2019", mentioned by S Marshall, above. And that's before you start to look at the canvassing issue that was raised by the OP of this thread too. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 18:59, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • S Marshall, it's good to hear from you, & I trust all is well on your end!! My experiences over the years tell me to not give too much weight to things that happened in the past, particularly in light of my being an editor who supports the right to be forgotten. I'm not aware of any system of judgment that is flawless, especially on WP where we are dealing with anonymity. All any editor can be expected to do is honor consensus, not necessarily agree with it. No one is perfect, and I'm not seeing any evidence that convinces me this particular editor (who I neither know nor had any interactions with to my knowledge or waning recollection) is purposely nominating articles for deletion that are indisputable keeps. I am more concerned about UPEs and the problems they create, and equally as concerned about the fast pace of NPP reviewer burn-out. I'd much rather err on the side of a 15 yr. veteran editor than a UPE editor who is creating unsourced stubs using an algorithm. I'm hard pressed to believe that poorly written, and/or unsourced articles add to the credibility of WP, or that we will ever run short of articles in mainspace. I'm also of the mind that it's actually in the best interest of the project to AfD, redirect or draftify poorly written, unsourced articles that fail the key elements of GNG, V, & NOR than to leave them in mainspace with tags that too few editors have time to address. The onus is on the article creator to properly prepare their article(s) for mainspace. For us to not enforce that aspect of AfC, we are rewarding the creators of bad articles by allowing those articles to remain. Atsme 💬 📧 01:31, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Atsme, thank you for this. Without prejudice to the outcome of the OP's opening of this case, coming out of semi-retirement to make this post on ANI (I don't follow ANI and I came to this in a rather roundabout way), I think your comment here and your nickel's worth above are two of the most apt and intelligent I have ever read in my many years of attempting to develop AfC and NPP into serious, quality driven processes and with sufficiently vetted operatives. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:09, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for those hearty well-wishes! I reciprocate!

I absolutely agree with you that TPH is not deliberately wasting the community's time with his poorly thought through AfD noms. When he goes on one of his nomination sprees it's because he genuinely wants to improve the encyclopaedia. His motives are nothing but the best. The only problem is with his practice.

TPH nominates articles recklessly and inattentively, with no detectable attempt to comply with the deletion process. His judgment about what articles should and shouldn't be deleted is very widely different from the community norm so the success rate of those nominations is exceptionally low.

Nice bloke, works hard, tries his best, but soaks up colossal amount of volunteer time for little result. Has promised to stop and reneged. Has been topic-banned, promised to change, topic ban was lifted, problem behaviour has returned. So what to do?—S Marshall T/C 07:31, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

How about requiring that he attend WP:NPPSCHOOL? Atsme 💬 📧 15:49, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

TPH has 194,000 edits. He's been a prolific editor for 17 years. He knows what to do, he just can't do it.—S Marshall T/C 16:21, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Motion to close

2 other proposals

2.TenPoundHammer is restricted to nominating not more than 5 articles for deletion for proposed deletion or regular deletion per day, or, alternatively, one bulk deletion AFD per day. This sanction expires in one year.

3.Proposing deletion of Wikipedia articles is put under community-authorized general sanctions. Uninvolved adminstrators are allowed to restrict people from nominating articles for regular deletion, proposed deletion, and speedy deletion, down to a minimum of 1 article for regular deletion per week, 0 articles for proposed deletion per week and 1 article for speedy deletion per week.

Proposal 2 is relatively mild. But TenPoundHammer told us of having trouble with disciplining himself to limit deletion proposals. This is a solution, and I think TenPoundHammer should be used to a lower deletion speed after 1 year and the sanction should no longer be needed.

I am making proposal 3 because many people stated that this is not a problem with one individual editor.Lurking shadow (talk) 20:13, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I support #2. 5 per day is a reasonable limit. I hope that TenPoundHammer would understand that the bulk deletion AFD is not a get-out clause, but only for the cases where they would be using bulk delete did the restriction not apply. — Bilorv (talk) 21:02, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Support #2 in particular as a restriction for TPH. I disagree with a general restriction of 5 nominations per day, but that is being discussed in another forum. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:55, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Support #3, General Sanctions, with the understanding that it authorizes uninvolved administrators to impose sanctions on various sorts of disruptive behavior in AFDs, including personal attacks, removing the AFD notice, et cetera, not limited to making too many nominations. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:55, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That is not what no. 3 is actually about. It seems to be very much about people who would be nominating, not about general participation in them. And "1 speedy deletion per week" is really nonsense. Additionally, per below, given the blatant lack of evidence this is a widespread problem (and given even the current case seems very no-consensus), the best option is to keep treating this on a case-by-case basis. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 21:48, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Support #2, though I would prefer a limit of 10 nominations per day. I had been involved in a case where TPH PRODded 146 TV show articles in one day, and they all got deprodded by a user concerned about their rapid-fire tagging. (Several were deleted in follow-up AfD's.) AfD stats. Their recent AfD stats show a disappointingly low score of 19.7% accuracy for the 72 nominations among the last 200 that have been closed, down from a so-so 57.6% for the previous 200. (For comparison, Sportsfan 1234 (talk · contribs), another user recently criticized for mass AfD nomination of Tuvaluan footballers, has an accuracy score of 87.8%.) –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 06:25, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

As to #3, there are cases logged at WP:EDR where a user was subject to a sanction on a different part of the deletion process. For example, the user CAPTAIN RAJU (talk · contribs) was banned from closing or relisting AfD discussions in an ANI discussion from December 2017 following an incident where they closed or relisted several AfD nominations based solely on the number of !votes. I would thus prefer a simpler, more broad proposal:

4. Standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all deletion processes (XfD, PROD, CSD, RfU, and DRV) on the English Wikipedia. Administrators may also reasonably limit the rate at which a user can nominate pages for deletion through XfD, PROD, or CSD; or close or relist deletion discussions. Users may initiate deletion discussions for articles or files where proposed deletions were contested in violation of these sanctions.

–LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 07:37, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose#4 Putting the entire deletion process under discretionary sanctions is a great way to bite newbies who just got their article deleted with additional awareness notices.Lurking shadow (talk) 09:27, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You're right, what happens if we limit this to nomination of pages for deletion? We get #3, but a little simplified. Support #3, but formulated in terms of standard DS because in some cases, it may be appropriate to ban a user outright from initiating a deletion process, though I'm not aware of any such incidents outside of New Page Patrol. The proposed minimum is too arbitrary, and I'm not sure if it should be limited to article space. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 12:08, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• support #2 and oppose 3 and 4 as making excessive work and drama. TPH has done some good deletions, but more time is needed to really check for suitability of the page. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:10, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Support 1, but if that's too harsh, Support 2 (but 1 per day would be better, 35 per week is a lot, and with the current <20% success rate, still a huge waste of other editors time), Support 3, but there are a lot of details to be ironed out. The editor's ongoing participation shows a complete lack of impulse control, and by his own admission, "everyone" reverts his redirects within a few minutes, his prods get reverted en-masse, and his AfD nominations are being rejected far more often than they're being successful screams they just aren't able to do a good job of article deletion right now. They need to take a break, but can't do so without help. Jacona (talk) 13:27, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• I now support 1 after seeing their original topic ban. I still support 3.Lurking shadow (talk) 19:59, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose 2 per same arguments as I opposed no. 1; Strong oppose 3 and 4 because I see not even the slightest evidence whatsoever that this is an area of the encyclopedia which has gotten so out of hand that such drastic measures would need to be imposed. If we're going that way, we should also implement a similar sanctions regime for people mass-creating stubs and database-sourced articles...; or for people repeatedly contesting prods of articles which do get deleted. Or maybe just not go ahead with such ridiculous nonsense proposals in either direction. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 21:44, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Strongly oppose all per my arguments above; there is no evidence of an actual problem here, so these are just solutions looking for a problem. Beyond that, strenuous procedural objection to 3 and 4 in strongest possible terms as far too sweeping of a suggestion to tuck away in the subsection of an ANI devoted to a single editor. People who are not interested in TPH's specific case, or who are deterred by the size of the discussion, or who see the lopsided discussion above and assume it is handled, are not going to see these sweeping proposals; this is effectively a WP:CONLOCAL situation where discussions in this subtopic cannot authorize sweeping things of this nature regardless of the level of consensus produced. If you genuinely believe those are called for, start a totally new discussion (preferably on WP:PROPOSE or the like), but they will not and cannot result from this one under any circumstances; anyone treating this as an RFC on those is wasting their time. It cannot be implemented in this way, fullstop. --Aquillion (talk) 03:58, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  @Aquillion: Could you clearly explain why you do not see evidence of a problem specifically regarding TenPoundHammer? A very low success rate for AfD's seems like strong evidence of a problem. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 07:18, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I explained in more detail above. First, I don't see a long-term 50% success rate as that low; there are inevitably going to be borderline cases, and we do need people willing to bring those to AFD. Punishing people based solely on success rate (especially a success rate that suggests their judgment is at least not absurd) would have a chilling effect people's willingness to bring such borderline cases to AFD. Second, per WP:TNT, it is entirely acceptable and appropriate to nominate a sufficiently bad article based on its current state, even if a better article could in theory be written on the topic; so success rate alone isn't a meaningful measure. There's plenty of people who spend time trying to salvage articles in AFD by improving and rewriting them, and more power to them if that's how they want to spend their time - but doing so does not make the original nomination wrong, certainly not sufficiently wrong as to justify sanctions. --Aquillion (talk) 08:02, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

My issue is not that TPH has a low success rate, it's that he consistently refuses to abide by community consensus and engage in thoughtful discussion, especially in the case of reliable sources (e.g., Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Lick or Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Peepoodo & the Super Fuck Friends (2nd nomination)). Furthermore, he continues to go back on his promise to slow down the rate of AfD's even while under the scrutiny of an ANI. Why? I Ask (talk) 13:29, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose all the above, agree with Aquillion on all counts. nableezy - 04:02, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose all: Per the points by Aquillion and there being no compelling evidence that TPH's actions, taken as a cure, are any worse than the treated disease, which is the deluge of subpar material flooding the project. TPH's 50% success rate means they are clearing out a phenomenal amount of crap, and likely prompting the betterment of the other 50%. Any AFD policy changes should be global, not targeted. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:32, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Support #2 - The context above demonstrates that TPH frequently does not do the required due diligence before proposing articles for deletion, which he has been sanctioned for previously. I think this means that imposing a limit is the least that should be done. Although some of the oppose votes are motivated by the idea that allowing TPH to continue proposing articles for deletion at the current rate is necessary to remove undeserving articles from this website, imposing this sanction should ideally push him to focus on "the worst of the worst" (so to speak), which if anything should improve the efficiency of that process. Hatman31 (talk) 13:10, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"No evidence there's a problem"

This argument does not survive the evidence, already presented above, that there's a problem. Let's collect and itemize it.

• 2018 AN/I leading to indefinite topic ban from AfD
• 2019 successful appeal. To quote TPH: "I understand why my topic-ban was imposed in the first place, and I will chalk it up to an overzealous attempt to clear out cleanup categories which led to a great deal of reckless nominations." Note carefully that TPH himself accepts that his problem is reckless AfD nominations. The appeal is successful but concludes that "the community is unlikely to offer another chance."
• "Statement from nominated", above. To quote TPH: "I fully admit I act in haste way too much.... instead of instantly nominating, my plan is to put questionable articles on (my) cleanup list."
• And within three minutes after posting that, he nominates a further two articles for deletion.

This is an editor who knows he has a problem with inattentive and reckless editing, and openly admits that he does, and is not able to control it.—S Marshall T/C 15:08, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm pretty surprised that not everyone agrees that 100 in a week or 250 in a month is a problem in and of itself. Even TPH seems to agree it's a problem, per their comments here. Levivich 15:30, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

One wonders if there is any point in collecting and presenting evidence when editors can just dismiss it with a metaphorical wave of the hand and claim it isn't there. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 19:04, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Does seem like this AN/I with a lot of deletionists present is mirroring the frustrations of an AfD with a lot of deletionists present, yes. "I demand you provide evidence of this thing which I will then proceed to ignore", etc... etc... Artw (talk) 19:19, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The only thing worse is inclusionists attempting to get rid of someone who has correctly removed hundreds of unsuitable entries or caused hundreds of articles to be improved. We should similarly sanction editors who indiscriminately create hundreds of articles; or vote keep at hundreds of AfDs without much justification (insert the archetypical "Keep passes NSOMETHING" votes); ... Or, less sarcastically, people should stop trying to strong-arm a situation by resorting to the dramaboards. None of the AfDs seems to be in bad faith or so obviously wrong as to show CIR issues. There is otherwise nothing actionable here. As I said earlier, AfD is not a game where the point is getting the highest "hit rate". An AfD which results in the article being kept but massively overhauled and improved, in my books, is a correct AfD, and an improvement to the encyclopedia: I don't see why people should be sanctioned for it. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 19:55, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Dire catastrophism about 100s of new articles if they don't get their own way also a regular feature of these discussions that we are replicating here. Wikipedia is not going to be swamped with new articles because TPM didn't get to nominate dozens of longstanding but neglected articles without doing BEFORE. Artw (talk) 20:14, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Artw: You've missed the irony, haven't you? And AFD would not have to be (as you say) "swamped" with "100s" of nominations if people bothered doing BEFORE before creating articles in the first place... Nominating sub-par content for deletion seems like a far less objectionable thing than people insisting it should be kept and then getting all fussy at the nominator for having highlighted how the content was indeed subpar. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 20:26, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

And there's been a number of conversations on Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers about the impossibility of the current situation. Wikipedia is being swamped with new articles that don't have notability sourced in the article, and currently, the burden for fixing the problem rests on the new page patrollers (of whom there may be 30-60 currently active), since the burden for WP:BEFORE currently rests upon the nominator for deletion, not the author of the apparently non-compliant article. One would presume that the person drafting the article would be the better choice to find notability sources. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 20:38, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like signing up for that would be a much more productive use of TPMs time than what they are doing right now, perhaps they should be encouraged to go in that direction and leave established articles alone. As it is, this is NOT what they are doing and what they are doing is harmful and they should be discouraged from it. Artw (talk) 21:03, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That's not the point of my message. One, two or even 100 new reviewers won't fix the asymmetry problem. The current setup doesn't work. There are 14,000 new pages not patrolled yet, and I'd bet many are hanging there because of this issue. The most time-consuming parts of new page review are 1) establishing lack of notability for an article that doesn't have notability evident already, and 2) investigating suspicious articles (e.g., possible UPE involvement). Of the two, #1 predominates.

