• Nyttend (talk · contribs)
• Jehochman (talk · contribs)

Administrator Jehochman (Or JHM for brevity) redacted[1] part of a comment I made at RFA after Nyttend came to his talk page[2]. Nyttend came to JHM seeking a block of me on basis of this[3] from November of last year. In it JHM wrote 'I could indef block your account right now'. Before that, JHM cited these two examples- [4][5].

An indefinite block for telling Nyttend not to violate WP:NPA after Nyttend called me[6] a stalker. That seems more than a little extreme.

Let's examine the more recent post first.

Nyttend wrote- "He's even attacked me at an RFA page over an incident more than a year ago. When you're demonstrably holding grudges over a period of years, attacking others' actions as "colossal failures" for no good reason, it's beyond time for assumptions of good faith, beyond time for additional warnings."

Nyttend blocked 20 accounts by his own admission for sockpuppetry that proved to be wrong. That's a failure all right. My post to the RFA didn't just single out Nyttend but another administrator also who I thought overstepped.

Where is it said at RFA you can't criticize anyone? JHM writes at his talk page- 'That RFA isn't the place to rehash an old incident.' Old incidents are rehashed at RFA every time once of these comes up.

Nyttend has a long history of not taking criticism of any type well. He actually gave me a uw-npa3 once for personal attacks over this[7]. Was anything I wrote in that thread a violation of NPA? He's accusing me of harboring grudges but his behavior (and I can give more examples. Like his going off wiki[8] to seek a block of me and using his backup account another time[9] for the same purpose where moments later he was back in his main account, plus his threat[10] to seek sanctions against me for something he in his own words to not occur[11].) can be called questionable. The two cases I cite above may or may not constitute administrator shopping especially after his categorical dismissal at Commons and his citing it when using it in his backup account post.

In a recent ANI thread here[12] Nyttend was told to drop the stick.

JHM seems on the verge of taking action against me. See edit summary here[13].He told me not to follow Nyttend. I haven't and Nyttend has supplied no proof of such. I, like all wikipedia users, get notified of RFAs. I have participated there before on at least one occasion. Nyttend and my paths cross sometimes but like here[14] he said it was coincidence. A threat of an indefinite block for trivial actions seems like administrator overstep. Nyttend's persistence to get me blocked needs to be examined. Nothing I've done at RFA constitutes a violation of any warning given to me....William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 14:01, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I am aware of this thread and will not be taking any actions other than to say that William's comment speaks for itself. Jehochman ^Talk 14:03, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

JHM here[15] says I'm wiki lawyering based on my request of proof I did something wrong at RFA. Ironically in that RFA thread I had an administrator asking me to cite WP policy to justify why I said something was wrong....William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 14:10, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please note Both Nyttend and JHM were notified of this thread. JHM subsequently deleted[16] my notification of him....William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 14:36, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Question @WilliamJE: do you read ANI threads that you have started? Vis-à-vis, Jehochman acknowledged your notice by commenting above. It looks rather as if you wish to portray his every edit to be either at fault or a personal attack. As a seasoned user, you know that editors are allowed to remove (almost) whatever they like from their own talk pages. FYI. _Muffled ^Pocketed 15:32, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

First, your RFA comment was redacted because it was completely off-topic and way out of line. You discuss the behavior of the candidate at RFA, not the behavior of a third party. You found an excuse to criticize Nyttend and took it. If you think the candidate is somehow soft on sockpuppetry or too hard on it, say so, but leave others out of it. Second, I take that ANI thread as telling both of you to drop the stick. You picked it up again, not Nyttend. I'm not going to block you because I'm the co-nom on that RFA and I think it would be improper, but I certainly think you deserve it. Katie^talk 15:29, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

And how is not Nyttend not picking up the stick by going to JHM and trying to get me blocked? Nyttend didn't cite the ANI thread but something else. My being critical of administrators around here has a long history and in a recent case[17] justified....William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 15:51, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi: I put the 'please note' in to make sure people know I did notify JHM as required. It was done innocently. He had the right to remove it, I wanted to prevent my being accused of not informing him. How about showing WP:AGF?...William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 15:39, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If he hadn't posted here immediately above you, then it would be a valid point. But he did, so it isn't. _Muffled ^Pocketed 15:44, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Not this again ... This is an attempt to reinvigorate WilliamJE's long-term grudge-farming against Nyttend, which I had hoped had subsided. William really should know better. Acroterion (talk) 15:43, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Unrelated to most of the issues concerning Nyttend and WilliamJE's bad blood, but to chime in if I may, but keeping old grudges fresh goes directly in contravention of our principles against personal attacks and battleground conduct. Whatever the history between Nyttend and WilliamJe, that is absolutely zero excuse to bring up Nyttend into unrelated venues. What does Nyttend have to do with Oshwah's RFA. There was entirely no constructive purpose in WilliamJE's comments and a good move on Jehochman's part for redacting that comment. One shouldn't be going out of their way to criticize an editor whom they have a "history" with, whatever their reasons might be. I think the core difference here is WilliamJE brought it back up, not Nyttend. This thread is an attack on both Nyttend and Jehochman for calling out his behavior. I would strongly suggest WilliamJE to cease commenting on Nyttend ever again and to go find something else to do. This has gone on long enough. —Mythdon 17:53, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• William has spent years demonstrating that he will not drop this grudge. When his attacks are reverted, he restores them. Why do we permit this person to remain a member of the community? PS, just to ward off any accusations to the contrary: I'm not following William. I voted in the RFA, and someone else pinged me, so I went back and searched for my username and found this attack by coincidence. Had he left it after I went to look at the ping, I doubt that I would have ever noticed. Nyttend (talk) 23:25, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Then he should receive a block on both the grounds of edit warring and for restoration of the gratuitous comments. I haven't followed up on all of the history, but judging from the diffs, its blatantly clear that WilliamJE is just not going to drop the stick. His editing demonstrates a fascination with the edits of another user (in this case, with yours), following you around. I can't fathom how he's been allowed to do this for years. I've seen less severe cases in the past and those editors had already gotten interaction banned or indeffed for doing far less severe cases of harassment and personal attacks. —Mythdon 23:53, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Nyttend went to Commons over a year ago and where I had never edited before in order to get Sphilbrick to block me here for harrassment. Sphilbrick replied back here[18]. I'll quote SP's reading of the WP harrasment policy, SP's reply to one of Nyttend's charges and his overall summary and let you go. First-

"

the singling out of one or more editors, and joining discussions on multiple pages or topics they may edit or multiple debates where they contribute, in order to repeatedly confront or inhibit their work. This is with an apparent aim of creating irritation, annoyance or distress to the other editor

You've demonstrated that the first part of this statement is true. There is no question that William is not randomly choosing articles to edit which occasionally include articles you have edited. We don't even have to invoke statistical evidence; he said he was going to watch your edits and he has. But the policy doesn't simply say it is inappropriate to follow someone else around. As I noted earlier and can explain again if necessary, there are many legitimate reasons one might identify a particular editor and choose to examine all or a significant portion of their edits. However, we have to look at the second part of the quotation. Are these actions done (mainly) "to repeatedly confront or inhibit their work"?"

Second- "In Monticello, Arkansas William change the heading from "notable residents" to "notable people". He has stated elsewhere that he believes this is the better choice. I concur. His edit did not affect your edit, modify or in any way challenge or inhibit your edit. It was an improvement to the article. No rational person could possibly see an edit by you making some improvements of the article, followed by an edit by William making different improvements of the article and think to themselves that William was confronting or inhibiting you." Bold added by me

Third- "I stopped looking at diffs at this point. If the best argument you can make is that William likes to improve articles where you've contributed, we should be debating which barnstar to award not talking about a block."- End of SP's reply. SP reviewed Nyttend's behavior involving me on another occasion. Here it is.[19] Read the whole thing but one SP quote 'it is the responsibility of admins to set a good example, and I don't think your interaction with WilliamJE meets that standard'.

One last thing and I have raised it many times (SP, JHM, and Acroterion have all heard it) and gotten silence. Why is it acceptable for Nyttend to threaten[20] to get sanctions against me for something he himself said[21] wasn't what occurred? For more context, here is another post[22] backing up what did occur. Is an editor supposed to tolerate that conduct or just take it because they fear they'll be made into the bad party?

What I am mad about is Nyttend got Orlady to block me in 2014 for BS and the block was overturned. However it is still on my block log. As goes for every editor ever blocked including a 2016 case where it was termed by an administrator 'the worst block I have ever seen' I have written before and SP has shown sympathy about bad blocks on an editor's history. Administrators read the history and make foolish judgments of my intentions based on it. Case in point Administrator Fram on SP's talk page not too long ago where SP replied in part 'I've had a long interaction with William — to oversimplify, he thinks there is admin abuse on this project, and I think admin abuse is something we have to be very careful about and make sure it doesn't occur, so I promised William I would look into such allegations. As William noted, I don't always agree with his assessment. On some occasions I think he has made a good point, and in other situations I have sharply disagreed with William.". You say I'm carrying a grudge? Is WP not carrying a grudge when a editor's block log shows a block that was wrong, universally condemned, and saw a administrator say it was the worst block he ever saw instead of having it deleted?...William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 23:37, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• I think it's long since time you two stopped interacting. -- The Voidwalker ^Discuss 00:02, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

WilliamJE editing restriction

WP:Wikihounding is:

the singling out of one or more editors, and joining discussions on multiple pages or topics they may edit or multiple debates where they contribute, to repeatedly confront or inhibit their work. This is with an apparent aim of creating irritation, annoyance or distress to the other editor. Wikihounding usually involves following the target from place to place on Wikipedia.

Here's a textbook case:

1. User:Travelmite opened an account in January 2015, making 92 edits, mostly on two days, where he added articles to a category using an existing list, and shuffled text around in an article. See [23] and [24] for examples, here for the complete list.
2. At the end of January 2016, this account's behaviour abruptly changed from making trivial edits to actively targeting two editors: myself and User:Miesianiacal, whom he attempted to WP:OUT, claiming a conflict of interest here.
3. In February 2016, Travelmite made 246 edits, some aimed at Miesianiacal, but most (198) directed against me via the Australian head of state dispute article, which I created in 2011 and has a handful of regular editors on this rather specialised topic. Examples of his behaviour here, here, here, here and many others. Only a few edits during this time were on other matters, such as support for Brianhe's failed admin request here and some triva concerning Ugg boots here.
4. In March 2016, all of this account's 101 edits were aimed at me via the head of state and related articles, continuing the previous month's behaviour.
5. This account quietened down during April, May and June, apart from two edits at Talk:Panini, taking a predictably opposite position to mine. I had been called there via an RfC request. Travelmite simply followed me there.
6. In July 2016, out of 52 edits, 49 were again directed at me via the School of Economic Science article, which has been a subject of some interest to me. Travelmite again caused disruption, mainly via another WP:COIN topic here.
7. In August 2016, after I attempted to raise this matter discreetly in other forums, the account's behaviour abruptly changed, with edits after 16 August moving away from me.

Out of 569 edits made by the Travelmite account in 2016, 393 (or 69%) were directed against me via articles I edit, or through various other harassments, such as the WP:COIN issue. Fot most of 2016, this account has followed me around Wikipedia for the purposes of harassment, making few edits that were not connected to me in one way or another. Looking at this account's edits, I think that the charge of WP:Wikihounding is clearly demonstrated. Again, I quote:

The important component of wikihounding is disruption to another user's own enjoyment of editing, or to the project generally, for no overriding reason. If "following another user around" is accompanied by tendentiousness, personal attacks, or other disruptive behavior, it may become a very serious matter and could result in blocks and other editing restrictions.

This account edits via Chinese proxies. It is apparently not connected with any other Wikipedia account, as determined by discreet Checkuser requests. (The requests were made discreetly for legitimate reasons I am unable to disclose here.)

I suspect that this account is fraudulent, based on the fact that its behaviour changed abruptly in late January 2016 from making a few sparse innocuous edits to being concerned almost exclusively with myself and Miesianiacal, disputing over various articles, talk pages and noticeboards day after day. This is not the usual manner in which editors begin their service here.

In late January 2016, there was some discussion here about an interaction ban involving four editors, one of whom was myself. I opposed the application of an IBAN then, but I am seeking one now, between myself and Travelmite. I don't mind if Travelmite makes constructive edits (and he shows a good deal of familiarity with wikipractice), but I do find the continued stalking offensive and disruptive.

I request the attention of other editors here to consider my request for an interction ban. --Pete (talk) 13:00, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely a reasonable request. Until an IBAN can be implemented, I recommended you try and WP:SHUN the user for now. Better yet, I think this long-term wikihounding warrants a block. I haven't observed this user's contributions closely, but from what you've written, and from the diffs, there is a possibility of a WP:NOTHERE case. Linguist 111 ^Moi? Moi. 14:11, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I am a person of the highest principles and integrity. The accusations above are all false, including the details and statistics. You won't find a single other editor to confirm these accusations. I deal with hundreds of issues on Wikipedia, only three involving Pete/Skyring. Why three? Pete/Skying's incivility towards other editors has unfortunately generated incalculable complaints and counter-complaints. And everyone sees them here on the dispute pages - that is the only way I know about them. Travelmite (talk) 16:21, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Travelmite: Please could you provide evidence that Skyring has been uncivil (diffs)? Linguist 111 ^Moi? Moi. 16:43, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, there are many. Let's start the 23rd March where I am called a "troll" when defending against false accusations against another editor [25][26] and here making further unfounded accusations that I am "dedicated to disruption" [27]. A few uncivil/baiting comments towards User_talk:Py0alb regarding spelling of Panini, with this diff [28] being one example. User:Roberthall7 is under a bit of a personal attack here [29] which led to the discovery Pete/Skyring was a member of the organisation in the article and making sympathetic edits. But there's more than just my dealings, because this block from 8-August shows a more serious attempt at making accusations, [30] but I don't know the details of that. Travelmite (talk) 17:52, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Also from the same page: [31] Travelmite (talk) 18:25, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"I deal with hundreds of issues on Wikipedia, only three involving Pete/Skyring." Maybe. That's like saying our planet has thousands of landmasses, only seven of which are continents. Looking at Travelmite's contributions, we see how much attention is given to various issues. 45 edits (totalling 14 212 characters) on School of Economic Science, one (17 characters) on Tragedy of the commons. The pattern is clear. --Pete (talk) 20:09, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

What has happened recently, to suddenly warrant an Hounding report? GoodDay (talk) 17:41, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've not heard from Pete/Skyring for about a month. From User:Roberthall7, I learnt he was blocked due to some other dispute. I guess the block has ended and well ... this. Travelmite (talk) 18:25, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The two of you are clearly not seeing eye to eye. I think you should agree to disagree, and get a two-way IBAN. You obviously aren't able to collaborate in harmony, and what's happened has just caused animosity between you. Until then, you should just deny all communication with each other. Linguist 111 ^Moi? Moi. 19:56, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I see you were summoned here GoodDay, through one of several canvassing edits here, misleadingly headed "Beacon Reader". I've done my best to ignore Travelmite since March, WP:SHUNing him as per Linguist111's comment. I could see he was putting more effort into trying to irritate me than I was in being irritated, but he made one reversion too many, and I decided to get more eyes on the subject. It's like having a stalking ex, and applying for a restraining order. Wikipedia's equivalent is an interaction ban, and that's all I'm looking for here. --Pete (talk) 20:09, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It is akin to workplace bullying and corruption, with a duty on all of us to help stamp it out. We have seen the accusations are false. Although I've been involved a mere three times, it has been confirmed above that the overriding issue is how other editors complain and request help from the community (via the dispute pages) to deal with harassment, bad faith, tenacious arguing and ignoring existing consensus positions, outstanding conflict of interest complaints and so on. (Note: Currently, due process is also at issue here. See Wikipedia:Administrators_noticeboard#Right_to_defense.) Travelmite (talk) 04:59, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Travelmite has above demonstrated the problem in the relationship. A look at his contributions from late January on shows very little else but a focus on my activities. He claims "hundreds of issues", but apart from a few, every post has been concerned with two topics:

• The issue of the Australian head of state, through the lead article here (171 edits totalling 60 714 characters), an RfC about the Australian head of state (79 edits totalling 29 925 characters), and some related pages. Contributions here.
• The School of Economic Science (45 edits totalling 14 212 characters) and related pages. Contributions between 15 July and 16 August.

Both articles were, prior to Travelmite's involvement, stable articles maintained by a handful of editors each. Travelmite's edits in article space were either destructive, or modest and superficial, his edits in talkspace fixated on my doings. His contributions list demonstrates the facts, rather than his wildly inaccurate clams, and may easily be checked through the hundreds of edits. This is not the "mere three times" claimed above! It is an unhealthy fixation, and his dishonest denials of the problem's extent underscore this. I think a two-way interaction ban would fix the problem, allowing Travelmite to pursue other targets. --Pete (talk) 16:59, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"You won't find a single other editor to confirm these accusations." Er, I am a single other editor who will confirm the accusations. Travelmite was not only sternly warned against making further unfounded and bad faith accusations against me, he threatened and then attempted to WP:OUT me, first by trying to have COI and OUTing rules changed and then by creating a page off-Wiki and linking it to my talk page (that edit was permanently stricken from my talk page's history). He eventually left me alone due to, I assume, a combination of the warnings and my ignoring him.

I didn't fail to notice from time to time that Pete/Skyring had indeed become the new permanent target of Travelmite and his obsession with and misunderstanding of conflict of interest. I recognize the behaviour, as I made an AN/I report about Travelmite myself for the same reasons. --₪ MIESIANIACAL 21:16, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Mies! On looking at the previous ANI link I notice that Travelmite was attacking you in an outrageous fashion, earning a 48-hour block and several warnings in the process. The use of Chinese proxy addresses was also noticed by two editors, as well as the "out of nowhere" approach that caught my eye. He likewise made a spurious COIN report and badgered you on your talk page; familiar behaviour. I strongly suspect this account to be run by someone with a longer wikihistory than meets the eye, using proxies to avoid scrutiny. --Pete (talk) 22:24, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the interactions, none of these are accurate. I never outed Meisianiacal nor did I try. I did not create an off-wiki page or link it - that doesn't even make sense. Maintenance of privacy was always taken into full consideration. Requests from others to explain my information on-wiki were refused, because I didn't trust them enough. Fortunately later, Meisianiacal made a solemn declaration to an admin, which took the COI issue away. Meisianiacal, just to let you know that this incident report is not a problem. You didn't open it. Your privacy remains an absolute priority. Travelmite (talk) 13:03, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is blatantly untrue. Travelmite made a specific identification, and threw in allegations of a sexual nature. Some evidence of this remains on-wiki. For obvious reasons I shall not comment further, though I can back up my statements privately to senior Wikiofficials if need be.--Pete (talk) 22:48, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

User:Linguist111, I'm brought out of my major off-Wiki commitments at the moment after User:Travelmite messaged me and you reverted that message on my Talk page. Your issue with his message may well have merit. Is it in keeping with standard WP practices for WP editors to remove material from each others' talk pages? Assuming it is, please explain your edit. Also, do you have a history of dealing with the editors in question, or is this your first interaction with them? Turning to the issue of this ANI:

• Due to my major off-Wiki commitments I don't have time to become fully involved.
• I know nothing about Travelmite's alleged connections to other accounts (that happen to be in China), a serious matter if true. Nor do I know about his full record of editing WP and attitude toward User:Miesianiacal which from the description, if accurate, appears to be in need of change.
• What I do know is that Travelmite's issues with Pete/Skyring have merit in at least one article. I recommend observers take a very close look at the School of Economic Science Talk page, before drawing any conclusions about Travelmite and this ANI. He, I and Pete/Skyring have for months been the most active editors on that article. Pete/Skyring has self-identified himself as a member of the School of Economic Science, an organization variously described as a church, school, cult or new religious movement.
• On that Talk page Pete/Skyring has been identified by afair Travelmite, myself and User:Fiddlersmouth as disruptive, and afair the three of us ceased to assume his good faith and identified his personal attacks. On the Talk page there, you'll see a repeated allegation from Pete/Skyring that I am a WP:SPA, and my explanatory response to it, including notice of my disengagement due to the discussion becoming both personal and adversarial. Until now, I have maintained that disengagement, averted edit-warring and direct Talk-page debate with Pete/Skring. Nevertheless Pete/Skyring has continued to bait me; one tactic appears to be a switch to referring to me in discussions with other editors as female ("she" , "her" etc), when nobody else on WP does, and despite my username being Roberthall7. I haven't taken the bait. There's plenty more problematic behavior where that came from.
• On that Talk page, afair User:Keithbob recommended Travelmite, myself, User:Fiddlersmouth and Pete/Skyring going to ANI instead of undertaking lengthy Talk page discussion about behavior. Travelmite replied that he hoped it didn't get to ANI, presumably because he wanted to keep things cool. So it may be that Travelmite's refusal to go as far as ANI was well-intentioned, but that resulted instead in a sort of vigilante 'policing' behaviour by him to deal with Pete/Skyring. That may have caused a negative impression about Travelmite to be formed. He might indeed have been better off going to ANI in the first place, as Keithbob advised.
• For the record, I have had involved content disagreements and differences of opinion with Travelmite. Even at their most entrenched, I not once found his editing or comments to be disruptive, manipulative or uncivil, which seems to be the final test of all allegedly inappropriate WP behavior. On the contrary, he has been meticulously even-handed, sometimes appearing to at least partially support Pete/Skyring, while disagreeing with me. The result has been establishment of consensus and stability to the School of Economic Science article, for which Travelmite is due for acknowledgement and praise.
• If Travelmite were to get blocked, administrators would need to observe what Peter/Skyring then does at the School of Economic Science article without Travelmite being there to provide balance. It may be that this ANI was launched by Pete/Skyring to tactically remove the balance that Travelmite has provided to that article, for a while at least.
• Pete/Skyring has a long history of blocks due to disruptive behavior, and he has just come out of a two-week block. It's conspicuous that he would choose now, of all times, to cast aspersions about Travelmite with an ANI. Is it some kind of emotional retaliation? Aside from Travelmite, I and afair at least one other editor, Fiddlersmouth, having ceased to assume Pete/Skyring's good faith on an article in which they interacted at length. As such, Pete/Skyring's ANI about Travelmite should not be concluded without further scrutiny of Pete/Skyring himself.
• At the School of Economic Science Talk page Pete/Skying has made deceptive edits, to the extent that I am skeptical about his allegations against Travelmite here.
• If the allegation about Travelmite using Chinese proxies turns out to be true, and I note that he has immediately denied them, one solution to think about might be a combination of an interaction ban for Travelmite as well as a topic ban for Pete/Skyring that stops the disruption which may have prompted Travelmite's vigilante 'policing'.
• Either way, I would now support an ANI scrutinizing Pete/Skyring's behavior at the School of Economic Science article, in which I would expect and welcome scrutiny of myself.
• Based on past form, Pete/Skyring will attempt to undermine my observations on the grounds that I'm a WP:SPA. I'm confident that administrators know disruptive behavior is the test of editors' conduct. If I've been disruptive, then please show me where and I'll apologize and make amends.
• I'm getting back to my off-Wiki work now, and give notice that I'll be preoccupied with that for the next couple of weeks. Thanks and good luck, -Roberthall7 (talk) 09:44, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Roberthall7! Perhaps you could provide a diff for Travelmite's "immediate denial" of editing via Chinese IP proxies? That would be interesting, given that his contributions show him claiming the edits made by several such proxies. You seem to applaud Travelmite for (in your words) "vigilante" behaviour. We don't support vigilantes on Wijipedia. We have well-established policies for dealing with disruption; one example is this noticeboard. Could you clarify your statements above on these two points, please? --Pete (talk) 12:19, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know anything about the 'School of Economic Science' article & haven't been involved with it. But in my past dealings with Travelmite, I've found him to be an honest fellow, who cuts through the baloney. GoodDay (talk) 09:57, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, GoodDay! On the issue of honesty, what do you make of his claim to have interacted with me a "mere three times"? As you know, the true figure would be in the hundreds, and this may be checked by looking through his contributions. This is why I make the charge of WP:Wikihounding. Would you be in favour of an interaction ban? --Pete (talk) 10:49, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

IBANs tend to be problematic & short term solutions. I'm not sure how to solve this disagreement between 2 editors. GoodDay (talk) 18:24, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well, we two have some disagreements from time to time, but I think we get on amicably enough, wouldn't you say? I don't go hunting you around the wikipedia to comment on what you're doing and to !vote against you. Wikihounding is a serious business, and most of what Travelmite has done here is to harass Mies and myself. I think an IBAN would solve that immediate problem. Others here are in agreement on this point. Perhaps I'll open up a vote section. --Pete (talk) 22:38, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The three interactions are Australian head of state dispute, Panini (sandwich) and School of Economic Science. Actually, it's two because I simply voted for Panini spelling under an RfC and didn't interact with anyone. Travelmite (talk) 13:03, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Panini thing was a clear example of stalking.

