Template:Active editnotice

We're getting more and more requests for rev del at ANI. Do we think there's enough frequency here to split off those requests into a "Requests for revision deletion" board? I don't watchlist ANI, but I could watchlist something more modest like this. Jclemens (talk) 17:58, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Certain requests for revision deletion (outing, personal information, so forth) ought not be posted at ANI at all, nor any central noticeboard. –xeno^talk 18:00, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Of course. But the fact remains that we have at least half a dozen on ANI right now. I would expect that you'd put this list on {{admin dashboard}} for quick action, much like our take on {{db-attack}}, such that we'd reduce the risk vs. just accepting them on ANI by quickly handling them. Jclemens (talk) 18:03, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if we could "appropriate" something, like the unblock-l mailing list that has lots of admin eyes on it, yet is still private, to direct such requests to? Because posting on ANI is defeating the whole point of RevDel, as would a separate noticeboard. A separate mailing list might be a better idea, actually. Courcelles 18:06, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if something really merits oversight, we're pretty clear on that one, but there are plenty of gross insults meriting RD2 but not oversight. This would be targeted for those, again, like G10s. Jclemens (talk) 18:15, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Irony. I was literaly just coming here to pose the same question. WP:BURO and WP:BEANS aside, surely it's better to have REVDEL requests somewhere better than the highly visible (and some may say toxic) atmosphere of ANI. I'm not sure what my opinion is on wether it's better to have a board or a mailing list (gut instinct is that I don't like mailing lists) but it's clear we need something per Jclemens. Pedro :  Chat  19:29, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I vote for a board. Instructions should make clear that you should not identify anything in the objectionable content when posting diffs. These requests can be handled very quickly. --Selket ^Talk 20:06, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• I guess I missed the boat on this. Are the rev-delete criteria that broad that items which merit rev deletion show up dozens of time a day? How many things are we rev deleting which would be better left in the history and reverted? Protonk (talk) 21:00, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The main things appear to be BLP violations in edit summaries (which can't just be reverted) and extremely offensive BLP violations in the text of an article. Personal information happens but is rarer. -Selket ^Talk 21:12, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) Well, based on my reading of ANI today, it certainly seems like it. Feel free to peruse it and make up your own mind on whether the number of requests is based on merit (they should have indeed been made and done) or overuse (better simply reverted, as you say). Jclemens (talk) 21:13, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I was just thinking about this today, considering how many revdel requests are on the ANI board right now. Since I've found myself doing so many of them lately anyway, I'd be happy to sign up for a mailing list or watchlist a noticeboard, whichever way people want to go. I just don't think that ANI is the best place in the long term for these requests. -- Atama頭 21:32, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps we should make this more clear on the WP:REVDEL policy page, just as it is on the requests for oversight page? I do have to agree with Xeno, that we should be discouraging people to post Revision deletion requests on ANI or any noticeboard as that only creates a "Streisand effect", which we don't want. –MuZemike 21:22, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

At the same time, though, we can be sure that any request getting posted at ANI will get rapidly dealt with; earlier today, I dealt with one report within three minutes of it getting posted. Unless it's oversightable stuff (which should always be emailed anyway), I think overall it's better for these reports to get a minute or two of high-profile attention than to send it off to what is certain to be an under-staffed and under-utilized mailing list, where requests may end up getting left around for hours or missed entirely (which does happen, even on the OTRS lists at times). Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 21:42, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The ability to stick a {{resolved}} on an entry is one reason I prefer a noticeboard to a mailing list. Jclemens (talk) 21:52, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sometimes not, though; we had an outing issue on ANI yesterday which ended up with at least three admins having to revdelete about fifty revisions on half a dozen articles. By the time that had been cleared up, any editor who was interested would have known who the editor concerned was in real life. Black Kite (t) (c) 22:08, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I hope that situation is the exception, not the rule. That was a situation where personal information was sitting on a talk page for 2 years without being reverted. I doubt that happens a lot (or am I being naive?). -- Atama頭 22:12, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Outing issues shouldn't go to ANI anyway; those DO belong at the oversight list for that reason. Normal revdelete stuff - grossly offensive attacks, copyright vios, etc., can be handled in due time. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 02:01, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think anything that needs RevDel also needs public postings. Noticeboards are fast, but visible. Mailing lists are private, but slower. I don't think there's a good solution either way. I would prefer a mailing list over a noticeboard, but both have their drawbacks. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 02:13, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Consider, though, that a RevDel mailing list OR noticeboard can explicitly exclude anything that meets the criteria for oversighting. RevDel on the way to oversighting is not something appropriate for such a noticeboard; RevDel for inappropriate content that does not rise to that level is. Jclemens (talk) 02:22, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Very true, but people will inevitably ignore things like that and post OSable stuff publicly because either they don't understand the gravity of the situation or they don't bother reading important notices. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 20:00, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Although a standalone specialised board could really, really whack people in the face with the need not to do that. Also such a board would provide a convenient single place to go for removing info from public view, since in explaining the difference between RevDel and Oversight it would point people to the latter's email address. This would also been opportunity to clarify under what circumstances Oversight is now preferred to RevDel, which I don't think is clear enough. eg at Wikipedia:Requests for oversight some of the points seem like RevDel. Finally, it would help keep experience with handling these requests in one place, which may be helpful for consistency. Rd232 ^talk 15:57, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What I'm afraid is going to happen is that people are going to start posting stuff that should be oversighted on-wiki to this noticeboard, making it visible in two places instead of just one. –MuZemike 04:01, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well if that really happens, even after taking advantage of the specialisation to make the issue much more prominent and clearer than it is now at AN/ANI, then we can delete the board and try something else. Rd232 ^talk 08:01, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think you'll find that those who wish to harass users via outing will game the system to make the personal information known in as many places as possible. Unless there is a bright line against posting personal information, like if in doubt do not do it, if unsure, do not do it, etc, it will continue to happen for a variety of reasons. Until the consequences of doing so are clearly not worth the thrill of harassment, it will continue. Bullies will always justify their tactics until it is clearly and uniformly forbidden. 71.139.5.184 (talk) 10:30, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just a thought, but as we already have {{Copyvio-histpurge}}/Category:Requested history purges and {{Non-free reduced}}/Category:Rescaled fairuse images, both of which involve revision deletions (AFAIK anyway), why not implement something similar along these lines? In any case, as I commented at the TfD for {{Copyvio-histpurge}}, I don't think it would be appropriate to delete that template without having something to replace it. PC78 (talk) 15:14, 26 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Straw Poll

Seems that the discussion has died down a bit, and people have staked out a few definite positions, which I'm going to try to summarize here:

Position 1: Nothing new is needed

The status quo position. Editors can be encouraged to use the oversight mailing list and/or discouraged from posting anything to ANI. The risk of centralizing RevDel requests anywhere per either of the following outweighs the benefits in doing so.

Support

1. 2nd choice to establishing an "WikiEN-admins" mailing list, see discussion below. –MuZemike 15:26, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
2. First choice per my comments above. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 16:32, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
3. Sorry, but I just don't see any good way to deal with this. ANI has its speed benefits, and hopefully no one is stupid enough to post private info there. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 00:58, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
4. No matter how fast ANI or a new board can take care of the problem, material that is subject to revdel should not be posted anywhere in the same way that oversight requests should not be onwiki. I have no objects to a new mailing list, but don't think it's necessary. -Atmoz (talk) 18:39, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
5. Kevin Baas^talk 17:31, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
6. I agree that we should discourage new posting of the offensive material on site by making a new board that hosts it. Anyone that puts the noticeboard on their watchlist will see the content. This looks like a well intended proposal, but would led to more focus on the content not less. For example, an internet site could easily find the offensive material if it monitors the noticeboard. Also, the content is not always corrected perfectly with revdel on the first try. It is not uncommon for extra diff with offensive material to be left on the page in error. So we are potential taking a page with low page views to one with much higher page views. For these reasons, I recommend against a centralized noticeboard. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 09:14, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

   I respect your concern but "Anyone that puts the noticeboard on their watchlist will see the content. " is exaggerated. Generally people will be sensible enough not to put sensitive content in an edit summary or on the board itself (and revdel is available for errors here); so it's generally just diffs to the content, which people will need to first go to the board for, and then click on. Diffs which will disappear as soon as the revdel is done. And I'm not quite sure who is supposed to be out there looking on a continuous basis for revdel content on anybody on Wikipedia in case something interesting gets rev-deleted (meaning: no source for it). I can't quite see a market for that. Anyway, we can slightly guard against this by keeping even the subject/topic out of the edit summary - eg just "RevDel Request 817". Rd232 ^talk 10:01, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

   Everyone that reports a contribution to be revdel will have the page added to there watchlist, right? So overtime the number of people who are alerted about new content will steadily grow. But I'm not primarily concerned about the innocent rubberneckers, but the people who deliberately troll. Our internal discussions are monitored by people who are banned and in dispute with Wikipedia editors/admins and WMF, and the also people who are the subject of articles. When I checked my email today before posting this I saw an email on checkuser mailing list about a vandal account who was trolling and mentioning the name of a banned wikpeida editor in their trolling on meta. I'm very concerned that putting the content in a centralized location will expose more low profile content to these vandals and trolls. We know that trolls and banned users are already doing this to some degree. This will make it easier for them to see the newest content that is problematic enough to be remove. IMO, we will be making the situation worse for the sake of efficiency of processing the requests. Also, my concern is that people will get the impression that placing the content on this page is the "right" way to get it removed when it would be by far better to quietly contact an active admin to do it. Also, on this page are there going to be discussions about whether to keep revdel, or whether to escalate to suppression. Will someone be clerking the page to keep out discussions and questions about content? FloNight♥♥♥♥ 08:52, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

   Well as I said below, it comes down to which you think is more of a problem: A) people seeing Bad content in the article before it's RevDeleted, because they're reading the article (or at least watching it and seeing the Bad edit) or B) vandals and trolls looking to cause problems, and deciding to use Bad content to help them, and getting easier, centralised access to it, albeit in very brief bites before it's RevDeleted. I don't see any easy answers to prevent both - the current solutions offered basically trade off A and B (and to me A feels marginally more of a Real Life problem and B marginally more Wikipedia, though both have both qualities). More complete answers might be some completely new approach, like say a Site Notice type thing which is only visible to admins (and can be dismissed immediately once the issue is handled). Or else a board which can only be read by admins (but permitting posts from anyone). In the mean time, the current system defaults to ANI, which has the worst qualities of both A and B. We can emphasise at the new board that if you can catch an admin active right now (eg get an onwiki or IRC confirmation they'll respond quickly to an email you're about to send), then that may be preferable to posting on the board. Again: this explanation is not an option at ANI. Rd232 ^talk 11:25, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• I'm not in favour of either of the other two options; more consideration needed before we do either. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 07:52, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• You gotta be kidding. We're supposed to be trying to decrease the impact of these postings, not highlighting them, with a noticeboard whose history will include all of the articles that have been vandalized....or users who have been on the receiving end of harassment....or the ones that actually need to be oversighted. Try this sample post to ANI instead. "HI, I need an admin to do a revdelete, could an admin please email me? Thanks!" Much better to wait fifteen minutes, with three people seeing the problem edit, than wait five minutes with 300, including folks taking screenshots of it just to prove how inept we are. Risker (talk) 08:35, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • screenshot of what? A specialised board can provide detailed guidance on how to make a request without revealing any more info than necessary, as well as providing guidance on how to try contacting someone directly instead. Rd232 ^talk 10:16, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

• Comment Not convinced on the issues some have raised here. RevDelete (in this sense) is not the same as oversight/suppression and doesn't need the same degree of off-wiki privacy. It's in effect a cousin of WP:CSD. Attack pages may be emailed to oversighters or asked about off-wiki, but the norm is they are simply tagged on-wiki and dealt with by admins as a routine on-wiki matter. RevDelete (in admin mode, as being discussed here) handles similar kinds of issues. So I see no problem with it being visible on-wiki that RevDelete has been requested. A noticeboard seems the sensible option. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 11:50, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  We don't have a CSD noticeboard. They are tagged, as you point out, and dealt with sans a public record+discussion of them being left behind. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 07:57, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Position 2: Add a new noticeboard

A new noticeboard provides a centralized place, much like the monitoring of {{db-attack}} where RevDel'able material can be widely watchlisted and quickly handled by interested admins. We can NOINDEX it, point people to oversight mailing list for serious issues, and not archive it to keep the Streisand effect to a minimum to mitigate the known risks.