Note I am not proposing any change to WP:BEFORE for articles already patrolled. Only for new contributions going forward. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 21:25, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The answer is to require all articles to be sourced or be PRODed, with the prod only removable if sources are added. Even requiring just 1 source would be a start (though 2 or 3 would be better). Levivich 23:57, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

As is already required as standard for BLPs ... yes, a practical suggestion. Maybe even a BOT to auto-PROD the sourceless. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:43, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

1000 AfDs in a week is not too many so long as those 1000 AfDs are not so obviously bad that they merited a sanction. Of the AfDs brought here I think there is one that is on the spectrum of bad to obviously bad, the rest are wholly defensible. I dont think one bad nomination merits a sanction, and I dont find the argument about overwhelming people trying to source these articles all that convincing. The material shouldnt be here without a source. Any editor is free to challenge the verifiability of any statement in an article, and absent a source is then free to remove uncited material. If you do that with these articles you are left with speedy deletion candidates (A3). So no, I dont see the effort to remove uncited material from Wikipedia to be a problem, I see the effort to add it and then retain it to be the problem. nableezy - 20:08, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Per WP:BEFORE, If the article can be fixed through normal editing, then it is not a candidate for AfD. This applies even if the article has no sources. In countless AfDs nominated by this user, sourcing has been found that established notability. If the user has done a proper BEFORE, they would have found this sourcing and added it to the articles themselves NemesisAT (talk) 21:23, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

And per WP:V, any user may challenge the verifiability of any statement and remove any challenged statement that is not cited to a reliable source. And an article devoid of any sources if emptied of such statements is an A3 SD candidate. All the WP:N and WP:BEFORE references to guidelines do not trump that core policy on verifiability. Any user can add material that they have reliable sources for. Adding it without a source to begin with? Not as much. Thats the actual problem here, not the removal of such low quality "articles" from a supposed encyclopedia. nableezy - 21:30, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

1) Many of these articles are not unsourced.

2) Claims that BEFORE is being followed are being made.

Artw (talk) 21:57, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. What I was going to type earlier but the reply tool was too buggy on mobile. NemesisAT (talk) 08:39, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

1) Many of these articles are not unsourced. And how many are sourced solely to databases? Such articles are similarly not really acceptable, even if they're technically not unsourced. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 14:04, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A data point: Looking back at April, before this whole business began, it seems like about 40 AfDs a day is normal. There's a few recurring names but most of the AfDs are individual entries with no users posting dozens of entries. I'm again finding it really hard to believe that the site depends on single users AfDing dozens of articles a day without care for BEFORE. Artw (talk)

• At one level Nableezy is completely, self-evidently correct. Editors are entitled to ask for sources and right to insist on high quality ones. AfD is a good place to evaluate sources. Editors should be able to use it freely, and being wrong, or at odds with community consensus, is not a crime.
  But there are other levels. AfD uses up a lot of volunteer time, so we ask for some basic diligence from nominators. They must carry out a good faith search for sources and, before nominating an article for deletion, they must come to a reasoned, defensible view that decent sources don't exist. They are not to use AfD recklessly or negligently, because volunteer time is our only limiting resource.
  The use of AfD is not a problem. Being wrong is not a problem. Editing recklessly and wasting volunteer time is a problem that needs addressing.—S Marshall T/C 23:48, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  The only person who is wasting volunteer time here appears to not be TPH. A better candidate might be DGG, who needlessly deprodded 50 articles nominated by TPH in a series of rapid edits back on the 30th of May; thus forcing every single one of these to go to AFD (because they all, in this case, do fail the inclusion criteria). In fact, I see absolutely no grounds for a complaint against TPH here: he prodded some articles in an attempt to avoid wasting volunteer time on it. That others decided to undo this and force the waste of volunteer time is not TPH's fault. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 12:37, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Ding ding ding. "Should be easy to source"? Then do that. You want a proposal that might fix things here? Change the default no consensus outcome at AfD to deletion not retention. Every other policy we have says challenged material is removed absent a consensus for it to remain. But entire articles are kept after a challenge without consensus or a source. Because it "should be easy to source". No indication that it is easy to source. No indication of any effort to find any sources. No indication of even checking if the copy-pasted at a 4x a minute clip edit summary is free of typos. But thats not the problem somehow. nableezy - 16:56, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  This is blame shifting. "Prods may be removed for any reason" includes "a user is mass prodding articles that seem saveable" is fully within that. ~~~ Artw (talk) 17:29, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  And users may challenge the inclusion of such articles through nominating them for deletion. Again, the problem is the users creating and then using obstructive tactics to keep unsourced garbage in our mainspace. You seem to take the position that we should have unsourced crap in our mainspace. Thats fine for you to take that position. Nobody is advocating any sanctions against you for taking it. Others, including apparently TPH, dont share that position. So they nominate such articles for deletion. And so the story of Wikipedia continues onward. nableezy - 17:43, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  "Again, the problem is the users creating and then using obstructive tactics to keep unsourced garbage in our mainspace." No, that is not the problem, that is the EXCUSE. An excuse that here would be based on untruths and not on the facts of the case.

  "So they nominate such articles for deletion. " - if the deletions here are based on the excuse you put forwards they are based on lies and invalid. If we assume good faith and TPM's fingers slipped and caused them to do a bunch of deletions out of incompetency then they are likewise invalid. Unless you believe that any deletion is a good one no matter what the case, which could be true but it would be shocking to see someone admit it, I don't see how you can see TPMs actions as good or helpful/ Artw (talk) 18:15, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  You can continue to believe that your position is the only possible valid one, but Ill note my disagreement once more before I take my leave. And since I do not see any evidence of disruption I still oppose any sanction here. nableezy - 19:20, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  if the deletions here are based on the excuse you put forwards they are based on lies and invalid - go read WP:N and WP:DELREASON instead of accusing other editors of being incompetent (which is pretty much a personal attack and not acceptable). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 13:07, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Support 2, 3, 4 or anything else as better than the status quo. The evidence of a problem is all around. My personal proposal: everyone gets X floating AfDs, where X might be anywhere from 1-5. That is the maximum number of AfDs an individual proposer may start; nothing would prevent people from keeping lists and others from volunteering to nominate AfDs. BUT, here's the rub: If the AfD is closed as delete, redirect, merge, etc. great, nominate another. If the AfD is closed as keep and improvements (i.e. sources) are identified, the nominator must make the changes before getting that "floating AfD" back. No impact to someone who only nominates true junk and does good BEFORE work, but random nominations will sooner or later get a nominator assigned to cleanup duty. Jclemens (talk) 02:22, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose all We need to stop making it harder and harder to even bring articles to discussion for deletion. It is a hugely complex process to bring an article up for deletion. We should not punish those who do so just because their multiple attempts to find sourcing come up flat. Wikipedia literally has articles that have existed over 19 years without sources. People need to stop acting like deleting articles is the end of the world. I understand the importance of before, but if an article has sat 10 years or more with a notice of no sources and you make a digest attempt to find some, we should not jump down your throat because after you nominated the article for deletion someone did a search in a language you do not know and identified some articles. If the concern is someone not doing enough before research, what we should have is a proposal about that, arbitrary nomination limits are not in any way such a thing.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:21, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  If it is such a hugely complex process to bring up an article for deletion, how does Ten Pound Hammer nominate dozens in a day? How does a brand new user make his first 10 edits and nominate four articles for deletion in the space of ten minutes? (see [33]). Unfortunately, the opposite is often true. Bushxingu nominated 4 articles in 4 minutes. Nominating an article is much easier than defending one. It shouldn't be, because the nominator should do their research before making a nomination. I generally (sometimes more vigorously than others, depending on the circumstances) perform my own BEFORE before even commenting on an article - which leaves my input rather sparse compared to editors who seem to automatically vote - either "keep" or "delete" on dozens of articles every day, about subjects which they have no clue, without bothering to click on "scholar" when voting to delete an academic, without reading the article, etc. Thoughtless nominations and thoughtless !votes waste countless hours of serious editors. You should consider not only not nominating, but not voting if you are not willing to put in the work to offer a carefully considered viewpoint. Ill-considered nominations and votes are a middle finger to the face of the community at large. Jacona (talk) 12:30, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Nominating an article is much easier than defending one. Sadly, what is even worse is that creating an unsuitable article is much easier than going through the bureaucracy to delete it. Ill-considered nominations and votes are a middle finger to the face of the community at large. Low-quality articles in all sorts of topics are an even bigger middle finger to everyone (the community, but also our readers). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 12:41, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

(EC)*Oppose sanctions, along the lines noted by RandomCanadian, Aquillion, Iskandar323, Rsjaffe, and nableezy. Punitive restrictions are not the answer here absent evidence these AfD noms are actually harming the encyclopedia rather than speeding up removal of unencyclopedic content and improvement of articles on actually notable subjects (which everyone here should agree needs to happen at some point). It seems based on this discussion and the other one a vocal number of editors believe the purpose of an encyclopedia is to contain as many articles as possible as quickly as possible regardless of notability or quality or even existence of sources. And anything that makes deletion of pages easier, or restricts creation of pages in any way, is an effort to destroy knowledge. But if we operate with the goal that an encyclopedia should be informative and therefore accurate and appropriately comprehensive in its coverage of each topic, it makes a lot less sense to prioritize increasing article quantity above all else. JoelleJay (talk) 04:06, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• What would that evidence look like, JJ? I mean, we've linked above evidence that TPH himself admits to making reckless and ill-considered AfD noms. How could we prove to you that this is a bad thing that should stop?—S Marshall T/C 08:41, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  If the result of this discussion is TPH admitting their over-zealousness and voluntarily curbing their enthusiasm then a positive outcome has been reached. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:55, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  You want him to admit over-zealousness again and promise to voluntarily curb his enthusiasm again? How many more last chances do you feel we should give him?—S Marshall T/C 13:11, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  What TPH is doing is good for the encyclopedia. You don't give ultimatums and last chances to people who actually do good stuff (as in finding low-quality or unsuitable content and doing what is really a necessary part of any serious work, quality control). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 13:27, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Only half the time though. The other half of the time he's wasting editor time nom'ing notable articles. And don't kid yourself that this other half is good because it leads to article improvement: "AfD is not cleanup" and "there is no deadline" so it's not really cool to require over 100 articles to be cleaned up in a week or be deleted. What TPH is doing is not good for the encyclopedia. Levivich 13:30, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Unless you have evidence that TPH has been nominating these in bad faith; this would just appear to be par-for-the-course. AfD might not be cleanup, but having unsourced (or unreliably-sourced) articles, or article which are database-entries-in-all-but-name is worse for our readers than somebody ruffling up some feathers at AfD. And ultimately Wikipedia is for its readers. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 14:10, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  "Ruffling up some feathers at AfD"? What? Come on: engage seriously with what people are saying the problem is. It's not "ruffling feathers". Here's a thing to do in these arguments to help reach understanding: can you state, in your own words, what my (and others') concerns are here? It's not ruffled feathers. Can you acknowledge and validate the concerns being raised? Levivich 14:17, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  How is it worse for the readers? If you didn't want to read an article, you are very unlikely to ever find your way there, unless you were just looking for something to complain about. Dream Focus 14:17, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  DF, I'm gonna say the same thing to you I just said to RC. Nobody is "just looking for something to complain about". Can you say in your own words what RC's (and others') concerns are here? "How is it worse for the readers": can you answer that yourself? People have been answering this question for years -- in discussions like these that both of us have been a part of. Can you acknowledge and validate the concerns of those you disagree with? Levivich 14:28, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  If readers are looking for an article about subject Y, and the only thing we have about subject Y is very superficial or not based on reliable sources; then we are effectively deceiving our readers and possibly giving them false information. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 14:29, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose all. Same reasoning as above. WP is ultimately being improved by these nominations, even if a very small proportion (so it would seem) are obviously bad. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 15:20, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, so I'm of the opinion that, like it or not, AfDs do function as a valuable clean-up method regardless of outcome -- I feel like editor time is only really wasted when the outcome is such an "obvious" keep that no one even bothers to look for sources, and a poor-quality, undersourced article then gets kept with no improvement. Or when someone comes along early on with a ref dump of trivial or non-IRS mentions and subsequent !voters don't bother to actually check them, or infuriatingly refuse to acknowledge the sources fail to establish notability once someone does assess them.

HOWEVER, I am sympathetic to the complaints about TPH's nom rate and "accuracy". I can certainly see how an endless flood of nominations can feel overwhelming depending on how you participate at AfD; for editors who are very selective in which AfDs they decide to !vote in (e.g., I almost exclusively look at AfDs on STEM academics and sportspeople that are already controversial (or majority keep, or feature egregious misunderstandings of P&Gs), and only then do a thorough source search; I also only participate in sporadic bursts), increasing the volume of AfDs isn't really an issue since their involvement is dependent on other people's prior participation. BUT, for the intrepid few who try to hit every AfD in a particular area (and also perform their own BEFOREs -- there are a number of participants who clearly do not look beyond what is already in the article, if that, before !voting), I can imagine the exhaustion of going from 10 per day to 35 per day. And with with TPH's (real or perceived) low "success rate", editors primarily in the "keep" camp may feel more obligated to participate in all his AfDs because to them there is a greater chance a subject they believe is notable will get deleted.

So from this perspective I would recommend TPH substantially scale back his nominations with the help of a temporary limit of AfDs/PRODs to some number per day that he submits to the community for approval, alongside a justification for how that number gives him enough time to do a thorough BEFORE for each nom. Violating this would result in lowering the limit or other sanctions. JoelleJay (talk) 18:03, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• If there is anyone who tries to participate in every single AfD, then they would be affected as you say. But it also affects the people who make well-considered AfD nominations. When you're trying to use AfD in a week when TenPoundHammer's purging some maintenance category by right-clicking to open tabs for the first twenty articles and then using Twinkle to AfD them all, then what the proper nominators will get is the usual crop of people summoned by their Wikiproject who make zero effort keep-!votes and nobody else shows up. Because we only have so many volunteers and TPH has flooded the venue. And it's those people who make the well-considered AfD noms who we're trying to protect here.

  You wrote "oppose sanctions", JJ, and I do feel you're rather missing the point. These aren't meant as sanctions, they're a flood defence.