1. I was summoned to that RfC by Legobot on my talk page here on 3 May 2016. This is the sandwich, rather than the reknowned Sanskrit grammarian, Pāṇini, of course. I found a proposal to bastardise a perfectly good Italian word, which appalled me, and I !voted in favour of grammar on 5 May.
2. I also found one of those interesting people who "care too much" and had some enjoyable time with him, which was naturally reflected in my contributions. When someone battles over some trivial word, I find it fascinating. There were some interesting people in the "winningest" discussion in January.[32]
3. Travelmite followed me there on 13 May - he was watching my contributions - and !voted the opposite way here.
4. Travelmite does not subscribe to any RfC notification service. Nor does he participate in !votes of any kind unless I am involved in some way. Not one. That's stalking. --Pete (talk) 17:50, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Travelmite, you say "The accusations above are all false" meaning that you deny that you used proxy accounts. Does that mean the alleged 'Chinese proxy accounts' were simply your IP addresses created automatically by WP because you hadn't signed in (an oversight which you then corrected)? Or do you have any other explanation? The use of the phrase 'proxy' is an accusation of puppetry, which won't be taken lightly at ANI. -Roberthall7 (talk) 14:31, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Robert, you're entirely correct. I'm not a network expert, but I certainly don't deliberately use proxies and don't use them as far as I am aware. But let's allow Pete/Skring to make the accusations, because that won't be taken lightly either. He is a member of the School of Economic Science, but somehow free of COI restrictions [33] and seeking an interaction ban. Travelmite (talk) 17:42, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to believe you, but in that case, could you explain the three diffs above that show you signing your name on edits made using Chinese proxies? It's not possible to "accidentally" use those IPs unless (a) you are in China, or (b) you are trying to hide your actual IP address. Those aren't an "accusation", but a simple fact. Thanks, Black Kite (talk) 17:49, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's (a) being in China, and I accept that from you, it's not an accusation. I am extremely fortunate that my explanation is simple enough, as the tactic of Wikipedia:Casting_aspersions and getting others to be suspicious is highly effective. Most people in China are affected by the Censorship of Wikipedia and need to use open proxies (policy here ), but this has not been a problem for me. Furthermore, there has been no activity in the forum to warrant mentioning it in the first place. I deny all allegations, and draw your attention to Pete/Skyrings recent block and, to be fair, his response [34], but I don't know further details. Travelmite (talk) 03:40, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Travelmite, if you were located in China when doing those IP edits which you then corrected, then it would appear that you did nothing wrong and may have been in receipt of a false accusation of malice. One could also ask whether the word 'Chinese' was used pejoratively to sensationalize the accusation. On that note, have you received fair warning that your activity was being perceived as stalking, prior to this ANI? In other words, have you been given fair opportunity to explain and/or change your behavior before being forced to by Administrators? It may be that this is the first time you've heard the stalking allegation. If so, a formal warning may be more appropriate than an interaction ban, and Keithbob's recommendation not to be shy of using the ANI noticeboard may be the new course you should take, instead of dealing with problematic editors on a piecemeal basis. -Roberthall7 (talk) 08:48, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

These are new allegations. Furthermore they are false. At some point, you were being attacked for being SLA and the page called out about disruptive edits and management of COI issues. Travelmite (talk) 09:43, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I might have been improperly canvassed, but I might as well comment as I've come to the page. I was involved in the debate at the Australian head of state dispute page. That article has questionable merits, as it seems to have been created to promote a fringe view that the Queen is not Australia's head of state. It had effectively become a debating forum, with endless discussion pages in which the same points were raised time and again. A lot of the discussion was counterproductive and frustrating. Criticism could be made against many of the participants, including me. I don't think Travelmite stood out as doing anything objectionable. I can't comment about his behaviour on other pages.--Jack Upland (talk) 05:36, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Jack! We're not rehashing specific debates. Editors are entitled to their views and we have procedures to deal with diversity of opinion. Seems to be working fine so far, judging by the result. The problem is that Travelmite's contributions since late January consist mostly of him following myself and another editor around the wikipedia on a range of diverse topics, always with a contrary position, always creating discord. I'm looking to put a stop to that. WP:Wikihounding is the topic here. --Pete (talk) 06:52, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Like Jack, I too question the existence of the Australian head of state dispute article, but of course that's something to discuss 'there. Anyways, I'm going to go neutral on the IBAN & allow other editors (who've not been involved much with either yourself or Travelmite in the past) to decide this one. GoodDay (talk) 10:06, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's important to look at the context. Pete accused Travelmite of being disruptive of the Australian head of state dispute article in March — [35] — pointing to Travelmite's initial post in January. However, Travelmite's post is recorded in Archive 5. I had started contributing to the Talk pages in September last year, at which point the discussions began to become voluminous. Pete followed this up by calling Travelmite a troll: [36]. Note that Travelmite was essentially saying that the Queen was head of state. Hardly disruptive behaviour in itself. The article now has 8 talk page archives. Travelmite is only featured in a few. All of them feature Pete. This seems more like a case of ownership than trolling.--Jack Upland (talk) 02:29, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Interaction edit counts

Using one of the tools available from the WP:Wikihounding page, I have compiled a table of interactions here. --Pete (talk) 07:57, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The table (all periods) confirms the interactions relate to three issues: Australian head of state dispute (Jan-March 2016), one RfC vote on spelling Panini and the School of Economic Science (July 2016). The table of interactions over the past four months, when the Head of State Dispute was concluded is as follows:Editor Interaction Analyser

The analyser demonstrates beyond doubt how the allegation is false. Travelmite (talk) 10:05, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

To be honest I had already done the edit interaction analysis and found that about 250 (140 the dispute page + 80 wikiproject + 40 their usertalk) of Travelmite's 790 edits are specifically congregated to 3 pages, that 400 or so of the total 790 are on pages that Skyring and Miesianiacal have also edited and that while there is a shocking amount of overlap it doesn't appear to me to be indicative of immediate Wikihounding, especially give that the overlap is across a total of 17 pages for all three editors, 19 for TM and Miesi and 33 for TM and Skyring (which is admittedly a lot), but, taking into account all the time lines; 7 of the overlaps with Miesi are in the past 24 hours with all of them being rather expected, however, this changes drastically in the case of Skyring where about 20 of the overlaps with Pete are in the past 24 hours with one of those being uncharacteristically out of place; Talk:Panini (sandwich). So, I'd discount Wikihounding with respect to Miesi, but, am not so ready to do so in the case of Skyring. Note, of the 20 overlaps I'd consider 15 of these to be entirely expected due to this report, the specific user talk pages, and the mutual interest in politics. It's possible that Panini is an unfortunate outlier and not an intentional following. A better pair of eyes with greater experience is needed to draw a definitive conclusion though, and this is merely my two cents based on what I am seeing and expecting to see. Mr rnddude (talk) 11:06, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Mr rnddude! I think we may discount some edits right off the bat, such as most of Travelmite's contributions on his own talk page. I wouldn't discount any of the Australian politics edits; they all concerned the one topic of Australian head of state. I see the Panini edits and the Brianhe RfA as smoking guns, rather than "unfortunate outliers". It is impossible to explain them as random chance. Travelmite saw them on my contributions, followed me there, and lodged a contrary !vote. --Pete (talk) 11:25, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Twelve articles and/or talk pages, totalling 256 edits.
• Nine Wikipedia project pages, totalling 157 edits
• Eight user talk pages, totalling 59 edits.
• Twenty-nine pages in total, of which Travelmite followed me there twenty-three times. 472 edits combined.
• Of Travelmite's 723 edits on en.wikipedia.org during that period, that's an intersection of 65%.
• So of Travelmite's entire Wikipedia contributions, two thirds involve overlapping contributions. If we discount Travelmite's 96 contributes before 26 January 2016, the ratio rises to 75%.

Two things are crystal clear:

1. Travelmite has focused his attention squarely on me to an astonishing degree.
2. Travelmite's claims to the contrary are risible.

I think readers will understand why I find it impossible to believe anything Travelmite says. The facts simply do not support him. --Pete (talk) 11:17, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There's no smoking gun. Brianhe RfC is easy to explain, because someone suggested I look at that page, and the words are "To see what I mean about community opinions on privacy and managing COI, and about "content not contributor", please have a look at this RFA, especially the concerns raised in the questions and in the oppose !votes" [37]. I didn't know he voted. I voted to spell Panini, because that's how everyone spells it, not because Pete/Skyring spells it Panino. That came up on a list of RfCs. It is inevitable that you will cross an editor who gets involved in thousands of articles every month (Total edits over 4 months: 16,932!).

Several editors hear have more interactions with Pete/Skyring that I do! Skyring also makes tenacious arguments building up the raw edit count, on the two occasions we interacted. On other pages, edits go smoothly and rarely followup is required. Broad statistics must be analysed properly. Thanks Mr rnddude for your conclusions. Travelmite (talk) 13:58, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the Brianhe reference. That's plausible, but it raises the question of what you were doing arguing COI at all. Looking at your contributions, it's as if someone just flipped a switch in late January. The behaviour of the account changes radically, and suddenly instead of making rare trivial edits, you're a COI warrior. The character of the edits in articlespace changes. Even the language used on talk pages changes from almost non-existent and strained (see [38][39][40] for examples) to fluent, confident and plentiful. The difference in character is marked. What happened - you suddenly discover grammar?

I don't buy the Panini story at all. The only RfCs you've participated in have been those involving me. Three of them. I've just reviewed your entire contribution list, and there's no other examples. Not a single other instance of you joining a random RfC discussion. A normal person, looking at the list of current RfCs - and there are hundreds open at any one time - will see many that will pique their interest. In nearly two years you apparently only found one of these interesting enough to participate in, and it just happened to be one where I'd spent a week in animated discussion. Right.

And how do you explain your sudden interest in the School of Economic Science? There's only one explanation. You open up my user contributions to see what I've been doing, and you jump in, aiming to annoy me. That's stalking, and I want it stopped. --Pete (talk) 16:33, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There is no reason that one vote, once, would annoy a person. A person cannot expect to annoy someone by making one edit. This is not what stalking is and it does not make sense. That would mean any person who happened to vote would annoy you, and that it not their problem. My interest in School of Economic Science was not sudden. The COI issue was there since 2015. This is already documented on the COI noticeboard. Travelmite (talk) 19:49, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You stalked me by following me to the Panini RfC. You claim that you selected it from a list - of hundreds - after I'd been engaged there for a week of spirited discussion. I reject this as implausible for reasons given earlier. I think you looked at my contributions list, noted my activity, and followed me there. To mark the lamppost, as it were.

The same thing happened with School of Economic Science. You saw my activity and followed me there. How else would you even have been aware of it?

That's stalking. I'd like it stopped. --Pete (talk) 07:29, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the statistics, there is a major error in what Pete/Skyring presents. If he is trying to present "stalking" he must have a start date. His start date is prior to our first discussion. His statistics include our first discussion and everything that followed. He also includes this complaint. Apparently, meeting Pete/Skyring and dealing with these complaints all counts as stalking. Therefore the statistics are vastly exaggerated and cannot be relied upon, as per my original reply. Every other interaction (of which there are two) has now been explained. Travelmite (talk) 20:01, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Whether some of the explanations are able to be swallowed is a different question, I think. Travelmite makes a vaild point here in the beginning and ending points. However, the tool looks at pages edited by both, and isn't the definitive answer. I'd put a narrower definition of stalking than Travelmite does, and say that it constitutes following another user around the wiki to cause disruption.

If we re-run the tool, setting an end date of 16 August, rather than 31 August, we can exclude this discussion we are having now, as well as Travelmite's talk page. I'll keep the same start date of 1 January 2015, because otherwise the tool labels Travelmite as visiting some pages before I did, such as Australian head of state dispute, and that is clearly wrong, because I created the article many years ago, spinning off content from its parent at Government of Australia. I think we can reasonably ignore any line showing more than a week between contributions as not being an interaction. The tool's revised output now shows Travelmite made 346 edits to the same pages as I did, about half his total. --Pete (talk) 17:19, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Request for Interaction ban

Skyring feels that Travelmite has been wikihounding him, and has presented evidence supporting same. He proposes a two-way interaction ban between himself and Travelmite in order to end this nuisance. What are the feelings of other editors? Should a two-way IBAN be imposed?

• Support IBAN (as proposer). Possibly Miesianiacal could be included, given the outrageous wikihounding by Travelmite against him in January and February this year. --Pete (talk) 22:38, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Travelmite's contributions to Talk:Australian head of state dispute were somewhat problematic, without doubting good faith there, while Pete/Skyring has been consistently tenacious (not necessarily a fault). But given the facts presented above, the proposed IBAN may be helpful to all interested parties. Qexigator (talk) 08:10, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per nom The two of you clearly can't work together in harmony, so I don't see why not. Linguist 111 ^Moi? Moi. 16:27, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Commnet - An interaction ban will do nothing to prevent Wikihounding (Please read on as I explain why). I think I need to explain what an interaction ban is and what it does so that both of you (Skyring and Travelmite) are aware of what restrictions it will impose. An interaction ban will impose two main restrictions on the two of you, first you will be barred from each others' pages (meaning talk, user, sandbox, etc) and second, probably more usefully, you will be barred from commenting to each other, pinging each other, commenting about each other, reverting each others' edits and thanking each other (through the thank user for their edit) function. What it will not do is prevent you from overlapping on any article page; you will both be able to edit any article page and join the same discussions on article talk pages. This is the main sticking point for my current oppose comment, Skyring, I believe you want to avoid not only interacting, but, overlapping with the other editor. An IBAN will not impose such a restriction and your concerns about Wikihounding won't be reasonably addressed by an IBAN. The reason I bring this up is because of Panini and Brianhe, neither of those incidents would violate an IBAN because neither of those incidents actually involved an interaction. It is because of this that I see little value in an IBAN. I think that you should (probably will have to) both wait for an administrator (Black Kite is one) or significantly experienced user to join this discussion. So far, Linguist and myself appear to be the only completely uninvolved parties to comment here and I don't think either of us meet the "experienced" threshold for this situation. Mr rnddude (talk) 23:01, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Mr rnddude! I've read your comments and appreciate the thought you have put into them. Yes, you are correct: the IBAN restrictions wouldn't prevent Travelmite from following me around and !voting in whatever RfCs etc. I participate in. That's not a problem, to be honest. All these public votes are open to all Wikipedians, and I believe the right for all Wikipedians in good standing to participate in our consensomocracy is something worth fighting for. Even if I personally disagree with the opinions expressed.

I raised the Brianhe and Panini examples as evidence of wikihounding. Travelmite gave a plausible explanation of the Brianhe RfA, and the evidence checks out. But he was unable to explain how he followed me to the Panini RfC. Well, he said he picked it from a list, but I don't believe this; since early 2015 he's participated in only three RfCs, all of which have involved me. I think I would have participated in maybe a dozen or so over that time - perhaps someone can check - out of the hundreds, maybe thousands of RfCs raised. Chances of complete congruence, if we posit only a thousand RfCs in that period, are 12/1000 * 11/999 * 10/998 , or one chance in 755 000. So I find his answer a little hard to swallow!

I want an IBAN for the following reason. In late January 2016 I accepted an IBAN (against my wishes, for the sort of reasoning you outline above). If I may be excused a minor indirect reference, both sides have adhered to the conditions, and the ANI drama dropped off. Since then I have this Travelmite thing popping up, and I'd like the same solution applied. --Pete (talk) 02:19, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I was out when you responded, and have been aware of your response for a few hours. I think I see what you're referring to, mostly what you want is to not have to interact with Travelmite regardless of whether you two end up on the same pages or whatever. I can see how this may be beneficial, even if you are being followed at least you're not also being forced to interact. I can see this being beneficial to both parties, but, only if both parties are willing to adhere to it. Otherwise the outcome will be further drama and another report either at AN/I or one of the other administrative noticeboards. For the time being I'm going to demote my Oppose vote to a Comment. I'd like to see a mutual agreement to an IBAN as this is generally the only way to avoid further drama. Mr rnddude (talk) 09:16, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Support IBAN - In early August I gave Travelmite a warning on his talk page because of his/her unwarranted aggression towards Pete. It's clear from this thread alone that both parties are fully invested in this dispute and there is a strong charge between them. An IBAN is the prudent thing to do to avoid further escalation. -- — Keithbob • Talk • 18:33, 2 September 2016 (UTC) PS I also gave Pete a warning in mid-July so neither of these parties has clean hands. I strongly support an IBAN.-- — Keithbob • Talk • 19:06, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think your comments to me were directed at a different topic (which could well be explored here under a different thread), but never mind. It wasn't Travelmite's edits as such I found objectionable, merely the fact that he'd come after me again and again. It's like having some kind of persistent parasite. --Pete (talk) 22:30, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Civility / personal attacks / End of request

In writing and responding, Pete/Skying appears to be breaching talk-page guidelines. This is a stressful series of ongoing accusations now going over four days. Various refutations of the allegations, which I have provided, have done nothing but caused increased incivility, perhaps even paranoia. Anyway, this has become an ongoing public attack, dressed up as an IBAN request to make seem acceptable to support. This is not solving harassment - this is the harassment. Details of offensive language, aspersions etc... are detailed below for the record.

1. WP:CIVIL Civility: "I find it impossible to believe anything Travelmite says", "What happened - you suddenly discover grammar?", "his dishonest denials", "this account is fraudulent"
2. WP:CLAIMS Excessive claims: "most of what Travelmite has done here is to harass Mies and myself", "Both articles were, prior to Travelmite's involvement, stable articles", "you jump in, aiming to annoy me", "It is an unhealthy fixation", "Travelmite has focused his attention squarely on me to an astonishing degree" (So Freudian!)
3. Wikipedia:Casting_aspersions: "always with a contrary position, always creating discord", "it's as if someone just flipped a switch", "This account edits via Chinese proxies" (wrong), "not subscribe to any RfC notification service", "This is not the usual manner in which editors begin their service here."
4. WP:TE Tendentious editing: "That's plausible, but it raises the question of what you were doing arguing COI at all", Replying to most comments with the same information, Refuting all comments that disagree
5. WP:FAIT Erroneous Conclusions/Fait accompli: "There's only one explanation" (there's more), "It is impossible to explain them as random chance", " I see the Panini edits and the Brianhe RfA as smoking guns" (they weren't).
6. WP:OUTING (partial): The country where I work was revealed due to WP:DOX Doxing
7. Wikipedia:Inaccuracy Statistics erroneously included this complaint and the initial interactions.

That's more than enough to get the idea. Someone should have picked up that this was happening. In conclusion, the IBAN request is moot. My "punishment" is a self-imposed block, so I can get real work done. Bye!

P.S. Linguist111 - good luck as your experience builds. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Travelmite (talk • contribs) 22:43, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry if you feel upset. I'm just trying to clear up the differences between us. You say you have refuted the points I made, but on examination, this turns out not to be the case. Let's take your points one by one.

My comment, "What happened - you suddenly discover grammar?" was not a personal attack. There is nothing wrong with your grammar now. However, the contributions of this account prior to late January were very different. It is plain to see. It is as if a different person were contributing, one who wrote in a very different way. (See [41][42][43] for examples). Likewise in Wikivoyage, we see tortured, stilted English, such as this example. The contributions in articlespace were very different to what followed. Most of the year's contributions came on two days, and they were markedly different from anything done since. So what explains the vivid change? --Pete (talk) 06:21, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Skyring: "What happened - you suddenly discover grammar?"—that was a personal attack, and with the comment above you appear to be gaming the system by "walking it back" instead of apologising. Travelmite, I'm sorry for suggesting you should be blocked; I was too hasty and didn't address the situation properly by listening to both sides first and looking closer. On observing the situation, what's evident is that we have someone who feels they're being hounded, and someone who feels they're on the receiving end of false accusations. The two parties are not reaching any common ground, and this is turning into a battle between them. If Skyring feels an IBAN is necessary to cut off all contact from Travelmite and put an end to this dispute, then I see no reason not to go ahead with it. Linguist 111 ^Moi? Moi. 11:13, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry? How is that a personal attack? I'm asking for an explanation of the two very different styles of English before and after late January 2016. I've provided samples of the first style; it is strained, the syntax and punctuation (particularly commas) are ungrammatical, it doesn't flow. Try reading it out loud; it is choppy and stiff. In comparison, the account shifts to a more natural and grammatical style in late January. I won't say it's poetical, but it certainly reads more fluently. The change is immediate and dramatic. Combined with a likewise dramatic shift in contribution patterns, it seems to me that this one account has been run by two different people, and I'm wondering if there is some explanation for this, perhaps something to do with the use of Chinese proxies. --Pete (talk) 11:49, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It seems like a personal attack to me. It looks like a sarcastic comment about someone's intellect. Linguist 111 ^Moi? Moi. 12:02, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's a comment on grammar, not intellect. We can see for ourselves. Before:

There such a long discussion about it. There must be someone here who is objecting to it being changed? Look, let me put it this way. At the moment, your are thinking only in US current-affairs mode. In South Africa, white people once got an unequivocal privilege to vote, so that alone is probably enough to justify the wording. If there is a political proposal, fictional world or legal case involving or clearly allowing such privileges, it's also enough to justify the wording. I also checked also how it's handled in other articles.[44] - 21 December 2015

After:

None of the sources support this notion of a dispute except for some minor monarchist-republican debate in the late 1990's. If it was just that, no problem. But the government position is clear. The Queen's position is clear. The academic position is clear, in that they reasonably distinguish between de jure and de facto roles.[45] - 28 January 2016

The difference is clear. --Pete (talk) 16:22, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Whatever it was, it was still an attack. Linguist 111 ^Moi? Moi. 18:13, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Not intended as such. Perhaps more my sensitive soul being injured at the mishandling of the English language I see in the early Travelmite contributions. To my eye, such prose grates. At least the later contributions are easier to understand. --Pete (talk) 22:40, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Statement to Travelmite: I support your closing statement above. Perhaps you could have been more polite in your defense. But you are not the main troublemaker here squandering community time and good will, Pete/Skyring is. You’ve understood that the way you have attempted to deal with disruptive behaviour may be counter-productive and can jeopardize your own standing. Your decision to disengage from Pete/Skyring from now on is the right thing to do. If it comes to any more of his disruption, please now go straight to ANI rather than ignoring it. Your contributions to School of Economic Science have moderated Pete/Skyring’s disruption there, and have therefore made Wikipedia a better place. I don’t know of your past missteps, and assume you are as capable of changing your ways as anyone is.
• Statement to Administrators: I am not going to participate in Pete/Skyring’s vote proposing the imposition of equal discipline on both him and Travelmite. First of all such a double ban would appear to be a way of consoling Pete/Skyring, by getting someone else disciplined with him soon after he was last disciplined: [46] Secondly the vote could be a case attention-seeking; per WP:DEM, Wikipedia is not a democracy and afaia ANI is a place for Administrators to take action, not to spend hours in debate about whether "he did it too". Travelmite says he wasn’t given a warning before this ANI, so he'll take this as his first warning. Besides, he has now voluntarily disengaged from Pete/Skyring, as I did several weeks ago.
• Possible action part 1: A future step could be a topic ban on Pete/Skyring to stop him disrupting the articles where Travelmite attempted to stop him causing disruption. On that note, Panini was a Sanskrit scholar; Sanskrit is taught by the church, school, cult or new religious movement known as the School of Economic Science, which Pete/Skyring says he is a member of. So the two articles are part of the same area of interest. Something needs to be done to prevent his continued disruption to this project. If Travelmite is stepping back, an Administrator needs to step up, otherwise this ANI will not be the last of it.
• Possible action part 2: It is important to assess whether some of Pete/Skyring’s allegations against Travelmite in this ANI have been false, defamatory to him and time-wasting for the community. The allegations have involved a personal attack, as explained by Linguist111 (who had been supporting Pete/Skyring’s case). Pete/Skyring then argued with Linguist111 about it being a personal attack. These allegations also come so soon after Pete/Skyring’s own last block, which he told the sanctioning Administrator Floquenbeam “was a little hasty”, that one of their assumptions was “plain wrong” and therefore asked to be unblocked: [47] It matters little whether Pete/Skyring is deceiving himself, or attempting to deceive others, or both; he’s clearly not learning to change his ways, despite ample opportunity as indicated by his long block history: [48] Another multi-week block may be in order. -Roberthall7 (talk) 15:53, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

One thing I've noticed is that both Travelmite and Skyring are saying "I've done nothing wrong. It's all [the other editor]'s fault.", so it's hard to tell who is actually in the right here. Skyring has made blatant personal attacks. Travelmite has been accused of stalking and hounding. If Skyring feels they've been hounded, I don't feel I'm in a position to say they haven't. It may have been Travelmite's intention to hound Skyring, or there may have been no intention at all. Linguist 111 ^Moi? Moi. 16:24, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Um, I don't recall saying I've done nothing wrong. I'm as human and fallible as the next person, and I frequently make the most appalling errors. Just ask my wife. I'm a big boy and can accept that. What I want is for Travelmite to cease his vigilante quest against me. Let him seek other targets. Clearly he is a person of some intellect and determination. --Pete (talk) 16:39, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Let me say this about Roberthall7's contribution above. S/he only edits on one subject, and s/he has some distinctive views. I would dearly love to get a busload of neutral editors to go through the School of Economic Science article, untangle some of the sources, and provide a counter-balance for any extremist voices. --Pete (talk) 16:39, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

What I meant was you both seem to be putting the blame on the other person. Linguist 111 ^Moi? Moi. 18:10, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think I have good reason to be critical of Travelmite's actions. From my perspective, he's come here, seemingly out of nowhere, and launched attack after attack on me. After seeing Travelmite's outrageous attempt at outing Miesiniacal, I think I'm justified in being wary. I could list the many personal attacks Travelmite has made on me. Would that be useful, do you think? --Pete (talk) 22:40, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, go ahead. Linguist 111 ^Moi? Moi. 09:29, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Further statement to Administrators: With this edit [49] Pete/Skyring slipped in the above new section heading. He has positioned it immediately above my comment, which now gives observers the impression that the section heading was added by me. So he's edited my comment. As indicated in my comment, I was specifically replying to User:Travelmite's closing remarks his section entitled Civility / personal attacks / End of request and addressing Administrators about it; I had no wish to comment outside that section. Moreover Pete/Skyring's section heading is a phrase that he has homed in on from my comment, and a question mark added, which appears to be yet more sarcasm. It doesn't reflect my full comment and distracts from it. If ANI discussion is treated the same as Talk page discussion, then this goes against WP:TPO, WP:TALKNEW section 'Keep headings neutral' and WP:VANDAL section 'Talk page vandalism'. -Roberthall7 (talk) 19:50, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Roberthall7! You began your contribution on the left margin, rather than following the indentation rules, so I assumed you were responding to no previous comment, just opening up a new section. So I gave it a heading to avoid confusion. No offence intended, just trying to keep things straight on what is becoming a complex discussion. I liked one of the phrases you used, thought it kinda catchy. Never mind. I've deleted it now, fixed the indentation, all sweet. --Pete (talk) 22:28, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think we need to clarify what Pete's allegation against Travelmite is. The claims about the change in grammar and the use of Chinese proxy accounts imply that Travelmite is a hijacked sock puppet. Based on the grammmar, Pete seems to think someone else (with better grammar) took over the original Travelmite account. I'm not sure why someone would do this when they could just create a new account. As I understand it, the reference to Chinese proxy accounts implies that someone is trying to hide his or her identity. However, it appears Travelmite is actually in China, and has made China-related edits. I don't think Travelmite has been behaving like a sock puppet because when he started editing Australian head of state dispute he appeared to have just found the article, and made an inaccurate statement he had to retract. I would have thought that a sock puppet would be used by someone familiar with the article. The obvious suspect for puppet-master would be me, as I appeared on the scene a few months before and got into debates with Pete. Is that what Pete is suggesting? If not, then the talk about grammar and the Chinese accounts seems irrelevant.--Jack Upland (talk) 10:45, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Well, kind of. I don't think the account is hijacked, but the only explanation that makes sense to me is that it was set up as a "sleeper" account, and for a year it made nothing but trivial edits - adding articles to a category using an established list, and moving some text around in another article. Basically, the account had two days of editing in its first year. And then suddenly everything about it changes. The nature of the edits, the frequency of contributions, the style of language used. It's a metamorphosis. Nothing I've ever seen before.