Support

1. As proposer. Jclemens (talk) 04:57, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
2. Sounds good. Access Denied ^{[FATAL ERROR]} 06:52, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
3. Makes sense to me. Disagree it will necessarily have slower responses than ANI. Yes, ANI has more watchers, but the relevant watching will be from active admins, which is a pretty small group - and with proper announcements, that shouldn't be an issue. If anything, it might lead to quicker responses, because ANI has so much else going on that (a) requests won't appear on watchlists the same way they will on a specialised board and (b) quite a few admins basically ignore ANI as taking too much time and trouble, and at least some of these may watch the new board. Rd232 ^talk 19:18, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
4. Can't hurt to give it a try. I agree with Rd232's points as well. Airplaneman ✈ 23:06, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
5. Good idea, we already have the category for attack pages. Make it like AIV, dealt-with reports should automatically be removed. Maybe make disposable date-based subpages that are deleted a soon as everything for that day is done? — Train2104 (talk • contribs • count) 02:24, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
6. The lesser of all evils. I think it would likely be well maintained to be honest - AIV is rarely backlogged for example and I'd view it as a similar board. Pedro :  Chat  13:59, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
7. I think it would help get these requests off ANI and would bring faster response than an email list. -- Atama頭 20:03, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
8. Seems like a sensible proposal, as worded, above. -- Cirt (talk) 20:08, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
9. SarekOfVulcan (talk) 05:46, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
10. Give it a try. I like the bot idea. MER-C 02:11, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
11. Yes. MLauba ^(Talk) 10:51, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
12. Sounds like a good idea, but oppose the use of a bot for revision deletion. This task should be made by humans, to avoid bugs in the bot causing problems. Armbrust ^Talk _Contribs 14:39, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
13. Provided that it bears a prominent warnings, including an editnotice, that requests for the removal of non-public information are NOT to be placed on the noticeboard under any circumstances, but must instead be emailed to the oversight list or otherwise transmitted to oversighters privately. WP:AN/I currently lacks such an editnotice, and the warning in the header is buried. Also, a dedicated noticeboard easily facilitates the revision deletion of the requests themselves, when necessary, while WP:AN/I will probably have too many unrelated intervening edits. Peter Karlsen (talk) 05:18, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
14. As long as the material linked to there isn't oversightable, this is probably the best way. The page's header and editnotice can ensure that users know what not to put there, and it's as visible as Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as attack pages, which I believe is on the same level. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 09:13, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
15. Support per precisely Peter Karlsen's thoughts above. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 15:58, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
16. Would result in plenty of people handling the requests, so response times would be similar to AIV or RFPP, and would stop these requests piling up on ANI. Possibly we could delete the page once a day to remove any problematic material in the edit history. Hut 8.5 12:51, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
17. I think it is a good idea. --Alpha Quadrant ^talk 01:02, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
18. Support per my comment in previous section. RevDelete in the sense being discussed is used as a cousin to WP:CSD which are tagged on-wiki and not seen as a problem to do so. The kinds of issue for which RevDelete will be used here, are similar to those which have CSD templates and where on-wiki tagging and eventual admin action have been used for years. No problem with them being listed at a noticeboard. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 11:50, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

• Too high-profile, and likely wouldn't be handled as quickly as they would on ANI. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 16:32, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• What if we have a bot that automatically revdels revisions submitted to the board (with limits on number of revisions per user in a time period and perhaps require submitter to be autoconfirmed, etc. to prevent abuse) pending admin review? This way any revisions submitted would be revdel'd immediately and invisible to most people, but we still retain the benefits of a public noticeboard. T. Canens (talk) 00:53, 26 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • What, so we'd then go back and check for abuses, reverse them, and block editors for requests made in bad faith? Hmm... that's a radically different proposal. Not sure I've thought through all the implications yet. Jclemens (talk) 19:35, 26 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • In any case an obvious, um, advantage of this noticeboard idea is that it permits automation. E.g. very much in the spirit of a completely open Wikipedia something similar to Deletionpedia could be set up. A bot could save all problematic edits on a server outside the Wikimedia Foundation's hands before an admin gets around to dealing with them. This would take inclusionism to a new level and would certainly be useful for all kinds of research about Wikipedia. Hans Adler 19:56, 26 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • This is such a distant possibility that any further discussion of it is really an unnecessary and possibly even counter-productive distraction. In any case, if volumes ever get high enough for people to seriously consider automation, I doubt the existence of a board would make all that much difference. In other words... come back c. 2015 and see how things are going. :) Rd232 ^talk 22:34, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• I agree with Hersfold. We are taking content that often is only on a page with a very low number of view, and moving it to a centralized page where many more people will see it. Seems to me this approach would make it possible for someone to monitor the page and see their offensive comments repeated. Some of our worst vandals look for new people to harass. Copycat vandals are a problem, and could be made worse if the material is centralized. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 09:28, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's not obvious that many more people will see it than on ANI, which is the status quo. Non-admins wouldn't have much of a reason to monitor the new board (would they?) and the setup (unlike at ANI) can very clearly be limiting info to diffs, which die for non-admins as soon as RevDel is done. "Some of our worst vandals look for new people to harass." I can't comment on that - I'm not aware of anything like that and it doesn't obviously make sense to me (I thought vandals generally targeted editors, unless they had a real-life grudge). And if the material is swiftly RevDeleted, copycat vandals don't have anything to copy. And remains true that if this actually happens, we can pull the plug very easily. There's also the issue of alternatives: the only one which avoids this risk entirely is a new admin mailing list, which creates issues with timeliness of response, as well as perhaps coordination problems. A priori, I'd put not removing things from the page in question with due speed as a higher problem than potential problems from centralisation, but maybe I'm just unfamiliar with that territory. Rd232 ^talk 10:11, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Actually, most people have the sense to find an administrator on a one-to-one basis to ask for a revdelete. And the only "timeliness" issue is the number of readers who see the problem edit between its identification and its removal. Fifteen minutes with three people seeing it is a lot better than 5 minutes with 300 people seeing it...copying it...discussing it... Risker (talk) 08:41, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • The 3 people are more likely the ones who actually care about the subject and perhaps know the person IRL; the 300 (in 5 minutes?!) are likely admins and random passersby. Rd232 ^talk 10:02, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Note

I have added this straw poll to {{Centralized discussion}}. Access Denied ^{[FATAL ERROR]} 21:15, 26 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Eww, the idea is to revdel something before lots of people notice it. If we create a noticeboard, people will use it rather than dig around a bit further until they find the way to privately request revdel. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 07:43, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • And a big notice at the noticeboard suggesting they contact someone privately wouldn't help them? You could even have a system by which admins log themselves in and out at the board as available right now for private messages. (Ideally with some kind of software backup to check for them forgetting to log out.) Rd232 ^talk 10:02, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Position 3: Add a new mailing list

A mailing list loses the {{resolved}} capability of a noticeboard, but it's relatively simple to restrict membership to admins such that we're not putting requests for rev deletion directly onto Wikipedia... as long as people follow the instructions.

Support

Discussion

• If we were to go forward with a "WikiEN-admins" mailing list, it would definitely need to be non-public for obvious reasons; non-admins can post to the list, but they will not be able to subscribe to it or view any other emails in it (similar to "unblock-en-l" regarding unblock requests). Something like this would also open the door for other forms of (at times sensitive) discourse exclusively amongst en.wiki admins. I'm leaning towards supporting if at the least to see if this is a viable route to go, but perhaps more discussion is necessary if we wish to go in this direction. –MuZemike 15:23, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Ewww. I get enough emails already from the lists I'm already on. Also has severe risk for these requests to fall through the cracks and never get noticed. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 16:32, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Can't people just send stuff into WP:RFO's mailing list like they do now? That's what I do. Gets the job done. - Neutralhomer • Talk • 04:06, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Likewise. Also, if there are two mailing lists, some mail will go to one place that should have been sent to the other, and then it will be forwarded to the right place - increasing the net exposure of information that's being removed because it shouldn't be exposed. Better to just make the current Oversight infrastructure a front end for all of this stuff. — Gavia immer (talk) 18:52, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• a new mailing list for admins could be quite useful, but it should be considered with more than this in mind, by way of a full RFC. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 07:50, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Neutralhomer is correct, Requests for Oversight is a better alternative than a noticeboard. First off, a goodly number of published requests for revision deletion have actually been serious enough for oversight. Secondly, the oversighters keep a pretty close watch on the mailing list, and most requests are DISCREETLY addressed in a short time. Finally, the more people who are on a mailing list, the higher the likelihood of leaks. Any mailing list with a thousand people on it is going to leak like a sieve. Risker (talk) 08:45, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm confused: are you suggesting all RevDeletion be handled via RFO (discounting cases of admins being approached directly)? Doesn't that require all the work to be done by oversighters, or else admins to have access to it (which I thought they didn't)? Rd232 ^talk 10:02, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • This board has received, what, 5 requests for revision deletion in the last month? There were hundreds of revision deletions during that time. The oversighters can handle the few that aren't already addressed in other ways. But creating a noticeboard whose main effect will be to PUBLICISE EDITS NEEDING REVISION DELETION defeats the purpose of revision deletion. As to whether or not it will be overwork on the part of oversighters, the oversight team had no difficulty keeping up with the volume of requests before admins had revdelete, and it would be even simpler now with better workload management and a wider timezone availability of oversighters. The argument that it would be too hard for a newbie to find an admin doesn't make a lot of sense; the biggest issue that newbies face is that they don't even know that certain edits can be revdeleted, and they're no more likely to go to the "right" noticeboard than to anywhere else. Here's a question for you, though. Why are there so many revision deletions? Has anyone been reviewing them to ensure that policy is being followed? I'd venture to say that at least 30% of the ones I look at aren't covered by policy. Risker (talk) 11:13, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • "Has anyone been reviewing them to ensure that policy is being followed?" - how? A specialised board would permit some reviewing, as even after swift deletion, other admins could look. Consistency is one of the arguments for having a board: and it's a big argument, because there's quite lot of uncertainty both among admins and among everyone else as to what qualifies. The former figuring out some kind of agreed practice would be a basis for more clarity all round. Rd232 ^talk 13:58, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Of course, if oversighters can handle the load that well, then having them do all RevDeletion would be one way to both centralise and ensure consistency. Leave admins the RevDel right but as a matter of practice, point everything to WP:RFO. Rd232 ^talk 14:07, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • No matter how vociferously you shout "PUBLICISE EDITS NEEDING REVISION DELETION", that doesn't mean that this board will do much of that. I've made various suggestions as to how the board can make posting at the board a last resort, with alternatives given at the board itself which avoid making any info public. Those alternatives are not publicised anywhere else! There needs to be a central place to handle this, even if the place itself doesn't actually handle the info itself and thus isn't really a board. But it would make sense for it to handle posts on occasion as a last resort. Rd232 ^talk 14:07, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • it needs to not do any of that. Not one bit. Else I think regardless of consensus it needs to not be done... consensus cannot override WMF privacy policy. I do like the idea about tracking that mail was sent, and that it was handled, without any actual details of what the mail says, but as soon as any details are made public, no. Not acceptable. ++Lar: t/c 18:22, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Position 4: status quo

Position 1 does not adequately describe the status quo ante, which is unhelpful. Currently we have

1. WP:RFO
2. WP:ANI
3. Contacting admins directly.

1. currently ignores RevDel. 2. is highly visible (most watched page?), has no relevant guidance for RevDel, and if it had any, it would be pretty well lost in the existing noise of instruction. 3. Is haphazard, and especially for newbies problematic. For anyone, creates the problem of knowing whether an admin will actually respond to an email or user talk page request in a timely manner. Now let's review this again: who supports this? Rd232 ^talk 10:09, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sufficient consensus?

I think we have gotten sufficient consensus to create the noticeboard, so someone should go ahead and do it! Meanwhile, I'll be designing a header and editnotice in my userspace. Access Denied ^{[FATAL ERROR]} 00:40, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well it's sufficient consensus for a draft to be helpful at this point; it may help overcome some reservations. Rd232 ^talk 10:16, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's a little bit "cart before the horse", but those who oppose the board in principle seem to underestimate the range of design options available. Besides what I've already said above, you could design the board so that all that's seen publicly is a log of requests (with no useful information in the log, not even a link, least not whilst it's any use to non-admins). For example the log could be structured as "request number # sent by email to Admin Y at time such and such", and after deletion the admin responds on the board with a link so other admins can review. Or, if we didn't even want that level of publicness (though that's hardly more than the existing log), we could devise some system involving requests going by email to several admins, so that the decision is reviewed entirely offline, and the log merely shows requests and the timeliness of fulfilment. Rd232 ^talk 14:25, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As some know I am developing a bot platform and I like to see if the project received wide support before continuing. d'oh! _talk 12:14, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

At this time, I would like to propose the unblock of User:Iaaasi so that he may start editing here again. He has been consistently constructive over at simple.wiki and at ro.wiki since his block this past March for disruption, and he has not shown to have socked during this period of time. That is, he was implicated as a possible sock puppet of banned user User:Bonaparte (see SPI cases), but it was not conclusive that he is. After communicating with him off-wiki, I feel that he has met the letter and spirit of WP:OFFER, sock or not, and that I have confidence that he can return to editing constructively here on en.wiki. –MuZemike 14:22, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• If not for his socking (and I'm referong to Conttest and Umumu, which he apparently has admitted), I wpuld be inclined to support it. However, once he created these socks, I oppose this for now. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 15:02, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose: This user has exhibited some seriously racist hatemongering. Please read [1]. This should have been logged as an WP:ARBMAC block. I think unblocking would be bad for the community in general even without the sockery. 15:27, 27 September 2010 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Toddst1 (talk • contribs) [reply]