  Your suggestion that TPH "scale back his nominations" does rather resemble the various promises he's made to do that when dragged to AN/I in the past, and the difficulty that I see with that is that TPH can't do it. Did you see the place, above, where TPH promises to stop and then nominates another three articles for deletion with his next three edits? Or the place where he admits that he can't seem to control his own behaviour? I do feel that you're suggesting the ideas that have repeatedly failed with this editor, and I ask you to consider re-reading the discussions that Cunard linked from his opening post in this thread.—S Marshall T/C 19:05, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  I appreciate that sending tons of nominations to AfD dilutes the attention any individual one receives, which is why I suggested TPH justify to us why 5 or 8 or whatever number he chooses would still give him enough time for a thorough BEFORE. Maybe we should instead (or also) require that his BEFORE results be outlined in each nomination statement, too? That would limit his AfDs without actually restricting him to some magic acceptable number. JoelleJay (talk) 19:34, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  If the community won't accept a restriction to a specific number, then the simplest and most workable thing is to reinstate his topic ban from AfD. The one that the community only lifted because he promised to stop doing this.—S Marshall T/C 19:44, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment. After seeing the extent of TPH's inability to control himself, I'm changing my !vote to support restriction to like 10 AfDs and PRODs per day, with a requirement to outline his BEFORE search results, with examples and why they aren't satisfactory, for both AfDs and PRODs. TenPoundHammer would you be able to stick to this? JoelleJay (talk) 04:31, 8 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Support (any sanction). This idea that TPH is doing what needs to be done is precisely the point: really? How do we know? The only way is via careful AfD analysis and the community can not deal with this volume sufficiently. I realize people are in a hurry to clean up Wikipedia but that's not how Wikipedia works. -- GreenC 03:51, 16 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Quick proposal

TPH acknowledges that his nominations have gotten out of hand both in terms of high quantity and low quality. I propose we start by closing all currently outstanding TPH PRODs and AfDs. This addresses the immediate pain/damage inflicted here. We can then continue to discuss further remedies here or we can get back to work on more pleasant tasks. ~Kvng (talk) 22:45, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

No, because he's actively nominating during this discussion so it won't serve any purpose. Star Mississippi 13:22, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

And that's a bad thing? Most of the recent nominations (read: probably all, but I might have missed some) I have fallen upon are indeed blatant NOT failures. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 13:28, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A concrete example, launched after ANI:

• In this AFD TPH claims “Nothing on Newspapers.com, ProQuest, or Google Books.” [34].
• A number of book entries are found and listed on the discussion page, TPH claims “Everything I've found on GBooks appears to be a mere directory listing.“ [35] - the books listed on the page, which are from the first page of the search results, are general discussions of the topic and not directories. It’s unlikely TPH missed them if they performed the search, if they did direct links have been provide.
• “I left out a word. Nothing significant found.” [36]
• The word “useful” is added. [37]
• In response to being told he falsely ruled out GBooks as an avenue of research: “"Nothing useful on Newspapers.com, ProQuest, or Google Books." Which avenue did I leave out?” [38] - note that they try to slip in the revised wording.
• In response to another editor: “The two book sources are very tangential mentions; hell, the first one isn't even a full sentence.” [39] - they are referring to this: “The second was a pilot for The Adventures of Superboy, made in 1961. Johnny Rockwell played a young Clark Kent/Superboy in a light-hearted drama set in Smallville. Bunny Henning played Laura Lang. Thirteen scripts were written, but only the twenty-five-minute pilot entitled 'Rajah's Ransom' was made, and it can also be seen on YouTube.”, which is five sentences.
• On changing the nomination text then responding as if it hadn’t changed: “Because no one in the history of Wikipedia has ever left out a word when typing before, right?” - note that the revised version is still inaccurate. [40]
• Another one of the mentioned book sources turns out to have an entire chapter on the subject [41] “Nothing on Google books” is thoroughly busted, this will never be acknowledged.
• At this point there are removing chunks of the article as “unsourced”. [42], said material has sources added after trivia effort and is readded to the article. Not technically any kind of rules violation on their part but still exhausting behavior.

So yes, TPH is still causing problems and wasting editor time, not just diligently listing a few uncontroversial NOT violations. Artw (talk) 14:58, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

What I want to know is why you're so upset over me removing unsourced content. That is allowed, you know. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 16:44, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Star Mississippi: It serves the purpose of getting us out from under the surge created by these activities. This suspends the potential damage and reduces the urgency to reach consensus on lasting remedies. ~Kvng (talk) 16:32, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Kvng @RandomCanadian sorry I wasn't clear. It won't help unless he's topic banned or otherwise restricted because he won't stop. So we close ten and he opens twelve and... Here we go loop de loop for another fourteen years. Star Mississippi 01:35, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't proposing this as a final fix. You might want reset your expectations as to what the community is willing to do to remedy this. TPH has legitimate supporters in good standing. The real remedy is to give fewer fucks. ~Kvng (talk) 01:43, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Oh I know. I've been among his defenders in the past. I'm just utterly exhausted by his unwillingness to at least stem the flood. Because I can is a poor reason to repeat the same actions, on either side. Star Mississippi 01:54, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's really annoying when people go around just mass deprodding things for literally no reason. I've been trying to be more exhaustive in my reasoning. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 16:46, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I've been trying to be more exhaustive in my reasoning. That's what we're looking for! However, experience indicates PROD users won't use such discretion without active PROD patrolling. Don't worry, I will slide back to my preferred tasks improving articles in not too long and PROD may once again be a viable loophole for deletion. ~Kvng (talk) 17:15, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn’t sure where to put this but I feel the end here is recent enough to say I’ve had experience with their tendency to lie for their reasoning in proposals, in this case a merger on The Fairly OddParents: Fairly Odder, and they were parroted for it. They were debunked, but my worry is that such deception will be overlooked when it becomes time to close CreecregofLife (talk) 19:23, 12 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

He does that in AFDs at times as well, insisting that everything is "press releases", even when they are clearly not. Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Inspiration,_Please! he made that claim and it was refuted by the first person to respond. Dream Focus 19:46, 12 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A wider limit

Vandalism?

Redirect should not be a substitute for the established deletion discussion process (which allows at least for discussion and review) when a deletion is disputed. He is doing by indirection that which he cannot accomplish by direction. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 11:44, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

7&6=thirteen, do you have any evidence to support that TPH's intention is to harm wikipedia, or is this just a difference of opinion? Regards, MrsSnoozyTurtle 22:41, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I offered my opinion about the process and its effect. It exists irrespective of motive. It is disruptive a fortiori. I did not opine on Ten Pound Hammer's motives. That is your accusation and creation, not mine. 7&6=thirteen (☎) (UTC)

Since you picked the section called "vandalism" to post your complaints, of course we would come to that conclusion.
So tell me, Mr laywer, where I apparently accused TPH of vandalism? Regards, MrsSnoozyTurtle 06:07, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

These were simply factual observations. It is you who chooses to characterize and accuse. You have given nothing to argue about. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 18:42, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That's a ridiculous backflip.

Where do you think that I made the accusation? If something I said accidentally implies this, I would like to clear that up. Regards, MrsSnoozyTurtle 09:45, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Observation

For years I've been arguing against the idea that "deletionists" and "inclusionists" are real things, and that a "deletionist" in particular only really exists as a convenient bogeyman for "people who want to delete things I want to keep". Whatever we want to call the positions, I can't help noticing just how... [partisan?] this, current thread about Lugnuts, and several similar discussions feel. There is IMO sufficient evidence to demonstrate several things in this thread -- some to TPH's credit, and some not. I don't know what sort of balance any intervention should strike, but the polarized comments which seem to treat this as the greatest of all problems or no problem at all just don't add up. I wonder what this thread would look like if we just took out comments by anyone with <10% keep votes and <10% delete votes. I know it's possible to have a great success rate and only vote one way, and that some people do good work while only really voting one way, but there's definitely an orientation about "what the problem is" in those numbers. I'm not proposing anything here, but I'm curious. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:50, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, these threads are just a proxy fight about what to do about unsourced and under sourced articles. Another front in the same battle is currently underway at the pump. There are enough people who feel strongly enough at either extremes ("delete them all" v. "every word is sacred", as I'd characterize them) but I think most people don't care much either way. Frankly I'm not sure this is even a problem that needs solving; more like containing. Let them argue about the notability of this or that, as long as it doesn't interfere with the larger encyclopedia (that's what AfD is for). When these threads come up, one can drop their !vote, but I don't hold my breath that any permanent solution will be found. Levivich 14:25, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm starting to wonder if this thread wouldn't look different if started by someone else.—S Marshall T/C 15:52, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Or what it might look like at ArbCom. Clearly, there's a behavioral issue the community has no stomach to solve despite multiple previous reports, so that's the logical next step. Jclemens (talk) 02:52, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. There's definitely brigading going on.—S Marshall T/C 11:27, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

So I'm a bit of a Rip van Winkle, having been very active from 2003-2010, then being more of a reader than contributor, and in the past couple months being PRODded into more engagement, (as in, I'm getting a steady stream of email about deletions, complete with, shall we say, "pungent" characterizations of my past efforts, ha ha). What jumps out as a difference is that everybody is concerned about the sheer amount of toil that is a byproduct of success, combined with the realization that there aren't enough editor-hours available for the all the desired tasks. So when somebody is energetic, it's hard to tell them that they need to slow down, or be less histrionic about DOOM if some article is not deleted Right Now, or even just to follow our basic standards for behavior. I suspect that if there was a way to reduce toil to more closely match available editor time, it would be easier to say "this is a nice place; if you can't do that, go find a different activity". Stan (talk) 05:07, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I also agree that the degree of partisanship is striking (and not good). JBL (talk) 20:52, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The canvassing

So far, the canvassing aspect of Cunard's treatise atop has been virtually ignored throughout this discussion. Just from viewing the list of nominations at a large number of AfD nominations for "List of people on the postage stamps of" alone, it is apparent that TPH is routinely and blatantly canvassing two users in many of their nominations or in comments, one of whom then reliantly comes along and then predictably opines for deletion in many cases. Aspects of the nominations such as "Obligatory ping of..." (discussion) and "As always, ping of @Fram: and @Johnpacklambert..." (discussion) do not inspire confidence that the user is even aware of WP:CANVASS. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 07:31, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

An WP:AGF reading of this thread says there's a lack of awareness of multiple policies. We should remember that we're dealing with a veteran editor who for years has been operating in areas where these policies apply. This makes makes unawareness a not-so-good explanation of the behavior. What we're dealing with is obstinacy and it is clearly having a disruptive effect. ~Kvng (talk) 23:26, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• More canvassing ty TPH here. Selective notification of a user that typically opines for deletion in list of people on postage stamps articles. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 00:46, 8 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of people on the postage stamps of Romania After the first person said "keep" he argued with them a bit, then did the canvasing you linked to. After three people said "keep" and only the guy canvassed over said delete, he then canvasses someone else who voted delete with him in in previously nominated list of stamp articles, pinging her in that discussion [43]. Doesn't say anything, just pings her. Dream Focus 01:08, 8 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Didn't he say he was going to put a hold on it for now?

At this point, I can't follow this immense discussion, but I'm sure TPH promised not to do any more nominations or PROD's while this discussion continued. Here's one today (and I think it's a bad one). Is it possible they're trying to force the community to ban them so they can put an end to their compulsion? Let's do it, we'll all be better off. Jacona (talk) 11:55, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I mean, you say that, but did you not just significantly improve and add relevant detail to the stub in question as a result of that prod? Seems like a content win. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:00, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Also, TPH created that article, so it was a self-PROD of an article that had barely progressed since 2011 - a prime example of content needing a nudge. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:03, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

TenPoundHammer has access to newspapers.com. They could have added those sources instead of making others spend their time doing it. NemesisAT (talk) 12:06, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Iskandar323, that is truly the most demotivating comment to contributing to Wikipedia ever. I guess we should only fight about this horrible behavior on ANI and not improve articles, because if we improve it, we confirm bad behavior as being good. That is sickening to me. Jacona (talk) 12:18, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Umm ... that is basically the entire point of the PROD setup: it's a form of less drastic, pre-AfD stimulation for either improvement or binning. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:22, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Why is it demotivating? Now, thanks to your actions, the world can see that Bill Armstrong had two Emmy noms. The body of knowledge moves on. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:24, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Had Jacona not noticed the PROD, the article on a notable subject could have been deleted without anyone noticing. That's what is so demotivating here, that we have to keep such a close eye on TPH's excessive nominations and spend time "saving" these articles, when TPH could just improve them themselves. NemesisAT (talk) 12:25, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's pretty clear TPH doesn't want to fix it, he either wants to kill it or try to force someone else to cleanup his mess. If this is how they are handled, why should I work on his articles (thus being proved to be his bitch), it's better to just remove the PRODs without comment. Jacona (talk) 12:30, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The positive spin is you did the body of human knowledge a service. Perhaps just pat yourself on the back instead. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:37, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The body of human knowledge would be better protected if people didn't repeatedly nominate notable subjects for deletion, as TPH does. NemesisAT (talk) 12:42, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Imagine telling other people how to feel about contentious actions that TPH has already promised to pare back in recognition of their errors, as seen earlier in the thread. Iseult ^Δx parlez moi 01:51, 8 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

TPH created the article and is still responsible for 54% of the content, so it is not like they never invested time into it, and I doubt they created it in 2011 just to torment people in 2022. You assume that they could have found the same information, but perhaps not. We all search for things in different ways. That's why humans are better as teams, because we explore the world in different ways and through different means. I've certainly never been on newspapers.com - is that now a requirement for WP:BEFORE? Iskandar323 (talk) 12:34, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The point is, he promised not to do new prods while this discussion was in process, and here he is breaking his promise. That is not good faith. Jacona (talk) 12:38, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If you have access to it then I would say yes. TPH regularly states that they have searched on it. NemesisAT (talk) 12:40, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The fact of the matter, though, is that per WP:PROD, it is a process to suggest an article or file for uncontroversial deletion (bold emphasis mine). The purpose of Proposed deletion is literally for deletion. It is not intended as a tool to nudge other editors to work on articles. That is what the maintenance templates are for. Furthermore, per the policy page, "PROD must only be used if no opposition to the deletion is expected." The notions being suggested above of Prod being used to nudge article improvements contradict this notion and are not part of the policy, nor should they be. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 12:51, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

He violated that "promise" ten times in the course of this discussion alone and it's clear he won't stop nominating unless he is stopped via technical means. In the best of worlds, he doesn't understand what makes a good/bad nomination. In the worst, well, I've worked with him too long to call him a troll but he'd be trolling us. I'm hoping it's the former. Star Mississippi 13:42, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Currently they are mass nominating categories, which I guess is a different form of deletion discussion. Artw (talk) 23:52, 14 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Another TPH Deletion Issue

ArbCom?