Using Chinese IP proxies allows the account to operate without the usual sort of checks. Because of the nature of Chinese internet, proxies are used to reduce the chance of being arrested for what we would consider normal activities. There's none of the freedom of expression we in the West take for granted, but of course there is the desire to express freely. Chinese IP proxies are readily available and ever-changing. Just do a search and you'll find lists of dozens. These can be used by anyone in the world.

This sets up a conundrum for Wikipedia. We don't want to stop a huge and increasingly sophisticated population from contributing to our shared effort, but these accounts must necessarily operate outside the normal Checkuser procedures. There are ways to avoid even more intense scrutiny, and with the very real chance of being disappeared and used for organ harvesting, these ways are employed.

So it sets up a loophole for those who want to operate outside Wikipedia's regular procedures. Use Chinese proxies, be careful to use the right privacy tools, and you can avoid detection through technological means. I think that there is a market for this sort of thing. Not just Wikipedia, but packages of established email addresses, social media accounts, software setups and so on. You want to play multiple accounts in a MMO game, just buy the kit from a friend of a friend who knows someone who does this.

In this case, I don't think the article was the target. Travelmite's contributions didn't show any familiarity with the topic. They showed two objectives: to irritate Miesianiacal and myself.

I don't know who or why, but I do know that there are editors on Wikipedia who are driven by urges beyond the desire to contribute to the world's store of information, and I've certainly encountered a few of them in my career here. I'm sure Mies has as well. Buying or establishing a second account to satisfy some inner personal desire for revenge or whatever seems plausible to me. Not normal, but there are people on the internet who do bizarre things for bizarre reasons.

Anyway, whatever it is that is driving the Travelmite account to follow me around Wikipedia isn't really my concern. I just want the stalking to stop. --Pete (talk) 20:03, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, Jack. My comment above didn't address your question. No, I had never considered you as the sockmaster for a moment. I'd always regarded you as an honest, straightforward person. Taking a contrary position to mine on one matter, but that's no sin; I think we share views on most other Australian political issues. If I had thought you were running this account, I would have filed a report at the sockpuppet investigations page. But no, I'm honestly unable to name anyone I suspect is the sockmaster. --Pete (talk) 19:41, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I didn't feel that this was directed at me, but I couldn't think who else the sockmaster could be. As you said, the Australian head of state dispute is a fairly obscure article. Yes, people do bizarre things, but we have to look at the balance of probabilities. I think Travelmite is a bona fide editor. His early edits show a knowledge of and interest in the neighbourhoods of Beijing. This seems to confirm that he was indeed a resident of China, which explains the Chinese IP addresses. I haven't done a linguistic analysis, but I don't think that there is a significant change in language in Travelmite's contributions. His prose might be sloppy at times, but that's normal. And I don't see the relevance of this. I also don't see how you can say he came "seemingly out of nowhere". Wikipedia is not "invitation only". His story checks out. He says his interest in the topic was prompted by Australia Day (26 January). He began editing at Republicanism in Australia the next day, and then moved on to the Australian head of state dispute, probably following the link. Many people are prompted to contribute to articles based on events, anniversaries, etc. He started out making the following comment, which he had to retract: "I have checked the history of this article, and it is written by two monarchists non-Australians." Now, based on the evidence of the discussion, you are an Australian and a republican. Yet you started the article. It doesn't appear Travelmite knew you at all. He didn't arrive there to target you. It appears he stumbled on the article and was outraged at the apparent monarchist POV-pushing. I understand that, because I felt the same way. On the evidence, it appears that your darker suspicions of Travelmite are groundless.--Jack Upland (talk) 07:49, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"It appears he stumbled on the article." My italics. If you are running a sock, you don't usually want to get found out. Hence the plausible narrative. I don't think it stacks up, becuase the edits for the whole preceding year were so very different. Basically all of the 96 edits for 2015 came on two days: 21 January and 21 December. Those in January were on Chinese articles, for sure, but needed zero knowledge of China. They were just adding articles to categories according to the list already existing here. And the December contributions had nothing to do with China at all. Just a matter of moving text around. Then, nothing until 27 January, and within a day he's a full-blown warrior making attacks every day on Mies and myself. Day after day all through February and March. Displaying a familiarity with wikiprocess not explained by the unconroversial edits preceding. That's a massive change in the nature of the account. I've never seen anything like it.

But, be that as it may, Travelmite went on to follow me to various other articles. His explanation for joining the Panini RfC is thin and implausible, and no explanation at all was given for attacking me at the School of Economic Science article. Neither of those are explained by an interest in Australian political subjects. It's entirely personal. And I'd like that sort of stalking ended. --Pete (talk) 12:25, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Biasing the discussion
User: Ruud Koot has made extensive changes to nearly all Wikipedia pages concerning Swarm Intelligence, removing a lot of scholarly material and links,and replacing them with a copy and paste of disparaging remarks on the topic. Amongst the pages affected by his changes there are those related to the Bees algorithm, Artificial bee colony algorithm, Harmony search, Cuckoo search, Glowworm swarm optimization, and Firefly algorithm. He also re-arranged the Swarm Intelligence page, moving arbitrarily a large number of sections to a separate page (List of metaphor-based metaheuristics), and introducing them with a long section of disparaging remarks, often misrepresenting the views of the authors he cites (see Talk:List of metaphor-based metaheuristics).
By removing a vast quantity of information documenting the success of nature-based metaheuristics, and replacing it with his own negative opinion, he effectively biased the entire presentation on Wikipedia of an important and thriving field (6000 citations in 2015 according to the Web of Science).

Trying to have Wikipedia pages deleted
He proposed deletion of the following articles: Bees algorithm, Artificial bee colony algorithm , Glowworm swarm optimization, Intelligent Water Drops algorithm, Cuckoo search, Imperialist competitive algorithm , Fish School Search. Many of these techniques are very popular and successful optimisation techniques.

Preventing other users from restoring material / changing his edits
Myself and other colleagues in the field were impeded to reinstate our deleted contribution, as he promptly removes or undoes any change. He has also semi-protected Swarm Intelligence to hinder other contributors from making changes. When one user hijacks the entire presentation of a wide topic on several Wikipedia articles, I believe we have a democracy problem.

Lack of any will to reach agreement
Myself and other authors (User:Zwgeem and User: Aheedar) tried to no avail to ask him to respect our contributions and present the topic in a fair and impartial way on Talk:Swarm intelligence, Talk:Bees algorithm, Talk:List of metaphor-based metaheuristics, on User talk:Marco castellani 1965, and on the motivations for undos/changes in the articles.

Personal attacks / Attempts to discredit other editors

• User: Ruud Koot accused me of Conflict of Interest in User talk:Marco castellani 1965 (I rebutted his accusations), and after my rebuttal he accused me again on Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Marco castellani 1965.
• He accused User:Zwgeem of Conflict of Interest (Talk:Harmony search)
• He accused User: Metafun of Conflict of Interest (Talk:Cuckoo search)
• He accused User talk:Aheedar of being a sockpuppet of mine (Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Marco castellani 1965)
• He accused User talk:Aheedar of being a sockpuppet of User:Zwgeem
• He blocked indefinitely User: Aheedar who supported my objections on Talk:Swarm intelligence. Although User: Aheedar might have made a procedural mistake in good faith (he apparently tagged both title and content of one page), I believe his comments reflected genuine concerns and did not constitute personal attacks. I also question the rationale for banning indefinitely an inexperienced user without warnings.
• If I understood correctly, he accused User: Metafun of having 105(!) sockpuppets Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Metafun/Archive.

Interestingly, he had similar quarrels (destroyed contributions) with User: Gogol 1367 (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Ruud_Koot&oldid=732258826), and got him banned too. He seems to have a knack at upsetting people and having them banned once they make a wrong move.
I added further comments on Talk:List of metaphor-based metaheuristics and Talk:Swarm intelligence to clarify my objections, and tagged Swarm intelligence for neutrality. However, I believe this is a question of Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. Should I open a separate section on that noticeboard?
Thanks Marco castellani 1965 (talk) 16:14, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Just a few observations:

• user:Gogol 1367 made three edits, all to Koot's userpage, none of them were appropriate. So he got banned.
• Requesting a SPI isn't a bannable offence (unless disruptive)
• User:Aheedar was blocked for personal attacks and disruptive editing. A block appeal failed.
• You write "Myself and other colleagues in the field...". To me that implies you do have a conflict of interest, especially if I see the name Castellani appearing as a reference in your contributions.

Kleuske (talk) 18:47, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• I think I have a problem with Ruud's actions here. At Swarm intelligence, on July 26, he indefinitely semi-protected the page with the rationale 'persistent spamming,' but the only link in question was a link to another Wikipedia article that was inlined instead of wikilinked. That's not spamming, and indefinite protection is certainly not warranted on an article that had no previous protection log. And the block of Aheedar for NPA is excessive at least and punitive at most, not to mention these alleged personal attacks were on the talk page of an article Ruud has heavily edited. I saw a UTRS appeal of Aheedar's block and sent it back to be addressed on-wiki, and it struck me at the time as a weird block. I'd like Ruud to address these issues and explain how he believes he's not involved. Katie^talk 18:34, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Marco and colleagues have been spamming their research fairly widely on Wikipedia for years (see several of the links and contributions of account mentioned in Marco's report; these are rarely external links but instead inappropriate citations or mentions of their work). There's a line between cleaning up spam being introduced by single-purpose accounts with a conflict-of-interest and being involved, and I don't think I've crossed that line. The User:Aheedar account, like the User:Gogol 1367 account, has made little contributions beside making some personal attacks. (I'm intrigued why Marco picked out the User:Gogol 1367 account from all those who I've ever had a "squabble" with. This was a month ago, do they know each other?)—Ruud 19:23, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to see User: Ruud Koot to back up his claims.
I have re-written Bees algorithm a couple of years ago, fixing broken links and updating the list of references. Out of 31 citations, 6 were to my works, the other 25 from the team of creators and sources found in the literature (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bees_algorithm&oldid=728207831). My 6 self-citations were the first journal article on the topic, two articles on the benchmarking of the algorithm, and 3 applications of the Bees Algorithm.
I also added one section on the Bees Algorithm to Swarm Intelligence, with two citations, one was the first and most cited publication on the algorithm, the other the first journal paper on the topic (see above).
I don’t believe this is inappropriate citations of my work. According to the definition:
“Citation spamming is a form of search engine optimization or promotion that typically involves the repeated insertion of a particular citation or reference in multiple articles by a single contributor. Often these are added not to verify article content but rather to populate numerous articles with a particular citation”.
If the problem was an excessive number of citations of mine, User: Ruud Koot would have been very welcome to remove the inappropriate material, and explain the reason in the motivation for changes.
My complaint is actually about him making radical changes to several articles, presenting an entire topic under his very personal negative slant, blocking other users from making changes, and abusing of his admin role to block and harass other editors.
User:Kleuske, if you believe that it is proper that an editor requests an SPI for whoever disagrees with him, and doesn't constitute an attempt to intimidate/harass other contributors, that's fine with me. I am relatively new here, I trust the judgement of more experienced admins. However, I still believe the indefinite ban of unexperienced User talk:Aheedar without warning was excessive and retaliatory (Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers).
Regarding my conflict of interest, I have worked 20 years on Evolutionary and Swarm Algorithms, I am an active researcher on the topic, and I lecture on it. I have written several articles on the Bees Algorithm, and collaborated in several occasions with the creators. That's why I contributed on the topic on Wikipedia. If a practitioner is not supposed to write in his field of expertise, please let me know and I will refrain to contribute again on the topic. However, I find very unfair User: Ruud Koot's accusation of our contributions being "spam being introduced by single-purpose accounts with a conflict-of-interest". Most of us are experts who are here to disseminate their knowledge and findings. User: Ruud Koot is free to have his opinion on nature-inspired metaheuristics, but shouldn't hijack the entire presentation of this field on Wikipedia, and discredit the work of hundreds of researchers in this area (see also my objections to the neutrality of his edits in Talk:List of metaphor-based metaheuristics and Talk:Swarm intelligence. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Marco castellani 1965 (talk • contribs) 02:11, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• I developed an interest in this field some years ago. When I first saw examples of "nature inspired" heuristics they seemed interesting and overdue. I wrote Wikipedia articles related to this area such as shoaling and schooling, self-propelled particles and swarm behaviour and helped maintain some integrity in articles such as swarm intelligence. Most of the heuristics involved revolve around some form of collective animal behaviour. However, it has become evident that this field has been progressively spiralling out of control. Authors, often from certain regions in India, have discovered this is a way to endlessly generate articles with an appearance of academic respectability. All you need is to take some sort of interactive animal behaviour, such as shuffled frog-leaping, set up a heuristic, and you're away. However, this is at base an area of applied mathematics. Many of these heuristics have a related underlying mathematical structure, and it is these underlying structures that should really be the focus of inquiry. This is a field that will sort itself out eventually, but in the meantime it has become somewhat ragged and disorganised. In my view Ruud Koot has done the right thing by creating a new article, List of metaphor-based metaheuristics, which attempts to keep these seemingly disparate but frequently related offerings together. I gave him a barnstar for this inspiration. However I have a reservation; it is not really Wikipedia's job to sort out this academic mess. The academics need to sort it out themselves. We should merely be reporting the mess they seem to have got themselves into. --Epipelagic (talk) 06:48, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. To summarize the situation: there's a group A of academics and journals who believe these nature-inspired/metaphor-based metaheuristcs to be the best thing since sliced bread and a group B of academics and journals who see it as little more than junk science. It has been group A who has been controlling the articles in questions for the past decade (using throw-away accounts, without declaring their conflict-of-interest, and generally responding with insults to anyone who obstructs them). Macro's comments above imply they have not only been doing that, but also been doing that in a somewhat organized fashion. This is all highly undesirable. —Ruud 11:55, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

User: Epipelagic every new rising scientific field has good science and bad science, original and derivative work, gaps in knowledge, serious practitioners and opportunists who jump on the bandwagon. To tar a whole are under the brush “authors, often from certain regions in India…” seems to me extremely unfair (by the way, none of the affected pages seems to correspond to your description). In any case, I believe you are not addressing the problem here. If this was a content-related issue, I would have reported it elsewhere. If you are interested in my scientific objections to User: Ruud Koot’s modifications, you are welcome to visit Talk:List of metaphor-based metaheuristics and Talk:Swarm intelligence.
My complaint is about one admin slanting the entire presentation of an area, removing a lot of other user’s contributions, blocking other people from contributing, banning critics for specious reasons. There is no neutrality and no consensus now in the presentation of metaphor-based metaheuristics, and nobody is able to change User: Ruud Koot’s slant. Katie has pointed out as well the inappropriateness of User: Ruud Koot’s actions.
I also would be grateful if User: Ruud Koot started addressing his behaviour issues seriously, instead of smearing whoever disagrees with his views with accusations of sockpuppeting, using throw-away accounts, being single-purpose accounts spammers, insulting him, acting in organised fashion.
As a relatively new contributor to this encyclopaedia, I don’t feel this continuous sort of bullying and smearing makes me want to stay here much longer.Marco castellani 1965 (talk) 13:38, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

tl;dr. Also, bolding excessively is very annoying. ThePlatypusofDoom (talk) 22:15, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• I agree with Katie's comments about the "weird" block of Aheedar, in fact caling it "weird" is perhaps rather an understatement. The block was in part for "personal attacks" which looked to me more like criticisms of an editor's editing than personal attacks. Those edits were criticisms of (or, if you prefer, personal attacks on) Ruud Koot, so he is an involved editor, and should not have blocked, but should ahve sought the opinion of an independent, uninvolved, administrator. Even if one does share Ruud Koot's view that the edits in question were "personal attacks", they were not such gross and extreme attacks as to justify an immediate indefinite block on a new editor who had never received any warning at all that his or her editing had problems. Apart from the "personal attacks", the other reason given for the block was this edit, which Ruud Koot described as "tag bombing/disrupive [sic] editing". Yes, it was excessive tagging, but even for an experienced editor who might have been expected to know better, it would have warranted a friendly message, not a block, and to use it as part of the reason for an immediate indefintie block on a new editor is absurd. In addition to all this, Ruud Koot has protected an article where he is involved in editing on disputed issues, which he should not have done.

• On the substance of the content dispute, I don't know enough to judge the rights and wrongs of the case, but on the substance of Ruud Koot's handling of the dispute, he is way out of line. He should not be acting as an administrator in a disputed case where he is involved as an editor. His complete misjudgement of the seriousness of what he called "personal attacks" and "disrupive editing", where he imposed an immediate indefinite block for what at most warranted a friendly message, is an indication of exactly the sort of reason why we have the policy WP:INVOLVED: in a case where one is involved, one is likely to find it difficult to see things from a balanced perspective. I have unblocked Aheedar, who should never have been blocked, and I also wonder about unprotecting the article. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 11:51, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• In light of the above discussion, and similar comments made at Talk:List of metaphor-based metaheuristics, I have reviewed the content and POV dispute. I find that some of the complaints about Ruud's contributions have merit. I think he has misrepresented sources to some degree, and has inserted material or structured articles in such a way as to poison the well. However, I am not ready to assume that this was done out of bad faith. Also, these content and presentational issues alone are not matters for the administrators; they're just run-of-the-mill content disputes. I have gone through and removed, revised, or restructured material that seemed to be factually incorrect or to violate WP:NPOV. Hopefully the edits (and my explanations in edit summaries and on Talk:List of metaphor-based metaheuristics) will be to everyone's general satisfaction.
  Of course, Ruud's use of administrator tools during this dispute is another matter entirely. This seems to be a very serious breach of WP:INVOLVED. —Psychonaut (talk) 15:21, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@KrakatoaKatie, JamesBWatson, and Psychonaut: I think I should acknowledge that I was in violation of WP:INVOLVED when I blocked User:Aheedar. I'm not sure if giving the full chain of reasoning that led me to make the decision to block them seems overly defensive, or if omitting it makes this admission seem shallow. At this point I'll just say that I'll try not to let this happen again in the future. Feel free to ask if you desire a longer response.

I'll also unprotect Swarm intelligence. If anyone wants to keep this page on their watchlist, then that would be appreciated. I expect there will not be any objections to leaving User:Gogol 1367 blocked.

—Ruud 17:38, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. FWIW, I do agree that (1) a lot of these algorithms are indeed junk science, and (2) their originators may be adding citations to them on Wikipedia. The problem with #1 is that determining which research is junk science is really none of our business; that's a job for academia. The best we can do is report on the criticisms that have already passed academic peer review—and when we do, we need to make sure that the tar brush this grants us is applied neither too broadly nor too selectively. The problem with #2 is that our guidelines make it clear that not every instance of self-citation is promotional or problematic. If the topic itself is notable, and the self-citations are clearly relevant, then I've found that it can be very hard to make an actionable case for wrongdoing. —Psychonaut (talk) 19:53, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I thank you as well. Katie^talk 21:17, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Psychonaut for solving the POV dispute, I think you have done an excellent job. I added a few minor comments in Talk:List of metaphor-based metaheuristics. Thank you also Katie and JamesBWatson for being the first to see the problem. I was wondering whether it would be possible to track who was banned in the past by Ruud, and check whether the correct procedures were followed. I came across User:Gogol 1367's case by chance, and it struck me that he had a content issue (removed material) with Ruud too. I don't question User:Gogol 1367 acted inappropriately (vandalised Ruud's page), but I wonder whether he should have been first warned, had been warned, and whether the ban should have been limited to a fixed period. If any of these objections applies, we may have a pattern here. Marco castellani 1965 (talk) 12:03, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Do you really want to go there? You got what you wanted, which I assume was scrutiny of Ruud's actions in this particular area, and I'd advise you to drop the stick. If you decide to keep digging in, you can find all the public logs by going to Special:Log and entering Ruud Koot's username. I'll warn you right now, however, that any accusation of bad faith needs to be backed up with evidence and diffs. Again, my advice is to step away from the abyss and go edit an article. Katie^talk 12:21, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Conflicts of interest

I'd remind user:Marco castellani 1965 that citing your own research in Wikipedia edits is usually considered a conflict of interest according to Wikipedia's mores. If you want to include text based on your own research then you should always propose it on the article's Talk page and let an independent editor review it and make the change. There have been instances where people's real-world reputation has suffered damage as a result of being seen to abuse Wikipedia for self-promotion. Wikipedia is very different from academic publishing: citing yourself is fine in academia, not here. And if you repeatedly push your own work then it can backfire rather badly, so I strongly suggest you take the ethical approach and leave it to others to decide whether it should be included or not. Guy (Help!) 12:16, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

citing your own research in Wikipedia edits is usually considered a conflict of interest according to Wikipedia's mores. If you want to include text based on your research then you should always propose it on the article's Talk page... That's just not true, according to the very guideline you're linking. EEng 13:48, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Damn these guidelines, they keep being faffed with. Pretty clear that this is the ethical way to do it though. Guy (Help!) 14:00, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You are thinking of WP:PROMO from the wikipedia policy What Wikipedia is not which directly links to COI. Someone self-citing will have a conflict of interest, but as long as the material is neutral and relevant its not prohibited. Its actually on the bottom end of the scale when it comes to COI issues. The COI policy (WP:SELFCITE) just says you can cite youself, but you should seek community consensus if in doubt. This however is taken by some hardliners to mean that all self-cited material should be proposed on the talkpage. From taking a look at Marco's (and the articles) history, I cant see an accusation of 'link/refspamming' holds up. Its not excessive given the length of time and material and its relevant (and as far as I can tell, neutral) to the articles. Only in death does duty end (talk) 14:08, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Guy, the problem I raised here had nothing to do with self-citation. In reply, I was portrayed as a citation spammer and many of you here seem to have found this picture reassuring. I found this quarrel tiring and time-consuming, and I have no wish to take it any further. However, it gave me a good inside view into the workings of Wikipedia. Do not worry about my real-world reputation, since Wikipedia has no part in the academic debate. I will refrain from making any future contribution, and I believe this will solve all problems. Marco castellani 1965 (talk) 12:59, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Don't be driven away. Your contributions are valuable. Read WP:SELFCITE, take it to heart, and always err on the side of discussing first. If there are alternatives to citing yourself, use them instead. EEng 14:00, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

SwisterTwister (talk · contribs) has incorrectly stated to users that an interation ban is in effect when no actual formal interaction ban has occured. An example from today is located here, and another recent example is here (see also, user response here). It is inappropriate to state that interaction bans exist when they have not occurred via formal processes, which amounts to casting WP:ASPERSIONS against other users. I have noticed that SwisterTwister frequently uses the "silent treatment" against users to limit communication. Here are some diff examples in addition to those above: [50], [51], [52], [53], [54], [55], [56], [57], [58].