• Support: We need more racists editing articles here to get their point across. Our standards are way too high. Toddst1 (talk) 22:33, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• From what I can see of his participation on simple-wiki, he has only been doing minor gnomish stuff there. I don't see anything in his performance that would give me confidence he has changed his attitude towards editing his apparent ideological hot-button topics, related to Romania and Hungary. Has he demonstrated he is able and willing to edit politically sensitive content in a neutral way? If so, how? Or is the plan to keep him topic-banned from that area? Unless this is clarified, I'm opposed to a lifting of the ban. WP:OFFER means not just that they have refrained from socking; if it has any meaning at all, it means he must provide a full, credible demonstration that all problematic behaviour patterns are thoroughly understood and under control. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:38, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• I too have interacted a fair amount with Iaaasi. In my interactions with him, I have found him to be reasonably rational and generally accepting that what he did was wrong and is willing to learn from his mistakes. Regarding the accused racism above, I agree that does raise some concerns. As such, I have asked Iaaasi to email me a statement and I will cross-post it here for him. Tiptoety ^talk 16:28, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Support I was involved at the time of the block and things seem to have calmed down from where they were in the weeks following the block. If this can keep up I see no reason not to let him back. --Shirik (Questions or Comments?) 18:45, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• I too am interested in reading the user's statement before coming to any view. Ncmvocalist (talk) 21:22, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support for unblock conditional on the following being imposed in lieu of the block: (1) an appropriate Romanian/Hungarian topic ban, and, (2) an account restriction (restricted to editing with a single account). Ncmvocalist (talk) 07:51, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Support pursuant to the Wikipedia:Standard offer being applied. Basket of Puppies 23:10, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Unblock with a Topic ban on Romania and Hungary Ethnic relations broadly defined I am willing to trust this user as the worst case scenerio is we block him again. If he can create and write on articles in that region (Towns, Local landmarks, Foods Etc). If he can manage to edit under that restriction, in six months we can review the need for the topic ban The Resident Anthropologist (talk) 23:14, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per ResidentAnthropologist, if this editor is sincere, then give him a chance to prove it. It should be clear that violation of the conditions will lead to the block being reinstated. Mjroots (talk) 07:38, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Support Let's give him a chance to show that he can be trusted. Netalarm^talk 02:28, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Support Let's give him another chance. If he misbehaves again, then I think the punishment should be harsher. Bejinhan talks 06:17, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Support I have already proposed his unblock as my personal opinion was that the unfortunate edit on his user page mentioned by Toddst1 and which was the cause of his block had not been intended by him to be what it actually looks like. Although acting on impulse on some occasions, as a Hungarian, I felt that Iaaassi never intended to offend Hungarians, he simply wanted to chivy certain Hungarian editors who had a permanent edit conflict with him about a certain article. I frequently edit articles about Transylania having a conflict potential between Hungarian and Romanian (or vice versa) points of view. My impression was that Iaassi has made a significant progress in seeking mutual understanding and respecting reached consensus. Rokarudi--Rokarudi (talk) 09:07, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per ResidentAnthropologist and Mjroots -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 09:28, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per ResidentAnthropologist and Rokarudi, plus, the editor is now aware of the consequences of being caught up in inappropriate nationalistic behaviours, and that any further incidences will result in possibly indefinite bans. Let's give them the chance to prove they have moved on and up. LessHeard vanU (talk) 11:26, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose - Unfortunately, I can't believe in Iaaasi's troth. But if the community should be propitious to him, it will be in order with a concomitant of indefinite topic ban on Hungarian-Romanian related articles--Nmate (talk) 14:18, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Support - Without any restrictions so we can see if he can respect Wikipedia. The worst possible scenario is that he will be blocked again. Adrian (talk) 15:23, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Support - I just spoke with the user on IRC, I support giving Iaaasi another chance. --Alpha Quadrant ^talk 16:11, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose I feel that this request is seriously misrepresented, as it takes no account of the numerous confirmed socks [2] that this user operated and the degree of disruption over a period of almost a year now. In fact we see no confirmation that there is not currently multiple active socks running by this user. If we look at the user history we do know that that some of the socks made several hundred edits. user:Umumu Total edits (including deleted):1,354 . user:DerGelbeMann Total edits (including deleted):564. Just two examples as we see during the socks made several thousand edits in total. If the past is any indication these several thousand edits on just the confirmed socks in a period of several months meaning hundreds of edits each month on just the confirmed socks. If the past is any indication we can be sure that there are currently active socks right now. The focus should be on finding and blocking those socks. Also it is false that Iaaasi edited to "show he is constructive" he edited with the socks to 1. Attack fellow editors 2. Parttake in administration procedures admin noticeboards [3] 3. handed out "warnings" with his socks [4] 4. The last confirmed sock is as recent as August [5] 5. Many times he edit warred using IP socks as well not a tenth of which are logged into the suspected and other categories. In conclusion I can see no benefit from "restoring editing privileges" when in fact the user edited with several thousand edits as it is. Also in full disclosure I have reason to believe that this user edited using a sock as recently as within a week of today so this might make me more prone to oppose. Also there is the issue of his open displays of ethnic hatred as discussed above which make me uneasy. However there may be a possibilty that the issues can be lessened by a full disclosure of all present and past socks by this user and a complete removal from the problematic area meaning anything to do with any Eastern OR Central European topic history geography biographies etc. This would still leave almost all of wikipedia to edit. Hobartimus (talk) 17:31, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I have just checked the standard offer referenced by someone above and it says as it's first point. "Wait six months without sockpuppeting." As it is pointed out above the last confirmed socking [6] is in 2010 August 9th. Mind you this is only the last CheckUser confirmed socking by this user so there could be much more of it just not yet confirmed by CheckUser. Hobartimus (talk) 17:34, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose - In the light of Hobartimus' comment about recent sockpuppetry (less than 2 months ago) I agree that the conditions of WP:OFFER are not met, so I oppose an unblock at this time. I have some ideas about a suitable unblock condition regarding articles subject to WP:DIGWUREN, but I think that discussion can wait until a full six months have passed since Iaaasi's last usage of socks. I support Jpgordon's request (below) for Iaaasi's complete disclosure of all past accounts he has used. I encourage him to be frank, since Jpgordon is a checkuser. EdJohnston (talk) 18:41, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose a nationalist editor who was socking as recently as August to return to his arena of conflict and generally engaging the old battlefield. Seriously misguided proposal.Bali ultimate (talk) 18:59, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Isn`t the purpose of the block to correct the behavior of one user, not to punish him? If this user is ready to change I think the opportunity should be presented so we can really see if this user is a nationalist or a valuable contributor to Wikipedia. This user has shown a great deal of understanding over various issues where I would`t call him a nationalist or something similar. For example on this consensus, [7]. Also User:Hobartimus recognized the valuable contributions of this user. Adrian (talk) 20:57, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Since I saw my name above I examined the link posted by Adrian. It is true that the user in question YellowFF0 seemed like a constructive user to me, in other words I was 100% fooled by the first edits of that account. Now this [8] later behavior, a brand new account reporting someone at ANI would have raised a bit more of a red flag. What's more important, the YellowFF0 account was active in late august and posting at ANI as late as August 25th, reporting User:Romaniantruths [9] to administrators. But the August 25th date, about a month before this unblocking suggestion was proposed shows, he not only socked in a Checkuser Confirmed fashion, he also actively used administrator noticeboards to report others to get them blocked. By this relevation found by user:Iadrian_yu it can be demonstrated that the words of the original proposal "he has met the letter and spirit of WP:OFFER" no longer apply. WP:OFFER states it needs to be more than six months for it to apply, now we found, it was actually one month. WP:OFFER does not apply to this case that is certain now. Hobartimus (talk) 20:31, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Support as he was corrected and let's give him another chance--Yopie (talk) 19:48, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. Socking as recent as August? No. And I dislike the IRC canvassing. T. Canens (talk) 07:18, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose, concerns about the recent violations of site policy with socks. -- Cirt (talk) 16:24, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Iaaasi

I think the block of an user should be firstly a measure to protect Wikipedia against people who try to sabot it by destructive edits, not a punishment for someone who did something wrong without a clear intent, so I hope I can find understanding...

The fact that I was involved in conflicts in the past was against my will and was partly a consequence of my lack of experience from that moment and perhaps a result of the fact that I was too less calm.

The famous xenophobic profile page was a kind of childish revenge after an user tried (in the end unsuccesfully) to remove the Romanian name of a historical personality, not an expression of my feelings. My aim was in no case to offend all the users of Hungarian nationality, but my action was focused only against a single user. That is not an excuse, it was a terrible mistake and I regret it

On the other hand, I know that it is blamable that I evaded my block, but the only reason was to show that I want to be a good contributor and my goal is to improve articles, not to disturb others.

If I will be unblocked, I am ready to be kept under a strict observation and at the first mistake to be irevocably re-blocked. (Posted on behalf of Iaaasi by Tiptoety ^talk at 06:07, 28 September 2010 (UTC))).[reply]

The famous xenophobic profile page was a kind of childish revenge after an user tried (in the end unsuccesfully) to remove the Romanian name of a historical personality, not an expression of my feelings. My aim was in no case to offend all the users of Hungarian nationality, but my action was focused only against a single user. That is not an excuse, it was a terrible mistake and I regret it -- "Mistake"? No. Writing the number 1 when the right answer is 2 is a mistake. Putting your left shoe on your right foot is a mistake. Swallowing with your trachea instead of your esophagus is a mistake. The expression of gross bigotry is not a mistake, unless, perhaps, you'd intended to put "not" in every quote there and forgot to. "Not an expression of my feelings"? Whose feelings, then? Whether the hateful sentiments you expressed are your own or someone else's, you, the person who posted it, are responsible for your own actions and your own words. I'd want a heck of a lot more than this poor excuse for an apology. Oh, it's not even an apology -- it's an expression of "regret". And of course you'd be under strict observation if unblocked; we do that routinely to serial sockpuppeteers. Just how many accounts have you created? Please provide us a list, including those that we have not yet blocked. --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 18:03, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have been asked to post the following message from Iaaasi upon his request:

I don't want to accuse others for my actions, but I think the users Nmate and Hobartimus are not the most entitled persons to talk about correctness:

• User Nmate is a constant edit warrior and has a very colorful block log, including sanctions for this kind of things: "Ethnic slurs and incivility"
• Hobartimus showed hostility to me since the beginnings, one example being here, where he reverted my edit with no clear reason

I know there are serious reasons to believe that I am not trustable, but please give me a second and last chance.

–MuZemike 05:46, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Moved to WT:AN#What_kind_of_community_actions_can_AN.2FI_enforce.3F

The conduct of Gavin.collins (talk · contribs) is currently being discussed at RFC. The conduct issues alleged are "persistent, tenacious editing and other unhelpful discussion behavior in policy/guideline discussions about notability and other topics." Gavin has refused to respond to the RFC, citing the non-disclosure of the draft RFC before it was posted [10]. A read through the evidence on the RFC/U will give a fairly clear picture of the past history.

Unfortunately, the conduct which brought about the RFC has not improved, and I feel that it has gotten worse. Gavin has over the past weeks made several hundred edits to Wikipedia talk:Notability, and Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Inclusion criteria for Lists, where he has persisted in advocating views which are at odds with the community consensus, and refused to accept that community consensus is against him. Moreover, some of the positions he has advocated are so absurd and out of line with well-established practice, that I am questioning whether he is sincerely arguing for them in good faith, or whether this is an attempt to achieve a relatively more moderate position in an Overton window fashion.

Among the things he has advocated recently is that current policy prohibits editors from sourcing lists with multiple sources. Gavin goes further than this, he says that current policy prohibits editors from updating lists until the entirety of the updated list has been published elsewhere. For example, adding Barack Obama to List of United States presidents is a "bastardisation" of the list, and an act which "would be sackable offence in any accademic institution" [11]. Nobody has supported Gavin's view that current policy prohibits us from keeping lists updated, yet Gavin has insisted that "its policy" and that "there is strong evidence that it is supported" [12]. (Note that this is not "Policy ought to disallow..." but "Current policy disallows...". The former is disagreeing with policy, the latter is misrepresenting policy.)

It is difficult for other editors to back off from discussing with Gavin, because Gavin has a history of editing policies and guidelines to fit his view when the discussion has died down. See for example this edit to Wikipedia:Article titles in June.

I find that Gavin has violated a number of policies here:

• civility violations by openly mocking the people who hold different views than him on inclusion policies [13], and casting spurious aspersions of WP:MADEUP violations [14]. Comparing the update of a list with "plagiarism" and a "sackable offense" is also intimidatory and incivil.
• Gaming the system. At WP:GAME#Examples, I think #4, #5, #6, and #7 are especially relevant. Also, a editor who "resists moderation and/or requests for comment, continuing to edit in pursuit of a certain point despite an opposing consensus from impartial editors." is explicitly listed as a sign of a disruptive editor.
• Failure to respect consensus.

The current situation has become intolerable. The two notability discussions have the potential to affect thousands of articles and need thorough, sincere, and open discussion. Instead, editors are being sidetracked into having to rebut the positions by Gavin, again and again and again. Several hours have been wasted on responding to each of Gavin's 200+ posts which more or less are a reiteration of his unyielding position which the community has rejected.

Gavin has previously been warned that his actions are disruptive, and that AN notification may become necessary [15], since that warning only yesterday, Gavin has made 16 more edits on WT:N continuing to insist on that point. Gavin's refusal to respond to the RFC and moderate his conduct has also led to discussion here where there is a general agreement that firmer measures need to be taken, the disagreement being whether it should go to ArbCom or here to AN. At this point binding intervention is needed to put an end to this, and I am sorry to say that that means sanctions. My opinion is that banning Gavin.collins from the Wikipedia and Wikipedia_talk namespaces is an appropriate course of action. Sjakkalle (Check!) 11:13, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I must differ with the opinion expressed above. The community has not rejected Gavin Collins' position. A small segment of the community would like to circumvent fundamental Wikipedia sourcing policy. Doing so is deleterious to Wikipedia. Gavin Collins has correctly represented the primacy of sourcing requirements at Wikipedia. The small group of editors wishing to skirt fundamental policy are the problem. The loosening of sourcing requirements only allows for flabbier articles, turning Wikipedia more into a discussion forum than an information resource. Wikipedia's fundamental role is the compiling of sourced material—not the creating of new content. Gavin Collins has represented the conservative approach to what Wikipedia is, opposing the erosion of principles that the small group of editors arrayed against him represent. Bus stop (talk) 11:39, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Gavin argued today that "a "List of 95 notable theses about X" taken from source 1 through to 95 [...] would be a made up list topic", which is not al atll what WP:MADEUP is about. Similarly, he claimed that an article like List of bus transit systems in the United States should be deleted "as this entirely novel list topic contravene the prohibition on original research", and continues that it violates WP:CONPOL and again WP:MADEUP. Such statements demonstrate an "understanding" of our policies that is so far removed from the general view of them, that it is indeed true that the community has rejected his views. Some of his points have been supported by some people, but even those (excepting, apparently, you) have stayed far from his more extreme statements. According to Gavin, we are not allowed to have a list of all winners of event X, based on a published list that goes e.g. four years back, combined with newspaper articles for the last three or four winners. This would be madeup, a bastardization, a homebrew, and so on and so forth: this would be subjective original research. If you believe that this is correct according to "fundamental sourcing policy", and that the majority of the editors would agree with you, then good luck to you, but you are wrong. Fram (talk) 12:49, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Since I replied to Gavin after I posted that warning, I didn't feel it correct to start this thread myself at that time. However, I totally agree that a namespace ban from Wikipedia and Wikipedia talk is necessary. As the RfCs and his conduct since indicate, Gavin is unwilling or incapable of acknowledging that his point of view is a very clear minority viewpoint on anything, and he continues to beat a dead horse over and over again, to the exasperation of nearly everyone else involved, filling talk pages with endless pointless discussions. Having a minority viewpoint is not a problem. making suggestions based on them, and arguing for them, is also not a suggestion. Making virtually the same arguments over and over again, even when it has become abundantly clear that they haven't got a snowball's chance in hell of getting adopted, is disruptive though. I think the current RfC says it all, really... Fram (talk) 11:37, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not clear what is conservative about his statement "I agree that this section does not reflect the consensus of the RFC, but I disagree with the view that no one agrees with this viewpoint, for these ideas have only articulated in the last few days, and it will be a long time before they are even understood, let alone accepted or rejected.". Dougweller (talk) 12:30, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I want to stress: those of us from Gavin's RFC are not seeking to have Gavin banned from WP-space because he has an incompatible viewpoint - everyone is free to have an opinion however extreme to the consensus is may be. This issue is strictly about Gavin's behavior and tactics of late, highly emphasized in this whole list/notability discussion. He's used these tactics before but in discussions on somewhat envelop-pushing ideas that weren't terribly far from consensus (read: reasonable ideas that may have been accepted under the right circumstances), as not to really call attention to this behavior (see the Kender mediation, for one). But now from several areas of late (climate change, article titles, and notability and lists), the more extreme and departed his ideas, albeit potentially good ones if we were a different type of work, are from consensus, the more and more his SOP of behavior is seen and how problematic it is.