In my statement to ArbCom asking them to consider a case on conduct during deletion discussions, I have asked them to include User:TenPoundHammer as a party, largely because this matter remains unresolved. Robert McClenon (talk) 06:21, 9 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think that might be required as he is now once more mass redirecting articles for television shows, even when they meet the general notability guidelines. [45] He eliminated an article for a television show with the edit summary (reviews are not enough if no other sources exist). This of course is not true. The article meets the general notability guideline. Can others look at this specific issue and comment please? Dream Focus 03:34, 16 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Note that's not the only one. Just so many of them to sort through at once. [46] and [47] for instance. And previously I and other reverted him on this same issue. Dream Focus 03:38, 16 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

reviews are not enough if no other sources exist?!?!?!

That is one of the dumbest and worst rationales I've ever seen as an attempt to remove article content. Silverseren^C 03:39, 16 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• He has lied in his edit summaries. [48] Claims there are only a couple reviews, but there are four. At [49] he has the edit summary (only two reviews, one from a personal blog). I responded when reverting him (three reviews. IGN and AV Club are reliable sources.) At [50] his edit summary is (not notable, just a couple token reviews) I reverting him with the edit summary explaining (those reviews mean it passes the general notability guidelines. Also the show had 10.49 million viewers). Can someone just explain the WP:GNG to him? With him doing this to so many articles at once, in the same way he did before, its hard to look through all of them. Dream Focus 06:24, 16 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Just found and reverted another of his redirects. [51] His edit summary is (has a couple reviews and placement on a "best of" list, but this is insufficient given the lack of reliable sources beyond this) The reviews were from The A.V. Club and IGN, both reliable sources. If enough people could just tell him that these two reliable sources mean the article passes the general notability guidelines, maybe he'll stop trying to eliminate articles. If not, sanctions or arbcom might be required to make him stop doing this. Dream Focus 06:30, 16 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I tried to go through them to filter as well, but the sheer mass of redirects makes it difficult to sort through. Are we soon going to also consider restrictions on making redirects, or is that too much? Iseult ^Δx parlez moi 00:22, 17 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Miscellaneous question

Yesterday, TPH used MfD to propose a prohibition of WikiProjects ranking articles as A-class. When Robert McClenon pointed out a WikiProject that used the A-class, TPH refused to notify the named WikiProject. Is his failure to notify the WikiProject acceptable? — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 17:41, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Could you link where he refused to notify the WikiProject? If he did refuse then that's not ideal, but surely it could easily be rectified by someone else (such as you) notifying them? Phil Bridger (talk) 17:58, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I've looked at the page history of Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history, and it seems like TPH has never edited it at any point during the MfD. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 18:15, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, posted on the WikiProject talk myself. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 18:19, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for doing that before I did. I'm no great fan of TenPoundHammer myself (I just wish he would slow down a bit and think), but there's a big difference between "refused to post" and "did not post". Phil Bridger (talk) 20:08, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal - modification of language in AfDs and Prods

Based on recent observations and interactions I have two suggestions which, if voluntarily adopted by TenPoundHammer (talk · contribs) or imposed upon them via sanction, would reduce some of the drama in AfD and Prod related discussions.

1. If a prod was contested TPH should restrict themselves to commenting “The prod was contested”, avoiding further claims. Currently they frequently make snippy comments like “The prod was removed without comment” and almost as frequently that turns out to be false. If no claim is made nobody has to waste their time verifying the claim or arguing about the claim.
2. TPH should not make any negative claims about the availability of sources. Currently they frequently make claims that nothing is available via some search or other that when followed up on turns out to be false, to the point where any such claims from them are untrustworthy. Best to leave it at stating whatever they have found, if anything, and whether or not it would help with argument improvement.

This would not fix any of the problems related to frequency or accuracy, but it would remove the most frequent causes for contentiousness in the conversations. Thoughts? Artw (talk) 00:51, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

So if I genuinely do get no results on ProQuest for a thing, how am I supposed to convey that? The second point seems counterintuitive. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 01:02, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Per the proposal you would avoid making such a claim regardless of if you thought it was genuine or not. Artw (talk) 01:17, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see any reason for the second half of my claim. If I get zero hits, then I get zero hits. What makes you think someone would get totally different results entering the exact same term on the exact same search engine? I've tried to spell out my searches more thoroughly. Perhaps if I did that more instead? (E.G. "I found four hits on ProQuest. Hit one had this, hit two had that, etc. etc.") Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 01:28, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The point of the suggestion would be to remove the possibility of your making a false claim, by accident or design, which as noted in the conversation above has been a very frequent occurrence. Artw (talk) 01:36, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Why do you consistently get "no results" when others (including myself) find citations (sometimes within 5 minutes of you putting an article up for PROD or AfD or REDIRECT)? Clearly there are issues with the way you do a BEFORE that no one else experiences. Perhaps you need to take a break from all 3 until you can figure out why your searches yield "nothing" and others find substantial sources. DonaldD23 talk to me 02:25, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Another TPH issue - Redirecting a page that previously survived an AfD

The article Spaceman Spiff was redirected by TPH to Calvin and Hobbes on June 11. This article was put up for AfD in 2005 and ended in Keep. TPH decided that in his opinion it was "completely unsourced OR" (this edit [52]) so he redirected it without discussion.

I noticed the redirect on June 18 and reversed it with this edit [53]. My comment was "AfD it" simply because it was already sent for discussion once and survived. So, I am concerned that TPH doesn't care about consensus and wants his opinion to rule.

When TPH noticed that the redirect was reversed he put it up for AfD (which I agree was the way to go), and when another editor questioned why TPH would, "redirect it if there was a prior AfD? That’s clearly not appropriate." [54], his reply was "By what policy?" [55].

His deletion rationale included the comment "Previous AFD was in 2005, when rationales for keeping were vastly different than they are now." While this may very well be true, to decide on his own that the article should be eliminated is inappropriate and shows a lack of regard for Wikipedia consensus.

How much longer will we allow TPH to run rampant over Wikipedia PRODding, AfDing, and REDIRECTing articles on his deletion spree? DonaldD23 talk to me 11:53, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Just to note although kept at an AFD 17 years ago, this was a redirect between 2006 and 2019. - LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 15:11, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Using a 17 year old AFD to restore completely unsourced content is absurd. You take responsibility for your edits, and if you think this is an acceptable edit for an encyclopedia, then we have an actual problem that ANI should address. That is an atrocious edit, and the whinging about "run rampant" when you are inserting material that does not meet the very lowest bar for inclusion here is amazing in its lack of self-awareness. nableezy - 15:31, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Bounding on an unfounded personal attack there, mate - nothing wrong with restoring a non-consensus redrirect on a sourced article. Artw (talk) 16:47, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Correction - not currently sourced. Artw (talk)

So not unfounded, not a personal attack,but rather an accurate statement about a user seemingly obstructing TPH for the sake of obstructing him. nableezy - 17:00, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Still a legitimate edit, still in response to one form TPH that is less than so. Also if we really wnat to nitpick the article had at least one source mentioned in its text, just not in citation form. Artw (talk) 17:30, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

TPH redirected it, DonaldD23 reverted it, and now it's at AFD. That's how things areeamt to work isn't it? - LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 17:38, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Sure sounds like an attack on me. Restoring a page is not an "atrocious edit". It was redirected at the discretion of one editor (TPH), and restored by another one (me), and now it is at AfD where it should have been all along. Keep personal attacks at home nableezy. DonaldD23 talk to me 17:42, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Request closure

There is one proposal that has consensus above, the rest seem to me to clearly not, and besides there is now an open ArbCom case with TPH as a party. Is there a reason this should be open now? nableezy - 15:32, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It mould mean new ones almost immediately being openened given TPH's continued pattern of behaviour, so it would be depend how you feel about that. This one seems to have stalled out so it might be a good thing to get fresh eyes. Artw (talk) 16:43, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Theres an open ArbCom case, if you have issues related to it then take that evidence there. nableezy - 16:59, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Close it, seeing as Arbcom has taken on the matter. GoodDay (talk) 16:45, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comment am not seeing any indication of any engagement between the Arbcom linked and TPH beyond some offhand mentions, it doesn't really seem to be a case about them at all. Artw (talk) 17:23, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose TPH is only offhandedly mentioned at the ArbCom case. It really seems to be about other editors. This needs to be kept open until a resolution is agreed upon. Not just simply closing it for the sake of closing it. DonaldD23 talk to me 17:53, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment close this and the others. If TPH isn't mentioned in the arbcom case, well it's about behaviour at AFD and someone can get TPH added. - LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 18:17, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  TPH is already a party in the open arbcom case. Levivich 18:26, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

TenPoundHammer lying in edit summaries

[56] TenPoundHammer erases singles from the list with the word "no", gets reverted by Northamerica1000 and then erases it again with the edit summary (no singles), I then reverting him again pointing out (Undid revision 1093844156 by TenPoundHammer (talk) the singles are there, and link to their own articles about them!) [57]

This exact thing happened also at [58] [59]. Dream Focus 19:26, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

At This discussion Lugnuts is niggling at Johnpacklambert again. The root of the issue is two fold. Firstly, Lugnuts has created a lot of sub stubs that eventually lead to the community banning them from making stubs and Lugnuts seems to have an aversion from JPL working on sorting out the articles, which includes prodding and AFDing. The second issue is that Lugnuts seems to be completely incapable about resisting the urge to personalise discussion and scattering aspersions. Normally this would be part of the give and take and general nastiness of AFD but as we have discussed here so many times Lugnuts is supposed to be on their final chance and has been warned specifically to avoid personalising discussions. I have blocked them a couple of times for this and no change in behaviour has been seen. The last time I unblocked early after a discussion to start systematic editing changes to avoid this in future but here we are again. I raised this latest incident with Lugnuts but they blew me off and short of an indef I don't see any block to be likely to lead to any improvement. That leaves us back here as an intractable problem. The only solution I can think off would be a one way IBAN for Lugnuts to stop them interacting with JPL in any way but that would mean he couldn't respond to any AFD nominations or Prods JPL might make but maybe there is a better solution? Spartaz ^Humbug! 17:52, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

How many times are we gonna discuss this at ANI before something is finally done? PRAXIDICAE💕 17:52, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You tell me. I have been the only admin enforcing decorum and I can't be the only one doing this. Spartaz ^Humbug! 17:58, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Praxidicae I agree, something has to give. Thank you @Spartaz for bringing it here because I think it has grown beyond our respective Talks and the repeat fights in the AfDs. Unfortunately I'm not sure what the answer is yet. Star Mississippi 21:20, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

As a reminder, Lugnuts is not the only involved party under sanctions - as I understand it JPL is limited to one AfD per day aren't they? They are keeping to this sanction, but have a very poor "success rate" at AfD - a very quick sample suggested that recently no more than 20% of articles created by Lugnuts that JPL sends to AfD are actually deleted (and I would argue that in almost all of those 20% that redirection is a valid possibility; in some of the 80% of articles which are redirected or kept, there are clearly questions that could be asked about the need to send them to AfD, let alone whether or not they should be PRODed at all - given that this is clearly an area in which deletion is contentious and there are often obvious alternatives). In many cases there are obvious ATD, yet JPL continues to send articles to AfD, which I'm sure that if I'd created them at a time in which these sorts of articles were deemed acceptable, that I'd probably feel a little exasperated as well. I'm not entirely certain why keeping a total of articles which JPL has sent to AfD this year is particularly problematic, but there you are. Blue Square Thing (talk) 18:04, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It takes two to tango. -- Vaulter 18:05, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The best long-term solution would be for User:Johnpacklambert to stop nominating articles for deletion when there is an obvious redirect target. He has been told many times that there is no need for a subject to be notable to have a redirect, but merely to be verifiable. In the short term the bickering should stop, but while such deletion nominations are being made the problem will not go away. Oh, and by the way, there is no such thing as a "sub stub". Our shortest articles are stubs. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:07, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I tried redirecting articles. Lugnuts mass reverted the redirects. Others have done so as well. So he has fought tooth and nail against that solution. In many of these cases there are multiple at least as near to notable as the subject. We also get discussions like this Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Otto Schröder where multiple other editos supported deletion, some of them specifically saying it was not a good redirect candidate. No one has presented a good way to remove these articles that no longer meet our inclusion criteria when attempts to redirect them have been routinely reverted.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:44, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The suggestion was "The best long-term solution would be for User:Johnpacklambert to stop nominating articles for deletion when there is an obvious redirect target"--it wasn't about you redirecting things, but about you no longer nominating such articles. Drmies (talk) 16:09, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The proposal to change "Articles for Deletion" to "Articles for Discussion" has been made several times, but has been rejected, largely because it makes six or seven million talk pages redundant and would completely overwhelm the AfD page. If a bold redirection is reverted then simply follow the WP:BRD procedure (I know that's "only" an essay but it encapsulates better than most policies and guidelines the essence of Wikipedia editing) and discuss it on the article talk page, rather than nominate for deletion something that shouldn't be deleted, but redirected, and needs no administrator to enact the outcome. And just forget the idea that redirects need to be notable, as you said in this discussion. If that was the case then we wouldn't have redirects at all, because they would all qualify to be articles. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:07, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I've just noticed (pardon me for being a little slow) that you are under a restriction that relates to creating AfD discussions. One advantage to you of the approach I outlined above is that article talk pages do not fall under this restriction. I would, however, advise you to make sure that you keep discussion focussed on the matter at hand. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:49, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Involved note: I am involved, not necessarily in this specific dispute but because I proposed what became John Pack Lambert's topic ban and both editors feel I close sports AfDs against their wishes, which has led to this disagreement landing on my Talk at several occasions: (User_talk:Star_Mississippi/Archive_5#I_feel_you_have_closed_many_AfDs_in_error, User_talk:Star_Mississippi/Archive_7#ANI_as_a_way_to_bludgeon_people, User_talk:Star_Mississippi/Archive_6#Giuseepe_Fago, User_talk:Star_Mississippi/Archive_6#Poul_Nielson_AFD. As such, I'm not taking an admin position, but I will say the community's patience is exhausted both with the endless squabbling and the fight over athletes' notability. Both editors believe they're editing in good faith but are unable to do so without poking at one another because they fundamentally disagree on athletic notability. As I said to John Pack Lambert at User_talk:Star_Mississippi#Frustration, it's not reasonable to expect to be addressed as Mr. Lambert, but Lugnuts doesn't need to go out of his way to call John Pack Lambert by a name he explicitly does not want to be called.