These behaviors could be potentially perceived as Wikipedia:Gaming the system, using such statements in an intentional manner as a technique to avoid any type of criticism, essentially trying to silence any opposition or concerns, because if a user then attempts to communicate directly about genuine, important concerns, (even in a calm, civil manner, as I have always done), the user can then just point to behavioral guidelines and threaten to go to ANI and such. I'm not stating that gaming is certainly occurring, but it could potentially be. While I understand that the user apparently just wants to be left alone, it is reasonable that questionable deletion nominations, prods, etc. will be challenged. Also, the user nominates a great deal of articles for deletion, and per this high rate, it is reasonable that some editors will have questions or concerns. The user has also requested to not communicate with me at this AfD discussion, which I have respected.

Inre this diff, it is concerning and inappropriate for the user to make demands to another user to not deprod articles they have prodded. Also, users have repeatedly asked the user to consider slowing down over a significant period of time, to follow proper procedures, etc. at ANI (here, here and here) and other than at ANI (e.g. [59], [60], [61], [62], [63], [64], [65], [66]).

In regard to performing AfC reviews, the user has many queries on their talk page from users, but rarely responds to any of them. This is concerning because reviewers should be open to providing input regarding reasonable queries from other users in relation to their AfC submissions.

Additional discussion regarding this user is located at User talk:E.M.Gregory § Re: thank you for noticing, which includes discussion about the user's AfD nominations and other matters. The discussion includes commentary from several users, including three administrators in addition to myself. Seeking community input at this time about this user's behaviors and actions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 05:23, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have notified users on their talk pages about this discussion who contributed to/were pinged to User:E.M.Gregory's talk page and those in the links above. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 06:07, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A request from one user to another not to comment on each other is usually honored, tho it is not a formal interaction ban. Even a request to let other people be the ones to deal with someone's work is not altogether unreasonable, if it can serve to decrease interpersonal problems. . Even a request to let others be the ones to deprod articles can be justified. Most of us do avoid taking even routine action against any particular editor with who one is at odds, to avoid any feeling that there might be some degrwe of prejudice or personal involvement. But I do know I would never make such statements, certainly not in the manner ST is making them--as the event proves, they are much more likely to arouse interpersonal hostility than to reduce it.

There is no formal obligation to respond to another editor whose article one has tagged for deletion . But most people do, even if all they say is "I only tagged it, please take it up with the admin who deleted it." In general it is a good idea to respond to anyone other than an obvious troll, because we want whenever possible to make sure people understand we are considering each article for its merits, not acting indiscriinatly or mechanically. (This is different from the obligation of an admin to respond about articles they have deleted, where it is considered necessary to give a good faith explanation, but that is not in question here.) It's difficult to say when carelessness in this respect becomes a problem, but I think ST needs to be much more careful here; it is indeed necessary to remove bad articles, but it is not up to any one of us individually to hold the dike; each person should do only as much as they do carefully and respond to properly. DGG ( talk ) 08:08, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Thank you for notifying me about this Northamerica1000. I often frequent AfD and AfC to a lesser extent, but I only noticed ST's peculiar behaviour at AfD when performing non-admin closures. I find it concerning that he uses the same ambiguous argument for each deletion discussion in which he partakes. Although ST describes himself as a deletionist, it is definitely concerning for me when he continues to !vote to delete articles where other editors have taken the time to improve the article. For example, here and here. The lack of care and attention really is striking and the failure to revisit deletion discussions is a disappointment. AfD is not a vote; it's a discussion, something which ST does not adhere to. I posted on his talk page as per the link above, but I received no such reply about his AfD contributions. Every editor should be open for constructive criticism for their edits, but, not in this case it seems. --st170e^talk 12:56, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment SwisterTwister came to my attention over time as I began to recognize his name because his frequent iVotes at AFD were often literally unintelligible, because his opinions were so clearly contrary to evidence that I or other editors had presented, and because articles he so often brought articles to AFD with an assertion that his searches have found no significant sources, and yet by even doing something so simple as clicking HighBeam in the tool bar in Swister's nomination statement proved the contrary. [[67]] He edits so incredibly fast that I am almost persuaded that he simply takes pages with a smallish number of sources and editors, and throws them up at AFD without searching at all - or even without reading some of them. And that his iVotes at AFD are exactly what they look like: opinions rendered without querying the sources. (Copious examples brought by several uses in discussion on my talk page [68].) The problem with all of this is not only that it wastes a tremendous amount of editorial time, but that it makes WP a frustrating and unpleasant place to work. One editor in that discussion states [69] that Swister's "belligerence" is one reason why he has stopped giving his time to editing Wikipedia. I am in strong sympathy with that sentiment. Swister cannot, in my experience, be swayed from a deletion position once taken. In Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shelley Webb, the AFD where I lost my ability to WP:AGF when dealing with Swister, I was clearly exasperated by the time of my Aug. 3 edit, the one that starts "A confession and an hypothesis..." Swister's arrogant, stubborn refusal to consider that he might have acted hastily show why I have come to the conclusion that SwisterTwister's editing is a problem that needs to be addressed.E.M.Gregory (talk) 13:47, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Question - I agree ST's "stay away from me" comments, objecting to deprods and comments/questions at AfD, are completely inappropriate. It seems that's what this thread is about, but it seems to also be about other ST-related issues? My question is whether ST saying "ok I won't do that anymore" with regard to self-imposed "interaction bans" would resolve this thread, or if this is more of an RfC/U sort of thing? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:22, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I am very familiar with SwisterTwister because I do a lot of work at AfD. I will limit my comments at this time to the issue NorthAmerica1000 raises: the supposed "interaction ban" that ST likes to invoke. As far as I can tell there are no formal interaction bans involving ST. It is not possible for a user to create one simply by telling the other editor to "leave me alone". It IS possible to say to someone, "stay off my talk page," and such requests are usually expected to be honored. But that's a user's own talk page. Things like "don't de-prod things that I have prodded," "don't comment at AfD's I nominate" - that kind of demand is invalid and frankly a little ridiculous. (Example: "Stay away from me, that means anything including DePRODing. You repeatedly violate time after time".[70]) People who routinely patrol PRODs and AfDs are going to continue to do so, and no user has the right to say "don't do that on anything I initiate". In fact, if a user feels there is a systemic problem with another user's nominations, they are entitled and perhaps obligated to seek them out for evaluation. (In ST's case, the record shows that only 58.7% of ST's AfD nominations actually get deleted, which may be a valid reason to subject them to special scrutiny.) My reaction to this report is that ST should be instructed not to claim an interaction ban when none exists, and he should be told to stop personalizing the deletion process in this way. I did comment on ST's participation in the AfD process at E.M.Gregory's talk page, but that is not the issue being raised here. --MelanieN (talk) 14:31, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Responding to Rhododendrites' question, SwisterTwisters dismissive response to questions raised by other editors is a problem, a particularly destructive problem for the project when he is interacting with new and new-ish editors. But it is only one of the serious problems with this editor.E.M.Gregory (talk) 14:48, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• To be clear, I know there are a number of issues. My question was primarily to clarify the scope of this thread, as bringing in his style of AfD comments and AfD stats broadens the topic from behavior towards other users to the content/style/manner of project contributions. ST has a number of detractors, based on previous ANI threads, and without a clear scope this might spin out of control and end with an overly complex or radical proposal fails to find consensus. FWIW. Maybe I'm wrong, though. :) Might be useful to have subsections for the different issues if they're all to be tackled at once, though. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:02, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• I agree with MelanieN, and would add that not wanting to interact is one thing, but outright stating that one is on a ban when they are not, especially on a forum that potentially the whole community will see, is bang out of order. That can do severe (perhaps irreparable, as some people really do believe there's no smoke without fire) damage to their reputation. When he said I'm on such a ban, I assumed he had me confused with someone else; had I been aware of the other cases, I'd have brought it to ANI myself. I have other issues with ST (such as apparent WP:OWNership of edits, as others have mentioned), but I think that's the main one being addressed here, so I'll leave my comment at that for now. Adam9007 (talk) 16:14, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• My personal feeling is that this discussion should be just about the so-called interaction bans. Rather than expand this into a huge discussion of all the issues that people have with this editor, that should probably happen in a different venue (possibly AN?), and with a more comprehensive introductory complaint.--MelanieN (talk) 17:03, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• The one-sided auto-established interaction bans (of whom I am one of the members) are just a minor part of User:SwisterTwister's long term WP:IDONTHEARTHAT attitude. Actually, while there are a lot of problems with this editor, the worst thing is their consistent refusal in engaging any sort of discussion and their apparent rendering any critic as an annoying drama or as a personal attack, because this dismissive approach precludes anyone from improving their contributions and understand their mistakes. When someone tries to engage a discussion in their talk page, the usual response is ST's ignoring the message, deleting it or accusing others of having a personal grudge against them, then in a mixture of self-absolution and victimhood the next step is ST's asking others to stay away and not deprod or vote in AfDs started by them because the votes are in bad-faith. For anyone thinking this could be true, I just looked at my interaction record with ST, and 100% of my keep votes at AfDs started by ST were eventually confirmed by the final outcome. What I requested to ST during my discussions monologues basically was 1) making a minimal WP:BEFORE before nominating articles for deletion 2) Notifying the articles' creators of his prods and AfDs 3) Slow down their activities, including do not mass voting AfDs but on the contrary making more meaningful and relevant comments in the discussions. Not just I have not received any answer to the issues I raised, in spite of the same issues being raised by dozens of experienced editors and admins I have not noted any minimal improvement. I keep in seeing a very bad record as AfD nominator with articles often kept per lack of WP:BEFORE, a lack of notification both for prods and AfDs, and mass-votes at AfDs generally consisting of an ultra-vague and often unintelligible sentence. Everyone makes mistakes and everyone has a potential for significant improvements, but in a collective work such as WP this unwillingness to discuss, the inability to hear others and the proofed refusal to improve their behaviour are massive problems. Cavarrone 15:15, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment My personal read is that User:SwisterTwister's behavior is tolerated by WP policies. You can nominate and propose for deletion as much as you like. Vote to delete everything. You can ignore and be rude or belligerent to other editors. You can be incomprehensible and make stuff up. You don't have to worry too much about policies such as WP:BEFORE because it is difficult to get a consensus that you've violated them and there is disproportionately small consequence for violation. On the other hand, everything I read in the WP:DISRUPT lead appears to apply in this case (including especially the WP:AGF statement in the second paragraph). Policies aside, we need to try to make WP a better place and so perhaps we need to look at applying the remedy described in the WP:DISRUPT nutshell: "Disruptive editors may be blocked or banned indefinitely." ~Kvng (talk) 16:55, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A 6 month topic ban from all the deletion-related areas should cover it. They can use that time to try and be more productive elsewhere. Only in death does duty end (talk) 17:02, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I would urge everyone to limit their comments to the topic laid out in the complaint, namely, telling other editors they are not allowed to comment on anything he does. No evidence for this kind of remedy (block/ban) has been established here, either in the introductory complaint, which was pretty much limited to the "interaction ban" claims, or in followup comments. As I said above, this broader discussion would need a different type of thread, possibly at AN, with a more comprehensive introductory complaint. I have an opinion on the block/ban suggestions and would state it at a more appropriate venue, but IMO this is not the place. --MelanieN (talk) 17:15, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

May, April, February. SwisterTwister has been here repeatedly this year due to people having issues with them. This is not an isolated incident. Generally the complaints are the same, ST works too fast, does not take enough care, not open to discussion, does not perform due diligence etc. Only in death does duty end (talk) 17:24, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The original WP:GAME complaint brought here is an individual instance in a pattern of WP:DISRUPTive editing. I think it is more productive to discuss the pattern here. We have had previous ANI discussions to deal with the individual instances. If we continue with the same approach, we should expect similar results: discussions that fail to reach consensus. ~Kvng (talk) 17:49, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The U5 was by a user massively removed my Draft nominations who never even consulted with me. Second, a topic ban is not solving the case where I was politely and firmly asked that the user distance themselves to which they agreed to at the Comfort Keepers AfD, stating they acknowledged and understood my thoughts. The subsequent following of me and even rollbacking my contribs thus notifying me in the notifications, took away the purposes of said agreement. SwisterTwister talk 17:27, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Alternately, repeatedly making shoddy nominations which you know are going to be picked up by someone who regularly comments at AFD is inviting trouble. Dont want someone commenting on your AFD's? Stay aware from AFD. Only in death does duty end (talk) 17:32, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Offer Hi all, sounds like maybe I've had less interaction with SwisterTwister than others have, but in the extent to which ST and I have worked together, it's been pretty constructive (e.g. successfully resolving an issue of a rejected draft in one case and a contested redirect/merge in another), and at the same time WP:BEFORE is an issue that's been on my mind a lot lately, so if I can be of help to talk this out to a resolution that satisfies everyone, I'm happy to volunteer myself to try. (Partly I'm also motivated to try to assist in this way because I share Kvng's desire to improve the overall WP atmosphere.) I'll leave a message on ST's talk page to this effect in case ST does not see it here. Innisfree987 (talk) 17:33, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• I'll note I have even spent time away recently as my contribs will show and also then focusing with AfC in hopes the user would not come near me, yet it continued so my message had not gone through. Thus, after my repeated requests and comments, I was not confident anything would get the message through, especially if I have noticeably noted it causes me stress, something someone should take to mind, especially if they have agreed to it themselves. SwisterTwister talk 17:49, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

SwisterTwister, you are talking as if this was just about one person, and claiming they agreed to stay away. But this is not an isolated thing, not about just one person. In the nine links posted above by NA1000, I find "you have been told to stay away from me" comments to five different people (most of whom respond with something like "Huh? When did that happen?"). In one case you put something that sounded like a threat in your edit summary: "I have specifically told you to stay away, final time"[71] In addition to those five users to whom you said they were banned from interacting with you, there are two others and an IP where you were are less assertive but still saying "keep away from me". This is a pattern with you, and the message you need to get here is, YOU CAN'T DO THIS. Stop pretending you can impose some kind of interaction ban based on your say-so alone. It doesn't work that way. You can't tell people they are not allowed to remove your PRODs or comment at your AFDs. We are looking here for some assurance from you that you understand this and won't do it any more. --MelanieN (talk) 19:06, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I know it involves more than one person, but the person most severe here still insists in being around me and my contribs when they know they are not welcome to be that close to me; I am certainly willing to assure and have this closed; but I want it to also be understood that I can't work calmly knowing a user is following me that closely and insistent, because it has become WP:HOUNDING. SwisterTwister talk 19:19, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Even if it you have an issue with one person in particular - what about the other seven people you said the same things to? You need to get the message here that this is a PATTERN with you, that it is NOT ACCEPTABLE, and that the community is likely to take some kind of action if you persist in not hearing what people are telling you. --MelanieN (talk) 19:32, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Your accusations of hounding are baseless and bordering on unsubstantiated personal attacks. They are not following you. If you raise an AFD, anyone is eligible to comment on it who is not under a restriction from doing so. That you do not want them to is irrelevant and something that is your problem to fix. Either by editing in an area you know they do not frequent, or learning to interact with people you disagree with. Even if you were in a formal interaction ban with another editor, this would not prevent them necessarily responding to an AFD you have created, provided they abide by WP:IBAN Only in death does duty end (talk) 19:25, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• User:SwisterTwister, unsurprisingly that's exactly the kind of WP:IDONTHEARTHAT frustrating response which I described hours ago in my post above. Instead of addressing the issues which were raised here (first of all, accusing editors of violating interection bans which do not exist) or elsewhere, your replies just ignore the issues, depict yourself as a victim and accuse the others of bad-faith and wiki-hounding. Will ever there be a chance of accepting a critic as genuine, and discussing it, and starting/trying to improve, let alone admitting some of your actions were maybe wrong? I am frankly skeptic. Cavarrone 19:24, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Add Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ektron (4th nomination) to the data set, where I explain to ST that WP:CONSENSUS is a policy, and ask for an explanation of the "talking to the closer" routine.  What I think will be found with analysis of the circumlocutions, deflection of discussion, and vague to non-existent deletion arguments, is a conscious effort to avoid statements that can be reduced by the force of reason.  I stand by my statement there to ST, "I suggest that you put more effort into preparing a high-quality nomination..."  That would include visible use of WP:BEFORE including at least one WP:DEL-REASON in deletion nominations.  Unscintillating (talk) 00:37, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Unscintillating, why am I not surprised to find you commenting about something that is not relevant to this main thread? Please stay away from discussing things pertaining to AfD, per CIR ("keep because it was kept before" is a pretty good indication). Drmies (talk) 01:26, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • The nomination before the 4th nomination is the 3rd nomination, which is a No consensus.  The nominator states that the article "was deleted the previous AfD".  ST could have redacted himself, but didn't.  Unscintillating (talk) 02:26, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• SwisterTwister (talk · contribs), admin here. It's simple. You claim interaction bans prevent some editors from commenting on you or, worse, dePRODding articles you PRODded. No such bans exist, so you cannot invoke them. Is that clear? As much as I've worked with you and appreciate your good work, I will not hesitate to block you if you falsely invoke such a claim again--those claims are disruptive and unsettling. Please don't go there again.

  I will give you another unasked for piece of advice: rightly or wrongly you are under continued scrutiny for your work at AfD and at AfC. This problem here is of your own making, and the result of it is more continued scrutiny. Bad idea. If problems are of your own making, perhaps you should try making them go away. Maybe you should consider a mentor, someone to talk to. Good luck. Drmies (talk) 01:43, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Some thoughts: Telling someone to leave you alone is not a ban on them in any way, and SwisterTwister should not be treating that as though it is a ban. I understand how annoying it is to have people following you around objecting to everything you do but you can't forbid them from doing that just by telling them not to. Regarding the previous ANI threads regarding ST, consensus at all of those was that ST wasn't doing anything wrong. Those threads shouldn't be used as ammo against him now; they prove nothing except that he gets inclusionists' dander up, and that's more often a good thing than a bad thing. ST had a weird way of expressing himself, but I seldom have trouble understanding what he means. Those claiming he's "incoherent" are overplaying their hand. I'd like to see him put more thought into their AfD comments, sure, but I have also observed that we seem to have infinitely more patience for bizarre and nonsensical keep votes than for bad or formulaic delete votes. Reyk _YO! 11:08, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Excuse me? Please look at the comments above, which are replete with links to SwisterTwister's comments at AFD, comments that truly do range from meaningless to incoherent. Many minor articles are closed with a tiny number of iVotes, which all too often includes an iVote by SwisterTwister that exhibits no evidence of having searched for sources, and no evidence of familiarity with the topic. And are you seriously claiming that getting editors "dander up" at AFD is a positive good? From my perspective, the intransigence and BATTLEGROUND attitudes at AFD are among the most repulsive aspects of the project, one that certainly drives editors away.E.M.Gregory (talk) 21:45, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Speaking of "overplaying their hand", Reyk, you are misrepresenting the case when you say that at the three previous ANI threads, "consensus at all of those was that ST wasn't doing anything wrong." There was no such consensus at any of them. The actual closes were "no consensus" May, "no consensus to implement topic ban at this time… The short of it is that there is a problem, but it hasn't yet reached the point that a topic ban is required" April, and "NO ACTION" February. --MelanieN (talk) 15:28, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm basing my opinion on a reading of the whole discussions, not just the closing statements. The one from February, for instance, closed as "No action" because there wasn't anything resembling a legitimate complaint. Reyk _YO! 17:15, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Even ignoring your battleground mentality and the lack of AGF, describing the previous ANI discussions as "deletionists vs. inclusinonists" querelles is also a plain mischaracterization, the issues of ST in other fields than AfDs (eg. patrolling new pages in two previous ANI threads and failures in interacting with other editors in the current thread) show how the problems go beyond your simplified and inaccurate depiction. Side note, WP is full of "inclusionists" and "deletionists" who do not crash with other editors, raise criticism or collect ANI threads. Cavarrone 18:04, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well that's unnecessarily hostile. Reyk _YO! 20:33, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• The aspersion at the first example I provided atop remains in place at the open AfD discussion. It would be nice if the user would consider striking the offending part ("interaction ban"). If not, perhaps an uninvolved user (e.g. not myself) would consider doing so. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 00:31, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Without implying opinion on this ANI discussion nor any thoughts regarding any statements made here, I have striked out the statement in the AFD. Regardless of how this discussion ends or if anything comes of it, I felt that in the pure context of the AFD discussion itself and in order to help keep the discussion on-topic (aimed towards building a consensus regarding the article's deletion rationale), as well as bearing Adam9007 in mind (he violated no interaction ban), I agree with Northamerica1000 (as an uninvolved editor) that striking that statement out and declaring that no interaction ban exists is the appropriate and right thing to do. ~Oshwah~^{(talk) (contribs)} 01:56, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• I support either (a) mentoring or (b) a temporary limit (2 months) on SwisterTwister nominating more than 15 articles per week. This is due to his reckless nominations causing a tremendous amount of time loss. Having gone through a chunk of his edits, I'd say he is a extreme deletionist. I view his editing style as being detrimental to the confidence of content creators who are newbies. Alternatively, I'd say a 1 week block is in order. If SwisterTwister is allowed to continue editing as normal after this thread, I will view that as a sign of contempt towards content-creators by the wiki community. 92.19.186.75 (talk) 15:16, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • IP, blocks are meant to be preventative, not punitive. A one week block would do nothing but punish SwisterTwister. You haven't even attempted to give any evidence that his patrolling isn't a net positive, and you've completely ignored the fact that most of his work, is in fact, very good. Omni Flames (talk) 22:51, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • What we'd like to prevent is further disruptive editing. I agree that SwisterTwister makes positive contributions. I think it is clear from this and previous discussions that there are also negatives. We're not trying to assess his net contribution; There is no formula for that. We're trying to decide if administrative intervention is appropriate to address the disruptive editing. I expect this pattern to continue and so I believe it needs to be addressed. A ban on delete activities will potentially allow us to see proportionally more of the good contributions from SwisterTwister. ~Kvng (talk) 23:07, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
      • I just stumbled on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Deirdre Macnab SwisterwTwister iVote in an AFD he asserts that he had PRODded. I do not want to chase productive editors off, I have been inappropriately attacked on this board, and it feels awful. I truly do not know how to handle this. But I increasingly see it as a sort of WP:OWN]], not unique to SwisterTwister, but perhaps too prevalent among editors who have worked so long and hard on these pages that they have seen it all and think they know it all. I do know that it is wearisome, discouraging, and probably chases new editors off and makes others so fed up that they leave.E.M.Gregory (talk) 01:40, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
        • Voting to delete something he prodded (I subsequently deprodded it and MSJapan then AfD'd it) seems consistent and reasonable. What's the foul here? ~Kvng (talk) 15:50, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• The issues largely arise due to ST's deletion-related activities, and communication with him with respect to these. The quality of ST's PROD and AfD contributions is poor, to the point of appearing to indiscriminately claim subjects are clearly non-notable and lack coverage simply because the articles concerned have have maintenance tags on for some time, in some cases with sources that strongly suggest notability available on the first page of a Google search, and usually with a deletion rationale that makes little sense. This is disruptive, as is ST's refusal to interact with/take notice of anyone who challenges his behaviour, and is wasting the time of a lot of other editors. A topic ban from deletion-related activities as suggested above would likely allow ST to focus his efforts in areas that cause less stress all round. --Michig (talk) 18:18, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

na1k is a inclusionist. st is a deltionist — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:387:5:805:0:0:0:76 (talk) 00:51, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not an "inclusionist". For example, I have performed over 5,700 page deletions on Wikipedia in an administrative capacity. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 05:45, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• A topic ban on all deletion discussions, broadly construed, is warranted. The users history of contributions in AFD are, as a whole, not constructive. Further participation in AFD by this user would be damaging to the healthy discussions required for AFD to function. The user repeatedly shows a lack of understanding on deletion guidelines and policies, a combative attitude and it is now reaching the point of disruption. Best would be for SwisterTwister to voluntarily agree to such a ban, and continue as a wikipedian in good standing that contributes constructively in other areas of Wikipedia. -- 1Wiki8........................... (talk) 07:34, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose any permanent or longterm topic-ban for ST. For one thing, any TBan for him should be short-term like three to six months (because he does in fact contribute constructively in AfD discussions he has not initiated, and is sometimes one of the few people who !vote on many discussions), and for another thing, as MelanieN has pointed out, this is not the scope or the point of this ANI. Softlavender (talk) 07:51, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The scope of this ANI discussion needs to be the pattern of disruptive editing in deletion activities. If someone needs to start a new entry here with that scope, so be it but we're here and deep into it now so let's finish this thing. There have been alleged instances of carpet bomb style delete voting with marginally comprehensible justifications by ST. The fact that he is sometimes the only one to comment in AfD discussions makes these potentially disruptive contributions more concerning, not less so. ~Kvng (talk) 15:30, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the ping, Softlavender. As I said above: there is no justification for discussing a topic ban or block in this thread, because no evidence has been presented IN THIS DISCUSSION to support such an action. Some people are recommending this, apparently based on other previous discussions where other evidence was presented, but those were all closed as No Consensus or No Action, and no new evidence has been presented here. If somebody thinks there is justification for a topic ban, either from AfD discussions generally (which I would oppose) or just from nominating articles for deletion (which I might favor), they would need to start a discussion on that subject, probably at AN rather than ANI, with diffs and other evidence to support the recommendation. What we are waiting for in this discussion is 1) a recognition from ST that he cannot unilaterally ban other people from interacting with him and 2) a promise to stop talking that way. ST has not commented here in several days, and if he doesn't respond satisfactorily soon, I would recommend this be closed with an official warning from the community: that he will receive temporary/escalating blocks if he makes this kind of comment again. --MelanieN (talk) 17:02, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I know that I'm probably heading off topic here but, from your description, I find it concerning that so much concerted effort is required to address a pattern of abuse. I would like to see it addressed and I have the wherewithal to complete the work you have requested but I am a WP:VOLUNTEER who would prefer to spend my time improving the encyclopedia. Collecting or searching out and reporting evidence against a disruptive editor is the kind of notfun project that tends to dampen my enthusiasm for working on Wikipedia. I suspect others may have similar feelings and so the disruption will continue. ~Kvng (talk) 15:14, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well, you can make it a formal proposal (subheading) here if you want, based on past history and without a massive collection of diffs. There are certainly others who feel the same way. Personally, if ST doesn't respond here in the next couple of days, I am going to formally propose what I suggested above. --MelanieN (talk) 16:23, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• warning (17:10, 31 August 2016) not to do so after a first removal of the {{in use}} template at Canonic Variations on "Vom Himmel hoch da komm' ich her" (17:00, 31 August 2016)
• removing the template again (17:13, 31 August 2016)

Pinging Bishonen as I read something about editing conditions on Mathsci's talk page which seems like Bish knows more about, and I'm not going to investigate (probably totally unrelated to this, but nonetheless). --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:31, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Mathsci notified --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:34, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Can an admin undo this edit and explain to Mattschi to please respect "in use"? Tx. --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:37, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Francis Schonken's current editing restrictions resulting from his edits to articles on Bach's sacred music. Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive925#Francis_Schonken's_disruptive_conduct_is_preventing_content_creation_on_Orgelbüchlein

I am the principal creator of Canonic Variations which has stayed in a stable state since its creation at Christmas time in 2009 (when I learnt to play the variations on a famous German Christmas carol). In addition I created the lilypond files from which the midi audio files were created (now on commons). Francis Schonken is not creating new content but fundamentally modifying a stable article to suit his own preferred format for sacred organ music by Bach. He has not sought any consensus. As fate would have it, I am the main editor on wikipedia who has created content on sacred organ music by Bach. I reverted his edits per WP:BRD because I did not think his changes benefited the reader in any way. He did not respond on the talk page but reverted. That is not how BRD works. There has been no prior discussion and I fundamentally disagree with his edits. Why has he not explained himself?