Again: tl;dr: this is not because Gavin holds a contrary position; that would be censoring. This is because Gavin does not know how to consensus-build when his contrary position has been flatly rejected, to the determent of others due to time spent defusing that. --MASEM (t) 12:59, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Gavin.collins has already been the subject of two previous RFCs and temp bans. Neither of these caused him to change his behavior significantly, only the pages that he edited and the Wikipedians that he fought with. Now there's a third RFC, which he has announced that he will ignore.

Having lost several disputes with others over the application of WP Rules and Guidlines he is now engaged in a war to change those rules. Once he's finally succeeded in winning by Stonewalling and Beating a Dead Horse he will then be able to go back and reopen those disputes using the version of the WP rules that he has personally rewritten. I believe this is an example of WP ownership, only instead of feeling ownership over any particular page/subject he seems to be applying this toward the whole of Wikipedia, or at the very least any page that he chooses to edit.

It is therefore my belief that a complete and long-term ban for Gavin.collins from the whole of Wikipedia is absolutely necessary. Since he refuses to be civil to his fellow Wikipedians and adhere to the rules then what other choice do we have? A topic ban simply won't work. He's shown many times already that he has no problems changing topics and continuing with the same behavior. Perhaps when his ban has expired he will decide to come back to Wikipedia and play nice with others. - Seanr451 (talk) 14:02, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For anyone wanting to hear about this from Gavin Collins: he is not planning to join this discussion[16]. Any specific questions (or remarks, encouragements, whatever) you have for him can probably best be posted directly to his talk page. Fram (talk) 14:07, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly disagree with the contention that Gavin has been uncivil. He may have a strong case of IDIDNTHEARTHAT, but I find no evidence of incivility. Blueboar (talk) 14:56, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, in general - it's borderline incivility that wouldn't merit individual review and certainly alone would not merit any block. When added to the big picture, it is something Gavin should be aware of that, for example, sarcasm in the middle of a long protracted discussion due to his insistence is not helpful to building consensus. --MASEM (t) 15:08, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There is a consensus that Gavin has been a disruptive editor but we need to be 100% clear that the problem is very specific. It's important to focus on WP:CONSENSUS, WP:IDHT, WP:GAME (namely the "stonewalling" provision), and perhaps WP:OWN applied to policies and RFCs. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and everyone is allowed to dissent. But when WP:CONSENSUS is the primary goal of any discussion, repeating the same dissent over and over becomes disruptive to Wikipedia. It causes good editors to burn out, withdraw from the process, and even exit Wikipedia in frustration. It also prevents policies from adapting to new circumstances, which means that long-standing problems prevail (at best. Sometimes they even get worse!) By no means am I saying that people should be forced to give into the majority like some kind of twisted thought police. But EVERY participant is obligated to show SOME kind of movement during a discussion for the sake of building a WP:consensus. An unwillingness to negotiate is troubling. But an unwillingness to negotiate, stated repeatedly and forcefully, does real and noticeable damage to the sense of community. What should we do? I think a topic ban would be extreme, but I would prefer it to nothing. I sincerely think that a warning from an uninvolved administrator could have a powerful effect. It would establish that the community does not condone his tactics. Once that is established, I'm willing to assume good faith that he will improve voluntarily, and we would have a warning on record if he does not. Shooterwalker (talk) 15:16, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Is this on the theory that since all the previous warnings, e.g., this one, have been so obviously successful that we should keep doing the same thing over and over?

Personally, at this stage -- after all these years, three RfCs, and a long string of individual complaints -- I think that that rational people should quit expecting voluntary improvement. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:40, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As noted on the RfC by BOZ and I, Gavin tried twice to get a highly valued editor with over 100000 edits banned on AN/I for not following Gavin's twisted understanding of policy and consensus. He subsequently went into full-on IDIDNTHEARTHAT mode on his talk page when asked to stop his attacks on the unfortunate editor in question. He has driven numerous editors off this site, as noted on the RfC. He now refuses to participate here because the issues were not discussed with him on his talk page, on his terms. This is classic Gavin - my way or the highway. Enough already. Vyvyan Basterd (talk) 16:03, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For reference, here you will find the ban proposal and subsequent discussion with multiple administrators on his talk page, as well as the second ban proposal a month later which resulted in that subheader on the above referenced talk page thread. BOZ (talk) 17:03, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I have to say it's just gotten ridiculous. Taking a position that can be called consistent with consensus only as a joke in poor taste, then trying to use unflagging tendentiousness to ram it through at the policy level and thereby enact sweeping top-down changes to Wikipedia practice... once is too many times, and this editor is way past once. —chaos5023 (talk) 16:16, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think doing an end run around the RFC is a great idea. And as much as I hate to play this game, it took a hell of a lot more to talk about banning/topic-banning certain notable individuals on the other end of the spectrum than what Gavin has done. I'm generally of the opinion that Gavin has kinda worn bare his welcome on notability topics writ large, but that is a nuanced problem that needs a nuanced solution. Protonk (talk) 18:33, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm inclined to agree with Protonk in this case. In Gavin's second RFC, I recall one of the concerns being "If we limit him this way, then he will just go somewhere else and become someone else's problem." And, well, that's exactly what happened. Banning him from notability discussions will just send the problem somewhere else, so like Protonk says we need a more nuanced solution. BOZ (talk) 19:02, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Protonk here too. Gavin has a very specific problem and is not beyond becoming a productive contributor, unlike some other editors. The situations calls for a more nuanced solution than a topic ban, and I think BOZ has come up with one that is fair and focused. Shooterwalker (talk) 20:55, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Topic ban proposal 1

Given the level of disruption, I think that a topic ban is appropriate. Here's my current thinking on how to word it:

"Except for comments made on his user talk page, Gavin.collins (talk · contribs) is prohibited from editing or discussing any page or section of a page related to notability), broadly construed, for one year. Gavin.collins is additionally prohibited from nominating any list or article for deletion through the Wikipedia:Articles for deletion process during that time."

This would stop the endless, time-wasting "discussions" at WT:N and other pages, and would prevent him from carrying on his campaign by filing a long string of spurious AFDs. What do you think? Do you think that this is enough to stop the disruption? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:04, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. I don't see any claim that user:Gavin.collins has done anything wrong regarding WP:N. He does seem to be on some sort of bender on other pages, so why is this the preferred solution? Abductive (reasoning) 18:22, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  Frankly, you should look harder. The barest tip of the iceberg on what he's done wrong at WP:N is edit warring on a policy page. —chaos5023 (talk) 18:33, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  What policy? WP:N is a guideline. If user:Gavin.collins is causing problems vis-a-vis Lists, why not topic ban him from Lists, broadly construed, and see if his behavior doesn't improve? Abductive (reasoning) 18:50, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  God. I looked at my comment after I wrote it, went, "oh, lovely, I referred to WP:N as a policy, not a guideline", and knew this was the sort of wikilawyering response I was going to get. Well done. Hey, turns out, edit warring on guidelines is not really spectacularly better than edit warring on policies! Whoda thunk it? Anyway, I suggest you look at the RFC; the current charlie-foxtrot in context of lists is far from the whole story. —chaos5023 (talk) 19:06, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  Abductive, I'm not finding your name at WT:N, where Gavin has posted more than 1,100 comments over the past two years. I'm also not seeing any signs of your participation at WP:Requests for comment/Inclusion criteria for Lists, where Gavin has edited the main page 100+ times and the talk page 200+ times just in the last month or so. Could it be that you aren't seeing how disruptive this endless repetition of his demands that we re-write notability standards to meet his highly unusual standards, simply because you aren't watching the pages he's disrupting? Disruption that's off your personal radar screen is still disruption, I believe. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:30, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  Back on May 12, I discussed the notability of small settlements with user:Gavin.collins. I have also argued with him on WP:WikiProject Council/Proposals/TRANSWIKI and here I'm trying to figure out what he is talking about at WT:Article titles. Abductive (reasoning) 07:50, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Topic ban proposal 2

I disagree with most of the wording -- it's too loose in places, too restrictive in others. My preference would be:

"Gavin.collins (talk · contribs) is prohibited from topics relating to notability, broadly construed, including the notability of individual articles, for one year. Violations of this ban may be enforced by standard escalating blocks."

If he can come up with other valid reasons to delete articles, there's no reason to ban him from AfD nominations.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:28, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I (really) like the simplicity, but I'm not sure I understand it. So if Gavin nominates an article at AfD and claims a reason other than notability, it's okay? For example, if he nominated just any of the 50,000+ "List of..." articles, and said that WP:NOT prohibited lists he didn't approve of, then that would be okay? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:58, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I'm not sure the concept of "other valid reasons to delete articles" makes sense, given the definition of notability as what "determines whether a topic merits its own article". Given that, it seems like any participation in AfD whatsoever falls under "notability, broadly construed". —chaos5023 (talk) 18:23, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, most of the CSD criteria are safe, for example. "We formed this band and we're really cool" should not be grounds for blocking, for example. However, "Who cares if he's a 15-time winner of the X Award, it's just a genre fan award" would be under the above wording, in my opinion.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:53, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That makes sense for it being fine for him to do speedy noms. Initiating or participating in an AfD, even if CSD criteria are involved, still seems like participating in something that's mainly about notability, though. —chaos5023 (talk) 02:07, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Support I prefer this.Second choice if the copyvio stuff is sorted out. It's simple so he can't lawyer his way around it. Vyvyan Basterd (talk) 17:39, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Support Jclemens (talk) 17:51, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Weakest possible support: don't feel we need to use the "b" word yet. But I agree there's a problem and this action is preferable than watching the problem continue. Shooterwalker (talk) 18:13, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Hum ho. Whilst there's clearly an issue here, Gavin gets a ban whilst those who spam AfD discussions (which is clearly the cutting edge) are allowed to continue? *Sigh* Black Kite (t) (c) 18:22, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't disagree, but isn't that kinda WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS? Spamming AfD is not okay, is disruption and should be stopped; this is a separate topic from Gavin's disruption. —chaos5023 (talk) 18:26, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  I unfortunately agree with you Black Kite. I tried to propose something a little more lenient. Something that would be a model that we could use for other editors who have a similar problem. (WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS and should be treated the same.) Shooterwalker (talk) 18:30, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. I would prefer that user:Gavin.collins get back to the useful work of nominating pages on non-notable topics, which he seems to have been neglecting lately. I find it remarkable that he is to be banned from AfDs when he is not accused of abusing that system. Perhaps he could be topic-banned from Lists for a while, but maybe the fear is that that would make him more effective. Abductive (reasoning) 18:28, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Support - I do not believe this will be sufficient and that eventually a complete ban will be required. However, I readily admit that I cannot foresee the future and thus could be wrong. This proposal still allows for a block but only in response to his continued bad behavior, and does give him the option to voluntarily change said behavior. Seanr451 (talk) 18:36, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose: Is Gavin a pain to deal with? Absolutely. Has he gotten entrenched in a dispute with people that refuse to acknowledge the triviality of their goals? Certainly. Was he right to request a block of AlbertHerring? Possibly ... the mass creation of stubs by bots is a horrible thing to do, and I'm amazed that the community tolerates it. Blocking Gavin basically gives the win to the people that are in the wrong, and I can't condone it.—Kww(talk) 19:08, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • We have to be clear: this is not if Gavin's interpretation (or anyone's interpretation) of policy is correct or not. It is sitting there pounding the floor expecting people to come to your stance when everyone else has agreed to move on with a completely different consensus, even when people try to reach out and get him involved. That is DEADHORSE and TE. I am very aware of a ban being seen as a form of censoring an unpopular viewpoint, which is why I'm not thrilled with this option either. --MASEM (t) 19:38, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm just not certain that punishing tenacity is necessarily a good thing. I stay away from a lot of areas where Gavin charges in just because I'm older and can't take it any more. He tends to be spot on in analyzing the effect of policies and guidelines on articles, and his opponents generally don't bother to refute him: it's more a chant of "I don't like the effects of applying the guideline to my area of personal interest, so I'm going to act like it says something that it doesn't actually say". He doesn't move on to the purported "consensus" because he correctly recognizes that a consensus that defies policies and guidelines doesn't reflect project-wide consensus.—Kww(talk) 20:00, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • I have to disagree with Kww when tenacity is excessive it should be forcibly ended. Unfortunately in Wiki no response is the equivalent to agreement. This has the effect of never letting argument die as long as there is one oppose. No matter how overwhelming the consensus is ,bas soon as no one opposes they will claim that consensus has changed and make their changes. There comes a time to allow editors to walk away without fear of someone claiming a false consensus just because no one jumped up to force him back down. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.143.204.198 (talk) 19:32, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  I believe "tenacious" was accidentally used in some of the originating documents here when "tendentious" was meant. It's tendentiousness that's meant to be deterred, not tenacity. People refute Gavin effectively all the time; I have only seen him respond to this by a handwaved argument, possibly throwing around some debate or formal logic terms, amounting to a bald assertion of his own correctness, followed by continuing to reiterate the refuted point. This is certainly tendentious editing. (I think my favorite, though, was when he breezed past my own citing of long-standing Wikipedia practice by calling that practice excessively vicarious. There's an argument you don't hear in debate club every day.) —chaos5023 (talk) 20:16, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  I know the difference. I see Gavin as 95% tenacious, with the occasional lapse towards tendentiousness.—Kww(talk) 20:56, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  Yea, yea, that's my fault :-P Anyway. I respect that Gavin is concerned with the problem of walled gardens and close groups of editors attempting to define consensus themselves - a concern that I agree is critical and certainly not an issue. The Kender mediation, in part, is a result of this. What is an issue is when the group of editors is a lot more diverse as at climate change, article titles, and the list RFC - very far from a walled garden group. Regardless of how "right" you believe you are, trying to continually push your point against a diverse agreement of consensus is purposely disruptive. --MASEM (t) 21:26, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  There are better ways to deal with walled gardens too. It's a perfect chance for a wider RFC. Much more disruptive to insist you're right against 70-80% who say you're wrong. There's no right and wrong on Wikipedia. Only verifiability and consensus. Shooterwalker (talk) 02:14, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  Most of my interaction with Gavin was at WP:FICT. That "wider RFC" is probably one of the reasons that Gavin has such a bad taste in his mouth. Dealing with people that believe that only verifiability and momentary consensus matter and all of the existing guidelines and policies can be ignored gets incredibly frustrating. Once you have notability, verifiability becomes trivial, and without notability, verifiability becomes a tangled mess of original research, opinion, and easily impeachable sources. It doesn't surprise me that he's a bit burnt out.—Kww(talk) 04:44, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  Fair enough. But burnout is a reason to take a wikibreak, not to get disruptive. —chaos5023 (talk) 04:49, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  You might be onto something with this bad RFC experience. These long painful discussions actually teach us bad behavior. That filibustering is effective. That you can exhaust the opposition rather than work with them. That you can canvass a few people from a walled garden to build enough of a coalition to disrupt any effort to find a consensus. I wouldn't be surprised if Gavin picked up some bad habits there and I can't exactly blame him. But that's part of why I've been trying to push for a remedy that encourages Gavin to engage in better behavior, rather than just trying to pull him out of the situation entirely. If this remedy works, it's something we can use for future troublemakers at other RFCs. I would really like to see RFC behavior get better across the board, and finding a way to push people to work together would help that. Shooterwalker (talk) 05:18, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose without having taken other steps to temper the problem. I've suggested on the RFC/U an idea like the one below for independent admins to review his actions, increasing blocks when Gavin's overstepped TE, and eventually leading to a ban after 3 strikes. But that would a ban in general, not of specific areas, as that's almost akin to censoring; it would have to be all or nothing. --MASEM (t) 19:41, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. What Abductive and Kww said. Angus McLellan (Talk) 20:35, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. It seems to me that we need to pursue some other options before moving to the level of a ban. --Nuujinn (talk) 22:48, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Per Masem and Nuujinn, I think this ban discussion is premature. I'd rather let the RfC/U process run its course first, and I note that there is not, yet, consensus there for this proposal here. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:32, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• This is close to what I proposed in the initial AN thread, but given BOZ's proposal below, I will call this second choice in case BOZ's proposal fails or does not work out. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:36, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal: work towards consensus or leave