My only potential solution to stop the disruption is a mutual interaction ban. There are many backlogs. There is no reason that John Pack Lambert has to be the one handling stubs Lugnuts is in the history for. If they're a travesty, another editor will notice. If they're not, oh well, they're mostly not BLPs and not hurting the project. Star Mississippi 19:47, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks SM - I'd be happy with this suggestion. I've got some things to sort out this morning (UK time), along with some c-word related stuff (cricket, of course), so I'll post a summary of my thoughts/concerns later today. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 07:47, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I admit, I giggled at c-word for cricket. If it ever returns to the summer games, the clash between that and Olympians might break Wikipedia in the best possible way Star Mississippi 17:12, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It could happen at LA 2028. With medals for best sandwiches at the tea break. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 09:36, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Observations:

• Noting that half of someone's many AfD nominations are articles created by one person isn't a problem in itself. It's data, and about the mildest expression of frustration I can think of.
• When you mass create stubs, you increase the likelihood that a spate of nominations will disproportionately affect articles you created, especially not long after the notability rules for those topics changed.
• Especially when there's some bad blood, I don't agree that just going ahead and redirecting articles is a better or more diplomatic approach than giving them 7 days worth of discussion. Redirect is a perfectly valid outcome at AfD, so why not allow for discussion if there's anything controversial.
• Lugnuts could avoid all of this by just going and redirecting those that need to be redirected rather than waiting for someone else to do it.
• When we have another article that explicitly mentions someone, yes, of course a redirect is appropriate, contrary to what JPL argued in that AfD.
• No idea what's going on with the Mr. Lambert/Lambert stuff. If you're looking for an abbreviation, I've not seen Johnpacklambert object to simply "JPL". — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 18:16, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • The claim that a name showing up in a sports results table is the same as explicltly mentioning them in not really a reasonable claim. Mention in a table is all we actually have at the proposed target article.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:00, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • Of course it's reasonable. A person is mentioned on Wikipedia, and we don't have a stand-alone article for them, so we can create a redirect. Whether in a table, on a list, or in a paragraph, they're mentioned. What is lost by redirecting, which of the the reasons for deleting a redirect apply, and most importantly, why is this worth the drama when redirects are cheap? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 19:09, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • I think you are misunsing the word "mention" when you braden it to include every apparence on a table in a long article. Most people when they see "mention" assume there is something of stustance said about the individual which realky is not the case with a table. Either way, the fact that I get accused of hounding someone for legitimate deletion nomiations since the person clearly does not meet inclusion criteria is very frustrating.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:15, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Also many of these articles a search shows other people with the same name who are as close to being as notable or even more notable than the person the article is currently on. Also as I show above in many cases multiple other editors see this as an article that is not at all notable. I am tired of the constant claim I am singling out Lugnuts. I am in no way singling out Lugnuts. He created a huge amount of under sourced stub articles so much so he has been banned from doing so ever again. For him to treat someone trying to solve this problem he created as an attack on him to me shows he does not at all recognize how truly disruptive his activity in creating all these articles that lead to him being banned was. That not recognizing how disruptive his past actions were should be of concern to other editors.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:15, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• The main issue is I should be able to nominate articles without false and unfounded accusations that I am hounding another editor.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:28, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • There was a decision that non-medaling Olympians are not notable for Olympic competition. These nominations are a clear attempt to bring Wikipedia in line with that policy. It is not the fault of me or other editors involved in this process that a very high percentage of such articles were all created by one editor.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:36, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

No idea what's going on with the Mr. Lambert/Lambert stuff. If you're looking for an abbreviation, I've not seen Johnpacklambert object to simply "JPL". this appears to be new @Rhododendrites. He requested it at my Talk and on his own today: User_talk:Johnpacklambert#Please_refer_to_me_as_Mr._Lambert. I admit I have frequently been guilty of JPL. Star Mississippi 19:50, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe this is just a cultural difference, but from my point of view it is egotistical to demand that other editors address him as Mr. Lambert. We are not his subordinates. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 12:35, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, that is really what confuses me. He can't dictate how editors call him. And it's a minor thing (at least for me). He can make a wish (like he did) but that's it. Or am i seeing that wrong? Kante4 (talk) 10:51, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think I finally figured that out. At 12:36, 3 June 2022 (UTC), he complained a user was calling him by only his last name, referring to him repeatedly as "Lambert", and he found that rude. I'm happy to comply with either Mr. Lambert or his username, seems reasonable given the context. Jacona (talk) 10:59, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• If you placed a ban on me from nominating for deletion any stub created by Lugnuts it would be rewarding him for his rude behavior and will reinforce his constant false claim that I am in some way hounding him. That would clearly be a case of punishing me because Lugnuts was rude to me and made false accusations against me.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:13, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  You both have active sanctions against you. Neither of you has clean hands despite believing you're acting in good faith, which you both do believe. Star Mississippi 20:28, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • So if we put this policy in place, it would ban Lugnuts from making any comments on any article I nominated for deletion. So in the rare cases there is an Olympic stbu that Lugnuts did not create, I could nominate it for deletion, and if he made any comment on the deletion discussion he would be in violation of a ban and would immediately face more severe sactions. Is that correct?John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:37, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

    You do realize that by phrasing that comment in such a fashion you are setting yourself for accusations of gaming the sanction when you inevitably start targeting Olympian articles that weren't created by Lugnuts. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 12:16, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose an interaction ban, at least if it will be interpreted to include every article that Lugnuts has started. That is just insane. This is a clear over reaction. What we need is something to get Lugnuts to stop claiming that people who are nominating a few of the thousands of articles he created, most of which at least at first glance lack both sources to meet GNG or meeting the current sports notability guidlines (or artist notability guidelines, he has flooded Wikipedia with sub-stubs on artist who were in the Olympic artist competition, which no one seems to want to either remove or add sources to to show they were actual notable artists, they clearly do not meet notability for Olympic contribution alone), is somehow targeting him. Many editors actually want to bring our coverage into line with the decision that Olympic competitors are not default notable for such unless they were medalists. It is taking much longer to review and search for sources on one of these competitors than Lugnuts normally put into creating articles (we know this because there were bursts of 10 minutes in which he created at least 4 articles). It is a long, trudging process that will probably take years to get to the bottom of. It does not help at all that those of us who undertake it are attacked falsely as trying to single out the work of Lugnuts. This is not a true claim. Any response to his false claim on this matter that limits the actions of other editors will amount in some way to validating his false claim.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:47, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Just look at Category:Athletes (track and field) at the 1928 Summer Olympics. What percentage of those articles are stubs? What percentage were created by Lugnuts. I suspect both are well in excess of 50%. This could be duplicated for a huge number of Olympic pages. Currently there are only 4 Olympic related deletion disucssions open, 2 of which were created by me. How this amounts to hounding on my part I am not sure. Why we have so few I am not sure, I believe some people who were adding toward it have become so overwhelmed by the size, they are planing some future mass nominations. Lugnuts does not have lots of articles by him nominated for deletion because people are out to get him, this happens because such a high percentage of articles on Olympic competitors, most of whom were not notable, were created by him.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:04, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I suspect you've already counted and chose that category advisedly, but for the record, there's 704 articles in it; 586 are also in Category:All stub articles; Lugnuts authored the first revision of 384 of them; and 378 of the pages that Lugnuts has the first edit to are also in the stubs category. —Cryptic 01:04, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• As best I can tell today was the first day in which I nominated for deletion an article started by Lugnuts since May 25th, which was 8 days ago. He still posted a post on his page accusing me of singling out articles he created for deletion. He was asked to back down but doubled down instead, so the editor who asked him to back down brought this here. So now, because he did that someone is proposing I be banned from nominating any of the thousands upon thousands of sub-stubs created by Lugnuts, a group so large he has been banned from every creating stubs again, because he was fasely accusing my of hounding him. None of this makes any sense. Especially since people tried to work out ways other than taking all these sub-stubs to AfD, but he has consistently opposed other solutions.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:21, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• I have been checking most bios of Olympians I am finding as I review Category:1901 births. It seems that about 80% of these articles were created by Lugnuts.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:24, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • 80% might be too low an estimate, and this in general seems to be the case for pretty much any year from 1901-1920 and maybe well beyond that.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:35, 2 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Nope, 265 out of 569. —Cryptic 01:13, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• My solution to this would be profoundly unfair on both of them, but, we've been here before and we'll come here again. None of the usual administrative tools exactly fit the problem, and if we want to be fair to them both, we'd need novel and creative solutions. If we're mainly trying to end the timesinks and focus our limited resources of volunteer time on other problems, maybe consider topic-banning the pair of them from AfD? Honestly, if you look at any AfD, you can always subtract both JPL and Lugnuts' contributions from it and get a better discussion.—S Marshall T/C 09:11, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment. It should be noted that Lugnuts aggressive and incivil behaviour has not been confined to interaction with John Pack Lambert, especially concerning their creations, and there have been suggestions here previously that Lugnuts be topic banned from AFD, perhaps just in relation to articles they have created. Maybe it's time to give that serious consideration. I don't see that John Pack Lambert's actions in relation to Lugnuts warrant any restrictive measures. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 09:20, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• I would suggest that I've noted a change in the ways in which Lugnuts expresses themselves, certainly at AfD. They seem to have been restricting themselves to a fairly standard response without any further comments. Don't they? Perhaps I'm wrong, but my impression is that I've seen a change in behaviour from Lugnuts. Fwiw I think I've also seen a move in response to the change in the sports notability guidelines, with Lugnuts "voting" for redirects as a response whereas in the past "votes" would have been more likely, I think, to be keep. Again, that might only be my impression and I may be wrong. But both of those suggest to me that Lugnuts has responded to changes in the ways in which things are done. I couldn't say whether JPL has changed the ways in which they behave. Blue Square Thing (talk) 10:54, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Indeed. Maybe wjemather has some diffs to back up their claim. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 11:09, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• This edit summary, today. At best, it's an unhelpful dig at John Pack Lambert, at worst, it's casting aspersions. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 19:38, 9 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Just to be certain I understand the situation correctly: Lugnuts has created a large number of very similar stubs, effectively as a WP:FAITACCOMPLI, yes? My reading is that under such circumstances is is entirely appropriate for someone to go through and review all of them -- WP:HOUND contains a specific exemption for such reviews. When someone makes a large number of very similar contributions that they believe share similar problems, we are allowed (and it is sometimes necessary) to review them all at once, and it is acceptable and appropriate to go over the edit history of the user in question for that purpose. This is necessary to prevent FAITACCOMPLI situations - mass edits need to be subject to unified review; if they could only be challenged piecemeal then they could be forced through via sheer weight of edits. If Lugnuts feels targeted, the appropriate solution is to get consensus in advance before making mass-edits in the future; it's fine to be WP:BOLD when adding a few stubs or articles, but when adding a massive number of them, proceeding without discussion tends towards recklessness. Reviewing bulk-edits (including stubs that were bulk-created) is absolutely appropriate and should not be punished or discouraged. --Aquillion (talk) 19:17, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Observations from Lugnuts

OK, for what it's worth, here are my thoughts. JPL has posted their frustration about my work on various users' talkpages, something I've never really bothered with. My frustration is trying hard to believe that their claim of "There is no attempt to single out articles created by you for deletion" is true. The stats I've posted, and update each day, show that for 90+ AfDs started in the past five months by JPL, almost half of them have targeted articles I started. Now if it was the other way around, and I was doing that same rate against one user, how long before someone would complain?

Everything I've ever created has been in good faith, sourced (to the best of my knowledge), and in-line with the notability requirements as they stood the very second I hit the save button. Yes, WP:NSPORT has pretty much been removed, something I personally don't like, but I'm going with the community's consensus with it. For example, I don't think I've ever challenged any asspect of the update since it went through the RfC.

I really don't have an issue on anyone nominating anything I've created for deletion. It's often a learning experience for editors on both sides of the debate, regardless of the discussion's outcome. Where I do have an issue is the feeling that it's one editor simply targetting that area of work. Their talkpage is littered with posts about articles they don't feel are notable either, but how many of them does JPL take to AfD? Very few if any. It feels very much as if they are trying to make a WP:POINT, certainly when they have said I write "junk articles" in the past (sorry, no diff for that, but they def. have).

With regards to AfDs, there seems to be little to no leway in JPL's thinking when voting for delete. This AfD (a school, so nothing to do with me), shows no hint of WP:BEFORE work, or even reconsidering their vote, despite the comment on their talkpage to kindly review the discussion. And then there's the whole PROD issue.

WP:PROD clearly states - "Proposed deletion (PROD) is a way to suggest an article or file for uncontroversial deletion", with WP:PRODNOM asking at point one "Is there a valid reason for deletion?", which links to WP:DEL-REASON. Looking through some of JPL's most recent prods, you find rationales such as This is an unsourced list in a series of unsourced or undersourced lists, This article on a race car driver does not have enough sources to meet GNG, The one listed source does not work. It has been notified as needing more sources for over a decade, The sourcing here is not enough to demonstrate notability, This is an unsourced article that has been notified as unsourced for over 7 years. That is enough time that we could expect a source to be added if anything was every going to change, The article is without sources. We need sources to have content or to show notability, and The article is without sources. We need sources to have content or to show notability. The latter one has no edit summary when the prod was done.

Now the issue with their poor PROD rationales AND the lack of edit summaries when prod'ing was previously raised at ANI (by myself), with the closing comment of "JPL has agreed to take the feedback on board and act differently, the OP has indicated they are satisfied, and there doesn't seem to be consensus for anything else to happen". So why is that still continuing nearly two years later, with that last PROD with no edit summary happening AFTER admin Liz posted this on JPL's talkpage, reminding them again about the summary.

