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

Keeps making edits to a rival political party page Pirate Party UK. Some edits were reverted, only to be made again, and reverted. Eventually they gave up as their edits were proven wrong - but they have recently deleted massive amounts of content from the page again. They resurface intermittently, causing a lot of disruption. The page is a shell of what it once was - and is now wildly inconsistent. Drowz0r (talk) 22:16, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. I've mentioned the issue on their talk page and they agreed to leave a tag for others to "fix" the page... but then made edits again themselves anyway.

They also flew off the handle about being called "ignorant" and so on. Others have noticed the same issue and posted on their talk page but they continue to do it. Drowz0r (talk) 22:20, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'll limit my reply here to a simple rebuttal since this is fairly open/shut:

• I've cleaned up the page because it doesn't conform to Wikipedia's quality standards. I invited Drowz0r to make those changes in a manner of his choosing, but he declined to do so, so I did them. I moved the election results to a different page because they violated WP:INDISCRIMINATE in their original form. I also removed irrelevant content concerning minor officers in the party, as they were not notable.
• I have already pushed a number of Pirate party related pages successfully through the articles for deletion process, and repeated mentions of these people in non notable contexts on the Pirate party page have also been deleted. I have thus stripped down the page to mentions that are notable, aren't a conflict of interest, and are backed up by a reliable third party source.
• The page is overwhelmingly reliant on sources that either fleetingly mention the person mentioned, or come from the party itself. Thus there's little way to establish notability of the people or concepts mentioned.
• I have not flown off the handle at any point. Drowz0r has been fairly disrespectful towards me and I have presented him with various options to resolve this issue, he has declined to compromise and disappears for long stretches of time so I continue with constructive edits. The fact that he leaves me insulting messages on my talk pages and then decides not to make any constructive edits to the Pirate Party UK page leaves me to clean it up myself.

I'm not hugely bothered by the page as a whole, but I'm not going to be intimidated from making constructive edits to a page because it's someone's own political party and because they want to set it out in a way that doesn't meet Wikipedia's quality standards and is considerably longer and more exhaustive than any other page on a minor UK political party. For an example of what I've been doing elsewhere, look at Mebyon Kernow, which is another minor UK political party page that I cleaned up. I've also created pages on minor parties from scratch, such as Mansfield Independent Forum and Canvey Island Independent Party. These much better suit accepted standards of length and quality, and use third party references that refer directly to the matter at hand. I'm collating a list of all UK political parties which is why I sometimes resurface at Pirate Party UK to clean up the page. I have no particular interest in Pirate politics, Mr Elston, or any other figure involved in the group. Maswimelleu (talk) 07:14, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

RHaworth (talk · contribs) is a long-standing admin who has done a lot of work to clear the persistent backlog at CAT:CSD. However, I have witnessed him making mistakes and talking to newbies in a far too intemperate a manner. I know admins don't have to be perfect, and I'm not always the most civil and polite admin on the block, granted, but I think he's going a bit too far. Some recent examples:

• UK railway station openings / reopenings by year (now at Draft:UK railway station openings / reopenings by year) - deleted A10 as a copy of History of rail transport in Great Britain 1995 to date though the list intended to cover the greater scope of all UK stations. See comment from Andy Dingley.

• Green tomato cars - deleted G11, after challenged by the creator, the response was "learn to provide a link when you talk about a page". After I restored the article, RHaworth sent it to AfD and moved it to Green Tomato Cars without a redirect (causing a problem where I inadvertently created the article again while I was copyediting it, requiring a history merge to fix). The AfD does not have an unanimous "delete" consensus, which is a good general arbiter of whether or not a speedy is appropriate.

• Draft:Divya Agarwal - deleted G4, though no previous deletion discussion had taken place. See comment from Chrissymad where she appears to be complaining about RHaworth calling Oshwah a "pedant".

• Draft:Comedian Nazareth - deleted per G13, hence can be restored on request. RHaworth's reply was "Kindly have the decency to wait until someone who a) knows how to create Wikipedia articles and b) has no CoI, thinks your client is notable and writes about him here.", also altering an earlier talk page comment of mine in the process (a minor violation of WP:TPO).

These are all in the last week or so, but if you go onto RHaworth's talk page archives, you can see other examples of him being unhelpful. I appreciate that speedy deletion is necessary for the project - heck, I speedy delete plenty of stuff myself, and admins sometimes differ over what is speedyable. However, I sincerely believe if you delete a page created in good faith, you should be in a position to work with that editor, and not make them increasingly frustrated. I don't seem to be the only one with this opinion; as you might imagine, SoWhy has previously said "With all due respect to RHaworth, I would never agree that a speedy deletion was justified just because he thought so." and this notorious boingboing piece which says "I do not have the capability to write an additional 2 million more articles in my lifetime to save the remaining 2 million stubs from deletionists like RHaworth, the hemovanadin killer whose itchy deletion finger was noted by a commenter in my previous article as directly responsible for that editor's abandoning the project." (the context here is an incorrect G12 deletion on Hemovanadin). Okay, strong opinions there that not everyone will agree with, but this isn't just a personal grudge, more an indication that there is a problem.

To be honest, I'd feel more comfortable if RHaworth had given me a thorough dressing down about how I was being overly aggressive and how his admin actions were correct (I wouldn't agree with it but I would understand why he would say it), but I've had next to no feedback. Things have deteriorated to the point where I don't trust any deletion activity he does as being correct and just revert anything that I feel is wrong. This is a bad situation to be in, as it's one stop short of wheel-warring, but as Andy Dingley put it here, "Go and do some training for WMF / WMUK somewhere. Hear the "I wrote something and then it was deleted immediately with no discussion" stories - it's so often the same admin names that come up, over and over again." So I think the community needs to do something.

Any ideas? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 18:06, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Awaiting a response by RHaworth; it's unlikely discussion will be productive before then. power~enwiki (π, ν) 18:35, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Thanks Ritchie for opening this, although I'm not optimistic about much happening as a result (an admin admit they're wrong?). This is a long-standing issue - although even RHaworth's "unorthodox" user_talk: page archiving strategy makes it impossible to search its history.