The problem is that Gavin is not acting in good faith to build WP:CONSENSUS. He is willing to argue the same point for (literally) years until he gets his way, or scares people off from the discussion. He is otherwise basically WP:CIVIL and the closest thing to a personal attack he gets into is accusing people of trying to silence his viewpoint, which is usually an unfair characterization of people. I'd really like to see Gavin continue to participate, but in a more conciliatory way. So I propose:

An uninvolved administrator affirms that Gavin is not in line with Wikipedia policy on conduct, and gives Gavin a clear warning to stop anything resembling filibustering, stonewalling, or using argument ad nauseum to cause a negotiation to fall apart. The next time he finds his viewpoint challenged as being outside the consensus, he cannot continue to participate until he takes a straw poll on his viewpoint. If his view gains a consensus, the issue is resolved. If his view is not the consensus, he is expected to moderate his viewpoint to build a consensus or leave the discussion entirely. If he continues to argue the same point after it has been discredited, we will revisit this problem at WP:AN/I. If he refuses to put his viewpoint to a straw poll, we will revisit this problem at WP:AN/I. (Which will probably require a stronger action such as a topic ban.)

I believe this is the lightest possible way to resolve this issue. But I do insist on some kind of resolution. Action is preferred to no action. Shooterwalker (talk) 17:31, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know about the straw poll action; not that those aren't helpful, but it really should depend on the situation. What if he takes what he considers two different viewpoints (as presently occurring in the list RFC, claiming his Sept 24 contribution is a "new idea") even though everyone else sees them as separate? I would not have a problem with the admin stating "Gavin, I think you need to take a straw poll..." on a case-by-case basis. --MASEM (t) 17:54, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think most people would be able to see through a new presentation or new argument for an old idea. A warning would put Gavin in the hot seat. He knows that if he doesn't REALLY work towards consensus, he'll end up back here. Shooterwalker (talk) 17:56, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Haven't we been there, and done that, enough times already? Saying "I'll overlook the previous thirty-six rounds, but if you beat that dead horse for a thirty-seventh time, then I'm really going to do something" sounds like it should be spelled e-m-p-t-y t-h-r-e-a-t to me -- especially since we've said the thing, only with slightly smaller numbers, several dozen times now. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:35, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Really? Can someone produce an incident that resulted in Gavin being unequivocally warned against wasting everybody's time by overwhelming every talk page discussion he takes part in? I'm sure we haven't. Every other instance to fix the issue has failed because someone invariably calls for his head, a few editors show up to say that's totally out of line and unfair (which it usually is), and we go onward with no solution at all. We've tried the "off with his head" approach. How about we try drawing a CLEAR line that everyone in the community can agree with, and asking Gavin not to cross it? Shooterwalker (talk) 23:43, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You mean something like a section on his talk page that is titled "Some serious advice and warning" and includes language like "your mindset should be apologetic for wasting editor time and also for disrupting the actual encyclopaedic content" and "Personally, I am quite prepared to block you for disruptive wikidrama"?

I've already provided you with a link to that warning, and other people have provided links to similar warnings from other admins. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:52, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I know you're trying to help. But sadly, Wikipedia has become so polarized that an administrator message on a talk page doesn't do much if that editor has established themselves in the community. Take a lesson from what we're trying to teach Gavin here: that consensus sometimes means settling for less in order to achieve something, rather than asking for everything and making the issue last another 6 months. Shooterwalker (talk) 04:51, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment I'm concerned that this would wind up just giving Gavin another go-round to do the same thing for another N months or years before his intransigence is again unambiguous enough to get yet another laborious process of intervention started. I would support this proposal if it seemed less vulnerable to that outcome. —chaos5023 (talk) 18:36, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• There's also the risk that we do nothing, because he hasn't reached the level of obvious policy breach that usually warrants a topic ban, and there isn't a consensus for it. Then he'd DEFINITELY have another go around to do the same thing, and we'd also say that there was no finding of wrongdoing last time because there was no topic ban. This is the motivation behind this proposal. To find a very soft but unambiguous way to put Gavin on notice. Shooterwalker (talk) 21:38, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Gavin arguing that adding Barack Obama to a list of US presidents is against policy shows that he's gone beyond obstruction to plain trolling. No reasonable editor could argue that position. A total ban from all discussion of policies and guidelines is needed to restore some semblance of sanity to these discussions. Fences&Windows 22:53, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

for anyone not following all of this, the link for the Obama discussion is [17] DGG ( talk ) 01:22, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I, having too much time on my hands, have read this thread. Compared to other stonewallers around here, this guy deserves an award or something. Basically, "consensus" seems to be all about repeating your argument until those disagreeing drop dead. Tijfo098 (talk) 09:55, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Alternate proposal

{NOTE: The details of how this proposal should be implemented need to be worked out if this gains consensus. While this could be used as written, I'm sure it is not perfect in this form. It looks like people are willing to support in spirit, but the details may need work. BOZ (talk) 12:38, 30 September 2010 (UTC))[reply]

Here is a modified and simplified proposal of what Shootwalker was proposing, mixed with some of Masem's ideas:

When a dispute arises between Gavin and other users on any discussion page (including user talk pages, policy talk pages, article talk pages, requests for comment), an uninvolved administrator will judge the situation and determine whether consensus has been reached, and if so close that portion of the debate. Gavin may not attempt to continue the debate, by reopening the closed discussion, moving the discussion to another forum or location, or restarting it on the same page.

If consensus is not reached, and Gavin is judged by a neutral, uninvolved administrator to be engaging in stonewalling, filibustering, or continually repeating his points, he must stop.

Edit warring from Gavin will not be tolerated, ever.

If Gavin is found to be in violation of any of the above, he will be warned on a first instance, blocked on a second instance, and banned from that venue on a third. BOZ (talk) 22:43, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support not as terse as my version, but much more likely to have good results.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 22:47, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, this seems to be a reasonable approach as it does not censor Gavin Collins, but creates a framework in which his tendency to overwhelm other editors may be controllable. Also, it provides a sanity check for other editors engaged in the discussion by providing an outside view of the situation. --Nuujinn (talk) 22:52, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support Again. Let's make the line in the sand crystal clear and remind Gavin not to cross it. His defenders believe he can at least do that, don't they? Shooterwalker (talk) 23:45, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support - I think this might make him less tendentious, and we can all continue editing happily. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 23:57, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support as a good first step, even if more steps prove necessary. postdlf (talk) 00:02, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support I like it. Seems likely to be effective, and is a less extreme step than a ban. —chaos5023 (talk) 00:12, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Grants extreme power to these "uninvolved administrators". I can't waltz into a discussion, declare consensus, and "close a section of the debate", and I don't think any other admins should be empowered to do so.—Kww(talk) 00:36, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I have suggested a mentor, someone who is uninvolved *now* and thus would be a single go-to person that would become familiar in such areas. And I'm will to make that list really really hard to cross to avoid anyone gaming the system against Gavin. I'd also argue that this would be tracked as an editing restriction such that if this ban were to occur, the mentor would have to reapproach AN and says "ok, see all this, and I've warned and etc. and nothing's happening, I am suggesting a ban now" in order to get consensus on that final trigger. I would also say there probably needs to be counter-action. We cannot goad Gavin into tripping this without repercussions and that's again something the dedicated mentor could offer. --MASEM (t) 00:49, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If Gavin gets a mentor(s), then I'd say that could replace the "uninvolved administrator" bit above. BOZ (talk) 01:06, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I concur, that would be fine. Also, if a single person would have too much control, perhaps a troika would suffice. --Nuujinn (talk) 01:38, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Kww, the admin won't be looking for consensus to wield power over the whole discussion. The admin will ask a simple question: is there a consensus for Gavin's view? If so, there is no problem, and the discussion SHOULD be closed. If not, then Gavin has to continue to work in good faith to build a consensus. Which means that if he engages in filibustering then he will be back here for a more severe measure. It allows Gavin to voice his viewpoint, but puts a greater onus on him to build bridges with other editors when he is clearly in the minority. Shooterwalker (talk) 01:35, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support Better than the other proposals above. But will Gavin be getting a mentor? Is he open for mentorship? Bejinhan talks 06:21, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Fairly mild, but if it works, it is a reasonable way of allowing Gavin to contribute without disrupting and stonewalling. If it doesn't work, there are stronger remedies available. Sjakkalle (Check!) 06:28, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support with either a mentor (if he agrees to one or three of those) or one or more uninvolved admins (note: I am not uninvolved). Fram (talk) 07:16, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Request clarification As edit-warring is not permitted, can we officially declare a 1RR restriction on all articles? (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 11:30, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure that would necessary, at least at this time. It seems that most of the problems folks have with Gavin's behavior are centered on talk pages, rather than article pages. --Nuujinn (talk) 12:25, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

1RR on established policy/guideline pages (interpreted broadly, and NOT their talk pages) may be helpful. Gavin does sometimes engage in slow edit wars. However, this is mostly a side problem, not the key one. --MASEM (t) 12:40, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

...though, I suppose edit-warring can technically occur even if an editor is subject to 1RR. Ncmvocalist (talk) 18:22, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Support (considering cleanup as mentioned). Definitely better than an immediate ban but addresses the issue at hand. --MASEM (t) 12:55, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Oppose Consensus Can Change is policy here. Restricting him from challenging consensus is not the same thing as restricting him from being disruptive, and restricting him from being disruptive wouldn't preclude him from challenging consensus. These proposals need to be thought out better because as it stands now there about 6 of them and it's one giant clusterfuck. -- ۩ Mask 13:51, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support in that I think it would be very worthwhile to have uninvolved editors/adminstrators judge consensus rather than those int he midst of the discussions. However, Consensus Can Change, so I'd put a time frame on how long until Gavin can protest. 6 months? Concurrence from another X number of editors (3?)? Karanacs (talk) 14:48, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:14, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support As first choice if the copyvio stuff is sorted out. I have no intentions of kicking someone who is now firmly on the ground but we can't have a guy who drives people away from discussions in which they are participating in good faith. That's just not how it works, regardless of how much or little support Gavin's views actually have. Vyvyan Basterd (talk) 08:48, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support In case the whole copyvio mess get eventually cleared. He must wait 6 months before "re-initiating & putting on the table again" a reform proposal that has been previous rejected by consensus. --KrebMarkt (talk) 14:27, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support This at least has the potential to reduce some of Gavin's problematic behavior. Edward321 (talk) 23:33, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Alternate proposal 2

First, an apology: I always got upset when people refused to see how disruptive A Nobody or Pixelface had been simply because they agreed with him, and I'm having the same problem in reverse. Still, I'd like to narrow the focus, and not wind up giving "uninvolved admins" extraordinary powers. I aso strongly dislike the idea of simply muzzling him on discussion pages: fighting for a losing cause (especially when that losing cause is the heretical notion that people should actually follow guidelines) isn't necessarily a bad thing. However, edit warring is generally unacceptable, and edit warring on policy pages is probably the worst form. Editing policy pages is also very rarely necessary. I'd like to simply restrict Gavin from editing policy pages. I'll act as a proxy for him: if requested, I will make any change to a policy page that he requests if I judge that there is reasonable consensus for his change. —Kww(talk) 13:36, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

His interaciton on policy/guideline pages (not their talk pages) is not a issue, it's a symptom. As I've outlined in the RFC/U, Gavin has done this several times:

1. (possibly) Gavin makes a policy change (which is bold and fine)
2. Say "this needs to be changed for these reasons" (which is fine)
3. Long heated discussion ensues, Gavin's change is found to be the minority and not desirable. If Gavin changed the page, that change is reverted (fine). There may be a very slow edit war here (like 1RR across 3-4 days), but that's not disruptive or admin-needed action
4. Discussion dies down and lays stagnent for 7-8 days, usually as no one has anything else to say to Gavin's idea (that's SOP for any proposal...)
5. Gavin then and goes changes the policy again because "obviously" no one has disagreed with him so it much be consensus. That is the problem step, and that's behavioral problem, not edit warring.