Everything needs give and take, and I'm not as heartless as some of you think (or would like to think), so what if JPL would take a voluntary restriction of nominating Olympian/sportspeople articles for AfD to a "few times a month" (oooh vague!) instead of EVERY. OTHER. DAY. which is happening now. And that can be done without any I-BANs, one-way or two-way. I will ping JPL shortly. Thank you. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 12:39, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Diff on JPL's talkpage. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 12:47, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• This is totally not an acceptable set of comments. It broadens the attack to include more things that are not relevant to the disucssion at hand. It also does not acknowledge that that starting accusations was flase and malicious but instead doubles down on it. It does not acknoledge that the problem here is Lugnuts falsely accussing me of houding him. The net result is also a complete and total win for Lugnuts. There is no limit on the behavior of him, the false accuser, and only a limit on the behavior of me, the wrongfully accused. This is not an ANI about me, it is an ANI about Lugnuts rude and uncivil accusations against me. The fact that he is trying to turn it into a broad ANI against me shows that he is not at all understanding why his attacks against me were not acceptable.John Pack Lambert (talk) 12:52, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Noticing this line The net result is also a complete and total win for Lugnuts, if I could suggest trying to reimagine this away from a battle where one side wins or doesn't. This is less of a zero sum game, and more of a group project where healthy tension is expected and collaboration and compromise is a key component. CT55555 (talk) 13:27, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  I am not the one who falsly claims someone is tagetting me in their deletion nominations. In fact, this week I have nominated as many articles created by me for deletion as I have articles created by Lugnuts for deletion. So the claim that I am targeting articles created by him really does not stand up to scrutiny.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:36, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  John, you must have made the claim that I said that you are targeting articles I created for deletion. Where EXACTLY have I said that - a diff would be most useful. The "There is no attempt to single out articles created by you" was said by YOU. If you can show me the diff where you claim I've said that you are targetting my work that would be great. But I suggest you don't keep making multiple false statements against me, esp. at ANI. Thank you. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 09:18, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Do you really think everyone here is too dim to understand implicature? It was literally your comment

  Number of AfDs started by Lambert since 1st Jan: 91
  Number of AfDs started by Lambert since 1st Jan on articles I started: 44
  "There is no attempt to single out articles created by you for deletion" - Lambert

  with the edit summary tick-tock, it's Lambert o'clock

  that @Spartaz recognized as a thinly-veiled aspersion and prompted him to take you to ANI. JoelleJay (talk) 01:49, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal for IBAN

• Support a two-way Interaction Ban as proposed above by User:Spartaz. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:34, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Robert, the two-way proposal was made by Star Mississippi. NGS ^{Shakin' All Over} 10:17, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• To be clear I propose a one way IBAN as Mr Lambert is not actually doing anything wrong. He tried to put in redirects, Lugnuts reverted him so all these articles have to go through a discussion. The whole reason we are here is because if Lugnuts' ownership and refusal to clear up his own mess. It would suit a lot of Lugnuts' enablers to force through a 2 way ban to protect the stubs so unless someone is going to step up and take care of these I would suggest that one way is the only way. Spartaz ^Humbug! 08:13, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  OK, Spartaz, where to start with your raft of false claims against me - it's clear you have a serious issue with me, and me alone. Firstly, I don't believe I've undone any of JPL's redirects, or if indeed I have, it's the odd one. Infact, how many times has JPL even bothered to redirect an article at all? "Lugnuts' ownership and refusal to clear up his own mess" - As you're not here everyday, you obviously missed this list of articles I've taken ownership to clear up "my own mess". Take a good look at that and let it sink in. Own mess indeed - the absoulte nerve of your comment is really something. It's work I aim to continue, along with the thousands and thousands of cites I've added to articles since the start of the year. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 11:19, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  At one point I did try to redirect some articles. Lugnuts came through and just reverted every single one of these redirects. A few of them later when they were at AfD he voted to redirect. I will let others judge if this beavior is acceptable. This proposal would however give Lugnuts exactly what he want, another rule that preserves the huge mass of sub-stub articles he created that was deemed to be such a discruptive creation that he has been banned from creating stubs.John Pack Lambert (talk) 12:26, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Just chiming in here to say that I've seen the same behaviour - Lugnuts !votes redirect at AFD but reverts redirects outside of AFD, meaning that you HAVE to go through AFD to do a redirect. Maybe Lugnuts has now stopped this, which would be great? FOARP (talk) 15:07, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Any diffs where I have voted redirect at an AFD, and they reverted that redirect? Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 15:14, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hans Riedl. A related issue, and one that occurs much more frequently, is you reverting prods and then !voting redirect in the AfD, rather than just redirecting the article. BilledMammal (talk) 15:27, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't revert the redirect after the AfD was closed - check the dates again. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 15:44, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think you have misunderstood the discussion here; no one was saying that you reverted the redirect after the AfD was closed. What they were saying is that you reverted the redirect, and then supported the redirect when the AfD was opened. As Star Mississippi suggested in that AfD, it raises questions about why you reverted the redirect - or in the case of prods, why you reverted the prod, rather than redirecting the article. BilledMammal (talk) 15:52, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly BilledMammal, the effect is to make it impossible to BOLDly redirect Lugnuts's stubs, meaning they all have to got through AFD. FOARP (talk) 15:58, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You can see from the edit summary re: undoing the original redirect - "hard to believe any WP:BEFORE work was done with the mass-redirecting done by this user" JPL did a mass-batch of redirecting. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 16:34, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Unlike AFD there is zero need for anything like a BEFORE check before redirecting. Yes, it is a good idea but nowhere close to as !required for an AFD nom (that is, even at AFD BEFORE is not required but it is strongly recommended to avoid unnecessary AFD discussions). Masem (t) 15:29, 8 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose; per Spartaz, a two-way IBAN would be counter-productive in that it would restrict good-faith efforts to cleanup the mess. I'm undecided on a one-way IBAN. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 09:05, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wjemather. The only "mess" is the current NSPORTS coupled with the lack of any useful SNGs – a total shambles created by a small consensus of agitators in direct opposition to the ideals of Wikipedia:About which state: Wikipedia's purpose is to benefit readers by acting as a widely accessible and free encyclopedia that contains information on all branches of knowledge. If someone interested in rowing becomes aware of a rower called Charles Massonnat, why shouldn't they be able to look at Wikipedia and read that M. Massenet competed at the 1928 Olympics in the French men's eight team? Lugnuts has not created any mess – he has created articles that provide information for the readers. I think you should withdraw your messy comment above, stop making WP:POINTs and follow Lugnuts' example by building and preserving useful content. NGS ^{Shakin' All Over} 10:17, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Lugnuts was banned from creating more stubs because it was deemed too disruptive for him to do so. You are now essentially proposing that I be banned from nominating any of those stubs, that were grounds to restrict Lugnuts behavior, from nomination for deletion, even though they were found be community consensus to be disruptive. If this ban is put in place it will only encourage future behavior by him. Making it so I cannot nominate his stubs for deletion is exactly what Lugnuts wants, exactly what the point of his rude accusations against me was on his talk page, and bringing that about will be an act of rewarding the very behavior that brought him here to ANI.John Pack Lambert (talk) 12:12, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

WP:ABOUT talks about a community of millions of contributors. How many were in this "community consensus" you and your deletionist clique are always banging on about? As many as ten? How many millions could not be bothered to take part in such a tedious discussion because they have much better things to do than put up with a load of claptrap? You should have an IBAN because you are a disruptive editor at AFD. You could redirect single source stubs yourself without going near AFD. But, you don't. You waste people's time at AFD by demanding deletion because you haven't found any source other than the one in the article. Sometimes, other people can't find any either. So, given that the single source found does meet WP:V, assuming it is a WP:RS, the remedy for the stub is redirect per PRESERVE, etc. Not for you, though. You invariably refuse to accept redirect as a valid alternative to deletion. That is disruptive behaviour which wastes time and then you wonder why other editors sometimes express their frustration with you. From what I have seen, Lugnuts willingly agrees with redirect pending additional sources.

Lets look at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Charles Massonnat. You proposed deletion. Lugnuts suggested redirect per four policies and guidelines subject to more sources being found. Eight minutes later, you are back with We should not be redirecting names of not notable people it is just not justified which is complete and utter BS, as well as bad English. There are two sources in the article that satisfy WP:V and WP:RS. So, the subject has been verified and qualifies for redirect given that notability is uncertain. By objecting to redirect, you are in breach of site policy and there is good reason to believe that you are trying to provoke Lugnuts into retaliation. Your behaviour is disruptive and you should definitely be subject to an IBAN. NGS ^{Shakin' All Over} 12:48, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@No Great Shaker: Community consensus has already determined that Lugnuts mass-production of stubs was disruptive (hence the tban) and has left a huge mess that needs cleaning up. Also, we are not here to relitigate an RFC that reached a consensus that you didn't like. This is not a battleground, please don't treat it like one. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 19:54, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Support a two-way ban - seems like a pragmatic suggestion. I would oppose a one-way IBAN. Deb (talk) 09:13, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • This proposal punishes the victim. I was falsely accused of doing something I was not doing. Lugnuts was brought here for making this false accusation. This proposal rewards Lugnuts for making a false accusation and being incivil.John Pack Lambert (talk) 12:47, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

    I don't see that it punishes you or indeed that it rewards Lugnuts. Deb (talk) 17:31, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

    @Deb, you really don't see how banning JPL from nominating for deletion/redirecting/PRODding articles created or edited by Lugnuts -- comprising the vast plurality of non-notable athlete stubs that need to be deleted per community consensus -- is far more of a punishment than banning Lugnuts from participating in AfDs of articles JPL has nominated? JoelleJay (talk) 05:53, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

    No. I see that Lugnuts' desire to improve Wikipedia is just as great as JPLs is. Deb (talk) 07:33, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

    What kind of answer is that? JPL has spent a lot of effort and been a huge asset in getting P&G-noncompliant non-notable microstubs discussed and deleted, an enormous proportion of which happened to be created by Lugnuts (resulting in his current TBAN). Most or all of the interactions between JPL and Lugnuts are in the context of these articles being nominated for deletion. A 2-way IBAN would substantially restrict JPL's preferred primary method of improving Wikipedia (patrolling biographies for maintenance and notability assessment) without having any effect on Lugnuts' preferred activities. How is that different from a 1-way IBAN against JPL? JoelleJay (talk) 20:28, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Strong support per Robert and Deb. I also oppose a one-way IBAN. The biggest issues at AFD are the lack of WP:BEFORE in many of the cases raised and the refusal of certain people to accept that any subject can be a redirect if it is verified – it does NOT have to be notable to exist as a redirect. These people are in breach of WP:PRESERVE and other related policies and guidelines. To be fair to JPL, he is not the worst BEFORE offender but he is one of the worst redirect refusal offenders. To say that he is not actually doing anything wrong is like Rees Mogg saying that Johnson hasn't actually done anything wrong.

And, just to be clear, the two-way IBAN must apply to AFD so that Mr Lugnuts cannot nominate an article which Mr Lambert has created or developed. And vice-versa, of course, in case Mr Lambert should happen to stumble across something created by Mr Lugnuts. If they both want to contribute to an AFD which doesn't directly concern either of them, that would be okay per point #2 of WP:IBAN as long as they don't reply to each other, even if they are in agreement. NGS ^{Shakin' All Over} 10:17, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• • This is an insanely broad proposal. Lugnuts has edited virtually every articles on some topics. That is just plain way too broad. It is also an example of puinishing me for behavior by someone else. I am not the one going around falsely accusing people of houding me because a few of the thousands of sub-stubs I created have been nominated for deletion when they clearly do not meet Wikipedia inclusion criteria.John Pack Lambert (talk) 12:07, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Alternative suggestion. We should automate a !Delete vote on every AfD for Mr. Lambert and a !Redirect vote on every AfD for Lugnuts, thereby saving them both an enormous amount of time. Secondly, we should automatically hide these two votes, thereby saving everyone else an enormous amount of time. The project would be greatly improved. Jacona (talk) 11:22, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose This proposal rewards Lugnuts for being incivil and falsely accusing me of things I am not doing by giving him exactly what he wants, a way to stop me from nominating the thousands upon thousands of sub-stubs he created for deletion.John Pack Lambert (talk) 12:04, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That looks to me like an admission of guilt. You ARE carrying on an anti-Lugnuts campaign in which your goal is to delete (not discuss or redirect) ALL stubs that he has created, regardless of the value they provide to our readers. Two more things for you to note: (1) whenever you write on a talk page, will you please preview it first so that your poor grammar and spelling can be improved; (2) stop using idiotic terms like sub-stub – a stub is a stub. NGS ^{Shakin' All Over} 12:19, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I am glad people are finally calling out the use of 'sub-stub'. It's an inaccurate term that is used to try to frame Lugnuts' article creations in as negative a light as possible. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 12:22, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

They were deemed to be so disruptive he was banned from further creating these sub-stubs. There is nothing wrong with the term. What is wrong is having Wikipedia weighed down with them. The fact of the matter is at least pre-1930 birth over 50%, maybe even over 80% of our articles on Olympains were created by Lugnuts, the majority of which were created by consulting one sports table and doing less than 3 minutes background research, plus writting, we know this because they were created that close to other articles on Olympains he created.John Pack Lambert (talk) 12:33, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The lowest article classification is stub. There is no such thing as a sub-stub. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 15:09, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Johnpacklambert you too have created many very short stubs, some with zero citations. I think you must concede that creating shorter stubs on Wikipedia is a good faith activity?

• William Hooke (governor)
• Enrique Muñoz Arístegui
• Pedro Laso de la Vega
• Denia Nixon
• Juni Bek

You can see the full list and order by length here Of the 2,426 pages you've created, 50.4% are stubs. CT55555 (talk) 15:33, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Is that limited to articles I created but exist today? Because a lot of articles I created are no longer in existence. Being a stub is not the issue, lacking sourcing that meets GNG is, and those are two seperate issues. Go ahead and nominate all those articles for deletion you listed here if you want. I will not oppose any of the nominations (although I strongly suspect other editors will oppose some of them). I actually nominated one of them myself. This is 5 articles. In the case of Lugnuts we are talking about thousands if not tens of thousands of articles. It was determined that his creation of such was disruptive and he was banned from creating more stubs. I did not participate in any way in that discussion. Not did I participate in any way in the discussion that lead to the decision to say that only those who won medals at the Olympics were default notable. In fact I did not even realize that decision was made until about a month after it was made. Also many of the stubs I did create were created over 8 years ago. I have since come to better understnad what sorts of things we need to justify an article. The one exception I see here is an article on a governor of a state of Mexico. As I said, you are free to nominat that article for deletion, and I will not vote against it. I highly doubt such an article would be deleted, but I am not stopping anyone from trying. Also, a good many of the articles I created were redirects. Another good set were on populated places, and there are very broad inclusion rules for populated places. I may well have created unjustified articles. I have nominated two articles I created for deletion just this week. Is there a place where I can easily see a list of all the articles I created?John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:51, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  You created 2,426. 258 have been deleted. 2,157 remain. Of them 1,225 are stubs. So of the 2,426 that were created, 50.4% remain up as stubs. I will not propose any for deletion, because I actually think each of the examples above (I picked the shortest ones to make a point) add some value. I would not advocate for their removal. I'm not trying to say they are a problem. I'm saying that you and the other person have done similar things - create shorter articles. I'm trying to guide you towards seeing Lugnuts activity as not inherently a bad thing.