Just a month or two back though, we had this one on Category:Bandini vehicles: WikiProject Automobiles §Bandini deletions, Criteria for speedy deletion §G6 on "empty" categories? – another one where an invalid CSD nomination, on a clearly contentious issue, was then implemented as deletion without the slightest check or question. Andy Dingley (talk) 19:35, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Further on the "bad press" aspect, we get articles like this: "Watching Wikipedia's extinction event from a distance". Boing Boing. 14 February 2017. Andy Dingley (talk) 20:08, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

There's another recent complaint at User talk:Feminist#'Murica! Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 20:13, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• It has been obvious for very many years to anyone who bothers to look that RHaworth is incompetent to judge speedy deletion. He was one of the two or three admins primarily responsible for my giving up editing with a userid a few years ago. One example among many was his speedy deletion of Cheveley Park Stud and the title's salting in response to my questioning of the deletion. It's about time we did something about long-standing admins who get away with such disruption simply because of their length of tenure. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 20:47, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• He does a LOT of CSD so there is bound to be some who find fault occasionally. Every page subjected to CSD has at least the creator believingbit should remain live. Legacypac (talk) 20:52, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Try actually looking at his record rather than making such general statements. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 21:03, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Well I'm not an Admin so I can only see so much - but the IP should actually look at my 11 page long record covering only since June 2017 before assuming I don't have a very good idea about every Admin's competence in processing Speedies. Legacypac (talk) 21:10, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

As stated above, I do lots of speedies myself; however I think the key issue is effective communication and managing people's expectations. It's why I created essays such as User:Ritchie333/Plain and simple guide to copyvios simply because trying to explain WP:G12 (which requires an instant deletion, if valid) to a newbie without them getting the hump is actually quite a difficult task. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 21:28, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

(Non-administrator comment) If we're going to let publications such as BoingBoing dictate our policies and (worse) ANI-cases against admins, we're definitely on the wrong track. The two articles cited are prime examples of hit-pieces instead of serious press. If BoingBoing doesn't like Wikipedia, I tend to view that as a compliment. As to the matter at hand, I side with Legacypac: you can't make an omelet w/o breaking some eggs, you can't be an admin without stepping on various toes. Kleuske (talk) 21:34, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Have you read the Boing Boing piece? Have you read the technical backstory to the hemovanadin CSD? This was a technical failure in sloppy adminship: a clear and unquestioned copyvio change to an article (previously not a copyvio) was reacted to by deletion, rather than reversion. There's just no excuse for that. The Bandini category was deleted for an invalid CSD reason which just isn't applicable to content categories (it's there for housekeeping of maintenance categories only).

AfD is always a battle between inclusionism vs. deletionism. But this isn't AfD, it's CSD - that should be simpler, there's no judgemental wiggle room for inclusion or not. CSD is there (and only there) for the technical reasons and the unambiguous invalid articles. If someone, even the article creator, can make a policy-valid case that an article might be suitable for inclusion, then the CSD fails and it goes to AfD as a minimum. CSD is just not there for arguing inclusionist / deletionist cases. But these deletions are so often technically broken - outside the policies of valid CSD rules. CSD is not about "speedy" deletion, it's about clear, unarguable and uncontestable deletion. If they're arguable, there are other mechanisms. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:55, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• @Andy Dingley: I have read both pieces and both, but especially the first, lack any journalistic decency. Both depend more on insinuations than facts. I have gone through the history of hemovanadin and what I see is Wikipedia working as it should. Someone screwed up and it got corrected quickly. I despise all isms and actively dislike people who reduce issues to various isms, since that's a very divisive way dealing with things. If you expect admins to be flawless, you'l be disappointed. No-one (but no-one) on Wikipedia is. Kleuske (talk) 22:04, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• See my comment in the recent SoWhy thread: RHaworth is on the opposite end of the speedy-deletion spectrum as SoWhy. He will delete a lot of things I wouldn't, but at the same time, most of the things he deletes really should be deleted, and having someone to push the envelope in that direction in terms of quality-control isn't necessarily a bad thing. I've brought an article to DYK after he deleted it (Tallinn Central Library (deletion log under a different title.), and I'll admit that his response to me was a bit gruff, but this was also how it stood when he deleted it. I can't rally blame him for that, even if my approach was different.
  I've noticed a few G12s in the past that I think he should be more careful on (I can't find them now, so this is more of just general feedback than an accusation or diff-able type thing), and I do think that he could be better in his responses to users on his talk page, but at the end of the day, I think he does a lot of good work that is needed. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:44, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

"I do think that he could be better in his responses to users on his talk page" And Donald Trump could be a bit more conciliatory and tactful over what he says in public. Anyway, that's not the real issue here, which is - if I happen to see a deletion from RHaworth that I disagree with (which seems to be about four a week at the moment), is the community okay with me just restoring it and telling him to go jump? I don't think that's a healthy situation to be in. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 21:48, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• "most of the things he deletes really should be deleted"

Most isn't good enough. We have policies for a reason, and they're binding on RHaworth too. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:58, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• I'm sure that the vast majority of RHaworth's CSDs are correct, but on the other hand if you're going to do a lot of CSD, you really do need to get the basics right, and you do need to communicate reasonably with often unhappy users. The first three examples quoted by Ritchie (the A10 of the railway stations, the G11 of the taxi company, and the G4) were all simply wrong. Whilst calling Oshwah a pedant was unnecessary, the G4 doesn't really matter that much because the article was deletable as G11 (although I note the person is probably notable if someone wrote a proper article), but the other two were not. Black Kite (talk) 21:51, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• "you really do need to get the basics right, and you do need to communicate reasonably with often unhappy users. " Amen to that. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:59, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Yes, I can agree with your analysis. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:05, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Admins that do a lot of CSD will have the appearance of making more mistakes (believe me, I would know). Relative to other admins, RHaworth has been our most active non-bot admin by an enormous margin since the beginning of 2018. I'm skeptical that RHaworth's ratio of errors to deletes is higher than any other admin. Yes, his communication style could be better, but I'm not seeing any immediate need for sanctions. -FASTILY 22:13, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I've got a good theory behind that. If you just accept every CSD tag is correct and just hit "delete" indiscriminately regardless of whether it's justified, you can get through a backlog far quicker than if you look at the article and sources, and confirm whether deletion is the correct action. To give you an example, I've just declined two A7s for Nancy Smith (designer) and Monica Rawlins; fixing up the article so it is properly formatted and clearly shows sources (principally to stop somebody else coming along and tagging it them A7 again) took about ten minutes. Hitting the "delete" button on the pair would have taken ten seconds. In that respect, it's no different than the problems I saw at AfC some years back where a few editors "helpfully" cleared the backlog of reviews by declining just about everything. I apologise if it wasn't obvious from the opening statement, but I wasn't particularly looking for sanctions (what form would said sanctions take, for a start?); rather I just wanted an explanation. I certainly haven't got one from his talk page. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 22:21, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Contrary to what many may think, I do have a life outside of Wikipedia. Hence the timing of this reply. Yes, Ritchie I think you are being overly aggressive. Apparently I am not allowed to make any mistakes at all. But to look at the examples you quote:

• Green tomato cars. I don't even call this a mistake, simply an example of bold / revert / discuss operating as it should. I found it with a speedy tag, agreed with that tag and made bold to delete it. Ritchie disagreed and reverted my deletion. I initiated an AfD discussion. What's the problem?

• UK railway station openings / reopenings by year. Similar to the above but in this case I have not even bothered to initiate a discussion.

• Draft:Divya Agarwal. A favourite line of mine from Murder in the Cathedral: "the last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason". Certainly giving an inaccurate deletion reason seems to be a treasonable offence on Wikipedia.