I know exactly how Pixel and ANobody behaved on the extreme inclusionist side and I see Gavin doing exactly the same on the extreme deletionist side. Mind you, all three used different approaches, and in AN's case, clearly afoul of expected behavior. Gavin (short of the possible CCI problems below) hasn't done that but he has pushed his involvement in wide discussions beyond a reasonable point. I cannot disagree with the statement "fighting for a losing cause (especially when that losing cause is the heretical notion that people should actually follow guidelines) isn't necessarily a bad thing", but the problem that we have come to discover is that Gavin's interpretation of guidelines seems out of sync with the larger consensus. If you're trying to alphabetize a list and someone is blocking your attempts saying that C comes before B, you can't let that person block the progress going forward. Now, of course guidelines are interpretive and the like and not hard and fast rules like the order of the alphabet. What has been revealed in all of the latest issues with Gavin is that he has a vastly different view of what original research is as applied to source, article titles, notability, and so forth than the common point of consensus. That it, he is fighting to prevent OR introduction into WP (always a good thing) but using an OR definition that is more extreme than accepted (not good). And he's been told this and several examples have been fought through to show that his OR definition is extreme and inconsistent with consensus at the wide scale (not a walled garden). We cannot punish Gavin for holding that personal definition, or even trying to suggest we move towards that, but we need to do something when he endlessly debates about it with refusal to acknowledge his view is neither the current consensus nor gaining consensus. That is disruptive, and that's the goal of this community action, just to know when to say "I see my idea is not being considered, so I'll drop it and/or work towards consensus". Otherwise everyone's wasting volunteer hours to deal with Gavin. --MASEM (t) 13:58, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I support this proposal. Masem's probably right that this isn't the highest level of disruption, but it is unacceptably behaviour nonetheless. Further, if Gavin is prevented from readding his position to the guideline, and can find no one else willing to proxy (and thus affirm that his position is consensus), then that may stop the endless streams of disussion. Karanacs (talk) 14:57, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I support this proposal but not by itself. The problem isn't edit warring but discussion tactics. Okay... we want Gavin and others to challenge consensus. But we don't want him to challenge consensus in the exact same way 3 times a day 7 days a week. We don't want him to back off for a few days and watch a consensus emerge among everyone else only to come back in with the same arguments. I know Gavin is not the first editor to do this. (Pixelface looks to have retired and A Nobody was surely banned for escalating further than Gavin did.) That's why I sincerely hope that we can try a remedy that works and can be applied to similar tendentious editors/debaters. I !voted for a remedy that I thought was less than fully effective because I thought it was better to find a WP:CONSENSUS than revisit the exact same issue 6 months from now. That's the kind of attitude I wish everyone had on those big policy issues and it's the kind of attitude I'd like to encourage in Gavin. Shooterwalker (talk) 15:19, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As with Shooterwalker, I support this but not alone. The WP:DEADHORSE issue needs to be addressed in some fashion, and I think the idea that being unable to directly modify policy pages will make Gavin unmotivated to filibuster and stonewall in discussions is too much to hope for. —chaos5023 (talk) 15:24, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My longest tie-up with Gavin was no where near policy, but on an article talk page where Gavin's near-unique interpretation of policy was endlessly debated. It is incorrect to see this as an issue related to WP: space in some way. Rather it is an issue about Talk pages, regardless of the space, that flows into both article and policy pages when there is insufficient will amongst the editors to stick up for the commonly perceived interpretation of policy. ‒ Jaymax✍ 05:45, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Many copyvios as well

Now that he finally gets back to article editing, his first edits are introducing a copyright violation into an article: this is a near-straight copy from this, with one line completely unchanged and the rest slightly reordered (including the use of the exact same comparison that article made). Looking back at previous edits, the last one that added some text was here, and again it is a copyright violation, using the exact text from here (12Mb, don't open unless you need to...). He both times acknowledges his source, but straight or near-straight copying (not quoting!) is a copyright violation no matter if you acknowledge your source or not. Gavin types: "Owing to its uniqueness in terms of the intrinsic properties such as the proximity, relatively low visual extinction, extreme compactness and brightness, NGC 3603 is one of the best examples of a starburst region and since its discovery more than a century ago, NGC 3603 has been intensively studied" The source has "Owing to its uniqueness in terms of the intrinsic properties such as the proximity, relatively low visual extinction of only AV = 4 􀀀 5 mag, and the extreme compactnessand brightness, NGC 3603 is one of the most suitable Galactic templates of starburst phenomena in distant galaxies. Therefore, since its discovery more than a century ago,NGC 3603 has been intensively studied in many groups". Gavin edited the same article extensively, adding lots of data early in September, e.g. here. Sadly, this as well is a copyright violation, taken from here. Again, the source is acknowledged, but these are all copyrighted sources...

Considering that on checking three source-adding edits he made this month, all three are copyright violations, I fear that we have a serious problem at our hands, which may take a lot of cleanup... Fram (talk) 12:59, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, if this is that significant, this needs to be handled separately from the above. (and probably takes priority as that is disruptive). --MASEM (t) 13:03, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

[18] is a copyvio from [19]. Any objections if I open up a CCI on this user? MER-C 13:26, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So the same happened at least a year ago as well... I don't think we have much choice but to open a CCI here, indeed. Fram (talk) 13:49, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As much as it pains me to see more open CCIs, please do. VernoWhitney (talk) 13:54, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Haven't gotten a chance to look at this, but assuming what you say is true (especially the part about this happening last year too), I think that nothing less than an indefinite block would be appropriate. NW (Talk) 13:55, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, this definitely caught me by surprise; I was not expecting to see a thing like this. But then when I think about it, I guess this is not that surprising... during the working phase of the Kender meditation as I recall, in order to avoid as much as possible any re-interpretation of the source material, it seemed like Gavin damn near just wanted to rewrite the article using only quotes and lines taken directly from the source material and, I had to challenge that and insist that we not do this. My memory may be faulty, but given this new evidence it seems to fit into a pattern. BOZ (talk) 14:44, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with BOZ. Gavin's interpretation of WP:OR is so extreme that it seems to prohibit summarizing multiple sources on the same subject. I wouldn't be surprised if he's using direct quotes from a single source because he believes anything else would be WP:OR. Shooterwalker (talk) 15:11, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And WP:SYN, yes. BOZ (talk) 15:30, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments like this, when the CCI-possibility was pointed out, is rather scary. At least with Darius (you know, the one affecting about 23,000 pages) , he at least attempted to clean (though far too little too late). --MASEM (t) 15:28, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Forgive me if this isn't the appropriate place to post this, but the possible copy violations are pretty severe:

• this is a copyvio of the source
• this is pretty much directly lifted from the cited source
• this is, IMO, a particularly egregious example lifted from a thesis

This is a mess. --Nuujinn (talk) 00:08, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20101001 MER-C 01:55, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have taken two of the articles listed by MER-C, History of science in the Renaissance [20] and Al-Baqara [21] both contained copyvios, with only very small changes in the text from the source material. Per BOZ and Shooterwalker, I think that a fundamental misunderstanding of WP:OR and ignorance of WP:C is the culprit here. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:55, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A bit saddened as well, because I thought contributing decent content now and then to articles was one of Gavin's stronger attributes. I would like to take Fram for taking notice of this. Sjakkalle (Check!) 08:18, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, ironically enough, since he seldom edits articles, the number of articles that will have to be cleaned up is relatively small. --Nuujinn (talk) 11:51, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Note: Gavin has responded to these allegations on his talkpage [22]. Sjakkalle (Check!) 08:52, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes indeed - although he blames Sjakkalle for this investigation, clearly others have shown just as much concern over this issue. BOZ (talk) 11:37, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it would appear that I am on a personal, bad faith, mudslinging vendetta against him to exact revenge on his delete vote on the Ellen Hambro article, where I supposedly have serious ownership issues. For the record, I have made two edits to the Ellen Hambro article, only one of which is substantial, and I haven't edited that article for nearly two years. (Nor do I have much interest in Hambro in particular, or Norwegian environmental agencies in general.) I have referenced the AFD several times, because it is one of the very few examples of a staunch delete vote on an article whose subject covered in a paper encyclopedia. The entire posting looks like an attempt to divert attention away from himself. Sjakkalle (Check!) 12:39, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Noting that Gavin has removed the statement, and apologised for it. :-) Sjakkalle (Check!) 15:12, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of his contributions seem to consist of failed AfD noms and prods. He also, once again, insists on deciding what the venue and terms should be before he wants to engage in any meaningful discussion about his actions. He is also engaging in blatant wikilawyering (again). Vyvyan Basterd (talk) 12:07, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And adding various templates here and there. It's a shame that it looks like most of the rest of his contributions are invalid. BOZ (talk) 12:32, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

His follow up reasons are extremely unsettling; ignoring the copyright complaint for the moment, it is "my way or the highway" attitude that has persisted through all aspects of the RFC/U and AN and now the CCI charge that are(seems?) intolerable by the wider community. Gavin can wikilawyer all day that he is not doing anything wrong as there is likely nothing but essays to point out his behavior is at fault,. But, and the reason to be AN to get community consensus, is to show that, particularly when charged with violating a core contribution principle (copyvios), "my way or the highway" is not acceptable behavior if one expected to be a contributor to WP. --MASEM (t) 12:44, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Blocked (and unblocked)

I have indefinitely blocked Gavin.collins for copyright violations. I have offered to unblock if he recognizes what he has done wrong and offers to help clean up the copyvios. Of course, other sanctions (independent from the copyright violations) can still be applied in that case. Ucucha 12:39, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That was almost certainly going to happen. I've been considering it after seeing the discussion on his talk page. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 12:48, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Having just about decimated the Accountancy article, I was just coming to ask someone to do that.--Elen of the Roads (talk) 13:10, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse block. His attitude towards the copyright policy and contempt for those cleaning up his mess is unacceptable. MER-C 13:25, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Let me ask a devil's advocate question for those more familiar with how CCI is handled than myself: it seems to me that most of what Gavin has been shown to copy are direct (within a word or two) segments of articles, with attribution but without the necessary quote marks to make it stand out as a quoted section. I recognize that the examples I spot-checked that just adding the quotes doesn't fix the problem as there's prose form and word flow and all that would have to be dealt with, but the base question is: are we going overboard just because he didn't use quote marks? Again, I don't know CCI procedure that well, so if this is accepted as a problem, ok, great. The few CCI cases I've had a chance to look into is where there usually wasn't attribution and thus a more serious charge. --MASEM (t) 13:34, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The issue, certainly from Accountancy is that he wrote no original text whatsoever. What he did was take two sentences from source Foo, and tweak a couple of words. Then a sentence from source Bar. Then a paragraph from Foo. Then two sentences from Thud...and so on. I deleted an entire five paragraph section that was entirely made up of copyvios from four or five sources, and another four paragraph section copied from three sources. Elen of the Roads (talk) 13:47, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Up until the block he was claiming his interpretation was correct. Here is what he says now:

"Having re-read the Wikipedia:Non-free content, it does appear that I have "misunderstood" policy as Sjakkalle has pointed out to me in relation to the correct notation that is need to avoid copyright violations, and I appologise to Sjakkalle for biting his head off and shall strike my in appropriate comments from the record[5]. WP:Plagiarism sums up the Non-free content policy as follows:

"If the external work is under standard copyright, then duplicating its text with little, or no, alteration into a Wikipedia article is usually a copyright violation, unless duplication is limited and clearly indicated in the article by quotation marks, or some other acceptable method (such as block quotations).

I appologise for this oversight. I am committed to rewriting offending citations where this is an issue, and I think most of these problems can be rectified with direct attribution where need be. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs)13:52, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

He's been told that before, but it's taken a block to convince him. Dougweller (talk) 13:58, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And...it's not going to help (mho) if he's doing things like [23] which is a straight lift of an entire paragraph from its own source. Elen of the Roads (talk) 14:01, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that he provides the source for the plagiarized material seems to indicate he just doesn't (didn't) understand the concept of plagiarism. Doug, you say he's been informed about it before? –xeno^talk 14:04, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

He's discussed it before at Talk:Enron scandal#Recent changes. Dougweller (talk) 16:15, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In the block notice, Ucuchna said "I will unblock you (and authorize any other admin to do the same) if you recognize the problem and commit to helping to clean up the mess in Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20101001." Since Gavin's statement is such a recognition and commitment, I have acted on Ucuchna's authority and unblocked Gavin now. One might accusing Gavin on being late in recognizing this, but better late than never. Sjakkalle (Check!) 15:12, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the unblock at this point, but I point out Xeno's question to Doug; if this is Gavin's second warning on CCI, that's a larger issue. --MASEM (t) 15:16, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe I'm biased, but why is this even remotely a redeemable offense? It's mindboggling that someone who spent as much time arguing about policy as he did would not understand the basics of copyright and the most basic concepts of how Wikipedia works. Or is this unblock just tentative pending a further judgment as the copyright investigation proceeds? postdlf (talk) 15:17, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Seems to be a case of chalking up the plagiarism to ignorance, rather than malice. –xeno^talk 15:25, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Fortunately, we are talking about a few scores of articles with copyright issues, not several hundred, and so cleaning this up is a smaller scale operation than the one last month. (The vast majority of the articles listed in Gavin's CCI are results of the mass taggings in 2007-08, not copyvios.) Gavin reading and quoting the WP:PLAGIARISM page indicates that he understands what he did was wrong. I have a strong hunch that BOZ's analysis is correct: Gavin was so entrenched in his views of what WP:NOR implied that he thought that big changes of the text in the source would be a violation of that policy. I don't think he was acting in bad faith when he added those paragraphs, but acting on the erroneous belief that what he was doing was OK since copying small snippets of the source wouldn't harm the copyright holder. Sjakkalle (Check!) 15:31, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(ec)That would be more plausible if he were a newbie rather than someone who's been around for three and a half years who has spent most of his time on here mired in WP policy. I don't doubt he thinks he's entitled to get away with it, but I can't believe anyone with his span of experience here could honestly think copyright law, or WP policy, permit it unless they had an infant's level of reading comprehension. At any rate, I think this is new grounds for a complete ban from policy discussions if (assuming the best) he has demonstrably no understanding of policy yet continues to spam discussions with his opinions of how it should be. postdlf (talk) 15:40, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I get where you're coming from (and to be honest, I've felt there was a reading comprehension problem at issue before, as with this), but I would object to pushing that line of thinking too hard. It's a bit mind-boggling and a fine refutation of the vocal minority who hail Gavin as the keeper of the one, true Wikipedia Way, but really, people are allowed to participate in policy discussion without fully understanding policy, and they kinda have to be. The sticking point needs to be the tendentious return to a position that has been shown to be not validated by consensus. Some of said positions being demonstrably illegal does bring the moral authority into question, but it's not being wrong, as such, that calls for intervention. —chaos5023 (talk) 15:54, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