  I linked it above, but you can see the list here:

  https://xtools.wmflabs.org/pages/en.wikipedia.org/Johnpacklambert

  I wish you well. CT55555 (talk) 16:00, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Thanks for your analysis, all the fives. Juni Bek's article in its current would be a slam-dunk AfD case if they were an Olympian! Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 09:41, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Except Juni Bek was a ruler of an indepdent polity. Our rules for inclusion of such people are very different than rules for people who competed in a sports competition. John Pack Lambert (talk) 12:43, 17 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• No, I am not carrying on an anti-Lugnuts campaign. That is a malicious accusation. I am trying to cut back the number of Olympic sub-stubs on Wikipedia. Some of these are created by Doma-W. They are not all created by Lugnuts. In fact less than half of my AfD nominations this year have been of articles created by Lugnuts. I am trying to start the process of removing articles on Olympians that do not meet our inclusion critiera for Wikipedia. It is not my fault that over 80% of these articles were created by Lugnuts. Please remive your false accusation.John Pack Lambert (talk) 12:29, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly not. You said: a way to stop me from nominating the thousands upon thousands of sub-stubs he created for deletion which literally confirms you are seeking to raise millions (thousands upon thousands) of articles created by Lugnuts at AFD and, as I have outlined elsewhere, you will only be satisfied with deletion, not redirect, despite the policies and relevant guidelines which apply. With a goal like that, you are actively campaigning against Lugnuts (okay, a few other editors have created some Olympic stubs too). Wikipedia isn't weighed down by stubs – read the two opening sentences of WP:NOTPAPER and then read WP:ABOUT where it says: Wikipedia's purpose is to benefit readers by acting as a widely accessible and free encyclopedia that contains information on all branches of knowledge. Lugnuts benefits readers by providing information on all branches of knowledge and, per WP:STUB, the information is useful and always reliably sourced. And there is everything wrong with a stupid, meaningless term like sub-stub or microstub or "protostub", the latest (not by you, to be fair) and most idiotic of the lot because proto- means first. Just say stub. NGS ^{Shakin' All Over} 13:42, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose as not actually addressing the problem. JPL has every right to redirect, prod, or AfD an article, whether written by Lugnuts or anyone else, and Lugnuts should be able to express his opinion and provide information that might be useful. But ultimately, an article that contains no information other than that a sportsperson competed at an event is doomed to redirection or deletion unless someone provides sources that show there is more to say about the subject. A more sensible restriction might be to allow both editors to lay out their case at AfD, then require them both to walk away and let consensus form. If the number of nominations becomes a problem, a restriction on the number that JPL can make in a given week or month might help. It might also help if Lugnuts could produce a list of articles he could live with being redirected so that discussions can focus on the ones he has strong feelings about. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:53, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  What if we gave Lugnuts a period of time (given the amount, a year or two might be necessary) to bring these stubs up to standards and prevented JPL from nominating any Lugnuts hasn't reviewed yet for deletion until that time has passed? Lugnuts could put the ones he couldn't bring up to standards in a list somewhere so we know what's been reviewed and not up to snuff vs. not reviewed yet to see if it could be brought up to snuff. Just a thought. Afheather (talk) 00:09, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Support a two-way ban (oppose a one-way ban, either way). If these stubs are so disruptive -- they're not -- there are thousands of editors capable of dealing with them. JPL's comments here -- see "a way to stop me from nominating the thousands upon thousands of sub-stubs he created for deletion" above -- make clear that this is some sort of crusade of his. -- Vaulter 14:22, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Last fall we decided that competitors in the Olympics who did not receive a medal were not notable. I have been trying to help in implementing this decusion. I have explained this multiple times. Yes, I am trying to bring our inclusion of articles on Olympians into line with our actual guidelines. That people treat this as somehow an attack on one editor is false and malicious. If this proposal is passed it will endorse the very uncivil accusations that caused this ANI to start.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:28, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • I've read your repeated replies and feel like it is necessary to remind you not to keep bludgeoning the discussion. I should also remind you about "people in glass houses" and the like. -- Vaulter 15:26, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Also the scope is unclear. On what ground other than ownership, which Wikipedia rejects, can I be banned from editing an article based on who created it? Would this apply only to articles created by LLugnuts, or would it apply to any article ever edited by Lugnuts?John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:31, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • John Pack Lambert, it seems pretty clear that many of these problems could be avoided if you simply stayed away from Lugnuts's stubs. It is not up to you to correct the entire project, and the upshot is that we are here, again. And yes, it can be a requirement under such a ban that you check who created an article that you wish to nominate or redirect; there is nothing unusual about it. No, this is not "ownership"--it's avoiding trouble. Lugnuts doesn't own their articles, and that won't change. Drmies (talk) 17:13, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • we are here because he falsely accused me of hounding him. This ban would reward him for his false and malicious attack on me. This is a clear proposal to punish the victim. If someone else engages in uncvil behavior towards someone, the solution should not be to punish the person who was the target of the unvicil behavior. That is exactly what this proposal is.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:23, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

      "we are here because he falsely accused me of hounding him" - Again, a diff please to back up your accusation. Thanks. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 09:21, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Also, other editors have expressed the view that what will happen is the next time someone begans to try to clean out the articles that do not meet our inclusion criteria that are on Olympians, Lugnuts will try lobbing the same false accusations at that new editor. There is no rule against an editor nominating a large number of articles on the same topic for deletion, especially when that is 44 or a few more over a period of just over 5 months. I have not nominated articles for deletion more than once a day, have nominated articles almost not at all on weekends, and less than half of my total nominations for deletion in this period have been of articles created by Lugnuts. There is no objective way to see any of this as problematic when these articles do not meet our current inclusion criteria. There is no objective problem with that. The problem is Lugnuts rudely claiming in very uncivil ways that such behavior is actually a probglem, but there is no actual problem with the behavior itself. The way to create civility is not to punish those who are the victims of uncivil behavior.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:34, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. This situation is untenable. While it is true that Lugnuts created a lot of stubs that resulted in his topic ban, it does feel like JohnPackLambert is carrying out a vendetta against Lugnuts. I'll echo Drmies' advice for John, leave Lugnuts articles alone. It's OK. Someone else will get to them, and with the apparent bad blood between you two, I think it'd actually be refreshing if someone other than you were nominating his articles for deletion. Also just a point of advice, I don't think the victim talk is helping you either. ♠JCW555 (talk)♠ 18:46, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong Oppose anything that would put any form of restrictions on JPL or in any way imply that he has done anything wrong. Nobody has produced any evidence that JPL has done anything wrong aside from nominating a bunch of Lugnuts' stubs; and since it was found in the past that Lugnuts' stub creations were problematic, it is not WP:HOUNDing to enforce that decision by going over them with a fine-toothed comb - on top of which, there is a specific exception to WP:HOUND for someone who creates the same problems across multiple articles. Mass-creating a large number of similar stubs clearly fits that exemption. Without the ability to specifically and deliberately go over a collection of similar stubs added by a single person, examining them simply because eg. Lugnuts created them, we would effectively be allowing people like Lugnuts to flood the wiki with whatever they please and have it be impossible to challenge their additions as a WP:FAITACCOMPLI; people are sometimes allowed to make bold mass-additions (though I think previous decisions have established that Lugnuts went far beyond what is usually admissible in that regard), but even under situations where it is admissible, doing so clearly allows anyone else to challenge them en mass as JPL has done. Therefore, JPL's focus on Lugnuts is not only appropriate and admirable, but something we absolutely must protect as defensible under such circumstances. A two-way interaction ban would effectively be protecting Lugnuts' (clearly problematic) flood of stubs from scrutiny by establishing the precedent that anyone who examines them will be barred from doing anything about them, and would invite people to make similar mass-contributions in the future knowing that they can simply interaction ban anyone who takes issue with it or tries to subject their contributions to review. Finally, I particularly oppose the implication that JPL has some sort of obligation to search for sources on Lugnuts' behalf before putting articles up for deletion - WP:BURDEN is a more important policy than WP:BEFORE and takes priority here. Lugnuts is the one who has to find sources for material he wants to add or retain, not the people who object to it. --Aquillion (talk) 19:09, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong oppose. As I understand it, JPL seems to be methodically nominating undersourced sportsperson microstubs by birth year, and is currently in the 1920s-30s. The fact that a large proportion of these articles happened to have been created by Lugnuts is irrelevant to JPL's behavior. Somewhat in line with Spartaz's proposal below, I would suggest in the future JPL redirect such articles when possible, and if Lugnuts genuinely feels a standalone should be retained then he or any other editor can revert the redirect, and JPL can then open an AfD. I also recommend JPL limit his non-reply comments in this (and other) discussion(s) so we don't get big blocks of repetitive stream-of-consciousness commentary as he workshops his own thoughts on a matter. JoelleJay (talk) 19:47, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am actually going through by birth year. So I just moved from 1901 to 1900.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:34, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. Editors who are saying that other editors can deal with these non-notable stubs are missing the scope of the problem - Lugnuts makes this accusation against any editor who is reviewing articles on Olympians for notability. As such, topic banning John Pack Lambert will not resolve the issue, because it will reoccur as soon as one of those other editors start trying to deal with these non-notable stubs. BilledMammal (talk) 01:53, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose any further restrictions on AfDs by John Pack Lambert (JPL). He is limited to one per day and has honored that restriction. His attention to the Olympic "sub-stubs" has been productive . (And, yes, there is absolutely a difference between an ordinary stub and a "sub-stub" -- i.e., an "article" mass produced in one or two minutes where the entire narrative is limited to a single sentence saying that "Joe Smith completed in fencing for Freedonia at the 1928 Summer Olympics.") Some years ago, I favored more draconian restrictions on AfDs by JPL, but his noms in the past year, at the permitted 1-per-day rate, have reflected more thought and care. He's not always right, but his recent AfD work has been valuable. Cbl62 (talk) 02:33, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Support I offered John a compromise (last point in the sub-section "Observations from Lugnuts", above), and he's flat out refused. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 09:20, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes, but please remember that you're not individually entitled to "offer" anyone anything. I would really recommend you opt out of this discussion now and I would recommend that JPL does too. Deb (talk) 08:06, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  OK, thanks Deb. I wasn't aware I could not offer anything in this case - thought it would be the right thing. Note that even while this discussion is live, JPL's very next AfD was this. Now if I was doing the same to his articles on a daily basis, well, you know how that would end. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 13:00, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Additional concern. I've already given support to the two-way IBAN but comments by and about JPL in the whole Lugnuts at AFD thread have convinced me that JPL is not a fit and proper person to be raising AFDs. I understand he is currently subject to a one AFD per day sanction and I propose we remove that sanction and replace it with a full AFD TBAN for a period of at least six months. I could quote numerous examples to support my view but here are just a few.

At the Charles Massonnat AFD, Lugnuts suggested a valid redirect and JPL quickly responded with: We should not be redirecting names of not notable people it is just not justified. Besides the bad English, he is completely wrong. In this thread, Phil Bridger said early on that The best long-term solution would be for JPL to stop nominating articles for deletion when there is an obvious redirect target. He has been told many times that there is no need for a subject to be notable to have a redirect, but merely to be verifiable. This point has been reiterated several times by Phil and others.

Why does JPL have to be told something "many times"? Obviously a WP:IDHT issue and someone who wilfully ignores other people should not be part of a collaborative discussion which impacts WP content.

Then, although it's a sideshow really, there is all this condescending "Mister" stuff which prompted Lepricavark to say: it is egotistical (and) we are not his subordinates.

The last example I'll give is JPL's statement that: This proposal rewards Lugnuts (by giving him) a way to stop me from nominating the thousands upon thousands of sub-stubs he created for deletion. Whatever interpretation he has tried to place on that statement, it confirms that his purpose is to obliterate everything Lugnuts has done and that amounts to a personal vendetta against another editor. He cannot be allowed to use AFD as a weapon against someone he dislikes – and remember his stance on redirects when you think about that – a case of delete everything, redirect nothing.

To summarise, I propose a full AFD TBAN on Johnpacklambert for at least six months. NGS ^{Shakin' All Over} 09:42, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify, I'm not convinced that it was egotistical. That was just one possible interpretation, albeit the most likely interpretation if someone in my culture made that kind of demand. At any rate, I agree that the evidence provided in this thread supports a full AFD tban for JPL. His understanding of deletion policy is inadequate, and he is far too hasty to support deletion in most cases. Furthermore, he has yet to acknowledge any problems with his editing and seems to only provide argumentative responses. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 13:30, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I'd Support this. There's a huge WP:CIR with JPL's understanding of the whole deletion/prod/notabilty requirements, highlighted in the sub-section, below, that has been going on for some time. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 14:11, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Let's start TBANNING everyone who routinely spouts P&G- and consensus-noncompliant arguments at AfDs, oh and also everyone who repeatedly receives NPA warnings regardless of venue. That should take care of a lot of the drama. JoelleJay (talk) 19:16, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That would be one hell of a cull on the keepkeepkeep side. Reyk _YO! 00:12, 8 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose two-way IBAN - Frankly the issue is not simply between Lugnuts and JPL but between Lugnuts and the community as a whole. JPL is obviously no saint, but it is the mass stub creation and obstructionism towards clean-up that Lugnuts engages in that is the main cause of the problem. FOARP (talk) 15:07, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  And here's the third false statement you've made against me in this ANI thread. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 15:15, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Groundless allegations are also an example of uncivil behaviour. FOARP (talk) 15:31, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose- Johnpacklambert is not doing anything wrong here and shouldn't be punished. Reyk _YO! 00:12, 8 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Support two-way interaction ban. Dream Focus 03:43, 8 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Support two-way interaction ban and oppose one-way interaction ban. Between Mr Lambert's hounding and low success AFD rate, and Lugnut's chronic snark, a one-way ban is neither workable nor warranted. A two-way IBAN is the most pragmatic solution. Darkknight2149 07:34, 12 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose This is not the correct solution as it is too broad.--Paul McDonald (talk) 13:58, 14 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong Support two way IBAN or else we will back here again. Both seem to irritate each other. Also, it is not necessary for JPL to police stubs created by Lugnuts. Other editors are fully capable of determining if such topics merit inclusion on Wikipedia. And Lugnuts needs to rationally discuss with editors who change his articles into redirects rather than willy nilly reverting. Such changes to redirects are not personal and are carried out in good faith. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 22:24, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