• Draft:Comedian Nazareth. The message on my talk page did not explicitly request a restore. Was I expected to restore the work of an obvious CoI merchant voluntrarily? or even advise him of his rights to make such a request?

In short: I defend all my deletions - am I required to be perfect? - if a small fraction of them were "wrong" others have restored them. But Ritchie, feel free to comment if you think I am communicating unreasonably with any unhappy user. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 22:33, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not impressed by this response at all, and a candidate at RFA would be pilloried for it. For non-admins, a CSD is not the start of a BRD-style discussion, but the end of one. The CSD guidelines also state Administrators should take care not to speedy delete pages or media except in the most obvious cases, which is the opposite of BOLD. power~enwiki (π, ν) 23:10, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@ RHaworth: I'm not sure you've understood the concern Ritchie333 has raised. It's fine if you make mistakes, we all do. But when other editors ask you for deletion explanations and/or help, could you please make an honest effort to be of assistance? I don't think that's an unreasonable request. -FASTILY 23:51, 8 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Given the divergence of views on what should be deleted, there will always be disagreements. I tag or delete a lot of CSDs, and not every one of them has been correct. My usual guess is that any experienced person should have a <5% error rate, the best practical human error rate is 1%, and I manage about 2%. Most of my errors are borderline, a few are just stupid. RHaworth and I and most experienced admins almost always agree for speedies--but not quite always. (& I point out that even "most obvious cases" will always have a fuzzy boundary of whether something really is quite that obvious.)

But the real problem here is that it is utter unacceptable to respond "Kindly have the decency to wait until someone who a) knows how to create Wikipedia articles and b) has no CoI, thinks your client is notable and writes about him here." , even to people writing blatantly promotional paid biographies. And even worse for autobiographies, it come out as "Kindly have the decency to wait until someone ... thinks you are is notable and writes about you here." (My own wording for that rather common situation is "When you become notable enough that other people write about you in third-party independent reliable sources, then someone will be interested enough to write your biography". The message will be understood equally well.) I cannot imagine ever saying "Kindly have the decency .." on wikipedia even at the peak of frustration, let alone routinely. DGG ( talk ) 05:03, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe he just played too much Bioshock? Andy Dingley (talk) 20:07, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment--I concur with much of what Ritchie has said.And, my sole experience with him has been pathetic, when post an interesting OTRS conversation, I asked him to refund a non-speediable article, so that it could be AFD'd but he went into a radio-silent-mode and didn't refund it.And, I would appreciate RHaworth, giving us assurances of more-friendly communication.All that being said, I somehat concur with Tony that having sysops at both end of the spectrum is beneficial. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Winged Blades of Godric (talk • contribs) 06:30, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Since I am a relatively new administrator and am only 126 on the list of those taking admin actions in 2018 (including bots), I am reluctant to criticize the far more experienced #1 human administrator. But I have to agree with Ritchie333 and DGG, among others. Any good faith editor who comes to your talk page deserves a good faith, informative response, rather than something dismissive. Certainly, there may be disagreement about who is truly acting in good faith, but when there is any doubt, please try to err on the side of kindness and helpfulness, RHaworth. That is the Wikipedia way. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:45, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

actually, I extend it even to those who may not be in good faith.I'lll give a full explanation the first time round, assuming good faith. If it becomes evidence other, the way to proceed is to still be polite, but firm. We cannot ask someone directly for their identity, but i do say, that I cannot help further unless I know who you represent. If they do not want to acknowledge the coi, that tends to give a conclusion. In particular, I always ask that of anyone who appeals to me privately off wiki. DGG ( talk ) 08:51, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Seeing as how RHaworth's user page states "I have a well-justified reputation for blunt speaking on talk pages. But such pages are not a vicar's tea party. I take my standards from parliamentary language - if a Speaker would allow it then I use it" he is unlikely to start communicating in a friendly manner, whether the users are good-faith or not.--Pawnkingthree (talk) 12:58, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

As I write, I can see five unanswered posts on RHaworth's talk page from editors wondering why their article was deleted - I would say this is a good opportunity for him to show he can take the above advice on board and put this discussion to bed. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:47, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Got to love the second discussion on his talkpage where he states "I hate it when I leave messages and people completely ignore them". Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 16:03, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Ouch. Looks like RHaworth is at about the point where I usually take a Wikibreak :-( Guy (Help!) 13:55, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Abstractly, there is a pattern on Wikipedia where high output contributors come under the microscope, and plenty of evidence is found on which to crucify them. Here in RHaworth, we have the 2nd most prolific admin in terms of deletions in the history of Wikipedia. In the 4620 days he has been an administrator, he has deleted things 393340 times, or ~85 a day. Even if he is right 99.9% of the time (highly unlikely) he still has a mistake every other week. We can find plenty of evidence to suggest he's making lots of mistakes in speedy deletions. Contrast; if we had an admin that did 1000 deletions and made only 1 mistake (RHaworth's presumed ratio), we'd congratulate them on a job well done. It should be noted that RHaworth is the 6th most active undeleter, with 7272 undeletions, or about two a day. All this said, I consider it highly important than an administrator be responsive to queries about their actions and to do so in a civil manner. This is ensconced in policy at WP:ADMINACCT. I would much rather see an admin engage in less deletions and rapid, civil responses to queries than to see high volume deletions and slow/uncivil responses. The reason we need administrators with such high volume output is due to declining participation in such things. The answer to that is not more deletions with less proper responses, but more proper responses and less deletions so as not to dissuade future highly active editors, and later administrators. We need to foster the community. We can't do that by deleting everything on sight and then not responding as to why. I'm not suggesting RHaworth is doing this, but rather what we need to avoid. --Hammersoft (talk) 16:46, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• "I don't even call this a mistake, simply an example of bold / revert / discuss operating as it should." I don't. I call it "Reverting another admin's actions without discussion". Normally, when I see a G11 I disagree with (which isn't often), I'd say something like "hey, I think I can clean this up, do you mind if I restore it?". But with you I see pages of rude or intemperate replies (as other people have mentioned), so I think I'll just get the same if I requested it (as Godric has mentioned), which leads me to not think it's worth the hassle. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 17:31, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• I have found a lot of errors in RHaworth's speedy deletions, and in some cases they clearly delete outside the bounds of what is permitted by the various criteria, see their comment about halfway through this diff. That being said, their error rate is probably about the same as anyone else's, it is just more noticeable given the sheer amount of work they get through. I do wish they'd stick a little closer to the rules though, and that's coming from an unashamed deletionist. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 06:04, 10 April 2018 (UTC).[reply]
• I think we all need to be careful conflating outright 'errors' with 'my opinion would be different there'. If RHaworth occasionally deletes something that - in a presumably less-reductive view - should not have been deleted because it could have become a 'real' article, then you can ask him to restore it, you can ask another admin to restore it, you can go to WP:RFU, or you can just make the new, better article from scratch, given that the deleted stuff is almost always not of any real encyclopedic value anyway (the topic may be, its treatment at that point was not). It's not like a speedy deletion is a brick wall, and when your article is deleted, even as a new editor, you are clearly pointed towards Wikipedia:Why was my article deleted?. Pillorying is not the solution. Fish+Karate 10:14, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