To be honest I think the problem is that he's been so hooked on discussing meta issues rather than putting his ideas to the test on actual articles. If he had done that he would have realized that it's impossible to write an article in accordance with his understanding of policy and guidelines. Vyvyan Basterd (talk) 16:05, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There's an easy way to settle this. Get Gavin to write up his viewpoint on WP:OR, and do an RFC at the WP:OR talk page. If the community accepts it, maybe the joke's on the rest of us. But if the community rejects it, we can ask Gavin to kindly WP:GETTHEPOINT and work within the community consensus. At that point, ignorance will no longer be a defense. Shooterwalker (talk) 16:06, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The last thing we should want is to give Gavin another forum to spam the community with his demonstrably wrong interpretations. Its sickening enough that he has wasted so much of everyone's time, with ideas that at first just appeared to be more conservative interpretations of notability guidelines, but ultimately proved to be incoherent and nonsensical views dependent upon copyright infringement. postdlf (talk) 18:36, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

@Masem, I checked the archives of his talk page and didn't really find anything. Maybe I missed it. –xeno^talk 15:25, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See above, it was at Talk:Enron scandal#Recent changes, not a warning. I note that another editor has said " Much of the text is neither brief nor properly attributed (i.e., quoted), and so needs to be removed and/or rewritten." -- see [24]. Dougweller (talk) 16:18, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes - thanks for that. Now the question becomes: did he continue with his near-verbatim insertion without rewording or quoting subsequent to that discussion? –xeno^talk 16:27, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Enron scandal#Recent changes is very enlightening on how his thought process got to this point. It didn't help that the person responding to the 3O request found in his favor that it was not plaigarism. BOZ (talk) 16:28, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with BOZ again. I think there are quite a few policy misinterpretations in the 3O. Sjakkalle (Check!) 16:32, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, they did say "some sentences have been taken directly from the source and should be re-written or made into quotations to make the attribution obvious". –xeno^talk 17:09, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if this thread from September might be informative about Gavin's views/understanding of copyright; he seemed to be saying that all lists (no matter how unoriginal and factual) are creative and thus copyrighted, but further implying that this is why we must attribute our lists to a source ("As regrads effort and copyright, all lists are creative, and all take effort to create, which is why they should be attributable to reliable source."). I responded that attribution is to show verifiability, that it can't cure copyright infringement if that's what copying a list would be; he made no comment on that. postdlf (talk) 16:48, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_mediation/Kender/Trim#Life_cycle and Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_mediation/Kender/Trim#Touching_base is informative as well. Gavin advances the theory that anything that is not sourced is OR, is disabused of this view, then advances the view that anything that is not sourced to a single source is OR. Disabused of that, he then argues for using nothing but verbatim quotation as a means of avoiding plagiarism. This problem with copyright violation is all tied up in his view of OR, rather than being an attempt to boost edit count, as is usually the case. I would ideally like Gavin to discuss how he would rework some of the deleted stuff, for example on Accountancy, so we can be sure he's got it. Elen of the Roads (talk) 17:33, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this is exactly what I was talking about in the above section. Thanks for not being as lazy as me, and actually going back to read that.  ;) BOZ (talk) 17:50, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So what's typically the next step in such a situations? I haven't dealt with any copyvios personally for several years now (and then, only with newbies copying and pasting whole websites) so I'm unfamiliar with the current process. I would hope at the very least he would be put on some kind of probation, with some kind of prior review of his future contributions to articles, and I would hope a very short leash on policy talk page spamming of his now-demonstrably false (and illegal) interpretations, not to mention some "re-education" of his policy understanding. postdlf (talk) 18:36, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, my "alternate proposal" above seems to have legs, so that will probably stick (in some form). Additionally, he has agreed to take on Kww as a mentor, to help him avoid this kind of trouble in the future. If either of those things fail, then things are probably looking bad for him. Otherwise, there's nothing else to do and he's free to go - at least, that's how I'm interpreting it. Now, if the people who manage copywright issues decide that more needs to be done, then that is up to them. BOZ (talk) 21:42, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal: future issues with other editors

Something that frequently comes up in these AN/Is is that other editors have done similar damage to the encyclopedia (or worse). If we do find a remedy, I would like to add something to Wikipedia:Dispute resolution or Wikipedia:Disruptive_editing#Dealing_with_disruptive_editors about how to deal with this specific problem. Namely, editors who cross the line between challenging a consensus one time versus filibustering, stonewalling, and argument ad nauseum. We haven't known how to deal with these problems in the past and I think we may have just found something worth emulating. Shooterwalker (talk) 15:24, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Mentorship

Gavin has accepted my mentorship regarding copyright and policy issues: [25]. I think everyone should let this proceed for a while, and we can see if more formal restrictions are necessary later. Feel free to notify me of anything he does that warrants special attention.—Kww(talk) 19:06, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Forgive me for being cynical in public, but I hope that you have noticed that most of the problems are on "guidelines" rather than just pages designated as "policies"? Since hairsplitting is one of the long-standing complaints, I'm afraid that I don't see an agreement to seek help for "policy articles" as solving the problems at pages like WP:Notability or the list RfC. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:04, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's helpful in combination with BOZ's proposal. Remember that much of the problem stems from discussion tactics and an unwillingness to engage in consensus building. As someone who cares a lot about WP:N and third-party sources I want Gavin there to provide sanity and balance. But Wikipedia is disrupted when editors resort to endless grandstanding and stonewalling that prevents us from resolving any issues. Either way thanks for taking on the mentorship role. Shooterwalker (talk) 21:39, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think having Kww coaching Gavin on copyright and policy issues is a good thing; Gavin seems to trust him, and I think that will go a long way. However, I share the concern whether having Kww in a mentor role is sufficient to address the concerns brought up about Gavin in the first place; Given that Kww has expressed his disagreement with the basis of the latest RFC (and thus, the majority of the complaint against Gavin), and was only one of two who opposed my proposal above (which has 15 people supporting, if you include me), and that I believe Kww is at minumum sympathetic towards most Gavin's views, this may affect substantially his impartiality in dealing with situations regarding talk page disputes. Therefore, I think we still need the ability to be able to seek out neutral, uninvolved admins in those situations, for the warn/block/ban. BOZ (talk) 15:09, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is a good route out of this mess. For what its worth, I've offered to advise if asked by either. Cheers, Jack Merridew 12:37, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Has been open over a month, and participation has tapered off so a close seems in order. I was a participant or I'd do it myself. Have fun! Beeblebrox (talk) 01:24, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I took a look, and decided to participate instead :) T. Canens (talk) 05:13, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

 – WP:AIV clear for now GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 20:34, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There is a sizeable backlog at WP:AIV. Thanks! — SpikeToronto 06:10, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Getting caught up now. Thanks! — SpikeToronto 06:30, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Li_Kung-lin_001.jpg seems to have a vandalism issue, as it contains an attack on another user halfway down. Oh, and apparently it has an "expression error." I'm on Wikipedia so rarely that I doubt I'd derive much benefit from learning how to fix this (were it a normal page, I'd likely blunder about, clearing out the unwanted text or reverting the page to a previous edit or something), but I thought that this ought to be fixed, and so I hereby bring it to the attention of those who may be better capable of addressing this issue. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.120.252.56 (talk) 08:29, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see either an expression error or an attack there? → ROUX ₪ 08:32, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I'm not seeing it. I also don't see any recent edits to the page, its Commons page, or any of the articles it's transcluded on. The only thing I can think of is that somewhere a template was vandalized and it's been fixed since then. —Soap— 12:26, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Might have been commons:Template:City, which was apparently vandalized and then protected. Ucucha 12:34, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

commons:Template:ISOyear too. I could still see the (particularly nasty) vandalism on a few pages before I purged them. Ucucha 12:39, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And it appears the revisions have been Revdeleted. --Alpha Quadrant ^talk 01:06, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I tried to add WikiProject Tags to Talk:Nguyễn_Thái_Dương and got an unauthorised message The page title or edit you have tried to create has been restricted to administrators at this time. It matches an entry on the local or global blacklists, which is usually used to prevent vandalism.

Why? It seems that Nguyen Thai Duong was redirected to Nguyễn Thái Dương yesterday, but didn't/couldn't move/redirect the talk page. Can someone fix up the disconnect please. Thanks, The-Pope (talk) 02:34, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Done. I wonder how many false positives those title blacklist rules produce. Ucucha 02:42, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

 – No longer backlogged GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 10:38, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Could somebody take a look at Wikipedia:Usernames for administrator attention? Everard Proudfoot (talk) 07:46, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Doesn't seem that bad now. There are 2 user reported, both of which are marked as {{uaa|b}} ( Not a blatant violation of the username policy.); there are 5 bot reported - 2 {{uaa|m}} ( Keep monitoring the user, until their username is more clear.); 1 {{uaa|b}} ( Not a blatant violation of the username policy.); one {{uaa|wait}} ( Wait until the user edits.) which appears to be a Star Wars reference; and one uncommented. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 10:21, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The backlog is pretty much clear now; I've moved the ones which suggest waiting until the user edits or worth keeping an eye on to the holding pen, and marked a couple as non-vios / removed a couple which others marked as non-vios. The only thing left are the two I've marked as non-vios, pending confirmation by a second opinion. GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 10:38, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Dilma Rousseff A clear example of admin abuse. --Ftsw (talk) 12:58, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Any particular reason you've posted to both WP:ANI and here? Shubinator (talk) 14:15, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Increase in the edit count? LessHeard vanU (talk) 17:48, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Blocked, Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/ThomasK - after he uploaded a possibly copyvio joke image of Obama. Commons:Deletion requests/File:Barackobama.jpg. Dougweller (talk) 18:39, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I notice that some bots, such as XLinkBot (talk · contribs), have reviewer rights. This is inadvisable under the current configuration of the pending changes software, since it can result in the automatic acceptance of vandalism. Suppose that an article under the highest level of pending changes protection (accept=reviewer), is vandalized by user A. Subsequently, user B adds a prohibited external link, which is reverted by XLinkBot. The resulting revision, still containing the vandalism by user A, will be automatically accepted. (Also see the discussion of other automatic acceptance problems at User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#Design_flaw_in_pending_changes_protection.) Peter Karlsen (talk) 04:18, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would think it would be the same with adminbots - do they need said bit to carry out whatever tasks they are set to do? –MuZemike 05:37, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not aware of any bots approved specifically to review edits. Peter Karlsen (talk) 05:52, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, in most cases an unneeded user right won't do any harm in the absence of a malfunction, since the bot simply won't use it. But the reviewer right causes edits to be automatically accepted whether you like it or not; the sysop bit might result in unwanted editing of fully protected pages. Peter Karlsen (talk) 06:38, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As the second operator of XLinkBot, I'd like to comment here. I have been thinking about that, and actually, I don't really know. In principle, it would not be different than, say, editor A is vandalising the page, but it goes unnoticed, and editor B, with an autoreview bit (but who does not care about it), is adding some info (and ignoring the 'there are pending changes'). Of course, the bot would not care by definition, and therefore the autoreview-right should be removed. Leaving the edit unreviewed would 'enforce' an individual check of both the 'new editor's edit' and the bot edit, to see whether the link might have been of use, or was really 'in violation' of WP:COPYRIGHT/WP:NOT/WP:EL/WP:SPAM/WP:COI.

On the other hand, most of the reverts by XLinkBot would revert back to a reviewed version, and therefore it would be great if the edits were autoreviewed (as otherwise it does give a lot of work). Maybe I should have a look into the data, and see if XLinkBot could actually detect whether the to-revert-to version is reviewed, and review automatically then, leaving it unreviewed if not. (P.S. for me .. I think it is better removed, and have no objection against removal). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:39, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

When editing with the reviewer right, there's no choice to "detect whether the to-revert-to version is reviewed, and review automatically then, leaving it unreviewed if not": any revision produced as a result of the edit will be automatically accepted. Peter Karlsen (talk) 15:27, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think if a page is reverted back to a previously reviewed version, no matter who reverted it, it is automatically reviewed and accepted. Could be wrong though. NW (Talk) 13:44, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt that it works in this way. The revision of user A is not accepted because they, supposedly, do not have the 'autoreviewer' right. The revision of user B is not accepted either because the previous revision (of user A) is unaccepted. The revision of XLinkBot will not be accepted because the previous revision (of user B) is not approved. The undoing is actually not different from an ordinary edit. On the other hand if the edit of user B is rollbacked (to the revision of user A) as opposed to undone, the resulting revision will not be accepted as well, because the revision of user A is not accepted. This is my understanding. Ruslik_Zero 15:32, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Please see Wikipedia:Pending changes: all edits by reviewers are "visible immediately" (automatically accepted.) To prevent the inadvertent acceptance of vandalism, etc, when editing an unapproved version of a page, the edit form will display the following text: "The edit form below includes changes that have not yet been accepted." Bots not specifically designed to notice this language will simply proceed anyway, insensible to the potential problem. Furthermore, "reviewer" rights are very different from "autoreviewer" privileges, despite the similar names. Peter Karlsen (talk) 15:52, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In the case you describe, don't you have to explicitly check the box to accept the revision? –xeno^talk 15:55, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You're right. It seems that I'm mistaken as to exactly how the PC protection works; the issue I'm describing won't actually arise. Peter Karlsen (talk) 16:07, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I see my confusion. XLinkBot is an autoreviewer .. and will not be anymore in a couple of secs. XLinkBot does not have botrights so that its edits do show up in the recent changes (both to catch real spammers on the fly, as well as keeping an eye on its reverts for various reasons). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:01, 4 October 2010 (UTC)strike that .. the bot is reviewer .. I am too confused, logging off and coming back tomorrow. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:03, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Please see prior discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know#.22Real-world_context.22.

Ban proposal: DragonflySixtyseven (talk · contribs) is welcome to participate in reviews at T:TDYK or to post error reports about articles in queue for discussion at WT:DYK, but not to edit the queues, prep pages, or main template T:DYK directly.