New Proposal - redirect & ban on reverting redirects

We could end the whole thing by a) redirecting all the unsourced stubs and they can be undirected if anyone finds sources, and specifically banning Lugnuts from reverting a redirect. If someone else wants to revert the Mr Lambert can let someone know and they can review and nominate at AFD. This is a bit clunky but stops the disruption in its tracks. Thoughts? Spartaz ^Humbug! 08:16, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Support. This would be a simple clarification/extension of their existing topic ban. I proposed similar in a previous ANI thread, with a caveat that in order to revert, the article must be substantially expanded from multiple instances of significant coverage, i.e. meeting the terms of the current topic ban on stub creation. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 09:26, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Again, another false assumption aimed at me. Apart from some VERY early stubs when I first joined WP (2006-07), I don't believe anything I've created is unsourced. You'd certainly have a hard job in finding anything from say the past 10 years I've created that is unsourced. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 11:12, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  what is false is your claim that I am targeting articles created by you. I am targetting in part Olympian articles that no longer meet inclusion criteria. You have not yet apologized for your false and malicous accusations. Nor have you apologized for your doubling down on condescedingly referring to me by a name after I had asked you multiple times to stop using it and to start calling me Mr. Lambert. This is the only proposal that actually shows that the community does not approve of rude behavior and false accusations, the others reward rude behavior.John Pack Lambert (talk) 12:36, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  An extremely high percentage of these mass-produced stubs do not have a single source that would contribute to passing GNG. Too often, the reliability of the source used is questionable, and there has been zero effort to substantiate any of the information from other sources. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 19:49, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Strong oppose. For a start, I don't believe Lugnuts – the usual target – has created ANY unsourced articles unless he has inadvertently forgotten to add a source somewhere. I'm in favour of deleting anything that remains unsourced for a reasonable period, especially if the author has been asked to provide sources. If a stub has five words with a source and is undoubtedly noteworthy, it is a valid article. If it has five words and a source but there is reasonable doubt that it is noteworthy (e.g., someone who played in one EFL match for a fourth tier team), then it is a redirect per WP:V, WP:PRESERVE, etc. To restore an article from redirect, additional citations from reliable sources must be introduced. NGS ^{Shakin' All Over} 10:33, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose any action. It doesn't seem like there's been any real abuse here. What's the big deal? 𝕱𝖎𝖈𝖆𝖎𝖆 (talk) 11:32, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Support This is the only proposal that shows the community actually cares to stop false accusations. The other proposal rewards false accusations and will lead to more. Every other proposal will basically endose Lugnuts false claims that he is being targeted, and will enbolden him to go after other editorss who dare to try and enforce the current rules on Olympic participant notability.John Pack Lambert (talk) 12:36, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose this is severely one-sided and would not actually resolve the problem since, according to NGS, Lugnuts does not create unsourced stubs. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 12:40, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, User:Lepricavark. Good point about severe one-sidedness. It amounts to a witch-hunt. NGS ^{Shakin' All Over} 12:58, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• • Well, it was Lugnuts who was going around falsely accusing another editor of targeting his creations for deletion. Lugnuts should be the only person punished for such false and malicious actions. If the proposal limits the actions of the editor he falsely accused, than it supports his false accusations, and amounts to endorsing his incivil behavior. When one person is engaging in incivil accusations against another, the person they have falsely attacked should not be punished. Doing so rewards the behavior, which is exactly what Wikipedia should not do.John Pack Lambert (talk) 12:46, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Doing so rewards the behavior, which is exactly what Wikipedia should not do. Really? May I recommend some light reading for you? This will tell you what does happen on this site, even though it should not. NGS ^{Shakin' All Over} 12:58, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Support in the sense that AfD is completely flooded and it absolutely does not need to be with all of these stubs, which can and often are handled by redirects. This is not exclusively a JPL problem (see User_talk:Star_Mississippi/Archive_6#Poul_Nielson_AFD for example), but I would say that JPL needs not to complain about the redirects, which he subsequently does sometimes simply because he thought it should be deleted. As far as my two way (courtesy @Robert McClenon, @Spartaz) it's because I don't think a one way will completely solve the problem. Some of the Lugnuts redirects have been subsequently kept at AfD. John Pack Lambert is working through a number of category backlogs (wonderful, needed), but I personally think there is enough of a backlog that someone else can handle Lugnuts' stub XFDs. Granted I think we'll end up here with that person, but the community is not willing to take action on Lugnuts' conduct so there hasn't been an option there. Star Mississippi 13:23, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose On further thought, the real problematic behavior here is the rude accusations that Lugnuts posts on his talk page. We need to A-get him to accept that due to the size of his contribution to the number of lacking any source that meets our guidelines and not meeting our inclusion criteria Olympic articles, he is going to see lots of those nominated for deletion. That is not a result of targeting him, it is a result of the fact the vast majority of such articles were created by him. 2-that he should not accuse others of houding him, when there are simpler, less malicious explantions for the behavior. So ultimately if we want to come to some consequence, the best one would be some clear restiction that will be placed on Lugnuts, and only Lugnuts, the next time he falsely makes accusations against people who are nominating Olympic or other articles created by him for deletion. I say other, because the place where Lugnuts comes cloest to having created a whole class of articles is in the Olympic Arts competitors articles. I have not seen one of those not created by Lugnuts, and almost of all of them are about like this "John Jones (1905-1975) was an American panter. He competed in the Olympics art competition in the 1948 Olympics" with just one source. Actually I will show you. Here is an article I picked at random. It was Konrad Hippenmeir, which as random pick is not the worst such article. Now if you follow the Olympedia source you will see it says more about Hippenmeier. He was the chief of the planning office for construction in Zurich. That one source is not enough to show he was notable, and it does not look like his positions were enough to make him inhernetly notable, but it is possible that there are more sources that could shed light on him, so someone wants to go digging for them. Clearly this is not a biography, and considering that Olympedia says more about his non-Olympic competition than Wikipedia does, we have the odd result that Wikipedia is more narrowly focused on the Olympics than Olympedia is. This is a very odd occurance, and since Lugnits created this article (which was the first Olympic Arts competitor article I found, it took me going to 3 articles on a list to find one not by Lugnuts and it was Frantz Jourdain which is the type of substantial article we need to justify having it. basically either people were like Frantz Jourdain and truly notable artists who happened to be in the Olympic arts competition, or we should not have articles on them. I once tried to interest the Arts Wikipedia project in this issue, but no one seems to have been willing to try to go through these articles and either expand them or nominate them for deletion. The source hunting is not going to be easy, but I keep hoping if I bring it up someone who knows something about this will at least try and start some review. Category:Olympic competitors in arts competitions has 1,710 article plus 146 articles in sub-cats related to medals (I do not know if there is any overlap). Still I do not see exactly what proposal will work.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:14, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I think what we need to do is tell Lugnuts "people are not targeting you, they are targeting a set of articles. The fact that the majority of those were created by you means that many of the deletion nominations will be of articles you created." Lugnuts knows that I am not just nominating for deletion any sub-stub Olympian article I come across. Some I find sources for and add sources to. In one case he reverted my doing this because he did not like my link or text or something, and then he reented it in edited form. I still do not understand why if he was going to keep the general text and I believe even the link, he did not just edit my contribution to a form that he thought was acceptable, and why he found a need to revert my contribution at all. However the episode not only shows that I am not just trying to mass delete every article on an Olympian who was not a mdalist I come across, but it also shows that Lugnuts knows I do editing besides nominating for deletion on such articles. He knows it, but he does not acknowledge it because it would undermine his ability to falsely accuse me of targeting his articles for deletion.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:32, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I think in this case we should propose that we tell Lugnuts to stop falsely accusing those who are trying to implemnt the fall 2021 decision that non-medaling Olyumpic competitors are not default notable, of going after him. We also need to say the next time he brings one of these uncivil accusations over this matter we will do something sepcific. Say block him from editing Wikipedia for seven days.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:34, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• On the Olympic Art competitors, my review of Category:1901 births just came across Filippo Sgarlata. He was a sculptor who was in the 1948 Olympic Arts competition. That is all our article says. The article was created by Lugnuts. the one source listed, Olympedia, has 3 paragraphs on Sgarlata. From the Olympedia article we learn that Sgarlata lived in the US from 1926-1932. We learn that he was a professor of sculpting in both Palermo and San Luca. He crfeated a gate for a notable building in 1961, and created some works that somehow were deemed to be "in line with fascists ideology". Is this one source enough to have this article survive? Porbably not? Was Sgarlata a notable sculptor? I am not sure, but really wish there was a way to get people to look into it more. I know there is a well developed set of notability criteria for artists, but I am less than sure what it is.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:45, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. This would greatly help with the problem at hand. It's not about either one of them "winning". Jacona (talk) 13:55, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Conditional support. I think on my third review this is a good idea. I think though we need to be clear on scope. Is this saying that any current Olympic article on someone who was not a medalist, which is only sourced to stanrd Olympic and spots table articles can be redirected. Lugnuts is not allowed to revert the redirect, but other editors who chose to can do so. Also, it appears we will have somewhere where such redirect reverts can be posted in notice, so that another editor will look over it and see if either they can find more sources or if it really does need to go to AfD. Thus if one editor comes along and say, redirects every person who was on the 1924 Mexican men's Basketball Team in the Olympics to a general article that mentions them (either on the team, or more likely because we probably do not have an article on the team, the men's basketball at the 1924 Olympics article), and then some other editor decides to revert all those redirects, we will not put the onus on the first redirector to go through and nominate all those articles for AfD, but will have other people willing to at least try to sort through these articles. Well, OK that example does not exist. The first basketball was at the 1936 Olympics. My first glance makes it look like most if not all Peruvian competitors do not have articles. In the article Basketball at the 1936 Summer Olympics we have redlinks to most of the members of teams who did not actually play in the Olympics. Hmm, actually some of the non-competitors we have articles for. So, yes, I think we need clearer guidelines. Partly because the issue is not "unsourced" per se, but "lacking sources that are giving in-dpeth coverage". the problem is the articles are sourced to sport stat pages, and not articles giving in-depth coverage that are indepdent, secondary and reliable, not that they have no sources at all.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:20, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • John Pack Lambert, I think there is a calculation that relates the number of comments made by someone who starts an ANI thread to the chances of success for whatever they propose: the more comments, the lower the chances of success. Drmies (talk) 16:57, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Drmies while I think JPL is bludgeoning this discussion, in his defense, it was @Spartaz who opened the main thread as well as this specific proposal. Star Mississippi 17:08, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • User:Star Mississippi, you are correct: my apologies, JPL. But I hope you will take the hint. Drmies (talk) 17:10, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
        • So it is OK to punish people for finding a behavior so problemtic that they bring it to ANI, but if they are a silent victim and wait for other people to find the behavior truly problematic, it is a little less OK to punish the victim. Are people here really serious about standing up to the uncivil, unfounded attacks Lugnuts has lobbeb at me, or am I ton conclude that falsely accusing someone else of something that all the evidence shows is not the case is acceptable behavior and that the real wrong behavior is speaking up about uncivil actions?John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:40, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
          • Can you point us to one comment in this thread (or ever) where you've admitted even partial responsibility for this conflict (or any conflict ever)? LEPRICAVARK (talk) 18:12, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
            • I have apoligized for all sorts of things. I even have an apology notice on my talk page. It is not my fault that Lugnuts falsely assumes that someone who nominates many Olympian articles that are 3 sentences or less has a vendetta against him, when the much more simple explanation is that since he created roughly 80% of such articles, there is no intention to target him. I know I have nominated articles on Olympians who did not on my review seem to fit any in inclusion criteria that were created by other editors than Lugnuts.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:41, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
              • That in response to a question about what you have done, you say "It is not my fault that Lugnuts falsely assumes..."--and that is precisely the problem. Drmies (talk) 01:29, 9 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose as most of the stubs are sourced, and redirects often go unnoticed and receive little attention so AfD is the best place for disputed redirects in my view, Atlantic306 (talk) 19:13, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose any action, far as I am concerned, and I don't know how much weight my suggestion has is that JPL should be TBANNED from all sports related AfDs nominations, comments, voting. I truly believe he has no interest in sports subjects let alone wanting to perform any WP:BEFORE style research. Govvy (talk) 23:01, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Govvy, you've hit the nail right on the head, there. NGS ^{Shakin' All Over} 11:04, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. As I have stated below, some of these stubs are not entirely unsourced and it seems to me that Johnpacklambert is using the redirects to effectively "delete" articles and circumvent any sort of AfD process, which, in my opinion, is pretty outrageous and seems to be an abuse of rules. Two articles created by Lugnuts had this happen to them in February, which I asked Johnpacklambert about doing without doing a proper WP:Before, then expanded the articles and added more references. They did this to two more articles today, that myself and another user added references to and I expanded one. Redirecting all sports stubs that are "unreferenced" isn't a good idea as it seems to depend on what some users consider "unreferenced". Some of those (at least four that I was made aware of) were referenced, or at least had a foundation and can be expanded. ExRat (talk) 23:55, 3 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose as mentioned above, this is one sided per LEPRICAVARK and NGS. Kante4 (talk) 10:43, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose Far too many of Lugnuts' stubs are expandable/notable. I am also highly against anyone redirecting them without first taking them to AFD. Lastly, they are not unsourced. Scorpions13256 (talk) 18:55, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Support as at least a solution to part of the problem. I hope the closer of this section reads the above !votes carefully, as this proposal is for redirecting all the unsourced stubs and I want to emphasize unsourced, so opposes on the grounds that they're not all unsourced aren't speaking to the actual proposal. This proposal does not propose redirecting sourced stubs, just the unsourced ones. Levivich 02:01, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • If we actually limit this to allowing redirects of Olympic articles that have no sources at all of any kind, I am not sure it will have any effect. Pretty much any Olympic articles is sourced to at least one sports table. If we expand this to allowing redirect of other non-Olympain unsourced articles we need to be clearer about the scope, because we actually do have some unsourced articles that at least if we could find one source to just verrify them it would be an acceptable article. This might have some effect if we worded it as "we can redirect articles on Olympians sourced only to a sports stats table, and Lugnuts cannot override that redirect", but I am starting to think people really do not like unilateral redirect. What we really need is to make it so at AfD people can say either delete or redirect or merge in their initial nomination, because as far as I can tell we have no good forum to discuss redirect in a way that will get large amounts of community feedback.John Pack Lambert (talk) 12:06, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Opppose This doesn't solve the long-term issue at all, it only makes modificaitons to the current state. I might support "specifically banning Lugnuts from reverting a redirect" down the road, but not at this moment. Preventing any editor from proposing discussion at AFD is not the right move. I personally think that Mr. Lambert does a lot more AFDs than I like; I personally think that Mr. Lambert doesn't like sports articles; and I admit that I have personally become frustrated at times from the volume of AFD discussions brought forth by Mr. Lambert on the articles that I do like. And none of that matters. As long at it remains civil, not disruptive, and otherwise avoids policy violations (BLP, Copyright, etc.) anyone can propose a discussion on anything.--Paul McDonald (talk) 14:14, 14 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal – stubs at AFD