On a previous occasion (see the link above), Francis Schonken made similar edits to BWV 625 in Orgelbüchlein, one of the 46 chorale preludes described in detail in that article. As a result of my ANI report and his disruptive editing on other articles on Bach's religious music (eg BWV 4), he was limited to IRR per month. He has tried here to circumvent this by adding an "in use" tag to the article while not adding new content. Then as now he was simply removing material he dislikes (text and images) and reformatting my content. Why has he not had any discussion on the talk page of the article to explain what his thinking is (beyond what he wrote about BWV 625)? This particular article has stayed stable since its creation in 2009, so the large scale reformatting without adding new content is unprecedented. I do not own the article but I disagree with the changes Francis Schonken made. He has given me no opportunity to discuss his radical changes to a stable article. He is repeating the conduct that led to the previous report. (Orgelbüchlein is still being created as the to-do list on the talk page indicates.)

I am currently busy editing BWV 39, at present creating hundreds of lilypond files off-wiki which result in audio files like these:

These take a long to time to create because every note of every instrument (including the figured bass, for which I use two recent scores) has to be encoded, checked, voiced with a soundfont and modified for barqoue articulation/dynamics, etc, etc. The new techniques I have learnt in this exercise apply equally well to the audio files in Canonic Variations which can be recorded as permanent ogg files with baroque organ sound fonts. Unlike midi files these ogg files do not rely on readers' software. BWV 39 was originally written using CD liners instead of academic books. I am gradually correcting that. I have made just under 450 edits to that article. I started by adding a large number of new sources to replace the CD liners.

I have no idea why Francis Schonken has not entered into a discussion on the talk page of "Canonic Variations". Escalating things to ANI is a strange thing to do, without prior discussion. His editing restrictions arising from his edits to articles on Bach's sacred music are still in place. The same type of edits as he's making now were what precipitated those restrictions. Perhaps he could explain here why he has not started a discussion on Talk:Canonic Variations on "Vom Himmel hoch da komm' ich her". I know the material and sources very well and am surprised to see a stable article so radically changed in this way. I'll keep asking the same questions. Why has he not discussed this on the talk page? Examples of new content are edits like this on BWV 39: [72] and this on Orgelbüchlein: [73]. In that case I add in use tags for the sections. Mathsci (talk) 18:59, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Which "recent scores" are you using for the figured-bass realisation, Mathsci? Are you sure that they are out of copyright? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:45, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

In all I have consulted six sources, including old and new vocal scores, but have invented the figured bass myself as rudimentary chords, using what I was taught as a schoolboy about realising a figured bass. Two recent explicit realisations, which have complicated right hands, have been useful for guidance; equally well Bach's own autograph manuscript, written a full tone lower. The right hands have to be simple and unobtrusive so as not to interfere with the two alto recorders. Mathsci (talk) 21:31, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Again, can an admin please undo this edit and explain to Mattschi to please respect "in use"? Tx. --Francis Schonken (talk) 19:29, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No. Have you read Mathsci's comments above, posted half an hour before you repeated your request? The only way this will be resolved at all is for you to discuss the matter. So discuss. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 20:03, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Re. "Have you read Mathsci's comments above, posted half an hour before you repeated your request?" – Yes, they are totally unrelated to my request. The only slim analogy I see is that Mathsci asks to be left alone when working on articles: that's what I ask too, for a few hours (when there is an {{in use}} template). --Francis Schonken (talk) 03:30, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I say no, too, and concur that discussion is the way. Since Francis Schonken pinged me: yes, I know about Mathsci's editing restrictions, I formulated them (at the behest of the community) and here they are. It doesn't look to me like they have any relevance to this kind of conflict. Bishonen | talk 22:31, 31 August 2016 (UTC).[reply]

@Bishonen: there I read:

"I would be far more careful not to overreact. I would state problems with edits dispassionately and carefully avoid any personal comments about editors. I would be careful to show that my edits on talk pages are there to help other editors as much as to discuss improvements to the article. I would strenuously avoid giving the appearance of belittling other editors with different skills."

At WP:TALKNEW I read:

Don't address other users in a heading: Headings invite all users to comment. Headings may be about specific edits but not specifically about the user. (Some exceptions are made at administrative noticeboards, where reporting problems by name is normal.)

Then, these are Matschi's talk page comments [74], starting with the section header "== Francis Schonken's edits ==", followed by his opinions against me. That doesn't look like "dispassionately and carefully avoid any personal comments" to me. Could you please address this situation? Tx. --Francis Schonken (talk) 03:30, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• This is obvious gaming. Francis, you can't use the in-use template to evade your 1RR editing restriction, namely "Francis Schonken is restricted to one revert per page in any calendar month. The restriction is to last 6 months and applies to all pages except his own user and user talk pages." [75]. Mathsci is indeed by far the principal contributor (97%) to the Canonic Variations on "Vom Himmel hoch da komm' ich her": [76]. The in-use tag and this ANI filing constitute classic WP:GAMING, and if I were you I'd withdraw this ANI before it WP:BOOMERANGs on you. You're merely re-engaging in the same disruptive editing which got you that 1RR editing restriction in the first place, and on an article by the same editor [77]. Pinging Johnuniq and Voceditenore for further review. Softlavender (talk) 03:46, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for providing those links which show that FS needs to proceed differently. Nevertheless, Mathsci should follow the "dispassionately and carefully avoid any personal comments" advice above—there is no need for an article talk page to have a section with a user name in its heading. I can understand Mathsci's frustration, and his suggestion about the six articles that might be created is good, but both sides need to reduce drama and find a way of making the same content points without the commentary. Johnuniq (talk) 04:19, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well, these two can't seem to stop insulting each other. Mathsci just reverted Francis on Orgelbüchlein with the edit summary "it's not very bright classifying organ music as instrumental" [78], when in fact organ music is obviously instrumental (not vocal), since an organ is a musical instrument. I believe this violates the promises that were the conditions of his unblock [79]. Pinging Bishonen, who unblocked and made those conditions. Softlavender (talk) 06:53, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Oh, come on, Francis. No, you shouldn't address other users in a talkpage header. But people do it all the time, because it's one of our least-known rules. When people do it, it may be appropriate to ask them to stop. But it's not a "situation". Bishonen | talk 04:28, 1 September 2016 (UTC).[reply]
• The problem is Francis is under 1rr which means they *cannot* revert any reversion when they are working on an article. Mathsci is perfectly well aware of this so knows that a single revert will prevent Francis from continuing when working even when making minor changes. The use of the 'in use' template is a reasonable response by Francis so they can work on an article without having to resort to offline editing. 'In use' is used extensively precisely to prevent knee-jerk reverts from interfering when an editor is making changes - clueful editors know to wait until they are finished then judge based on the final result. I dont see from the edit-cycle above that there has been a reason provided for reverting other than 'I dont like it, you need to justify making changes', which is pretty much the essence of ownership. In Francis' case it means if anyone just ignores the in use template, he has to stop working straight away. At this point I think a 2-way interaction ban between the two should be considered, its clearly becoming disruptive, and as Softlavender points out above, has degenerated to insult edit summaries. Either that or topic ban them both from the area and let someone else deal with it. Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:32, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Isn't Only in death taken from the same fantasy novel series as Anroth? I already privately discussed your editing with arbitrators (and Bishonen), particularly the false allegations you made about me in a previous ANI request. This is more of the same. Mathsci (talk) 09:23, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • Oh what a surprise, you once again (I think this is the second or third time actually) make reference to an account on another website in a blatant outing attempt. But by all means, continue to attempt to out me in violation of policy. Shame your 'report' has gone precisely nowhere because it was completely baseless. Only in death does duty end (talk) 09:30, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
      • You've lost me there. Are you talking about www.bach-cantatas.com? Mathsci (talk) 10:30, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The thing is, Francis added the in-use tag while making a completely undiscussed 1,000-byte deletion [80], as if the tag would somehow give him impunity from reversion of his undiscussed mass deletion and subsequent complete re-working of an article Mathsci has built from the ground up. This is exactly the same sort of mass disruption and bulldozing he was engaging in on Orgelbüchlein, which got him his 1RR restriction [81]. Mathsci rightfully reverted the mass re-working once he logged on [82], and Francis spuriously "warned" him in an attempt to circumvent his 1RR (not to mention WP:BRD): [83]. The major and mind-boggling infraction is Francis's and he should get a further sanction beyond his six months of 1RR. Mathsci probably needs some sort of warning or sanction for his ludicrous edit-summary insult (and for the gratuitous "Isn't Only in death taken from the same fantasy novel series as Anroth?" above), but the problematic editing is by far Francis's on this particular article. I don't know that an IBan would work because they rarely do and because of the two editors' overlapping interests; and since the offending party is clearly Francis here we may want a one-way IBan or a topic-ban on Bach's sacred music as was proposed in the last ANI: [84]. -- Softlavender (talk) 09:46, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A two-way iban would prevent either from reverting the other. If anyone *else* has issues with Francis' changes, they will soon show up. Large edits are not by themselves 'disruptive' and I have still yet to see a credible reason against Francis' work (which would be out of scope here anyway as a content issue). BRD is for unrestricted editors, when you apply it to editors under a 1rr restriction its completely pointless because all the reverting party has to do is not discuss and there is nothing that can be done about it. Really the only alternative that would stop the issue between them is just to ban one or both of them completely from the topic area, as anything else (as has been clearly shown) is just going to end up in gaming the system. Only in death does duty end (talk) 09:54, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There was no gaming in Mathsci's two edits -- Francis made massive undiscussed changes and Mathsci reverted him to the status quo ante. This was completely acceptable under Francis's 1RR restriction (which was designed for just such undiscussed mass changes and bulldozing that were the reason for it in the first place). The gaming was all on Francis's end, and I'm beginning to think he added the nonsensical in-use tag for his massive undiscussed changes specifically in order to bring Mathsci to ANI (in this silly unwarranted thread) and to goad him. The problem from the beginning has been Francis, and in my opinion Mathsci should not be IBanned because of Francis's misbehavior. Softlavender (talk) 10:05, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• (Non-administrator comment) I find it odd that FS wasn't immediately blocked for essentially admitting, by opening this discussion, to trying to game the system in order to get around his editing restriction. My reluctance to call for harsh sanctions against long-term contributors who usually act in good faith (even if they are wrong a lot of the time and can be incredibly aggressive in defending their wrong edits) is the only thing causing me to say he should be given a block of between one day and one week, and keeping me from suggesting that the restriction should be made indefinite, or broadened. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:37, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

As someone who doesn't know much about the history here I have 2 comments. Firstly I agree with Ultraexactzz that it seems to me this should have been discussed more rather than brought here.

But I'm also not sure I see a reason not to respect the 'in use' tag. The edits don't seem so harmful that they require immediate reversion like BLPvios. If Francis Schonken and Mathsci were editing at different times, it seems to me the dispute over inuse would never have happened. (Well I don't know how often each person edits but I presume theres at least ~ 7+ hours a day when they generally don't edit when sleeping, eating etc.) Mathsci is free to revert edits they feel are harmful after Francis Schonken has stopped presuming Francis Schonken isn't asking for an unresonable timeframe for the inuse tag.

If Francis Schonken makes a large number of edits and quite a few of them are harmful and it's too difficult to assess each one they may have to accept wholesale reversion of their edits. It's the risk they take whenever they are editing (since it's always possible no one will notice their edits) but even more so when they are insistant on people respecting the in use tag. (In other words, I'm assuming Francis Schonken understands the isuse tag means if they can make some clearly helpful edits along with others which seem more questionable ones, there's a risk it's going to be difficult enough to sort the good from the bad that all their edits will be reverted and isn't going to come here complaining about all their edits being reverted when they are the one who partially created the situation by making a large number of edits and asking people not to edit while they were doing so, meaning that others didn't notice the problems until they were done and it was too difficult to try and sort the good from the bad.)

Nil Einne (talk) 13:01, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Re. "...this should have been discussed more rather than brought here" – Note that Mattschi immediately removed the talk page section I had opened about this on their user talk page (17:17, 31 August 2016), which they are of course perfectly allowed to do, but indicates "not open for discussion about this on my talk page", ANI being the logical next step.

Re. "... I'm assuming Francis Schonken understands the isuse tag means if they can make some clearly helpful edits along with others which seem more questionable ones, there's a risk it's going to be difficult enough to sort the good from the bad that all their edits will be reverted and isn't going to come here complaining ..." – Of course, I understand completely. --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:12, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Timeshift9 (talk · contribs) is displaying clear WP:OWN at Mike Rann (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). he refuses to let me edit the article, even when correcting for factual uncited errors that I discussed on the talk page, as per [85] and [86]. he had previously claimed relevant citations were on Rann Government which they are not. he has now insisted I will continue to revert until such time. In my years on Wikipedia this is clear WP:OWN , insisting that all edits must be pre-approved by one user. he accuses me of WP:POINT when I am correcting errors of fact.

A few days he made repeated attempts to discourage me from editing [87] and also threatened for admins to sort me out LibStar (talk) 03:34, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I can't believe this contributor is so one-eyed! I am disputing the changes considering their repeatedly mischievous and increasingly POINTy past-few-days-of-history with the article (see article edit summaries and article talk page contributions - ensure when doing this everything is noted rather than skim-reading it and forming a potentially misguided conclusion). As their changes are disputed they require a consensus. If they believe their intentions have been and shown to be consistently pure and they have displayed required valid corrections, then perhaps they should wonder why after all this time, still nobody else has come along and agreed with them yet. Where's the consensus replies from other contributors that they believe they deserve? "Build it and they will come"... or WP:DONTBEADICK and they will come? Clearly they have not convinced anyone... perhaps they should reflect on their behaviour as to why this is. Their initial attempts to make changes were met with evidence to the contrary, having to correct them around six separate times for six separate wikipedia guidelines! It is clear that once this decade-long user experienced six guideline corrections in a row, they increasingly turned POINTy. Again, to anyone who looks in to this, I implore them to read the article edit summaries and article talk page contributions to see how much this user continued to change trajectory after each guideline correction. Massive glass jaw/pride it would seem... it's clear they just cannot handle being corrected, particularly repeatedly. If they're right, they would get that consensus and this would all go away. So they should ask themselves why that hasn't and isn't happening...? Timeshift (talk) 03:34, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've added my two cents to the talk page of the relevant article. You should both be discussing sources there. I don't see any WP:OWN issues but there has not been best practice editing. SPACKlick (talk) 04:27, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) I did put an edit warring warning on both your talk pages because both parties are warring. This is a content dispute that should be handled through dispute resolution as the talk page hasn't had input from outside editors and the issue isn't getting anywhere by the constant reverts and changes. -- Dane2007 ^talk 04:29, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

But it is clear that when a change to the status quo is disputed/reverted, it is up to the user making that change to gain talkpage consensus, and until that time, they are required to leave out their change. I'm not going to play their increasingly tedious POINTy games. I corrected them on the first six issues they raised with the correct guidelines - six times - which they didn't even acknowledge each and every time, and became increasingly POINTy which is clearly observable on the article's talk page. After the first six times correcting their incorrect understanding of wikipedia's article guidelines which made them increasingly POINTy, I had every right to disengage. I don't deal with tantrums nor should I. If they are so sure they're right and not being underhanded then they should be able to easily manage consensus without me. As they're so sure of themselves, they shouldn't have any issue waiting for consensus from other users - very reasonable. I drew the line and refused to continue to play their increasingly tedious games. After I provided half a dozen corrections to their first half dozen issues, they admitted you were encouraged to look deeper/be POINTy. I'm not going to and am not required to continue playing their games. I'm not going to go around playing your reference games. If they're right they'll get consensus from others. But it won't be from me which all things considered is justifiable - if anyone disagrees, just read the article's edit summaries and article talk page contents. No reasonable person would continue to hit their head against that particular brick wall. Timeshift (talk) 04:52, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I suggest both editors take a deep breath and drop the edit-warring behaviour. Skirting around 3RR will just get you sanctioned. Might I suggest an RfC or other DR approach? Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 08:01, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I created Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Beauty pageants yesterday to create a central place to view AFD nominations relating to beauty pageants. Johnpacklambert (talk · contribs) @Johnpacklambert: has listed approximately 70 biographies for deletion over the past week or so - that is only those that are open and not those that have already been closed of which there are many, many more. There is a consistent pattern here of nominating articles en masse (not a mass nomination but 5+ can be nominated in an hour, as an example) with significant issues - a person's state is mentioned incorrectly [88] (person was Miss Alabama USA not Georgia), [89] (person was Miss Colorado USA not Nevada - name also spelled incorrectly), or the title is incorrect [90] (contestant was in the Miss America system not Miss USA) - evidencing that little effort has been put into reading or researching the article at hand. There are numerous examples of other editors questioning these AFDS [91] [92] [93] [94] [95]. Johnpacklambert is extremely dismissive and appears biased towards the subject and often ignores the sources available - a prime example is nominating an article about the current Miss USA national titleholder [96]. Some of the notifications - like that of Natalie Pack above [97] completely overlook the main reason for notability and show zero evidence of even a simple Google search.

He is currently making claims as to how to view their notability and acting on them without any prior discussion - e.g. "For state pageant winners we should require sources that cover the person without any regard to their winning a state pageant." [98]. There are accusations made about sourcing in these articles that are blatantly untrue - see [99] where he claims "Others are from Diamond Bar sources, which is where she is from, and is the ultimate in local coverage. Another is a media interview with her. Interviews with the subject do not count for passing GNG, only articles about the subject." whilst ignoring articles from People and Daily Mail.

Numerous editors have tried to discuss this with him but he invariably just deletes the discussion from his talk page. I will admit I did revert one instance of this earlier today without realising that that is not allowed - I've taken a very long hiatus from Wikipedia and wasn't aware of that. However I find this behavior very poor because in my eyes he's trying to dodge attempts at discussion rather than engaging on it. See [100] [101]. He has a habit of doing this on other issues as well [102].

It looked like attempts to reason with Johnpacklambert to slow down and allow editors to assess and work through the backlog of AFDs had succeeded as there were none made between 28 August and today, however it has started again with six created today, including one nomination that does not explain what has changed from a previous AFD that is only a few months old [103]. With every day - literally every hour it is getting harder to get control of this out of control AFD situation and work through and research each article. At the current time there are 77 open AFDs. I accept that not all meet WP:GNG but they are all being treated by Johnpacklambert as though they are equally non-notable with dismissive nominations which in many cases contain inaccuracies and evidence of no attempts at research. The Wikiproject has been exploring a guideline but thus far isn't getting anywhere [104].

I will be the first to admit I haven't always handled myself very well in this situation - I've said some things that weren't overly polite which is poor. However I'm frustrated and feeling like I've been hit with the proverbial hurricane with this battering of AFDs and trying to cope with so many. We badly need some time out to take stock of where we're at with this without further AFDs being created at such alarming speed and I request assistance with this. --- PageantUpdater (talk) 07:25, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

So, what are you asking us to do? Ban Johnpacklambert from opening AFDs because their opinion as to who meets GNG differs from yours? The above are all listed as separate AFD pages, so anyone is free to express a conflicting opinion on any or all of these pages (it's not like a mass RM where a bunch of dubious requests were piled in with some good ones with the clear intention of forcing them all through together). None of the pages will be deleted unless there is consensus to delete them (or at least, I don't think the majority of admins would delete an article based on a nomination that they determine to be flimsy and that received no traction among other editors). If it turns out that a lot of people agree with your interpretation of GNG and disagree with Johnpacklambert, then maybe opening a bunch of AFDs with a rationale that others disagree with can be brought up as a reason for potential sanctions, but I'm not seeing anything here but one user's opinion that this or that article should not be deleted. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:23, 1 September 2016 (UTC) (Comment withdrawn 13:20, 1 September 2016 (UTC) )[reply]

• I support a block or a moratorium on the amount of nomination Johnpacklambert can do. Or a temporary topic ban from nominating pages for deletion. His editing pattern seems disruptive because the rapid-fire nature of his nominations appear to suggest he has not done sufficient research on whether a page is notable. Inevitably this leaves the researching to the content creator who may have a short wiki-break and may not be able to contribute. Or it leaves the hard work to editors who may wish to save the pages. However raid-fire nominations are almost always bad because trying to save a single page takes enough time as it is but trying to save dozens or scores in a matter of days is impossible. Such editing patterns exhibit a disrespect for content creators and frankly I believe that not doing anything about Johnpacklambert is a disservice to content creators. Pwolit iets (talk) 11:45, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment yes a block or moratorium or both is exactly the sort of thing I am requesting. Sorry it wasn't more obvious, I had thought that would be clear but I guess not. And yes a lot of my frustration comes from the fact that if he channeled all his time & efforts into being constructive and improving articles he sees issues with we could get somewhere, instead I'm spending a large part of my spare time at present sourcing articles and dealing with this stuff - where it's clear he hadn't even bothered to ready or consider an article on its merits and is still arguing the point in the face of overwhelming opposition and what seems like clear common sense it gets pretty irritating. Not everything is worth saving there are definitely those that don't have enough coverage to pass GNG and they can be deleted or redirected., I'm putting time into those where there is a clear claim to notability but I simply cannot keep up with the stream of new nominations to figure out what belongs in which group and then make the necessary edits. 77 nominations is clearly a huge backlog and it seems never ending because it jumps every day. --- PageantUpdater (talk) 14:18, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Wow, bad editor makes bad edits. We're talking about a guy who was almost indeffed for the Amanda Filipacchi mess he created, and then almost indeffed for BLP violations and edit warring. And now he's AfDed more pages in a month than I've AfDed in two years, or than most people AfD ever. While AfDing a lot of articles in a short amount of time isn't in and of itself a reason for sanctions, there are a number of troubling things here.

1. Most of the AfDs are in a single topic, burdening people like PageantEditor who edit in that topic
2. Factual errors in the AfD such as not even getting the state of the pageant right
3. Nominating people solely because they won a state beauty pageant, even if their noteriety comes from other things
4. Renominating articles that have been kept kept (i.e. closed as "keep" rather than "no consensus") within the last year
5. A complete lack of WP:BEFORE that segues into a complete ignorance of GNG. Even if you don't do the Google check for sources, you should at least examine the sources in the article. He's nominating articles that are sourced from such places as People and Vanity Fair magazines, the Today Show and CBS. It appears his mass AfDing is motivated by a personal belief that state-level beauty pageant winners don't belong on Wikipedia even if the source material in their articles would pass GNG. (And, FWIW, @Hijiri88:, there IS a strong backlash by editors to this interpretation of GNG)

At a minimum, I support Powlit iets's suggestion that a moratorium be placed on his AfDing, and perhaps that a moratorium of 2-4 weeks be placed on his editing period. pbp 13:07, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough. I didn't actually look at many of the AFDs, and the topic area is so far outside my area of interest that I don't think I would have understood the rationales anyway. I just didn't see much of merit to the OP's essentially saying "this user made a bunch of AFDs in a short period of time and I don't think the pages should be deleted". Obviously I agree that, at least in theory, opening a bunch of AFDs at the same time is not a good idea, but sometimes people have opinions about GNG that can actually prove the better interpretations of the policy, so sanctions solely because of a bunch of AFDs that haven't been closed yet seemed inappropriate.