But having a an admin with a very terse attitude IS a problem. I guess WP:BITE doesn't apply to Haworth. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 13:28, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Terse!=Bite. Kleuske (talk) 08:00, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

But, in this case, Bite=Bite. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 19:27, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That's your claim. Now back it up. Why this this shitshow still open, BTW? Kleuske (talk) 20:58, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

From a quick spin through WP:IPHUMAN, "Count yourself lucky I am condescending to talk to an IP address", "I don't talk to IP addresses.", "Consider yourself lucky that I am talking to an IP address. .... I wonder if you will ever learn about wikilinks.", "Count yourself very luck that I am replying: no explanation of why you are having to violate my IP address policy; horrible page widening and no link to the deleted article. I am not surprised that your article triggered what has happened: no lede, no link back to the parent and totally unreferenced.".

As for complaints, "have seen your tone in response to many other contributors, and it is obvious that you think highly of your own assessments, even as other administrators disagree. Many of your responses are rather condescending, to the point of being quite rude and unprofessional.", "lso somebody who is a admin should be more nurturing and less condescending.", "I'm not too thrilled that you choose to start this conversation by hurling insults. That's so clearly against WP principles that I'm astonished that you have any kind of administrative capacity." That's from a quick ten minute search on a few terms. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 22:32, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Ritchie333: Out of 18.000+ actions? Not a bad score, considering he's only human. I bet you never make mistakes... Kleuske (talk) 12:22, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Then we have "There was absolutely no need to e-mail me and the matter is not the slightest bit urgent. If you don't know what has happened, I suggest you learn to read edit histories and logs .... ", "Please learn wikilinks and to not use br" (in response to "Thank you very much for your help" after another admin restored an article speedied by RHaworth), "Do you know the difference between an encyclopedia and a social networking site? Go away to FaceBook.", "Talk about helping lame ducks. If you really cannot find out how to submit a draft, you should not be here.", "Please read this ", "Since you have been foolhardy enough to bring yourself to my attention, I will say: so far you have done nearly an hundred edits none of which are actually contributing to the encyclopedia.", "do it yourself! Learn to use the tools the MediaWiki software provides", "The singular of criteria is criterion. A person who has been on Wikipedia for 10 years and 3 days ought to know to provide a link when they talk about an article.", ""Not through Google" - what an insult to the MediaWiki software which provides all the clues you need. .... In its original form and as amended above by me there are two links, one red one blue. Did it cross your mind to follow the blue link? Have you thought of looking at your contributions history instead of asking Google?", "Get your facts right.", "Don't be ridiculous. I have already told you to put it at draft:Winning Jah (2). Why is that concept so difficult to understand? Please reply." ..... Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:22, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Ritchie333: Nice collection of quotes, but I struggle to find anything really uncivil there. Civility does not imply going along with everything, agreeing with anyone,pleasing everybody and never contradict them or point out the fucking obvious. AGF and CIVIL are not suicide pacts. Kleuske (talk) 10:14, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

So you think "This article is shit, fuck off" is an appropriate response to a new user's first article? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:18, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Where does he say that? —SerialNumber54129 ^{paranoia /cheap shit room} 10:30, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

He's never said that exactly (the specific wording I used there comes from Wikipedia:WikiSpeak#S), but in my view the wording he did use has the same effect. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:47, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

But that's really why the thread has got no traction: ~everyone knows that we as a community are—rightly or wrongly—relatively tolerant of brusqueness-to-the-point of incivility, as long as heavy work is being done in the course of it. I also see a lot of people—rightly or wrongly—who don't actually care whether spammers and junkoids do have their pages deleted without a by-your-leave—noobs or not! :D On a lighter note, yes, the Wikispeak page is always worth an outing: doesn't get used enough imho. —SerialNumber54129 ^{paranoia /cheap shit room} 11:46, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

"count yourself lucky that I am talking to IP's" and the rest of the diffs are not a 'mistake'. Its called, 'being a massive tool'. A mistake would be 'I did not mean to say/do that'. Not 'I'm going to be completely arrogant and rude in order to deliberately demean you.'. Glad we cleared that up. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:29, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Kleuske:, how many thousand bitey comments do you want to be provided to answer your "now back it up"? Whatever reasonable number you give could certainly be answered from RHaworth's talk page and contribution histories. Try looking for yourself rather than demanding near-impossible feats from others. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 19:44, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

...and despite this ANI thread being open, and explaining to Seraphim System why Association Montessori Internationale doesn't meet the criteria for A7 (despite RHaworth deleting it), and when consensus is moving towards the recreated version being salvageable, he goes and unilaterally moves it to draft without telling anyone. I've got a sore head now. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 21:33, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

From my time at AfC, I think User:RHaworth does a lot of valuable work that is a net benefit to the project. Maybe his talk page responses are a bit curt, but it is also not helpful for admins to take an inherently unrealistic and fantastically optimistic approach to the reality of the backlogs at AfC and NPP. Moving this article to draft space was a sound alternative to deletion in this case - in its current condition sourced only to primary sources it would not have passed AfC anyway.Seraphim System ^(talk) 21:47, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• I substantially agree with User:DGG above. To err is human, to be uncivil is not. Unfortunately, WP:CSDs are ripe for adamant SPI's making life miserable for both taggers and deleting admins. A few quite vocal participants in the community expect a perfect score card and are quick to grab the torches and pitchforks. Alas, in human endeavors, perfection isn't possible. In my experience, speedy deletions that are overturned - all with much ballyhoo and sniping - are often deleted through other means and the tendency toward WP:BUREAU marches along. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:03, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• I think a convincing case has been made that the CSD errors themselves can probably be overlooked and forgiven. Unusually high volume of reviews = correspondingly high volume of mistakes, and as Hammersoft demonstrated above, even a 99.9% rate of accuracy would yield the appearance of relatively many mistakes being made. In spite of this, a substantial case has been made regarding RHaworth's interpersonal communications. Enough to demonstrate a persistant pattern of seriously problematic behavior. On top of that, in a rare display, there's a strong consensus view that that the community does not find his conduct to be acceptable, and is far beyond the levels of incivility that we normally let slide. In my opinion, RHaworth failing to engage here because he "has a life" is in itself indicative of the problem. @RHaworth: I think, in the interest of WP:ADMINACCT, you should heed the community's view that your conduct in communicating has been below the expected standard from an administrator. Just show us that you accept the criticism and assure us that this is something you can and will work to improve on. I think that's all any of us are looking for here. That said, the consensus in this thread would appear to be tantamount to a community condemnation of your conduct (I'm searching for a less poignant term than "condemnation" but a more accurate one isn't coming to me). I don't think this is something you can get away with just ignoring. Swarm ♠ 22:52, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