• Support, as proposed (wording as recommended [26] by Rjanag). -- Cirt (talk) 14:53, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Obvious oppose, to the extent that my opinion matters. I've already conceded one point regarding appropriateness, and I refuse to concede the other point because it involves a matter of factual accuracy. DS (talk) 14:56, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Also, Cirt - I sincerely apologize for having accused you of violating WP:POINT in restoring that inaccurate hook; I did not sufficiently clearly indicate that it was inaccurate. My mistake. And I've already conceded the point about letting grotesquely-inappropriate hooks remain in the queue if I've been so lax as to not intercept them earlier. So what's your point? DS (talk) 15:08, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the apology, I accept, and it is most appreciated. This proposal was recommended previously at WT:DYK, both by Rlevse (talk · contribs), and by Rjanag (talk · contribs). It was not simply my original suggestion, though it is a sound one. -- Cirt (talk) 15:10, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Support, all this 'ban' really would be is a restriction on DS using admin tools to edit protected templates at DYK against consensus. Does not actually ban him from reviewing DYKs. Strange Passerby (talk • c • status) 15:04, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Support I wanted to give DS the benefit of the doubt, but from my discussion with him (now rolled up at WT:DYK, see [27]) it has become clear to me that he doesn't even understand why editors are upset and doesn't understand what the point of this proposal is. He can't be trusted to exercise good judgment with regards to the DYK queues and therefore he shouldn't have the ability to override other reviewers' judgments unilaterally. He can participate at T:TDYK like everyone else. rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:55, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Of course I understand; don't attribute motives (especially when you only have a part of the conversation). DS (talk) 15:09, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• No, you still don't understand what other users are upset about. I have already linked to the conversation in question. rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:11, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Of course I do. You still don't understand what it's like to care about this project. <=== SHOCKINGLY UNFAIR PERSONAL ATTACK, MADE TO DEMONSTRATE THE CONCEPT OF 'ATTRIBUTING MOTIVE'; I DO NOT ACTUALLY BELIEVE THAT RJANAG DOES NOT CARE ABOUT WIKIPEDIA. I did not respond to comments made in those eight hours because I was asleep; becoming angry at me for those is ridiculous. I have already agreed to the point re: proper procedure, and attempted to demonstrate this by using it to deal with what I saw as a serious error of factual accuracy (my point was addressed and ruled to be not a problem). DS (talk) 15:42, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Support ban - because DS just went and removed another hook from the queue right after being advised by several users not to do that anymore without prior discussion. I had given qualified support to DS up to this point, but it now appears he simply doesn't care about the opinions of other users on this matter. Gatoclass (talk) 15:15, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wasn't this exactly, what you have done, Gatoclass? Only it was worse in your case because you removed the hook for the topic you were involved over with your head.--Mbz1 (talk) 15:41, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Please keep discussion focused: if you have concerns about another user, feel free to discuss with them at their user talk page, or at WT:DYK. -- Cirt (talk) 15:44, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No it wasn't Mbz, it was a very different situation, but per Cirt this is neither the time and place for that debate. Gatoclass (talk) 16:01, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Support. I personally found it shocking that such a long-established admin acts this way. His way of using admin tools (as far as DYK is concerned) is simply incompatible with the collaborative nature of this project. --BorgQueen (talk) 15:30, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. Though I understand that DS is against fictional hooks without real-world context, removing them unilaterally from hooks or the main page is wholly inappropriate. I encourage him to bring up any problems he has with hooks at WT:DYK in the future, and I'm sad that it's come to this. Nomader ^(Talk) 15:58, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong oppose on both procedural and practical grounds. At 00:25 (UTC) today, the first complaint was raised on WT:DYK about Dragonfly's actions; exactly fourteen hours later, the topic ban proposal appears on this noticeboard (not on WP:AN/I, which would seem the forum for a demand that is so <irony>obviously important</irony> request). This is an obviously an insufficient period for any Wikipedia editor to be expected to reply to a discussion, given that we are a global project and operate in pretty much every time zone on the planet. As there was no reasonable time for a reply, there has been no attempt at WP:DR worthy of the name, and so a topic ban for DS would be completely inappropriate at this stage. My views about DYK are well known, but I think it speaks volumes that the matter has been handled in such an obviously inappropriate way, and the number of pile on supports that are above my !vote. The best long term solution would be a topic ban for all editors on DYK, by its simple abolition; every time it shows itself both incapable to apply the basic principles of WP editing, while being notorious for the miniscule numbers of readers who access the encyclopedia from the articles it features, it is adding another log on the fire that's cooking it. Physchim62 (talk) 16:25, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Actually this seems to be a perennial issue with DS, I believe there are several other threads in the archives about similar removals (will try to dig them up later). As for the time that elapsed, you can see there was ample time for DS to reply, given that he did reply many times at the WT:DYK section linked above, and it was only after the discussion with him got nowhere that this proposal started. As for the appropriateness of having the discussion here rather than at the DYK talk page, I agree, and I too had suggested that consensus be reached there before bringing anything here, but that is not what happened. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:36, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• I haven't found all of them yet, but other than the real-world issue that I believe is already linked, here is something from this September: WT:Did you know/Archive 58#Hook deleted from main page. I vaguely recall there being more like this (and note cmadler's comment "I'm really getting tired of reading about DS deleting hooks from queues"), I just haven't found them all yet. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:55, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• I also don't see what about the above comments you think constitutes a pile-on (click through the link). They all have rationales with them (they're not JUSTAVOTEs), and they all came after extended discussion at WT:DYK (although you don't see that discussion here because Cirt rolled it up and somewhat hastily moved the proposal over here before the discussion at WT:DYK ended); they're not just showing up out of nowhere and dropping votes. rʨanaɢ (talk) 18:20, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose per Psychim62.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:39, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

To reiterate: after a series of warnings regarding hooks-pertaining-to-fiction and the best way to deal with removing an inappropriate hook from the queues, I removed a hook from the queues for a wholly different reason: although I felt it was a perfectly valid and appropriate hook, I had concerns about its factual accuracy. Those concerns have been dealt with and the hook has been returned to its rightful place the queue, and I find it ridiculous to have this lumped in with the other behaviors for which I was criticized and for which I have already conceded the point. For that matter, I have continued making several small changes to sentence structure and punctuation, in the intervening time. We have all wasted too much time on this; I will not remove hooks from the template, queues, or preparation areas unless there are serious concerns regarding factual accuracy or BLP issues; but in all cases I will make certain to restore [any hooks which I consider problematic] to the discussion areas to ensure that they are not lost. Now can we all get back to work? DS (talk) 16:45, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but the problem is, you removed that hook right after you'd been advised by multiple users not to unilaterally remove hooks anymore, but to discuss on the talk page first. What you've managed to do over the course of several weeks is leave a strong impression that you simply don't listen to concerns that are being raised over your hook removals. This is a collaborative project and you cannot just ignore the concerns of other users and go on doing your own thing as if other opinions didn't matter. Indeed, you are doing the same with this very post, which amounts to "I've done nothing wrong, now let's all get back to work". Multiple users have informed you that your hook removals are problematic, but here you are asserting your right to continue removing hooks if you and you alone see a problem with them. That is just inappropriate. Gatoclass (talk) 17:21, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wait, wait, hold on. Too much going too fast; I may have missed a statement. Where was that statement made, please? This would have been much easier if it was all in one place, but I've been hopping back and forth and it's difficult to keep track. Diffs, please.DS (talk) 17:38, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Support, I was hoping to avoid this but DS repeatedly fails to get the concerns and to address them. @Physichim, this is not the first time. See the link in the WT:DYK thread to a thread only 7 weeks old where this same issue. — Rlevse • Talk • 17:11, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

{EDITCONFLICT} (EDITCONFLICT)Important question: why has no one addressed the issue of whether my edits to sentence structure, word choice, and punctuation are permissible or problematic? This is a question which must be dealt with, and I find it most disappointing that this debate does not yet include a section precisely defining which behaviors are or are not to be considered acceptable. Is this diff acceptable? Why or why not? What about this one? Or this one? Why is no one else taking the time to address these points? DS (talk) 17:13, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I personally don't have much of a problem with such edits of yours, what I've seen of them. The issue is the way you remove hooks without discussion, when it's clear that you don't understand DYK procedures related to hook removal or when it is and is not appropriate to do hook removals. And until you demonstrate that you do "get it" in that regard, I see no reason why you shouldn't be banned from doing so. Gatoclass (talk) 17:30, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Note: So far, it appears (at least), prior discussion threads involving this issue at DYK have included: Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know/Archive_57#Clarification_for_.22real-world_context.22_in_DYK_rules, Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know/Archive_58#Hook_deleted_from_main_page, and Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know#.22Real-world_context.22. -- Cirt (talk) 17:16, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the Taylor Vixen hook: "Yeah, I noticed that one hook was removed. The hook was for Taylor Vixen. I must say that agree with DragonflySixtyseven on that one. The hook text was rather in bad taste and very tabloidy, IMO. I don't think hooks like that should be promoted." Regarding the 'real-world context' - those were objections that I made on the suggestions page. Under what circumstances do you have grounds to complain about my objecting on the suggestions page? DS (talk) 17:24, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

@DS: I don't know about others, but I have already addressed this question of yours repeatedly and at length here, and clearly you still don't get it. The issue is that some of the editors there, myself included, do not feel you are capable of deciding what edits you make to the template and queues are appropriate and what edits aren't. rʨanaɢ (talk) 17:21, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(e.c.) Another thread in which it is made clear that DS's views on fiction in hooks is not shared by other editors: Wikipedia_talk:Did you know/Archive 57#Clarification for .22real-world context.22 in DYK rules EdChem (talk) 17:20, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

At least 2 other editors explicitly support DS there, and the thread peters out without obvious conclusion. I gather DS's judgement in removing problematic hooks is in question, but given that we're talking about Main Page exposure, it seems quite appropriate to be conservative. This isn't a licence to ignore clear consensus, but it is a consideration. Overall this discussion seems quite extraordinarily premature - where are the prior steps of dispute resolution? Rd232 ^talk 17:32, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And for what I believe may be the fifth time, let me repeat that I HAVE CONCEDED THE POINT. Objections are to be raised on the suggestions page. Can we all get on with our lives now? DS (talk) 17:41, 4 October 2010 (UTC

I strongly concur with your view that we should "err on the safe side" in regard to DYK problems. The problem is that DS has on multiple occasions removed hooks that others don't see a problem with. He does it without discussion on the DYK talk page first, and he does it incorrectly, just deleting them altogether instead of restoring them to T:TDYK for further discussion and without restoring the previous debate or leaving a message about why he removed them.

DS is basically acting like judge, jury and executioner, and it has proven very difficult to get through to him what is wrong with his behaviour. I personally wasn't keen on this ban proposal, but I think at least until he demonstrates that he understands the concerns and will act accordingly, a ban would be not inappropriate. Gatoclass (talk) 17:55, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, you're quite correct in that I hadn't been restoring problematic hooks to T:TDYK for further work; mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. My actions have been done in ignorance of the methodology which evolved for this situation. If I ever notice anything problematic (regarding BLP or factual accuracy; regarding the question of 'appropriateness' in fiction, - and let me say this for possibly the SIXTH time - I HAVE ALREADY CONCEDED THE POINT) which I feel must be removed, I will immediately replace it on T:TDYK. The reason that I have acted so precipitously in making removals [edit: in OTHER matters such as porn stars talking about their breasts, or politicians who are in the middle of running for president, or forensic pathologists who are in mid-lawsuit over claims of criminal negligence which may have led to innocent men being executed, ALL OF WHICH ARE THINGS THAT I REMOVED FROM DYK) is that the front page gets hundreds of hits per second and that anything inappropriate draws dozens of complaints. DS (talk) 17:59, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And I'll say mine for the sixth time too. The proposal is not asking that you please make sure to replace hooks on T:TDYK after you remove them. It's asking you not to remove them at all. Not because you forgot to replace them, but because some editors do not trust your judgment in what should and should not be removed in the first place. You have not <big>CONCEDED</big> that point, no matter how big you say so; you don't even appear to understand it. rʨanaɢ (talk) 18:01, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thankyou for conceding that your actions have been done "in ignorance of the methodology" - an ignorance that has persisted for many, many months as you have been contributing to DYK over a long period. I don't know of any other admin active at DYK who has remained ignorant of our procedures for such a long period, and perhaps you could ask yourself why that might be. But this confession is at least a step in the right direction.

But while you have "already conceded the point" as you put it, I am obliged to point out to you that even after this concession, you still blew it in your very next hook removal by failing to restore the previous discussion as you had been reminded to do. You also removed the hook over a very minor issue that could easily have been resolved at DYK talk without any of the drama. The bottom line is that you are still not getting it right, and you are not getting it right because you don't listen to what others are trying to tell you. And until you do show some evidence that you are capable of paying attention, I see no reason why you should be allowed to continue disrupting DYK with your self-confessedly "ignorant" editing. Gatoclass (talk) 18:23, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding recent behavior at this AN board by DragonflySixtyseven (talk · contribs) = The yelling and the bold and the all caps and the big font is not really helping matters. -- Cirt (talk) 18:04, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You're correct, but I hope you can understand that it's a little aggravating (in particular, the edit conflicts when I'm trying and trying to make my points). This is a ridiculous mess, and aside from the disputes over the appropriateness of fiction (where I have already conceded the point, I stand by each one of my decisions and -- since your premise is that I have a record of poor judgment in this respect -- I am more than willing to argue each one with you, right here. DS (talk) 18:12, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There is no valid rationale for this level of text markup by DragonflySixtyseven (talk · contribs). It just appears to the reader as screaming at other users, which is not polite. -- Cirt (talk) 18:14, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Clearly DS is aggravated and tempers running high. Frankly I'm not all that surprised, in the circumstances. Jumping to such a ban proposal when there seems to have been insufficient communication/discussion (dispute resolution) is just all round bad. It doesn't help matters that the proposal has no clearly argued rationale. What are the actual, current, outstanding, still-disputed issues? Rd232 ^talk 18:18, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. Sorry, I've seen DS' constructive contributions at DYK in the past. This seems hardly necessary. He's conceded error; I'm sure he'll be more careful in future. By the way, Cirt, DS is reading the thread; you don't need to address him like he isn't here. Your comments are only serving to aggrevate the situation further, I think. PeterSymonds (talk) 18:23, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]