That said, I wrote the above without trawling through the subject's prior edit history so I had no way of knowing, for instance, that he narrowly escaped an indeffed twice. You appear to know more about this than me, so I'm gonna guess that you're probably right. Stricken.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 13:20, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

WP:Fait accompli would seem to apply here, which came out of a similar situation of mass AFD noms in the same project area. --MASEM (t) 16:44, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Masem: Correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't the application of this something like, "Just because one article is deleted, doesn't give an editor license to nominate similar articles for deletion so quickly that they can't be fixed or even assessed?" pbp 17:12, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Going off the first diff in the second paragraph above ( specifically [105]), I read this as Johnpacklambert asserting there is clear grounds to delete these based on an established guideline, and going at nominating en masse, despite several problems with said nominations (either easily fixed things in articles or improper nominations) that cannot be addressed reasonably en masse at the volume they are being put to AFD, thus forcing the fait accopli. --MASEM (t) 19:56, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment I want to comment as someone who has dipped a toe into this arcane and highly contested area after coming in via AFD. I see the fundamental problem as a conflict between a very small number of editors who are intensely committed to beauty pageants, and what appears to me to be an even smaller number of editors who cannot see notability here, and who get so irked with editors who create pages on pageant winners that they sometimes work to delete without assessing the individual beauty claims (honestly until I waded into this I had no idea how many beauty pageants there are, most are multiplied by 50, and are annual, so....). I personally view winners of state and of minor national pageants as non-notable - except as a list of names on a page for the pageant, but when I happen on one I do try to assess it honestly, because some of them have a quirk that garners extraordinary coverage, and others go on to have significant careers. But here's the point: I always regret weighing in; the Sturm und Drang in some of these discussions is extraordinary, and to me it always feels like a great fuss over a very insignificant quesiton. The ONLY solution I can see is to BEG more editors to look at that discussion, in the hope that by bringing in enough people with a wider perspective and no horse in this race, we can come to some sort of consensus on what the outcome should be in a typical AFD in which a young woman wins a state pageant title, is covered in her home state and in one handful of national articles, then is mentioned a year or 2 or later in the context of the title she once won. e.g. Kaitlyn Tarpey, a current AFD. Perhaps a significant number of editors weighing in could create a consensus and reduce the recurring ability of this area to waste time and generate an enormous amount of anger and resentment.E.M.Gregory (talk) 20:49, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - Having seen this sort of thing with several tiers of Filipino pageants and lists of unrelated participants I AfDed (mainly due to the fact that they were promotional for the "franchise holder" more so than they had useful information to ascertain the level of the pageant as required), there are specific policies in place for notability of beauty pageant contestants, and what happens is that the people who really like the whole pageant thing disregard them entirely. We have many articles that say literally nothing about a contestant other than she won a state-level pageant and competed in Miss USA. Our policies say that isn't acceptable (one needs to place, if not win), and as a general rule, being a contestant doesn't guarantee an article. A lot of these contestants fade into relative obscurity afterwards, so there's just nothing there that isn't effectively FANCRUFT from dredging personal data. What this is indicative of is a war of content - you either have content that should be here because it exists somewhere, or you have content here because it meets the policies set forth for content. Instead of nitpicking at an AfD for an incorrect state, maybe that's indicative of a basic factual problem with the article? Multi-noms certainly mean other people had issues with the article in question as well. In short, an editor's behavior and the quality of an article are two different things, and if the article itself is not in accordance with the policies it should be in accordance with, then any editor has the right to AfD it, regardless of what their behavior is perceived to be. If the articles are bad, they'll disappear. If they aren't, they'll stay. MSJapan (talk) 21:22, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I have no issue with articles where there is little or no coverage and thus no hope of passing being nominated, most are being redirected at present and that's fine. That's not the issue here. What there is a problem with is that in amongst the 70 odd nominations are many that are being dismissed out of hand by JPL, where there are plenty of sources, and notability can be established, but with so many to trawl through they are falling through the gaps. We need time to sort out the current lot. Often we're told that there is no news coverage in the nomination yet I can find 10+ articles. Some of the nominations are for clearly notable people but he's made up his mind that because they are titleholders there's no notability - ignoring many other factors. See Wikipedia: Articles for deletion/Deshauna Barber Wikipedia: Articles for deletion/Natalie Pack, Wikipedia: Articles for deletion/Nancy Redd Wikipedia: Articles for deletion/Nicole Johnson (Miss California USA). --- PageantUpdater (talk) 21:43, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

IMO, the piece de resistance is still Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Talyah PoleeWikipedia:Articles for deletion/Talyah Polee (3rd nomination), where he a) nominated something that was only recently closed as keep, b) mixed up the states, and c) initially misspelled in the nomination. Two and a half weeks in and with eight keep votes and only JPL expressing a deletionist stance, I don't understand why Nancy Redd was still open. I have closed it as SNOW keep. pbp 22:04, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I actually can't believe I forgot that one but that's a symptom of how many there are and how hard they all are to keep track of. Agree that Talyah Polee is the best example of his clear bias here --- PageantUpdater (talk) 22:11, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think you mean Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Talyah Polee (3rd nomination). Nil Einne (talk) 22:17, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that. pbp 22:48, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

As far as bias goes, all I'll say here is to check out the language used here in this AfD nomination. FWIW, there were references from NPR, People Magazine, the BBC, the UK Daily Mail, the New York Daily News, the London Daily Telegraph, and Today that were already in the article at the time the AfD nomination was opened. Ejgreen77 (talk) 23:31, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• I do see what you mean, I weighed in at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nancy Redd and it is a perfect example of what goes on with these articles, not least the fact that the article was kept because of the random fact that I stumbled on it and invested time looking for sources sources; something that happens less often than one might imagine. JohnPackerLambert not only brought it to AFD, he returned at my request only to dismiss what I thought were persuasive sources, but did not return again when I brought even more persuasive sources and requested that he take a 3rd look. However, there is less than exemplary behavior on both sides. User:NewYorkActuary weighed in with this comment [106] not only at Nancy Redd, but at what I took to be every pageant-related AFD then active, but note that she did not leave a link ot the discussion she mentioned. This has the effect of making editors back off, but does not bring editors into the tiny circle that discusses these issues at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Beauty Pageants.E.M.Gregory (talk) 00:00, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• I referred above to an active RFC on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Beauty Pageants, which drew only 8 editors, 4 pro and pro con. I truly think that a few more editors weighing in might establish some sort of consensus, or rule of thumb on what it likely to make a pageant winner notable. Or not.E.M.Gregory (talk) 23:46, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Done, and, I likewise encourage others to do same. Innisfree987 (talk) 03:18, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment A-the notice of this discussion was placed in a manner that I had to scroll way down the page to find it. B-the attempt to say that making a mistake here or there should disqualify my participation in AfD as a nominator ignores the fact that over and over again these pages that I have nominated have been deleted. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Michelyn Butler, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Robyn Johnson, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Melissa Ann Young and I could go on and on and on. Attacking me on the Tara Wheeler nomination is particularly odd since in that case the article was deleted because the article was found to not be worth having. On the more general issue of stating my views on inclusion well, A-I stated them at an RfC seeking a general consensus on this matter, B-there is no rule against stating a coherent policy, and it is better than just leaving people in the dark as to your thinking. Considering in the case of the Natalie Pack article I mentioned and linked to source not in the article, claiming this shows no evidence of any searching is incorrect. I am still not sure how it is "blatently untrue" when I correctly state the sources include extremely local coverage and a source that is just an interview with the subject. Making incorrect edits on Wikipedia is not grounds for banning a user. To treat nominating articles for deletion as something we should penalize is a horrible idea. It is far too easy to create articles on Wikipedia, much easier than to delete them. It does not require editing 3 pages, posting some sort of reasoned reason, and waiting weeks to see if there is some sort of consensus. Nominating articles for deletion is so difficult that for years I would come across articles that I was 100% sure came no where near meeting the inclusion criteria but I would do nothing because the 3 step process is so much a hassle. So allowing such a discussion to exist just as an attack on someone for nominating lots of articles for deletion makes no sense at all. The "numerous" editors mentions are 3, one of which has previously been told to stop placing any edits on my page, and this one engaged in such behavior as calling me "childish" and saying I needed to grow a "spine". Purplebackpack has again showed his hate toward me. He previously called my intrepretation of GNG "perverted". Now he has called me a "bad editor". This is the editor who created a nomination to block me from editing Wikipedia on Christmas day, in a way that suspiciously suggested he was hoping to rush it through during the hollidays. He comes back and is constantly trying to drum up hate against me. How else can I interpret him refering to me as a "bad editor". It was recently shown in the discussions on Hugo E. Martinez and Carol F. McConkie that his interpretation of GNG is not the one that is generally accepted. A review of those discussions will show Purplebackpack engaging in hounding editors with whom he disagrees. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brenda Brabham shows a discussion where I make a nomination and never make any sort of comment in response to later comments. So if we have someone engaged in disruptive behavior, it is not me, but Purplebackpack. If we have someone engaged in behavior that should not be allowed, it is PageantUpdater who calls another editor "childish" for removing insulting posts from his talk page.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:53, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Only three editors? Since August 16, the following editors complained about your AfDing of articles, or the related issue of mass-redirecting pageant holders, at your talk page: 1 (MYS77), 2 (Fenix down), 3 (NewYorkActuary), 4 (PageantUpdater), 5 (me), 6 (GRuban), 7 (PratyushSinha101). Maybe you've lost count because you delete the comments on your talk page without addressing their concerns. Setting aside the fact that you've nominated 77 articles for deletion this month and I've nominated 50 articles in the past two years, I can point to plenty of discussions where similar articles to McCorkie and Martinez were deleted. But my behavior isn't the issue here. Yours is. And, yes, considering your block for a gross BLP violation (a BLP violation that would have gotten most other editors indeffed), I think the characterization of "bad editor" is quite fitting. Considering your push for deletion of articles that are sourced from such sources as GQ, People and Vanity Fair magazines (at least one of which was in the article you claim had only local coverage, hence PageantUpdater's blatently untrue), "perversion" of GNG seems appropriate. It speaks volumes to me that you haven't even address the most egregious allegations (namely, the complete shoddiness of your nominations), instead basically saying "Hey, look over there!". pbp 02:20, 2 September 2016 (UTC) PS: deletion is a lot faster with Twinkle[reply]

• • A - I copy pasted the coding above. I'm sorry if I hurt your scroll finger.
  • B - That's not the issue. The issue is the speed with which you are nominating these articles without regard to checking for sourcing etc. You're making it impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff. Not all articles are worthy of being kept but some are and you're making almost no effort to check for that. Re the Tara Wheeler deletion - my comment is nothing to do with the result of the deletion, simply that it's further proof you do not read the article properly before nominating as you have very clearly put the wrong competition. It wouldn't have made a difference in the outcome but it shows how indiscriminate you are.
  • C - I do find it highly childish that you choose to delete unfavourable comments on your talk page. But I have stated at least five different times that I was totally unaware about the policy surrounding this. I am sorry for the undo but I did not know that I was not allowed to do that. I do accept that policy but I don't have to like it. I find it disturbing that it allows you to present a very one sided and false image to those who visit your talk page. The very many disagreements that other editors have from you have essentially been expunged to show yourself in a more positive light. Well that's how I view it anyway. I would have had more respect for you if you had engaged in the discussion rather than deleting it. Those are simply my views though, the only part of that relevant to this discussion is that you choose to delete discussions rather than discussing with other editors. You might have the right to do that but it shows a lack of willingness to cooperate with others. As PBP says, maybe that's one reason you can't remember just how many other editors have taken issue with your deletions.
  • D - I'm not asking you to stop making deletions indefinitely, just to hold off to allow the current backlog to be properly researched. And I'm asking you to be more careful in making nominations and to actually bother to do some research yourself first per WP:BEFORE which you clearly have not been following. --- PageantUpdater (talk) 02:26, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment -- I would not support a ban for someone doing AfD work; it's counterproductive (one look at CAT:NN will suffice). However, I would suggest letting the backlog at beauty pageants page work itself down to at least half of the current size before nominating more (let's say 35). It appears that several editors have some frustration that there are too many nominations to be able to review them properly.

Side comment: It's a shame that participate at AfD is so low; I would encourage everyone reading this thread to take some time and review a few nominations a day. K.e.coffman (talk) 04:38, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• • I wouldn't support a ban for someone doing AFD work either but that's not what we're talking about here: we're talking about abusing AFD work or at the very least being highly negligent with their AFD work. Otherwise I agree with your comments. --- PageantUpdater (talk) 05:02, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• I do not find the editor's work to be "highly negligent". That's an over-statement, IMO, having observed their nominations for a while. K.e.coffman (talk) 05:53, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment It is really time someone calls Purplebackpack on his continued insulting of other editors. His calling people "bad editors" is just not acceptable behavior. I sometimes think that some of his bigotted and hateful language only appears that way, but when called on it he never tries to explain that he did not mean it to be as insulting as it came off as, he always just tries to justify it. And yes, his behavior should be called into question. If people can object to creating AfD discussions then they should expect other people to call them on the attack behavior they engage in. Multiple editors specifically called Purplebackpack's behavior with regards to the deletion discussion on Octaviano Tenorio unacceptable attacks on editors with the potential effect of diminishing contributions. That is the sort of behavior that should be talked about here, not typos in nominations.John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:09, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

While I did make a lot of contributions to that AfD, you'd have to twist NPA to find anything that was a personal attack. As I seem to recall, JPL, there were a lot of people who weren't a fan of your behavior on Octaviano Tenorio either. Or of Carrite's (who went around refactoring my comments for kicks). Or of a lot of other peoples'. And instead of addressing why it was somehow acceptable to do the things you've done, you've called me bigoted without any diffs. pbp 13:38, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Carrite did not do it for 'kicks', they did it because you kept Bolding your Delete comments which gives the impression of voting multiple times. Given your badering there, (and yes you were not the only one) that was the least of the issues. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:50, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

What's all this then? pbp 13:56, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment As is common from Pageantupdater he engages in disingenous bait and switch tactics that are designed to be as insulting as possible. Some of the people he mentioned above said absolutely nothing about nominations related to beauty pageant winners. They were related to one line, one source articles on football players. If PBP is going to insist that the one and only criteria is GNG, then there is no way these articles passed GNG, and thus no way for him to attack my nominations. However more to the point, this was about articles related to one particular topic. To through in nominations related to another topic is entirely unfair. Of course fairness is not expected from a person who at one point joined in trying to ban me from Wikipedia because I had added to the a pornographic actress category a person whose biography said in the text of the biography they were a pornographic actress. Closely connected to this is the assumption that saying that about a person is a BLP violation, yet if one expects articles on pornographic actresses to actually be held to BLP standards and need sourcing from reliable sources they are accused of trying to "censor Wikipedia."John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:22, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment at issue is your abuse or negligence of the AFD process. I can only speak on the issue of pageants because that is where my interest likes however it is highly relevant that others have reported similar behaviour regarding other topics. --- PageantUpdater (talk) 05:28, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Not entirely sure what pornography has to do with this. Also, diffs please instead of just innuendo. As for football players, the reason they are getting kept is that there is an SNG, based in the fact that, while the sources may not be in the article for even "cup of coffee" players, they exist somewhere. Did you even try to look for the sources before AfDing? pbp 13:42, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment - having read some of these articles, they really often aren't of notable people. I don't think winning a non-national beauty pageant makes you notable on its own, any more than winning a state prize for best watercolours or best athletics performance would. To PageantUpdater, I suggest discussing the biographical details of these winners in the articles for the pageants they won. Blythwood (talk) 08:07, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I agree with you, that's not the issue here. The thing is some are notable for other things or for some other reason and they are being given the same treatment. The afd-Ing is too fast and indiscriminate. Each page is not being given due consideration before being nominated. --- PageantUpdater (talk) 08:17, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Although, the comparison you made isn't valid. With those two examples, the competition is a one-off, when it's over it's over. These titleholders win on one night, but then spend months making appearances, doing media etc. And they also go on to compete a second time in a nationally televised event. --- PageantUpdater (talk) 09:19, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • and he's at it again, with the wrong state mentioned in a comment. Which just goes to show he's not taking enough care [107] --- PageantUpdater (talk) 08:37, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Blythwood: Do you believe that even if there's a lot of source material? Also, why don't you vote in more of those AfDs? pbp 13:38, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: JPL isn't really answering the accusations here. In particular, he hasn't given a reason why so many articles need to be deleted so quickly (See the note about Fait accompli above) that you can't even spell the name right and get the right state of the pageant. It's not like Bill Shaheen, which had to be deleted after 24 hours as an attack page that violates BLP policy. It's not like adding language which violates BLP policy to an article about a U.S. Senator. No, waiting 2-3 weeks (thereby giving PageantUpdater or GRuban more time to try and fix them) instead of just one seems reasonable.

Instead of defending his bad editing, JPL's doing what he always does when criticized: make spurious accusations. He's accused me of being a bigot above without any diffs to prove it. IMO, calling somebody a bigot without any diffs is the kind of personal attack that warrants a one-week vacation (Maybe more, since he's done it many times. Also, that would solve the pageant backlog, provided he didn't nominate another 6 dozen articles immediately following unblock). pbp 13:38, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment Well, there is a reason so many articles need to be deleted so quickly. In some of the Discussions on winners of Miss USA state competitions in 2004 the fact that we had articles on virtually all winners of Miss USA state competitions in 2004 was used as justification to keep the particular article. This type of circular argument from what existed was being used to argue for keeping not very good articles. So it seemed logical to nominate more no good articles for deletion. Also, the circular argument was propped up by the fact that a lot of the articles that exxisted as links from the template were really redirects to the page for that particular state competition. In searching out which articles were redirects I kept on coming across truly not notable articles. Biography of living people principals dictate we should not keep articles on non-notable living people. Add to this some of these articles litterally had severe content problems that begged for immediate action. Some of them were plagued by tabloid prose about the subject having been seen dancing with some sportsman in dance formation others thought was too intimate. I could multiply the issues involved.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:56, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment To hunt down the diffs would take a long time, and the last time I tried to find diffs I could not even figure out how to transfer them when I found the edits. However the basic gist is he has said things like '"Latter-day Saint writers tend to be of poor quality", but his exact wording was much more inflamatory. The attempt to define a whole set of writers in a negative way based on their religion, and then use this as an argument to delete articles on people who fit that discription because you presume people of that religion do poor writing is to me a bigoted argument. The whole issue is largely built around the exact wording. Thus he has persisted in saying I have a "perverted" interpetation of GNG. That is a strong, attack word. True, a lot of my negative reaction relates to his strong attack words, but as I said I could not figure out how to come up with diffs when I last did the search. However since "bad editor" is a term he used in this discussion, I think I have every write to react negatively to it. My point is that GNG engages in overly attack language, calling other people "bad", and saying they have a "perverted interpretation". The first is a direct modification of the person, which is attack language. The later is so inflamatory a word, that even if in theory it is being used about ideas it comes off as an attack. Beyond this, PBP is dredging up events from April of 2013 and misrepresenting what happened there. I was also one of the key people in creating and filling categories like Category:20th-century American novelists, which made it so Category:American women novelists would not be in violation of principals to not overly seperate out articles into only ERGS based categories. I also created and supportede nominations to upmerge some ERGS categories that were not easily workable with our policies. In some of these discussions I was called sexists because I didn't think a category like Category:American women essayists was a good idea. While there may be valid arguments that women essayists as a group create different work than men, the arguemtns that Filipacci engaged in, which was that putting women in a different group as women while leaving men in the general category, implies women are not "fully essayists" would if anything be more potentially inflamatory. The fact that over three years later a selective understanding that misrepresents my contributions to the whole matter is used to attack me is totally out of line. More on this in a little.John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:13, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Johnpacklambert: I'm not sure you quite understand what the word "perverted" means. Wiktionary gives its definition as "deviating from what is normally considered right, normal or correct". The way you apply (or don't apply) GNG to AfDs deviates from what is normally considered right, normal or correct. The way you apply (or don't apply) basic checks on sourcing on your AfDs deviates from what is normally considered right, normal or correct. As for this ridiculous claim of bigotry, a) where the hell are the diffs? Diffs or it didn't happen, and b) why's it a bad thing to be suspicious of an article on a mid-level LDS church official coming from sources all associated with the LDS church, especially if said sources have been routinely criticized for lack of neutrality? If this were a band or a business executive sourced from similarly not-independent sources, it would be summarily deleted. Also, I'm pretty sure GNG does not engage in personal attacks. pbp 15:27, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You consistently ignore the issues of how the words you use feel. It is the tone invoked by saying someone has a "perverted" anything that is at issue here. Dictonary definitions do not capture the full length of meaning. "sources all associatedwith the LDS church" and "routinely criticized for lack of neutrality". I still challenge you to produce anything anywhere where someone claims that the biographies the Deseret News creates are anything less than factual.John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:37, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's not necessarily an issue of factuality, but one of independence and neutrality. I don't necessarily dispute the factuality of what's on a bands's page or a company's website, but I still wouldn't use it as the only source of an article about a bandleader or executive. And I can find challenges to the scholarship of the LDS Church (of which Deseret News prints press releases almost verbatim) and of BYU pretty quickly and easily. As for challenges, I also challenge your claim that I only nominate articles because they are of Mormons. There are plenty of non-Mormon articles which I have voted delete on, whereas there are not very many (perhaps very few) articles on other religions which I have voted keep on. And there are a great many Mormon articles I have not deleted, nor have any intent to do so, because they are sourced well enough to pass GNG. pbp 15:50, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment I just want to clarify since I have seen numerous comments which misconstrue my intent: I understand that many, if not the majority of articles may not meet GNG and are good to be deleted. I do not take issue with that at all. What I do take issue with is how fast these have been nominated with little attention paid to WP:BEFORE evidenced by articles being nominated with inaccurate details or in close to a dozen situations now where it is clear no research has been done or sourcing considered. There's wheat and chaff here and at the speed JPL was nominating no time to separate the two. I would like to see: (a) censure for the sloppiness of this work - I maintain either abuse of process or negligence (b) a promise to slow down in future and pay due consideration to each article nominated (c) a promise to consider WP:BEFORE rather than simply taking the blanket belief that pageant contestants cannot be notable in any sense. We've already seen the slowdown mentioned in (b) which is positive but that has happened previously and he later resumed in the same fashion. --- PageantUpdater (talk) 11:42, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment  I did some more review of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nicole Johnson (Miss California USA).  Nicole Johnson and her baby have been featured recently on TV in the coverage of the August 2016 Olympics, in association with all-time Gold medal winner Michael Phelps (reference: Google news search on ["nicole johnson" olympics NBC].  This nomination makes no pretense to having done anything more than review the sources in the article.  This is exactly where it is the responsibility of editors to improve the article.  WP:BEFORE B1 states, "If there are ...notability...concerns, take reasonable steps to search for reliable sources." WP:BEFORE D3 states, "If you find that adequate sources do appear to exist, the fact that they are not yet present in the article is not a proper basis for a nomination."  So we have it on record that JPL is making improper nominations.  Unscintillating (talk) 13:06, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