An experienced user:Obi2canibe is continuing to bully and trouble wikipedians who edit articles related to Sri Lanka for some years now. He first tried to bully and chase away the editors who were interested in Sri Lankan civil war related articles. His behavior directly and indirectly resulted many Sri Lankan wikipedians to vanish from Wikipedia (Most of them fear to complain considering his very high article/edit count and the destruction he may caused to their work in Wikipedia). Now he has started to trouble even the nicest of Sri Lankan Wikipedians who are not interested to edit Sri Lankan war related articles. A recent comment from an neutral editor is given here (comment i). Could some administrator or a user with special rights look into this matter ? Thanks. RitzAgasti (talk) 08:19, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

1) I have notified the user; 2) where is your attempt t discuss the issues with the user before coming to ANI?; 3) have you edited under another account before, seeing as your first edits are to ANI?; 4) please provide some links showing examples of the edits you have issues with. GiantSnowman 08:27, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Many have tried to discuss this with him, but no use (most of them do not edit wikipedia anymore or have reduced the number of contributions). My responsibility is to report this hidden ongoing issue here at ANI and I have given a very recent example of a comment made by a wikipedia admin about it. A recent example for his bahviour is given here [2]. Old example for his behavior is given here (not my self) (many incidents have happened and went unnoticed in between). It is up to the admins to investigate using available tools and take a suitable action or to ignore it as have happened many times before and let him continue on his merry way (easier option is the second one). --RitzAgasti (talk) 09:26, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

RitzAgasti - Umm, no... you have a couple of things incorrect here:

1. The examples you provided here are edits by Obi2canibe that were made in 2009 and 2011 - that's over seven years ago. Aside from that, I don't see any bullying or inappropriate behavior with those edits at all.
2. Your example here, while I agree could perhaps have been worded a bit nicer and to a tone that reads that he's assuming good faith, this discussion seems fine and they seem to be working to correct some incoming link issues... no big deal.
3. You are incorrect with your implications when you state that "it is up to the admins to investigate using available tools and take a suitable action" - it is up to you to provide direct and solid evidence with all of your accusations and statements; so far, you have only given a link to a discussion and three edits made many years back. Your other accusations such as this user causing others to vanish and ongoing bullying and other violations made by this user to other accounts - have come with absolutely no evidence at all. This is not acceptable; accusations are taken seriously here, and making such statements without evidence can be considered uncivil and disruptive, which are grounds for having action taken.
4. You have not answered all of GiantSnowman's questions.

I highly recommend that you resolve the concerns I've expressed or clarify any statements above, as I'm seeing absolutely no weight behind your accusations against Obi2canibe so far... ~Oshwah~^{(talk) (contribs)} 12:24, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. While the above post itself is quite shallow and lacks evidence, I would like to weight in on RitzAgasti's claims. I am the founder of Wikimedia Sri Lanka, and an admin here. I have a number of local editors on my watchlist, and RitzAgasti is not wrong. This user has been stealthily taunting a number of editors - mostly those from Sri Lanka. While I do openly agree that Obi2canibe does good work here on Wikipedia, I have a number of diffs and permalinks that show extremely disturbing underlying behaviour of this particular user. Most of which did go unnoticed as most users just don't have the time, patience, or knowledge, to go through our escalation processes.

I will not provide any links to the diffs I mentioned yet, as the issue is currently being discussed with other uninvolved admins. Depending on the outcome of those discussions, I will comment here again.

In summary, commenting in my admin capacity: I would have warned and/or blocked this user if the above linked conversation continued. They very clearly have a problem with Sinhalese people, and very clearly is stealthily taunting such editors on wiki. As a person who is in fact doing everything I can to promote contributions from Sri Lanka, it is very clear to me that this user is doing serious harm to the community, and should not be ignored. Rehman 13:30, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Rehman - That's what I said to myself as well - if the user was being belligerent and uncivil to that high of a level on your user talk page, you certainly would have taken some kind of action. Hence I took it as a conversation where the wording he used wasn't great, but also wasn't something I considered an actionable event. I understand your thoughts and feeling about Obi2canibe, but I need diffs and specific examples before I can agree or begin to make judgment here... Let me know how things go :-) ~Oshwah~^{(talk) (contribs)} 13:47, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Rehman - just wanted to check in here. Can we move to close this discussion for now, or are there further concerns and diffs that you wish to provide and add to it? Let me know. Cheers - ~Oshwah~^{(talk) (contribs)} 04:34, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Oshwah. After discussing the issue with another admin, I've decided to post the links here in public. I will do so within the next 24hrs (I'm currently at work). Kind regards, Rehman 06:44, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Rehman - No rush; just ping me when you do. Cheers - ~Oshwah~^{(talk) (contribs)} 07:21, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Oshwah: Apologies for the delay in responding. Below are some diffs and/or permalinks mentioned earlier (dates are approximate).

• 2008-11-12 - Created their userpage by calling Sinhalese people "the forces of evil", sometime after removing facts claiming were misinformation on Wikipedia by "Sinhalese nationalists".
• 2013-02-06 - Numerous 'sinhala vs. tamil" conflicts with User:Himesh84. Links on this page branch out to other large convos with other editors. The user disappeared, before/after eventually being blocked due to sockpuppetry following repeated taunting.
• 2015-11-08 - Opposed facts, calling it "Sri Lankan propaganda" and "Sinhalisation of names in Tamil areas". This was my first interaction with this user.
• 2015-12-25 - Refusing to state LTTE terrorist activities as such, and asking the opposing editor to "Leave Wikipedia"
• 2016-01-02 - Against Sinhala pronunciation? Note that this is against WP:COMMONNAME.
• 2016-01-03 - When question the above edit, the user accused me of being a "Sinhalised Tamil speaker". I am neither Sinhalese nor Tamil. This is my 2nd bump-in with this user.
• 2016-02-21 - Open-ended/convos that don't stick to the topic like these are quite common. Especially when it seem to involve editors from Sri Lanka.
• 2016-04-17 - This Sri Lankan user's talkpage is flooded by rude warnings, including one which asks him to leave Wikipedia. The user has vanished.
• 2016-12-14 - Various attempts to delete the article on this notable Sri Lankan figure.
• 2017-01-07 - Edits such as these are all too common. Note that Sinhala is the primary language of Sri Lanka.
• 2017-01-14 - Dispute on who wrote the Sri Lankan National Anthem.
• 2017-07-30 - Public personal attack on my work at the Wikimedia User Group on Meta.
• 2018-04-08 - Then finally, this incident, which made me take a closer look at this user's history.
• 0000-00-00 - Searching venues such as ANI, using keywords, or having a close look at the user's usertalk and article talk contribs, or any other discussion page for that matter, would definitely bring up more concerning results. Note that I haven't checked other Wikimedia projects.