JPL's proposal

• Proposal I am going to not nominate any more articles related to pageants for deletion until the current number of nominations goes down. Last night in going through the lists at Miss Kansas USA and Miss Michigan USA it was all I could do to not nominate some of these articles, especially one line, one source articles, for deletion. I was going through the pageant lists because from doing so I learned we still have a few links that go to articles on people who had nothing to do with the pageants, and having on the order of 50 red links from one page is just not a reasonable way. If a user feels that an article should be created, recreating the link is easy, whereas from what I found this massive number of fake links ends up at times creating links to articles on people who were not the competitor in the pageant but some other person who just shared the same name.John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:41, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That's a start. And if you want to remove bad red links, I don't think anybody would have problem with that. I believe BLP policy actually encourages the unlinking of red links to presumed BLPs. pbp 15:50, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A halt to the damage is commendable. We should also stop the proceedings on all those existing AfDs, divide them up so they can be tackled in a reasonable manner. JPL is a sufficiently experienced editor to know this many nominations in the same subject would overwhelm any sort of defense. It was a deliberate attack on the subject, to achieve an WP:AGENDA. In the least, this kind of bad behavior should not be rewarded with success. Additionally, this was done making incomplete representations at best, though with his agenda to remove non-intellectual content from wikipedia en masse, I think it is more malicious. If a WP:BEFORE was done, it was at best poorly done. I've only had a chance to sample the articles. I have been able to add significant sourcing to every one I have sampled. Lets take Mekayla Diehl. JPL says: I think it is now agreed that winners of Miss Indiana USA are not notable for that in and of itself. The article hypes that Diehl is Native American. However since 0.3% of Indiana's population is Native American, it would not be unexpected that no winners of Miss Indiana USA had been Native American until the pageant had existed for over 200 years. Since Miss USA started in 1951 and not 1816, this does not make her notable. I also do not think the gossipy sources about her body size constitute the type of RS sources we would need to justify actually having an article. The gossipy sources he dismissed include every major American television network CBS, Fox and Friends, The Today Show, Good Morning America and Entertainment Tonight. And these were generally not casual mentions but involved on camera personal interviews. I sourced every one of them from a simple google search. Since he mentioned them, he had to have known about them but tactically neglected to add them to the article, I suggest deliberately in order to make for a weaker presentation of the subject at AfD. Every article I have looked at so far now has ten or close to ten sources. I've added most of them. None of them should fail WP:GNG, which is our ultimate standard, although JPL has North America dittoing his nominations with the same kind of thoughtful consideration that these nominations were made from, sarcastically meaning they both ignore the sources that are available from a simple google search. In our very low traffic court of AfD opinion, he could very well get away with this pack of disingenuous nominations. Don't just throw up your hands and give up WP:Fait accompli. Something additional needs done both to protect these specific subjects that he nominated in bulk, and to prevent future bad behavior. Trackinfo (talk) 17:57, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Trackinfo: Feel free to notify me of any discussions I have !voted in that you disagree with on my talk page. I'm always willing to reconsider. For example, see this AfD discussion. I consider many of these to be WP:BLP1E situations when sources only cover the subject in the context of one event. When sources that provide significant coverage are available about more than one event, then it's not a BLP1E situation. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 05:31, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment There is no reason to halt the proceedings. The article on Jaci Stofferahn has 6 sources, one is facebook, and she actually ran for the US house. Abby Norman has 4 sources. The claim about "10 or close to 10" is not true, and even if it were true, that is not the same as saying 10 sources that are reliable, 3rd party and not from extremely local publications. It is multiple people who agree with the fact that many of these people are not notable. In the case of Abby Norman 9 editors have supported the notion that the article should either be redirected or deleted, one has said "keep for now", but not given any policy based reasons to keep the article.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:52, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • OK, I recounted and it is 8 editors who have supported deleting or redirecting the article. Still this is as opposed to one who has supported keeping the article.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:54, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Even Talyah Polee who some people seemed to think was an open and shut case so much that they argued to speedy keep the article has seen a delete vote that presents various reasons to delete.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:59, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Then there is the articles on Natasha Barnard which still has as its only source a link to facebook.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:07, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The was only one source why? Because you didn't look for any support before you nominated it? Challenge accepted, I've added 14. Sure there isn't a lot of substance to the article, she's a model. Her notability does not come from her intellectual pursuits. I'm not searching for a Nobel nomination. However, she clearly is a notable model. Trackinfo (talk) 05:24, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment Shaletta Porterfield has 5 sources, which is no where near ten, and one of them is actually about Miss Wisconsin USA with no reference to Porterfield, it is there to explain who franchises this organizations, in a total act of coatracking.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:11, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You are kidding, right? You couldn't find the reports of her arrest and resignation? The story was already in the article. You suggest that bizarre situation, reported in multiple sources doesn't make her notable? And now you point that out as an example of an article that needs sourcing. Its like shooting fish in a barrel. It just goes to show how little you know about the subjects you are nominating for AfD even now. Trackinfo (talk) 08:00, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorta getting the feeling that JPL has started with the blanket assumption that all of these articles are non-notable, then, when challenged on it, grasps for reasons that each article must be deleted. If he had not rifled these off so quickly without greater examination of the sources available, he would not have this problem. pbp 01:27, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly correct. Personally, my time is very limited. I am not choosing to defend the articles that have few sources to back them up. But I do my research first. What offends me, often, is the thoughtlessness of editors like this, who do not do the due diligence of looking for sources, of informing themselves about a subject they are commenting on. Its been on my user page for years Many of the "delete" respondents didn't even know about the subject. If you are able to read the article and understand the subject, then you should be speaking about its content. If you don't, butt out. Trackinfo (talk) 02:43, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Just like this editor who voted delete whilst repeating JPL's incorrect statement that the titleholder was from Georgia [108] --- PageantUpdater (talk) 03:34, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment -- I do not support suspension of any AfDs in progress, as many have already been !voted on. I believe editor Johnpacklambert has shown plenty of good faith by suggesting they do not nominate further articles while the backlog takes care of itself. In any case, the real problem is that there are too far many BLP articles on (apparently) non notable individuals, the problem that JPL is addressing. Slowing down the process in progress is counter productive. K.e.coffman (talk) 04:15, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment. I wouldn't mind JPL's mass-Afd-ing machine-gun style of beauty pageant articles if (1) JPL did a minimal amount of beforehand source checking (even a quick minute on each one and (2) listened to other contributors and was open to changing his mind when a particular subject met the general notability guideline. Nuff said.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 09:37, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment And the article on Porterfield has now been closed as a redirect. I never bothered hunting down information on the criminal charages against her, because charges of identity theft against an individual almost never make the person perpetrating the crime notable. There was probably a source on the issue at an earlier point, but some editor, not me, but probably wisely, had decided to remove the whole mention of the criminal charges on the grounds that having it in the article was a violation of our rules on sourcing and undue weight for negative information on living people.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:19, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment JPL has repeated numerous times that "well x y z articles have closed as delete so what I'm doing is justified". I'd like to present the other side to that:
  • Julie Donaldson closed as keep - 3 keep votes/0 delete votes - nomination by JPL: "Donaldson is a former Miss Florida USA, but this on its own is not enough to make her notable. Donaldson's career in journalism is just not at a level to make her notable. The article is a horrible example of coatracking, which is one reason to avoid articles on unnotable people. Half the article goes into allegations against her non-notable then boyfriend. It is possibly a violation of biography of living people guidelines, since such guidelines apply to defamatory material against non-subjects as well as subjects. Wikipedia's purpose is not to right great wrongs, which means that Wikipedia articles are not the place to carry out diatribes against those accused of domestic abuse."
  • Nancy Redd closed as keep - 6 keep votes/1 weak keep/0 delete votes - Redd is notable for basically 2 things. One she was Miss Virginia, but it seems consensus is moving that winners of state beauty pageants are not notable for such. The other is she wrote a book, but there is no evidence that she passes the notability guidelines for writers
  • Katie Blair closed as keep - 8 keep votes/0 delete votes. - "Blair was Miss Teen USA in 2006. I do not think there is any indication that the winners of teen titles like this are notable, and no other coverage of her comes even close to showing her to be notable."
  • Tami Farrell closed as keep - 6 keep votes/0 delete votes "is only really notable for being Miss Teen USA, but that is not enough on itself to make her notable"
  • Natalie Pack closed as keep: 6 keep votes/1 strong keep/0 delete votes "At some level I wish we could keep all articles on female doctors. However, Pack is not a female doctor as far as I can tell, and clearly no where near being a notable one. She was in her 3rd year of undergraduate studies at UC Irvine in 2012. She might be in her 3rd year of medical school, although the interview I found with her from 2014 in a totally non-reliable source did not seem to suggest she was in medical school, it mainly spent time posting pictures of her in bikinis. Her role as Miss California USA is not enough to be notable, and her role in America's next top model, does not seem to cut it either. Her modeling career to date also does not seem to rise to the level of notability" (see comment by Gruban: "I haven't even looked at the subsequent pages, these are three non-trivial articles by three national publications, over three years. And she was Miss California 2012. And she was on America's Next Top Model, a national TV show. Honestly: "I wish we could keep all articles on female doctors"? She's not a doctor, she's a model. Sure, she doesn't meet notability standards as a notable doctor. Well, neither does Barack Obama meet notability standards as a lawyer. Strangely enough, not everyone becomes notable as what they went for university for. That's not a reason to delete an article about someone who clearly meets WP:GNG")

I think these are clear evidence that an open mind and appropriate research have not been employed before nominating these articles with what amounts to boilerplate. As I've said numerous times before: many if not the majority of these articles do not meet notability but there are others that do and they are not being appropriately filtered by the nominator, buried as they were amongst an overload of nominations --- PageantUpdater (talk) 03:34, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Original Post: JustPsymo (talk · contribs) is changing music genre to various artist pages, adding genres following his opinions, also removing sources. I suspect he uses the IP 183.171.181.117, because he did this and 2 days after the IP did this. Other changes here and here. User was reported here -it:Wikipedia:Utenti problematici/JustPsymo- for the same problems, including the removal of sources and the write-only. --79.12.1.50 (talk) 21:28, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

JustPsymo (talk · contribs) is changing music genre to various artist pages, adding genres following his opinions, also removing sources. I suspect he uses the IP 183.171.181.117, because he did this and 2 days after the IP did this. Other changes here and here. User was reported here -it:Wikipedia:Utenti problematici/JustPsymo- for the same problems, including the removal of sources and the write-only. I repost it because I posted it wrong, not to the bottom as required, sorry.--87.3.18.172 (talk) 17:11, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Just to repeat my longstanding proposal that if we simply eliminate coverage of four low-value subjects -- footy, music genres, beauty pageants, and professional wresting -- traffic here at ANI would be reduced 30%. EEng 23:25, 2 September 2016 (UTC) P.S. Oh, and porno actors/actresses.[reply]
  • Are you seriously proposing that we eliminate coverage of Ludwig van Beethoven, Duke Ellington, Blind Willie Johnson, The Beatles, and everything else having to do with "music genres"? Shirley jesteth thou. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 03:33, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Forsooth, I merely proposeth removing the genre categorizations in infoboxes and leads, my liege! (I suspect that discussions of genres buried in the text proper are too much trouble for genre warriors to find. They all seem to be idiots.) EEng 03:41, 3 September 2016 (UTC) And no, I'm not serious. At least not completely. [reply]

Earl King Jr. fails to assume good faith and resorts to personal attacks instead of discussing edits properly:

• edit by Earl King Jr. insulting Jtbobwaysf [109]

• response from Jtbobwaysf trying to calm down the discussion [110]

• subsequent edit by Earl King Jr. insulting Jtbobwaysf [111]

• comment by N2e trying to calm down the discussion [112]

• user talk page warning by N2e [113]

• edit by Earl King Jr. failing to discuss an issue at talk page and assume good faith [114]

• edit by Earl King Jr. failing to discuss the issue at the talk page and assume good faith [115]

• edit by Earl King Jr. failing to discuss the issue at the talk page and assume good faith [116]

• edit by Earl King Jr. failing to assume good faith [117]

• edit by Earl King Jr. failing to assume good faith and discuss the issue at talk page [118]

• edit by Earl King Jr. failing to assume good faith [119]

• edit by Earl King Jr. failing to assume good faith [120]

• edit by Earl King Jr. failing to assume good faith and discuss the issue at talk page [121]

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Ladislav Mecir (talk • contribs)

• edit by Earl King Jr. vandalizing N2e's talk page (deleting discussion relating to his behavior on other pages [122]

• history of cleanup by Earl King Jr. of his own talk page to quickly removing warnings, including one he received a couple days ago from N2e. Appears King may has been the subject of previous ANI's as well from looking at edit summaries. [123]

Jtbobwaysf (talk) 10:49, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comments A couple of things, and I'm uninvolved other than that I have Earl's talk on my watchlist as well as ANI. I don't see those diffs as personal attacks. Finally, one is free to remove warnings from one's talk page. Dbrodbeck (talk) 12:57, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Earl King Jr. uses thinly-veiled unsupported ad hominem attacks in content debate. Here and here, EKJ accuses those who disagree with EKJ of having a commercial COI on with a BitCoin journal. Here, EKJ accuses me of being a Holocaust denier. Grammar's Li'l Helper ^Talk 23:00, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ever since this user came onto Wikipedia, he/she has been making pointless and disruptive edits that have wound up being undone. Literally his/her entire history is made up of such edits. While a number of editors have undone his/her edits, ZeEnergizer has dealt with this user the most.

For example, RolandSupreme made this edit, claiming to be fixing "missing info", but the sources do not seem to verify this and ZeEnergizer ultimately undid the edit. He/She also seems to have a temper tantrum, judging by the edit summaries of these edits.

RolandSupreme has been here for a day and already is he/she causing problems for every article he/she has edited on. Of course, it can be attributed to him/her being a new user and being unaware of the rules. But this disruptive practice has been pretty consistent so far and I think it's already time for him/her to learn the consequences of his/her behavior, whatever that may be. Parsley Man (talk) 18:55, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The first thing I notice is a total absence of any attempt to communicate with this new editor on their talk page to try to help them - just a welcome, followed by an ANI notification. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 20:14, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note also, the time between the welcome and AN/I notifications is literally less than 24 hours. Here's a several step solution that should have been enacted prior to bringing them to this noticeboard. Step 1, talk to the editor. Step 2, if the editor refuses to communicate drop them a personalized message on their talk page that they are being disruptive and should try to communicate with other editors. Step 3, notify a friendly admin and see if they can't possibly give a helpful suggestion or leave a note on the editor's talk page. Step 4, if the disruption has continued and is continuing after all of the previous steps have been taken, bring it to the administrator's noticeboard. Mr rnddude (talk) 00:32, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Good point Boing. Also, I think we should cherish anyone who is willing to work on the Transformer articles, which suffer from a serious dearth of interested editors. We're missing out on a lot of content. Drmies (talk) 01:41, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• And seriously, we have 181k worth of List of Transformers film series characters? Drmies (talk) 01:43, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, my bad. I didn't notice it at first, but yes, it does seem like communication hasn't been established with the editor first. Sorry. I advocate for this discussion to be closed now. Should this user continue to be disruptive even after a warning, I will bring this back to ANI. Parsley Man (talk) 03:36, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Blocked indef for vandalism. Nakon 04:16, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Pardon me, but why, when the conversation was "OK, let's be sure this new user understands how we do things here, we'll meet back if there's further disruption", does suddenly the user get blocked 30 minutes later, having made no further edits? EEng 05:06, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Dane2007, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I seem to agree with EEng on this one. Is there some additional context missing here? TimothyJosephWood 11:18, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is maybe the third time today I'm getting the "Impossible-as-it-may-seem-I-agree-with-EEng" treatment. When did I become the personification of heterodoxy? EEng 15:13, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You can...come off as...abrasive... TimothyJosephWood 23:35, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I prefer to think of it as being "direct". Have you visited The Museums? EEng 02:26, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Nakon, I'm questioning your block. Have you lot heard of WP:BITE or did that one float by without anybody noticing. The user was bitten by one user who went from "welcome" to "warning" in less than 24 hours. Now, rather than try to talk to the editor, an admin joins in the fray and bites the editor's head off completely with an indef block. Since when do we go from no block to indefinite block for non-blatant vandalism. That is a poor block. Please consider reversing it, new editors have enough to deal with, without rash actions by an administrator. Mr rnddude (talk) 11:26, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Yep, that's pretty bad. There was clearly an understanding here of what should've happened and what was intended to happen, and that crappy block just rides roughshod over the community. Cheers, _Muffled ^Pocketed 14:07, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• I feel compelled to point out that this isn't the first time this has happened. EEng 15:13, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well, quite. _Muffled ^Pocketed 15:21, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• I've unblocked the editor and will leave a message on their talk page apologizing for biting and regarding the need to discuss these edits. Thanks, Nakon 15:56, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, if it's not too much of a bother to ask, who is JJJ a sockpuppet of? I was very intrigued when I heard they were blocked. GAB^gab 21:41, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Conspiracy theories of the United States presidential election, 2016 after surviving an AfD and a deletion review. now has another AfD (The failed AfD closed on 24 August 2016 (no consensus), the deletion review was closed on 2 September 2016 (endorse close) and the new AfD was filled on 2 September 2016). Also the entire article has been deleted and replaced with a paragraph about a 1964 essay that has nothing to do with the specific topic of the 2016 US presidential election. I tried to restore it but was reverted. Could we please have some uninvolved admin eyes on the article, and especially on what I believe to be gaming of the system?

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Conspiracy theories of the United states presidential election, 2016[124]
• Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2016 August 26#Conspiracy theories of the United states presidential election, 2016 (closed)
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Conspiracy theories of the United States presidential election, 2016[125]]
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hillary Clinton brain damage rumor
• Previous ANI discussion, Aug 25
• Page before it was gutted
• Page after it was gutted

(Note the "United states" vs. "United States" in the above URLs) --Guy Macon (talk) 04:45, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note the closer (User:Sandstein's) comment: "Because of the close outcome, a relatively quick renomination (on the order of days) might be appropriate." (my emphasis - VM).Volunteer Marek (talk) 04:48, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! That makes the second RfD just an easily-fixed formatting problem (it should say 2nd nomination with a link to the first). However, changing this well-sourced article and reducing it to this blanked article when there was no consensus to delete was, in my opinion, gaming the system. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:02, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"The following Monday the National Enquirer ran a front-page feature titled "Hillary Clinton's Secret Health Crisis" while the Drudge Report posted a photo showing Clinton tripping on a flight of stairs, in which it was insinuated the accident was a result of medical issues". Well sourced my butt.Volunteer Marek (talk) 05:05, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

What? That's about as good as sourcing gets for a comspiracy theory, unless you want a source from Breitbart or Alex Jones or something. 207.38.154.23 (talk) 07:41, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Some of the removed material was sourced to NPR, NBC News, Harpers, Scientific American, CNN, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, Snopes.com, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, CBS News, BBC, and The Intercept. I stand by my assertion that well-sourced material was deleted and politely decline Volunteer Marek's offer of his butt -- thanks but I already have one. :) --Guy Macon (talk) 08:01, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the visual. EEng 08:11, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: I added AfD: Hillary Clinton brain damage rumor as a related AfD above, as relevant to this discussion. I also added Previous ANI discussion, Aug 25, which was started by the article creator. K.e.coffman (talk) 04:51, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There are already two other threads about this here Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Conspiracy theories of the United States presidential election.2C 2016 and Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Articles for deletion. Can they please be consolidated into one to try and avoid a huge mess. Also please note that it is a holiday weekend in the US so some editors (involved or not) may not be around to respond quickly if pinged. MarnetteD|Talk 04:53, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It is appropriate to renominate no-consensus afds, even quickly, in the hope of obtaining consensus. It is usually more helpful to wait a while, because this increases the chances of actually getting consensus. Of course,in this particular case the interest in the article is to some extent time limited--myself, I think it will indeed be permanently of interest, but I think the arguments here will be less heated.

But the blanking or partial blanking of the article was not appropriate, perhaps to the point of being disruptive and outrageous, and should be reverted. I'd do it myself, except i have a overall opinion on the matter. DGG ( talk ) 07:54, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The article is objectively better in its stubbed form than it was previously, though. jps (talk) 11:52, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's not better or worse that way; it's just empty, thus the stubbing is equivalent to out-of-process deletion. — JFG ^talk 14:35, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The article is better stubbed than it was before. Who are you to say that it isn't? jps (talk) 16:49, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Nobody cares who I am or who you are. You are saying that an essentially empty article is better than an article dedicated to contentious contents. That's just your opinion. I happen to think that our encyclopedia should not shy away from reporting well-sourced controversial contents. We are WP:NOTCENSORED. Excessive WP:CRYBLP protection doesn't cut it for such prominent WP:PUBLICFIGURES who chose to come into the election fight for the highest US public office. They are much thicker-skinned than you and me. — JFG ^talk 17:18, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Agree this is being discussed in 3 different places and it should go down to one. Also agree with DGG on everything he said (except I've already reverted once). Finally, yeah, this was _very_ well sourced. I think "disruptive and outrageous" is correct. Hobit (talk) 11:12, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Suggest WP:BOOMERANG against Guy Macon (talk · contribs) for tiresomely bringing this to AN/I. This is a dispute that does not belong here. jps (talk) 11:50, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Boomerang suggestions when the person targeted did nothing wrong have a tendency to boomerang against the person making the suggestion. I'm just saying. -Guy Macon (talk) 15:55, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• You've done plenty. Your petty vindictiveness and penchant for escalating non-issues into dramatic conflicts is well on display at arbcomm even as we speak. jps (talk) 16:50, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• • While I have no love for the subject matter this is entirely an appropriate place to bring out gaming of the system and disruption concerns. As the article has been completely gutted and replaced with an anti conspiracy essay from 1964, I would consider that as meeting both those concerns. Deleting large sections of articles can be done occasionally but that's like me taking a religious article, deleting everything out of it, then replacing it with an Atheist talking about why religions are wrong essay. Tivanir2 (talk) 12:00, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• As the editor who first raised a red flag about this on the talk page of the article, I will state my agreement with Guy Macon that what has happened here is disturbing. The community debated an article that was, and is admittedly controversial. But we could not reach consensus on whether to keep it or not. Then a handful of editors decided that there was enough consensus among themselves to go ahead and delete the article in all but name and reduce it to a POV stub. That is bad enough. But after strong objections were raised by other editors there persists to the present moment fierce resistance to restoring the blanked material. For the record I am no fan of fringe material on the project and have personally nominated many articles for deletion I believed were non-notable and improperly being used to promote tin foil hat ideas. And I also readily concede that this article is not an easy keep or delete. Sound arguments were made on both sides at the original AfD. It may well be that the article will end up being deleted at the new AfD. That would disappoint me, but I would respect the outcome because that's the way this sort of things should be done. If you want to delete an article fine. But unless it is a clearly non-controversial situation, which this obviously is not, do it at AfD. The pro-deletion side came very close to carrying the debate last time around and may well do so at the new AfD discussion. In summary; stubbing an article that the community just said it could not reach consensus on, by deleting all relevant material and then claiming "talk page consensus" formed by a handful of editors who failed to persuade the community at a well participated AfD discussion is, IMO, improper. -Ad Orientem (talk) 14:25, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Regardless of anybody's opinion on the need for Wikipedia to have this article, the blanking of all significant contents, section by section, with blanking editors cheering each other up, was totally inappropriate, especially as a no-consensus deletion review was underway. I would advocate a fresh start: restoring the full extent of the article and having a wide-open RFC during which the page would be fully protected, then let people edit away taking into account RFC results. Full disclosure: I once restored a section which had been blanked by an editor in violation of 1RR, and was counter-reverted by another editor with an offensive comment; I abstained from further intervention. — JFG ^talk 14:33, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment I'm torn. On the one hand, I wholeheartedly agree that this is gaming the system (I !voted delete, by the way). An article that does not achieve a consensus to delete should absolutely not be stubbed when the AfD is closed.

On the other hand, I still stand by my !vote to delete. This is too soon to have an article about this subject! When the election is done and folklorists and journalists are writing about the totality of the conspiracy theories in this election, we will finally have an article worth writing.

Now, getting back to the subject of this, I have two things to say.

1. This is absolutely gaming the system, disguised as a content dispute. I usually avoid speculating on the motivations of others (and I actually have a great deal of respect for those who blanked the page), and I will not start now. However, the facts are clear: there is obviously no consensus to blank the page, as anyone can see from looking at this thread. Let alone the article's talk page. The page should be restored to the version I railed against at the AfD. If full page protection is necessary to keep it that way, so be it. We can then go through this new AfD and see if we can't decide what to do with it.
2. That should damn well be the end of it here at AN/I. The justification I see above for a boomerang is... Well, actually I don't see any justification. I see the assertion that this should boomerang, but no reason why (beyond the dangerous suggestion that opening an AN/I case in order to get admin attention is a problem). Furthermore, I see no evidence that the stubbing of this article was done in anything but good faith, by editors who've demonstrated repeatedly their desire to improve the encyclopedia, motivated by concerns that are perfectly coincidental with my own concerns about the article. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 15:03, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That's the tough part all right. I too agree with what the out-of-process deleters are trying to do, and will continue to do what I can to convince the community to form a consensus for deleting the article, but on the other hand I oppose gaming the system in this way even when the end result is what I wanted to happen. We all need to follow consensus even when it goes against us. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:03, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, while strongly disagreeing with the back door attempt at deletion, I do not question the motives of the editors involved. I have worked with some of them in the past on other articles, especially via FTN, and think they are all good editors with honorable intentions. But I do believe in this case their zeal got the better of them. I see this as a case of poor judgement, not malicious editing. -Ad Orientem (talk) 16:15, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I support the above conclusion. I don't think anyone meant to do a backdoor deletion, it just happened, a piece at a time. That being said, I do hold those individuals who have used the revert button to undo attempts to restore the material responsible, and I have a low opinion of anyone who supports deleting material sourced to NPR, NBC News, Harpers, Scientific American, CNN, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, Snopes.com, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, CBS News, BBC, and The Intercept just because some other material in the same article is sourced to the National Enquirer. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:23, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Based on the above comments and those on the talk page of the article I am satisfied that there is at the very least no consensus to substantively blank the article. To which end I have reverted the article to the most recent attempt by Guy Macon to restore the controversially deleted material. I have also requested full PP to last until the close of the ongoing AfD. -Ad Orientem (talk) 16:35, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think it highly inappropriate to claim consensus on the basis of whining on WP:ANI. If an admin wants to move in and protect the page or something, let them. jps (talk) 16:55, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

And I've done just that, for a week. Airplaneman ✈ 16:58, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment I believe large-scale content blanking in this context is disruptive, see Arbcom guidance. JerryRussell (talk) 16:56, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. The article has been blanked yet again despite the fact that there is clearly no consensus in favor of this action and arguably there is consensus against it. I am starting to view this as deliberate disruptive editing and believe that an admin should step in. -Ad Orientem (talk) 17:02, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Note It's now been fully protected by Airplaneman. _Muffled ^Pocketed 17:05, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

An admin has stepped in and protected the page. Now let's get back to actually discussing the actual content rather than citing arbcom cases that are 9 years old. jps (talk) 17:04, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

In this ANI discussion, are we really here to discuss the content? Or are we here to discuss whether content blanking is disruptive? It actually would be nice to have some policy guidance about that. Unfortunately, 9 years old was the best I could do. I'm not questioning the motives of the editors here, but I find it alarming when this sort of thing happens. JerryRussell (talk) 17:36, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

C'mon, man, do you really think that citing 9-year-old precedent (best that you can do for a reason -- Wikipedia has evolved much since then) is helping us answer the question of what to do when editors WP:BOLDly stubbify an article that was documented to have many problems in an AfD closed as no consensus? Content discussions absolutely should trump (excuse the pun) this kind of stuff. jps (talk) 17:47, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I could also have cited Wikipedia:Tendentious_editing#One_who_deletes_the_pertinent_cited_additions_of_others or Wikipedia:Content_removal#Consensus_on_removal, but those are just essays. Or there's the template text itself, which says that articles shouldn't be blanked. It seems to me that removing all but a stub, is not much different from blanking. If the concern is BLP issues about Hillary's head injury, that content could be removed or edited to improve neutrality. The article contains several other sections. If, on the other hand, there's a community consensus at this point that massive sourced content removals immediately after failed AfD's are just fine and dandy, well, I stand corrected. JerryRussell (talk) 18:40, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Stubbornly stamping one's foot and declaring fealty to made-up processes on Wikipedia is an increasingly problematic aspect of the culture here. What is worse is that there really are no rules per se that explain what you are supposed to do when a discussion about deletion ends in no consensus. The normal thing to do at such point is to return to normal editing. That could include bold rewrites of an article and this is not the first nor the last time that such has occurred. By insisting on ninny-ism that seeks to sneer at editors working to remove problematic content from an article for which there was no consensus to delete, you are contributing to an atmosphere that values process over content, rules over quality, games over encyclopedia. jps (talk) 21:37, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The problem isn't the topic, the problem is that it was written as a giant BLP problem with a predetermined POV. When the article describes the opinion of doctors with descriptors that undermine their credibility and then identify them as part of a conspiracy. That is not okay. Same thing with mentioning unrelated indictments without conviction. When one side of a campaign calls an issue legitimate and the other calls it a conspiracy theory (with a a long history of labeling all criticism as part of a "vast right wing conspiracy"), these issues are simply political campaign issues and not something we can cover real time or make conclusions about. The press will cover it from every aspect including legitimate concerns and conspiracy theory. We don't carry their water. There's a reason why Hillary Clinton brain damage rumor was deleted. The content was literally copied to an article with "conspiracy theory" as the title. This didn't make the content better, more encyclopedic, more neutral or anything else in WP's interest. If we want to cover candidate health, put it in their bios. If we want to cover the question of health as a campaign issue, put it in the campaign articles. Topics like this evolve and even this weekend, "new revelations" of minutiae will be discussed. We don't need articles on it keeping score and we don't need sections that disparage living people that offer opinions that are sought out by ever hungry press. If there is "Gaming the systtem" occuring, it is by editors creating articles titled from a campaigns talking points and then trashing the detractors. It needs to stop. --DHeyward (talk) 17:10, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• I truly have no opinion about the merits of the article. I haven't read it and don't intend to participate in the AfD. But it was restored with an edit summary stating that it should not be blanked again; there is an AfD running, and articles should not be blanked while at AfD, as the template itself states; and then it was blanked again and immediately after that was full protected. I went to the talk page to ask that it be restored but I see a statement there that this discussion supersedes the talk page discussion on the blanking. So here's my request: revert the blanking, please. Yngvadottir (talk) 17:35, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • My God. WP:WRONGVERSION is something everyone who hasn't read should take a moment to read. There is currently a discussion on the talkpage as to whether there is decent sourcing for claiming that the Hillary Clinton "health rumors" are a conspiracy theory about the presidential election. They may very well be, but the sourcing needs to be addressed). jps (talk) 17:42, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• I suppose this article is eventually going to be kept. But, if it is, it needs to be kept on a short leash and forced to only mention things which are reliable. pbp 18:07, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Really? Have you looked at the AfD? I am rapidly losing any hope that the article will be kept. And with the blanked version now locked with little hope of being able to restore the material deleted (despite the clear lack of consensus for the mass redaction) I am more or less resigned to its being deleted. Indeed I am very close to voting for deletion in the AfD myself given the current article is just a POV coatrack and no longer has any real relation to the subject of the title. If you have some reason for your optimism I wish you would share it. I could use some encouragement right now. -Ad Orientem (talk) 18:15, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Always darkest before the dawn? I think the current version is less of a POV-coatrack than the version you preferred. In any case, there is a discussion at the talkpage. If you are despondent over this, let's try to come up with a better idea of what a good article on this subject would look like. jps (talk) 18:25, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Ad Orientum: I wouldn't necessarily call it optimism...more like realism or cynicism. COATRACK articles have become harder and harder to delete of late. Plus, 2nd nominations generally trend more keepist than 1st nominations do. pbp 19:07, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• (1) once an AfD is closed, normal editing resumes, (2) the content that was removed was discussed on the talk page, (3) editor's upholding one of our core policies, WP:BLP is not an attempt to game the system, (4) an argument based on "but it's reliably sourced", still doesn't override our BLP policy, (5) in a contentious topic area under DS, I would expect to see a firm consensus to keep, the first AfD about HC's brain rumor article resulted in delete and the most recent AfD was no consensus, (6) I agree with Dheyward that the topic is not the problem here, the content that was removed per BLP didn't stay focused on the aim and scope of the topic of the article; instead, it drifted off to unacceptable material that focused too much on the individuals. The material was cherry-picked from RS and then used to synth this content together, which resulted in a massive BLP violation, that's unacceptable. Does anyone think The New York Post is an acceptable source for contentious material about a living individual, (7) Clintons campaign article has a section on her health, and Trumps campaign article has sections on Cruz/controversies/fringe/conspiracy theories, there's no reason to create a POV fork full of BLP violations.-- Isaidnoway (talk) 20:19, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Observation The reason an article goes to AfD is usually that it comprises a predominance of unsourced or poorly-sourced statements. When they fail AfD, we should expect and welcome the efforts of editors who continue to remove the disqualifying content. The ones who are "gaming the system" here are those who insinuate that this kind of normal article clean-up is "back door deletion" and the like. Next one who plays that card should get a time out. SPECIFICO talk 20:35, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment They removed content, they gave a clear policy basis for the removal, and they discussed it on the talk page. There's a talk page section for each item deleted. A good first step in restoring the Ted Cruz related conspiracy theory would be discussing why it should be restored. Same for the other sections that were removed and discussed on the talk page. What happened instead was an accusation that an end run around the AFD process was being made and without discussing the merits of the removal the entirety of the material was restored. An AFD was made that resulted in no consensus. A DVR that endorsed the "no consensus" followed. A new AFD attempting to achieve a consensus has been made. None of this amounts to gaming the system. Removing items from and article and attempting the discuss it doesn't amount to gaming the system.-Serialjoepsycho- (talk) 02:39, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I looked at that "They removed content, they gave a clear policy basis for the removal, and they discussed it on the talk page" previous discussion for the section I am currently discussing on the talk page, and all I see is a WP:CRYBLP claim that any coverage of Hillary Clinton's health is a BLP violation. The closing AfD admin ruled against the claims of a BLP violation, and the other admins endorsed the close at deletion review. The BLP argument was made during the first AfD. If the closing admin or any admin reviewing the close had found a BLP violation, that would have resulted in an instant delete per Wikipedia policies. "BLP" isn't a magic word that lets you get your way without actually establishing that there is a BLP violation. --Guy Macon (talk) 07:07, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I may have missed it but in the close it seems as if it was ruled there was no consensus. I didn't catch where he ruled out the BLP. The BLP is not a magic word. Typing WP:CRYBLP on ANI doesn't remove your obligation to use the talk page of the article and make your case that there is no BLP violation. 1 person opened a discussion that the section on Ted Cruz was a BLP violation. 2 people concurred. It was restored without any actually discussion other than the position that they were making an end run around the AFD. There is a BLP Noticeboard and seen people take discussion there. But for some reason, I suppose since you are "right", you have no obligation to discuss this. And it's not that I am saying you are wrong and there is in fact a BLP violation, I take no position on this. BLP or not, thats a content matter. ANI is for conduct. IMO, there is no case here for any conduct issues. If there is no BLP issue you should have no problem making your case, whether on the talk page or at BLPN.-Serialjoepsycho- (talk) 09:21, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Whether or not material about a conspiracy theory regarding Hillary Clinton's health violates WP:BLP has already been decided, and I am not going to re-argue the point with you. If there had been a BLP violation, the closing admin and reviewing admins would have been obligated to immediately remove the material as soon as they identified it. See WP:PUBLICFIGURE, which is part of WP:BLP. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:06, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• When an article has survived a deletion discussion and a DRV, blanking it and then protecting the blanked version is an obvious end-run around our processes. A few editors spamming the talk page with a massive quantity of text does not constitute a consensus that overcomes these processes; in fact, the sheer quantity of text and its argumentative tone is a very effective deterrent to other editors joining in and helping out. The outcome here has been severely suboptimal, and yes, I'm well aware of WP:WRONGVERSION and I'm disregarding it with all due forethought.—S Marshall T/C 16:37, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(after edit conflict) Guy Macon just made the same point I made at the article talk page. In my book, that sneer about the "vast right-wing conspiracy" statement comes uncomfortably close to a BLP violation in itself, and while I've heard bad things about the editing environment at our US politics articles, I'd thought that was a canard. Now with all the sneering and assumptions of bad faith, I'm glad I have to deal with these editors relatively rarely.. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:44, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

RE:@Guy Macon:Mr. Macon has asked me not to post on his talk page, so I am linking a comment I placed there in a forgetful moment. Here it is. Mr. Macon has a recent history of disruptive and battleground editing on American Politics. GuyMacon's BLP-violating edit I asked him to undo was, fortunately, immediately undone by a passing Admin, @Acroterion:. Other recent lapses by Mr. Macon at the Seth Rich article include the following: PA edit comment battleground, esp. vs. editor @Steve Quinn: goofy threats failure to engage on talk page threats again etc. etc. At some point, a TBAN from American Politics would seem appropriate. I have posted this here because of @WoKrKmFK3lwz8BKvaB94: jps' suggestion of a boomerang finding regarding Guy Macon. I have unhatted and clarified relevance here. SPECIFICO talk 17:27, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I personally oppose the punitive action you are suggesting here. I can not see this as anything but a good faith question about questionable practices. While it is possible to say some of the article falls foul of BLP I sincerly doubt that the entire thing would qualify. The essay replacement of that information is pointy at best and disruptive at worst. Tivanir2 (talk) 19:05, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not proposing it, I'm endorsing jps' recommendation. It is not punitive. It is preventive. Please don't complicate the discussion with "punitive" SPECIFICO talk 19:08, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Strongest Possible Oppose to any suggestion of BOOMERANG sanctions against Guy Macon. There is absolutely no evidence of bad faith in raising the issue of the improper blanking of Conspiracy theories of the United States presidential election, 2016. Those concerns have been echoed by a very large number of highly respected and experienced editors. The above post by SPECIFICO appears motivated at least in part by a heated, but unrelated dispute with Guy Macon. Attempting to use unrelated threads, the legitimacy of which is beyond serious contention, to advance one's side of a personal dispute is pushing the envelope of propriety and could be seen as FORUMSHOPPING and or CANVASSING. The comment which does not in any way address the issue raised in this thread should never have been posted here. I take no position in the dispute between these editors as I am not familiar with it and have no intention of getting involved. But this is not the place to resolve it.-Ad Orientem (talk) 19:24, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If WP had the same functionality as Skype, you all could see my WTF face right now. Usually I edit with a bit of a smile (or sometimes a blank look, complete with drool), but right now, I'm dumbfounded. The 'evidence' given above by SPECIFICO of Guy's supposed poor behavior is beyond specious. In some of those links, I'd venture to suggest that the motivation was to imply wrongdoing while knowing full well that the diff didn't illustrate any wrongdoing. AGF is important, but I really can't reconcile how someone can take that first diff as a personal attack in any way. The only possible explanation I can imagine is that the user damn well knows it is not, but doesn't think anyone will check. In every other link, the claim of bad behavior is either arguable or just a clear misunderstanding of what was being said. This is ridiculous and this thread needs to be closed before it creates any more pointless drama. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 19:34, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

66.235.36.153 has been active on Bill Cosby sexual assault allegations for quite some time. Recently they have been making particular contentious edits. Last month they were warned twice for adding that the accusations were made without evidence with no source.[126][127] A similar edit was made without a source today[128], though after being reverted they did finally provide a source.[129] Over the past few days they have been in an edit war over whether to list Cosby's status as a civil rights leader in the lede of the assault allegations article.[130][131][132] The last three warnings on his talk page are from making incendiary comments about other editors and general talk page misuse. After my procedural revert of his last addition to the article in question, he posted this rant on my talk page, saying that other editors have ganged up on him and, after referencing Hitler and George Orwell, said I was piling on as well.LM2000 (talk) 00:25, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• A short block for edit warring seems appropriate here, at the very least. Their edit warring has been slow, but it's edit warring nonetheless. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 02:18, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Page semi protected. That's all that's needed here for the time being.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:26, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • • Hello Folks First, let us get something straight, when there has been a request to go to talk about a subject this good faith editor has done so. This was pointed out to LM2000 before they came here whining about being 'picked on', this good faith editor merely pointed out other editors at Cosby biography talk had deleted RS and deleted a reply to an editor who rambled on about the 'good' Hitler did and Cosby was like 'Hitler'...you can confirm this at Cosby bio talk. Pointing this out to LM2000 is not a 'rant' it is a fact, easily confirmed.

When it was requested this editor provided the proper RS for the painfully obvious fact that Cosby is noted for aspects of his civil rights activity it was provided. That was what, is, being referred to as 'slow edit warring' of which there is no such thing. This editor requested numerous times that the Cosby allegations article have some kind of protection as every time there was some juicy gossip in GAWKER or even the NATIONAL ENQUIRER some editors would rush in drooling to get it into the article...so it is rather hilarious to request article 'protection' when entering a fact of a Living Person is placed in the article with a proper RS, an RS cited in the biography of that person. There is the expressed concern in the Cosby allegation article that the Cosby legacy is being suppressed by means of the allegations, part of that legacy is notable civil right activity, activity some editors have deleted multiple times even in the talk section. With deep concern...Sincerely 66.235.36.153 (talk) 16:53, 4 September 2016 (UTC)A Contributor[reply]

I'm afraid page protection may not be enough in this case. 66.235 denies slow edit warring exists and continues incendiary comments by saying that I was "whining" by coming here, a claim they doubled down on in their edit summary.[133] 66.235 has discussed the civil rights issues on the main Cosby article but not the allegations article, that's a separate dispute and is no justification for edit warring. 66.235 has done good work on both articles and brings a different perspective but has recently ignored policy and their talk page behavior has elevated tensions.LM2000 (talk) 17:49, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• • • Hello LM2000 Thank you for acknowledging this fellow good faith editor has done 'good work'...when the edit about the Cosby civil right legacy is restored with the proper RS that 'good work' will continue. What has 'mounted tensions' is pointing out that editors who compare Cosby to 'Hitler' and drone on about the 'good Hitler did' were deleting posted RS from the Cosby talk page to be perused by other good faith editors such as yourself. They would then rush over and threaten this editor with being 'blocked' if the editor then reposted the various RS at Cosby talk to be reviewed for the article....soooo get your story straight before joining editors who ramble on about the 'good' Hitler did and threaten fellow good faith editors with being blocked...this an archived site so all can be confirmed at the Cosby talk pages. Yes this editor considers it 'whining' when another editor does not return a conversation at the proper talk page and runs to get a fellow good faith editor disciplined for doing what editors are suppose to do...provide edits that improve the article with proper RS. With deep concern 66.235.36.153 (talk) 18:12, 4 September 2016 (UTC) A Contributor[reply]
      • • Hello LM2000 This is a sort of PS to you of the above...the only 'perspective' this editor has is to stick to wiki standards of neutrality. Pointing out that editors who compare Living Persons to 'Hitler', delete RS from the talk pages and threaten editors with being blocked is a very, very, very proper subject to comment on ...at the proper talk page. Sincerely66.235.36.153 (talk) 18:21, 4 September 2016 (UTC) A Contributor[reply]

 Done --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:17, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Could an admin please deal with the threat of violence posted here? StAnselm (talk) 06:01, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, for fuck's sake, when a non-native speaker says, "Hindus will not forgive editer . And result would be not peceful for any one. So please ensure your self before editing", it's not a threat of violence. Honestly, what a bunch of crybabies we have here at ANI. EEng 06:09, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Reporting the problem is worse than the problem itself 2607:FB90:2400:6A04:3976:2F29:28DE:DCFB (talk) 17:49, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Does anyone think that the contents of User:UW Dawgs is appropriate? It has been removed 3 times: [134], [135], [136] and proposed for deletion as vandalism [137] but UW dogs insists on restoring the content and greeting every visitor to his/her user page by telling them that they smell like poo. I believe this is completely inappropriate and the discussion on his/her talk page has gone nowhere. Toddst1 (talk) 06:12, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Again with the nannying of the user pages. Can we just go back to editing articles? (I haven't opened the linked JPG and don't plan to, but unless it's something egregious my prior comment still applies.) EEng 06:33, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

In any case, I wouldn't want to question the accuracy of his assessment. _Muffled ^Pocketed 07:31, 4 September 2016 (UTC) [reply]

Are you following me, Mr. Muffled Mundi? EEng 08:05, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Dear User:Toddst1; I strongly suggest that you use the unwatch button at the top if the page so that you no longer see user pages that displease you.

If, by some chance, you are strapped to a chair with your eyelids tied open in front of a monitor with User:UW Dawgs on the screen and the Poo Song blasting in the background, then let me address this message to your captors: First of all, keep up the good work. Secondly, please take away his keyboard. --Guy Macon (talk) 07:35, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"Guy Macon smells like poo!" is now approved for everyone's user page. Great. Toddst1 (talk) 15:18, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe stop clicking on their userpage and go and build an encyclopedia would be something to try. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 08:46, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: I decided to download the linked image so you don't have to, and all it is is a picture of a poo plushie. All in all, I don't really think there's a problem. -- The Voidwalker ^Discuss 16:31, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

User:79.180.125.113 made edits [138] to Qasr el Yahud (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), which may be construed to be in violation of WP:ARBPIA3 with regards to the "reasonably related" clause, given the anonymous editor's edit description reading: "As of today, 4 September 2016, there is no state of Palestine. This area is within the state of Israel." RegistryKey^(RegEdit) 11:41, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ineluctably. _Muffled ^Pocketed 12:28, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I closed that RFC on the page some time ago(the IP that closed the discussion was me, obviously) The closure was reverted, without any reason against the closure itself, the only reason being an argument against me. After an Adminstrators noticeboard discussion(Link) it was said get an account. I even did it to avoid further complications, and after nothing happened, I reclosed it. It got reverted even then, and User:Favonian denied to revert himself.[link

1. Assuming someone is involved just because he or she is an IP/has a low edit count is assuming bad faith
2. Someone with a high edit count could be involved in the discussion with another account as well. We don't assume that everytime a discussion is closed by someone with a high edit count.
3. Wikipedia:Closing discussions does not set any restrictions on edit counts for closing RFCs
4. These who didn't like the closure didn't even talk with the me, and presented no reasons why the close would be bad
5. Further reverts are not helpful, talking to the reverters didn't help, so I went here instead.Lurking shadow (talk) 15:17, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)I've notified Sro23 for you. On a sidenote, that is some top-notch knowledge of policy for an account so new. SQL^{Query me!} 15:52, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like you were able to notify them - removed mine. SQL^{Query me!} 15:55, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It is best when experienced editors close RfCs. This one is for the moment still open, and it is listed at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Requests for closure#Talk:Abkhazia#RfC on Infobox. The RfC was opened on June 21, but was still receiving a few comments as late as Aug. 26. The status of Abkhazia as a breakaway from Georgia is obviously controversial, and the infobox contains wording about status. If it had to be closed today, the RfC would probably would be deemed to be no consensus (numerical vote is about 17:13 for the new infobox), but a good closer would come up with suggestions for what to do next. For example, raise more precise questions about status. EdJohnston (talk) 16:21, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If someone closes a discussion, you do not revert if it isn't vandalism or such. You talk to the closer, and if you do not convince them, you go to WP:AN to challenge the closure. But you don't revert closures until someone closes it in the way you like.Lurking shadow (talk) 18:35, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Impact of the privatisation of British Rail (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Gravuritas (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Mathmensch (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

After being asked not to do so, User:Gravuritas broke the three-edit rule (diff) with an inappropriate summary line. Furthermore, his response on his talk page was not the most polite of all, and I consider it to be inappropriate, violating Wikipedia principles such as WP:AGF and addressing me as "sonny", and I'm not sure whether this already crosses the line of an insult, albeit a very harmless one.--Mathmensch (talk) 15:56, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Edit_warring#The_three-revert_rule: Violating this rule "often leads to blocks"--Mathmensch (talk) 15:57, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Furthermore, it may be not the first time: User_talk:Gravuritas#Peak_oil--Mathmensch (talk) 15:58, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

User:Gravuritas and User:Mathmensch have each got up to three reverts and are risking a block if either of them goes further. Mathmensch has applied a WP:PROD template to this article which is not very sensible, since it's a decent article on an important topic. If you disagree with the article content try to get agreement on how to change it. EdJohnston (talk) 17:47, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@EdJohnston: I only did two reverts [139].--Mathmensch (talk) 18:09, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

User:EdJohnston has since agreed that I only did two reverts. --Mathmensch (talk) 19:30, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The offended editor believes the whole article to be "bullshit". He edited the article in such a way as to throw doubt on pretty much all of it, with a single source. When reverted he seemed to believe that if he postulated something on the Talk page, that would constitute the entire discussion. Further, any opposition to one of his edits appears to engender a belief that it can only be due to ideological opposition to his own position. As he has been temporarily slightly thwarted, he would now like the entire article deleted.

Gravuritas (talk) 17:49, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed the PROD. Clearly it was not going to be an "uncontroversial deletion" Meters (talk) 18:13, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Gravuritas: You are really not being nice. I don't know what else to say.--Mathmensch (talk) 18:12, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Mathmensch: Well, I've been less than polite: the triggers being that you've imputed a load of opinions to me that I haven't expressed; and you've tried to educate me that 'correlation does not mean causation'. I suspect I learnt the latter before you were born, so posting it on my talk page was pretty insulting. How about saying sorry?

Gravuritas (talk) 19:08, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wasabi,the,one (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) seems, after having been blocked for disruption, come back with a clear intent of getting as many articles of clear notability deleted on flimsy grounds ("not notable other than playing in the olympics".

Examples include

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ragnar Hargreaves
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Beal-Gaillard House
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Expulsion (film)
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ellerbeck Peak
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jor (music)
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chen Chi-hsin

Seems to be a WP:POINT issue in reaction to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Matthew Healy. Obviously a block has had no positive inpact. Also approaching the editor has shown no improvement. I would suggest a topic ban on AFDs. Agathoclea (talk) 16:44, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

My gut feeling with this user is they're a sock of someone else, based on apparently being a "new" account, that went to going to AfDs pretty quickly after being created. Most of those AfD rationales are incredibly poor (look at Beal-Gaillard House, for example) and I'd support a topic ban in that area. And on top of that, they create articles like this! Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 16:47, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Ktrimi991 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

With this comment comment (diff) Ktrimi991 wrote to another editor: assuming you are not mentally disabled....

I politely explained them (diff) that this comment is violation of WP:NPA and Wikipedia:Civility. Instead to acknowledge the issue with their editing and/or refrain from repeating it, they replied (diff) with a comment about the same editor: Only someone who has problems with their brain control can do such things. and this (diff) It is not your fault, everyone knows what means to come from a country like Serbia, a society which is mostly famous for nationalism and propaganda.

I notified them with this edit (diff).--Antidiskriminator (talk) 18:44, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• "What means to come from Serbia"? Are they paying attention to what they're typing? White Arabian Filly ^Neigh 19:02, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Looking at their posting history, they're an Albanian nationalist, which could explain why they seem to hate Serbs so much.74.70.146.1 (talk) 19:26, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • I have been told to die and fuck off, but this is extreme. Guess they won't like me since I am part Serbian. Callmemirela 🍁 {Talk} ♑ 19:29, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

IP user 86.187.169.29 , 86.187.162.52 , 86.187.171.148 , 86.187.170.137 , is edit warring on the Mini-14 page.[140] [141] [142] [143] [144] [145] [146]--RAF910 (talk) 19:31, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]