Again, I want to clearly emphasize that User:Obi2canibe is a dedicated contributor, and I personally admire his work. That being said, his actions against other Sri Lankan contributors is clearly damaging the community, and has a serious domino effect. One new user with a bad experience not only share that experience in RL, but others looking at the offensive talkpage would also multiply that result. If I come across unnecessarily offensive messages (like the Laxapana post on my talkpage) from this user to anyone, I would not hesitate to take the appropriate action.

At the same time, since this discussion is on, I will leave it up to the OP and anyone else involved to decide on what action to take from here on. My best interest is to protect and empower the tiny editor base in Sri Lanka, even if that means blocking Obi2canibe. A topic ban on all Sri Lanka related articles may be something to consider. Rehman 17:17, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Rehman: is clearly involved here and explicitly violating WP:ADMINACCT and WP:INVOLVED with whom he has had content disputes. His threat to ban or block Obi2canibe will be clear violation of this policy.

Further there appears to be a clear case of WP:SOCK or WP:MEAT here.

• On 8th April 2018 Obi2canibe asks him fix Dab and Rehman threatens to ban him
• On 10th April 2018 a sock -RitzAgasti comes out from nowhere solely posts in ANI and directly attacks Obi2canibe quoting Rehman in ANI and does not answer questions about previous account.Then Rehman posts in this discussion through he was not notified.Feel someone should open a sock invetigation against Rehman.Clearly fails WP:DUCK here.

None of the differences show any violation of WP:NPA ,WP:3RR or any major policy.Note Obi2canibe has been around since 2008 just as Rehman.

• There is a content dispute on 2017-01-14 - Dispute on who wrote the Sri Lankan National Anthem. Obi2canibe rightly goes to the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard
• This is content issue over the name which was discussed in the talk page Between Rehman and Obi2canibe both discuss the civily I see nothing wrong from either user
• Obi2canibe nominates to AFD once it is kept nothing wrong there. I couldn't understand why is Rehman saying, 2016-12-14 - Various attempts to delete the article on this notable Sri Lankan figure.
• User:Himesh84 was blocked over 10 times by various admins Here clearly false that he left due to Obi2canibe.Kaytsfan (talk) 19:27, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Kaytsfan: Thanks, you saved me a lot of time in finding evidence to defend myself against some very weak accusations. How on earth did you find out about this discussion?

@RitzAgasti: You are clearly a sockpuppet but whose? Rehman's? Himesh84's? Who are you? Be a man, reveal yourself.

@Rehman: You've spent a lot of time trawling my contributions to find evidence that I'm causing "serious harm to the community" but much of the evidence you've gathered is just content dispute. Disputes are fact of Wikipedia. If you go through any user's contributions, particularly one who has been here for as long as me and edits a contentious subject, then you will find that they have been in disputes. Does that justify a blanket topic ban?

I will for now only respond to one of the diffs you've provided, the very first one (2008-11-12). This is from ten years ago (there's no statute of limitation on Wikipedia!) and is something I regret. I came to Wikipedia for the wrong reasons (to balance my perceived imbalance in Sri Lankan articles) but stayed for the right reasons (to create well sourced articles on a topic that was under represented on Wikipedia). I removed the offending content from my user page but as it remained in its history I was advised by an experienced user to delete the page. I did this later. Now you have abused your admin privileges to dig up deleted content. Not cool.--Obi2canibe (talk) 20:54, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Kaytsfan:, I was not aware of @RitzAgasti: contribution history (i.e. only at ANI). I am more than happy if a sock check is done for the user, if that ensures things go smoothly. That being said, yes I do agree that there is a high chance Ritz is a sock. No new editor drops straight into ANI. Update: Oddly, you too seems to have only recently come out of dormancy and dropped directly into ANI. I've also noticed this edit which is odd, because barnstars are usually posted on the user talkpage. Anyways, I am not interested in digging into this any further. Rehman 04:33, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Obi2canibe:, with all due respect, it is up to you if you decide to only respond to the easiest diffs. Yes I understand the older permalinks, despite being wrong, can no longer be considered relevant. I've been here as long as you, and I have done stupid things as well. Without beating around the bush, if you could clearly accept that you were unfair/wrong in cases like the Laxapana/Channukam/calling people "Sinhalised"/calling edits "Sri Lankan propaganda"/your personal attack on Meta, and can promise not to take that route again, I am willing to step out of this conversation and let you continue with Ritz, who initially started this conversation. Like I said, my best interest is the health of the community, and looking at most of your work, I'm sure it is yours too. Rehman 03:04, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

As the user who has initiated this thread,i must admit that i am neither Himesh84 nor Rehman. Also i have not awarded any barnstars to my own account using socks and this account was created solely to secure my account from posssible negative consequences of reporting mighty obi2canibe who has possibly 5 to 10 accounts with several thousands of useful and useless edits. RitzAgasti (talk) 08:41, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

{reply to|RitzAgasti} "this account was created solely to secure my account from posssible[sic] negative consequences" Not sure that counts as a sock puppet, but it seems to. Per the policy: "Sock puppetry takes various forms: [...] Creating new accounts to avoid detection." There are legit reasons to have multiple accounts; the reason you gave doesn't seem to be one of them. So, think carefully before you go casting aspersions else you be hit with boomerang.Sudden Someone (talk) 21:11, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Rehman: Please note systematic Sinhalisation (article created by @Kanatonian:) is a fact in Sri Lanka and is considered to be the major cause for Sri Lankan Civil War. I don't see anything ulterior why Obi2canibie is objecting when the words are Sinhalised on Wiki articles in Tamil areas.Kaytsfan (talk) 11:10, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@RitzAgasti: Can you identify those socks of Obi2canibie? Kaytsfan (talk) 11:10, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Rehman: You are backtracking. In your earlier comments you stated that I was clearly doing serious harm to the community and deserved a topic ban. If you truly believed this, you would pursue the matter rather than settling for an apology.--Obi2canibe (talk) 21:21, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Slapnut1207 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

User Slapnut1207 has been editing tens of articles on Roman emperors but failing to present any reliable source. He did this in the article of Zenobia, where he insisted that he is improving the page by deciding which title she held, even though his edits are contradicted by sources within the article (which is featured).

Diff: 1, 2...etc

I asked him not to insert inaccurate information on his talk page User talk:Slapnut1207#Palmyrene empire and I asked him to participate in a discussion on the article's talk page. He reverted and only after I told him that this will be reported did he reply in the talk page... then reverted me again telling me that he did the talke page!.. this time he added a source that does not support his edits as he wants to call Zenobia either Empress of Rome or Empress of Palmyra and his source did not contain an evidence for both!.

I believe this is not a content dispute as he have no reliable sources to back his edits. Hope this can be stopped.--Attar-Aram syria (talk) 02:05, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

P.S, I just breached the 3 revert rule. Sorry about this, didnt notice how many reverts I did. I wont go into an edit war with this user but inserting inaccurate info should be stopped if Wikipedia will be considered reliable.--Attar-Aram syria (talk) 02:20, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You might want to open a thread at WP:RSN. Erpert ^{blah, blah, blah...} 17:49, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• @Attar-Aram syria: what exactly is the point of contention here? As an uninvolved reader, the article already contains the information that she was "Empress" (or "Queen") of the "Palmyrene Empire", so Slapnut's edit would appear to be a good faith, superficial change that strictly conveys sourced information already presented in the article, as opposed to the addition of unsourced content. What is the controversial claim being made in their edits, that requires a source? Swarm ♠ 23:33, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

User:Swarm this link will explain. Cheers.--Attar-Aram syria (talk) 00:18, 14 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Attar-Aram syria: Thanks. I'm not attempting to become involved in the content dispute, merely to have all the context. So, could you provide me with some additional clarification from what I gathered from that discussion? The subject was the monarch of the Palmyrene Empire. Is that incorrect? And she went by the title "Empress" (speaking anachronistically, of course). Is that incorrect? Swarm ♠ 01:33, 14 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes she claimed the title of Augusta. The thing is, she might have been using it in a new meaning not related to Rome but to a new empire she was building. Thats what many scholars say and thats why it is wring to attach any geographic term with the title of Zenobia cause she might have meant that she was the empress of Rome or the empress of the East....etc.--Attar-Aram syria (talk) 09:54, 14 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there! Recently, User:INNAjm keeps vandalizing Inna by making the picture in the article's infobox very big and changing the singer's name from "Inna" to "INNA". Some of his edit summaries include: "you, please stop vandalism", "wikipedia fo all users, this article or all articles for all users, and watch, small size pic" and "happy cartoon network freaky". He/She even sent me a message, clarifying that "you're monopoly style is bad, INNA Article MONOPOLY for Cartoon network freak, what this". Can someone help? Many thanks! Cartoon network freak (talk) 04:39, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I have warned both parties here, Cartoon network freak, next time remember to avoid WP:3RR and bring the attention to the talk page of the article in question. Engaging in this type of behavior is unnecessary, and it does not look good on your end when you fail to communicate with the other party in question to resolve the issue. Also, when you bring an issue at AN/I, you must notify the other party(ies) involved in this case so they can defend themselves. Best – jona ✉ 14:57, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Cartoon network freak: That's just a new user who's trying to contribute in good faith, and they're allowed to do so. You're expected to work with them. Assuming their intentions are negative is a breach of policy. Labeling their edits vandalism is a breach of policy. Declaring yourself to be the "main contributor" in a content dispute is a breach of policy. Repeatedly reverting is a breach of policy. Failing to articulate specific objections when reverting is a breach of policy. Doing all of these things to a newbie is, you guessed it, a breach of policy. The only difference between your conduct and INNAjm's is that they are a new user, so they have a good excuse for problems with their editing. You have made about the same number of edits as I have, so please, enlighten me: what's your excuse? Swarm ♠ 23:57, 13 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Swarm: I think any other comment by me now is superflouous. I'm the one who brought Inna to GA (the result of hard work), so I always look for it to remain in a good shape, undoing poppycock added by some users like in this case. So yeah, I do have an excuse, if you take it that way... Not undoing bad edits just because they're made by a "newbie" does not sound good to me, and, yeah, you don't need to count those policies to me another time. Cartoon network freak (talk) 05:13, 14 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Cartoon network freak: Ah. So that's what this is. You put in hard work, bringing the article to GA, and you don't want incompetent idiots messing it up. I have to tell you, that's understandable, sympathetic even. But by handling the situation the way you did, you became the bad guy. Understand? Just because you curated a good article does not mean that you can do those things that I called you out on. I understand where you're coming from, but you were in the wrong. I won't hold that against you, because I know it's frustrating having a vested interest screwed around with by random newbies, but please keep those policies and guidelines that I linked in mind going forward. If you abide by them, you might resolve these situations easier, and if it doesn't work, then we can work with you. But if you do all these wrong things, then you really have no standing to bring a complaint to us. Swarm ♠ 05:33, 14 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Swarm: I apologize, if it's not too late now. Cartoon network freak (talk) 06:46, 14 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Not at all. Just keep this in mind. There are other fans who wish to contribute to the article in good faith, and that doesn't necessarily mean that they need, or deserve, to be shut out. You are not required to train them or to babysit them. But simple gestures of good faith collaboration would go a long way. And you can still revert unproductive edits while doing so. Swarm ♠ 07:29, 14 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

There have been several requests at WP:RM today to revert new undiscussed page moves performed by User:Gryffindor. Because of this, I have looked further into Gryffindor’s recent edit history, and documented some of what I found at WP:RMTR. There is also evidence of a large number of objections that have been lodged at User talk:Gryffindor; the pattern of editing has continued unabated. Since the start of the year, User:Gryffindor has engaged in the following sorts of behavior related to page moves:

• 1) Undiscussed moves when the title had been established by a previous Wikipedia:Requested moves discussion, such as seen at Talk:Sobieski family from 2014 followed by this.
• 2) Edits specifically designed to prevent reversion of undiscussed moves, such as the repeated removal of the R-from-move template. An example is here. Here is another. Note that there are no edit summaries for the empty edits. This appears to be part of a long-term pattern of performing such empty edits after page moves.
• 3) Note that the move itself shown in example 2 would not normally be out of process as a bold move, but the editor has previously taken part in significant discussions on "House of X" articles and knows that this sort of edit represents a controversial move that should be discussed through WP:RM, as shown in the instructions at WP:RMCM. In fact, administrator User:PBS specifically warned User:Gryffindor against both 2 and 3 in 2017, as can be seen here.
• 4) Re-moving articles after the original bold moves have been reverted, such as here and here (the last of these is from December 2017). The second move sometimes happens much later and is not immediately caught by the editors who objected the first time, so it seems that some of these moves have been successful. For example, the article that was at House of Arenberg from its creation in 2007 to 2017 now remains at Arenberg family with no evidence of move discussions as of April 10:

• 11:41, September 17, 2017‎ Gryffindor (Gryffindor moved page House of Arenberg to Arenberg family over redirect: non-sovereign family, restore encyclopedic naming format)
• 09:21, August 24, 2017‎ PBS (PBS moved page Arenberg family to House of Arenberg: revert contriversial move)
• 08:22, August 24, 2017‎ Gryffindor (Gryffindor moved page House of Arenberg to Arenberg family over redirect: non-sovereign family)
• 03:27, March 11, 2017‎ PBS (PBS moved page Arenberg family to House of Arenberg over redirect: rv contriversial move not following the WP:RM)
• 10:38, March 9, 2017‎ Domdeparis (Domdeparis moved page House of Arenberg to Arenberg family: In English "House of" is reserved for Royal dynasties see House of)

Each of these four actions is strongly deprecated and would normally garner some sort of a warning for the editor who engaged in them. Today, it seems that the moves continued after posts by User:Bermicourt objecting to them; see User talk:Gryffindor#Moving "House of Foo" to "Foo family" and User talk:Gryffindor#Please stop moving "House of" articles without a discussion and consensus!. Gryffindor also edited later in the day, but did not respond to these concerns.

It would be inaccurate to state that this is the first time such problems have arisen surrounding moves by Gryffindor. Being as charitable as possible, there are previous ANI discussions of Gryffindor's unilateral moves from at least 2007, 2010, and 2012. See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive254#Gryffindor out of control (apologies for the section name), Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive648#Unilateral page moving against consensus, and Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive771#A possible problem with undiscussed moves. There are others I’ve chosen not to include here. Given those discussions and the talk page, it’s clear that Gryffindor knows these moves are out of process and has a long-term tendency to proceed anyway.

I have nothing against User:Gryffindor, do not have an opinion about the titling of the "House of X" articles, and have had few interactions with Gryffindor in the past. I also attempt to avoid drama. But this needs to be handled somehow, is creating more work and stress for many editors, and I am under the impression that previous complaints have resulted in no action because Gryffindor either temporarily avoided this sort of behavior or did not respond to questions about it. I therefore think it is appropriate that there be a discussion here to gauge community consensus on how to prevent the sort of disruption I have documented here from continuing to happen in the future, up to and including placing limits on the ability of Gryffindor to perform undiscussed moves. Dekimasuよ! 08:38, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The WP:RMTR thread is reproduced below:

Dekimasuよ! 08:38, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• I think the answer to this is fairly simple. All of the "House of..." moves should be reverted, and Gryffindor warned to only go through the RM process to move these, otherwise sanctions may be applied. Note: not all of Gryffindor's moves appear to be wrong; the "X (noble family)" -> "X family" ones appear to be logical. Also colour me seriously unimpressed that Gryffindor is an admin who has previously appeared at ANI for doing exactly the same thing over other's objections. Black Kite (talk) 08:54, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• (EC) I do not mean to imply that all (or any) of the moves is wrong aside from being deliberately out of process. However, as mentioned above, Gryffindor has been warned in the past on this specific point, and has continued: see [3], [4] and elsewhere on the talk page, so I believe that at a minimum the conditions for and scope of any sanctions should be made explicit. Dekimasuよ! 09:14, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Seems that repeated warnings over a very long time have been pretty ineffective. How about a ban on any page-move-related edit or admin action? Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 17:54, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• This certainly looks like a deja vu. I remmeber I had to warn Gryffindor off for exactly the same kind of misconduct (using admin tools for controversial moves against consensus, plus using the dirty trick of redirect-scorching) back in 2007; see here and here. I never crossed path with him since, but if he has continued the same pattern over all these years, that's pretty bad. Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:23, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Gryffindor has replied to the WP:RMTR thread here, and I responded here. Another editor since asked that discussion not continue at WP:RMTR, so I have removed the thread. In the reply, Gryffindor wrote that "I think you are confusing edits from an editor that you disagree with, and activities as a sysop. See this editing guideline WP:BB for further information. Concerning the discussion you mentioned earlier on "House of X", feel free to comment in Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Royalty_and_Nobility#House_of." This misinterprets my objections to the moves; I responded with "If this is directed at me, please rest assured that I do not particularly disagree with the edits themselves (I have no opinion on the titling of these articles) and I am not primarily concerned with whether or not these are admin activities. The moves would be problematic whether performed by an admin or not, because they are being performed without discussion despite being known to be disputed by other editors." To expand upon this, the reply shows that Gryffindor is aware of ongoing disagreement with respect to the titles of these pages, but is pursuing the moves as "being bold." This is already advised against by WP:RMCM; at the same time, Gryffindor been short-circuiting the WP:BRD process that is necessary for the proper application of WP:BB by preventing reversion and repeating the "bold" moves after reversion without engaging in WP:RM discussion. Gryffindor has also posted new replies to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Royalty and Nobility#House of stating editorial reasons for the moves, but has not there touched upon any rationale for the process by which they have been carried out. Dekimasuよ! 00:01, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Vote of no confidence in Gryffindor as an admin

Topic ban from moves

Proposing an indefinite topic ban on moving pages

• Support I don't see how a "community reminder" will help where numerous complaints from experienced editors haven't - he still hasn't acknowledged any issue. Per his response here, he still doesn't seem to understand that his moves are disruptive, and WP:BOLD isn't applicable to potentially controversial page moves nor is it a justification to repeatedly move-war etc etc. Nor is it a justification for editing the redirect to make reverting back impossible except for admins and page movers.

Indefinite, because this has been an issue for 10 years per threads linked by Future Perfect at Sunrise (see this and this links provided, and the ANI from 2007 linked above), and I think he needs to come and appeal with an explanation of his understanding of when to use the RM process and how he'll do better. Galobtter (pingó mió) 06:23, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Support per my comments above. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 11:01, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per my comments above. Black Kite (talk) 15:04, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Support - Minimal necessity. ~ Winged Blades^Godric 15:11, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• I don't agree. Moving articles of a category to an established format makes sense so that there is order. However if this is seen as disruptive by a majority of users involved, then I will desist obviously, as I have done so in the past. I have received many thanks from other users for taking the initiative and moving articles. And there are cases where this can be met with criticism, that is true as well. Gryffindor (talk) 16:11, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what you are responding with in talking about categories. What I and people want to minimally know is: do you understand WP:RMCM, specifically that any any controversial or potentially controversial move should be taken to WP:RM? In this specific case you'd nominate the pages en masse, and if the consensus is there, the moves will be done in a week or two. As far as I can see, your desistment doesn't seem to last, considering the recurrence of these ANI threads, and of move-warring. Galobtter (pingó mió) 16:37, 12 April 2018 (UTC) Striking that first bit, see you are talking about WP:CONSISTENCY within a category - which is an argument to make in a WP:RM, but not a reason to unilaterally mass move pages Galobtter (pingó mió) 17:22, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that Wikipedia works by WP:CONSENSUS, not one person's "system" so that "there is order." You're not the boss, your comment on the Royalty talk page was just that - a comment, not an actual statement of Wikipedia policy. Which means cleaning up your own mess and reverting your undiscussed moves yourself rather than making others do it for you. You can achieve all of what you are currently doing if you simply file Requested Moves at a reasonable (not breakneck) pace. Where you have a point, people will support your move and it'll be moved; where you can't find consensus, it won't be. The end. Everyone will be happy. SnowFire (talk) 17:19, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Already mentioned above, WP:WRONGVERSION is clearly what has happened here... 198.84.253.202 (talk) 11:21, 13 April 2018 (UTC) [reply]