In the Squad case, I closed the AfD as "delete". King of Hearts closed the DRV as "Overturn to redirect. Those who !voted "delete" at the AfD have failed to advance an argument as to why a redirect would not be appropriate." In doing so, King of Hearts failed to properly do their job as DRV closer, which is to assess whether consensus exists at DRV to overturn an AfD closure, and if so, to implement that consensus. Instead, they merely inserted their own view about how the AfD should properly have been closed, without even attempting to assess the consensus of the DRV discussion (i.e., they cast a supervote). If they had done their job, they would have either found that there was no consensus to overturn the "delete" closure, or even consensus to endorse it. In both cases, the article's history would have remained deleted, consistent with the AfD consensus. This would not have prevented the later creation of the redirect from Squad (app) that now exists and with which I agree.
King of Hearts' comments indicate that they severely misunderstand applicable deletion policy if they insist that "There is no such thing as a consensus to delete at AfD per se". But in our policy and practice there is indeed such a thing as a "delete" consensus at AfD. It means that the history of the deleted article is suppressed. All attempts to change policy to the contrary have failed (cf. Wikipedia:Soft deletion (failed proposal)). That was the consensus at both the AfD and probably also at the DRV. I am concerned that King of Hearts is attempting to reintroduce such failed proposals, which do not have community consensus, by misusing the DRV process.
Similarly, in the United Airlines Flight 1175 case,Black Kite closed the AfD as "delete", and King of Hearts closed the DRV as "Restore without prejudice against a new AfD." But in this case as well, opinions in the DRV discussion were divided and there was no consensus to overturn the "delete" closure. And again, King of Hearts did not even attempt to assess consensus but merely cast a supervote in favor of what they considered the right outcome.
As a collaborative project, Wikipedia works only if all, especially admins, respect consensus and the deletion process. Admins must not use their special user rights (in this case, the undelete right) to bypass this process. I therefore propose that the community overturns these DRV closures and lets another admin close these DRV discussions. Sandstein 12:04, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Notification of the participants in previous discussions
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
To me, the first close does indeed read as a superclose - there isn't a consensus in the DRV that that position was held, and if the closer felt it was the case, they should have !voted themselves to stress that position. I would reverse it. The second close, however, is significantly more legitimate. In base numbers, it's somewhat "no consensus", but the DRV policy strength arguments made by the the restore supporters is significantly clearer. I may have gone NC myself, but I don't believe the close was bad. Nosebagbear (talk) 12:22, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The first close reads as a !supervote to me too - There wasn't any consensus to overturn and if KoH felt the AFD shouldn't of been closed he should of stated that in the DRV as opposed to closing/overturning. The second one - Opinions were divided and sources were also provided although a discussion then occurred over those sources. Personally it's a balance of No Consensus and Restore so don't really see a problem with that one. First DRV was wrong tho. –Davey2010Talk12:44, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I was involved in both of these and I was surprised by the outcome of both of them, especially the Squad (app) outcome. On numbers alone, that was an endorse/decline 5, relist 2. The United Airlines 1175 discussion was closer to an endorse/restore no consensus. I really only have an issue with that because the topic falls far below our notability guidelines for aviation incidents, it's turned into an exceptionally crufty article which completely overplays the incident, and I've been criticised for taking it to AfD immediately by two !voters in the new AfD. Even given my involvement, I'd recommend overturning the Squad (app) one. I'd like the United Airlines one to be vacated, but I'm even more involved in that one. SportingFlyerT·C14:17, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Without commenting on the validity of them individually, there were rather a lot of challenges to King of Hearts' AfD closes last year, by amongst others experienced editors TonyBallioni, PMC, ArnoldReinhold, HighKing, and JBL: [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. I can see he's been inactive for long periods of time since 2014, perhaps this should be taken as a gentle suggestion to refresh himself on our current norms on closing and consensus? – Joe (talk) 15:29, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That is an additional concern, Joe - the points often aren't unreasonable as such, but in quite a few (not all) of the cases linked to somewhere in this discussion would belong as !votes, not closes. Nosebagbear (talk) 15:37, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
A redirect is fine as people searching for Squad App will get to know (more) about its acquisition by Twitter. However, like Sandstein I also find KoH's DRV closure decision is out of line. A deleted article's history remains suppressed. The discussion here is about KoH's DRV closures and I feel they are not shy of casting Supervotes. Dial911 (talk) 17:09, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The first DRV doesn't look like a consensus to redirect at all. It looks more like a consensus to endorse the original close - I see there is an attribution/copyright issue but the endorsers clearly considered that aspect. Ditto on the second DRV - it's clear that not everybody agrees that the new sources justify restoration, one could call that a consensus to endorse or no consensus but it's not a consensus to restore, really. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 17:11, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If I were to have voted myself in either the initial discussion or the DRV for the Squad case, I would have voted to either turn to a redirect or to relist the original AFD debate. That being said, I would not have closed the discussion as KoH did. As an admin, if we have our own opinion on the discussion at hand, we should vote and not close the discussion ourselves. There's nothing wrong with thinking the consensus was incorrect, and to vote accordingly. There is something wrong with closing a discussion against consensus. I would overturn that one. The second one, on the UAL Flight 1175, it's close enough to the border that it's within range of closing either way; I think that one is okay as it. --Jayron3217:45, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Perhaps I should not have used the word "overturn" to describe the result of the Squad (app) DRV. However, the fact of the matter is that consensus is not required to create a redirect at a previously deleted page, or to restore the history under a redirect (assuming that the deletion was not for content-related violations). As neither the AfD nor the DRV supports a consensus that the redirect is inappropriate, the correct course of action is to allow the redirect. But why so much fuss over the words used rather than the end result, which Sandstein admits would have been the same? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠18:21, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Under what policy does the creation of a redirect nullify the previous AfD deletion of earlier revisions? You state that "consensus is not required" for such an undeletion, but WP:UDP doesn't support this claim (nor does Wikipedia:Viewing and restoring deleted pages, which refers to UDP). Unilaterally overturning a consensus-based and consensus-endorsed deletion should not be done lightly and needs a much better reason than a claim that "consensus is not required" without anything to back this up. Fram (talk) 18:32, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You have more people here in this discussion saying that it isn't OK than was in that discussion from 8 years ago. Apparently, consensus has changed. --Jayron3218:54, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
So let's open an RfC to clarify the policy then. I've been following that interpretation since there has not been any consensus since to overturn it, but let's decide as a community what the right interpretation is once and for all and enshrine it in policy. I'm happy to follow whatever is decided going forward. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠18:57, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) I don't think I ever said you weren't doing what you thought to be correct; but it seems clear that the practice is not well supported. Policy documents practice and does not determine it, and you have a LOT of very experienced admins here saying that one should not be restoring an article history of a deleted article; we don't have any written policy that even says you should be doing so, and you've pointed to an 8-year-old discussion with minimal participation that was not documented anywhere obvious. Based on the fact that basically no one knew such a policy existed, except you and the few people that participated in the discussion, it wasn't documented anywhere, and that enough admins clearly don't see it as practice, it would be advisable to stop doing it. Of course, if we need to have an entire RFC just to force one admin to stop doing something no one else does, we can, but do we need to??? --Jayron3219:14, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Are they saying that because this is what they believe policy to be, or what they believe policy should be? It appears that I am outnumbered on the first front, but I think it is a rather sensible thing to allow restoration of non-sensitive content underneath an existing page (whether article or redirect) and it's worth a discussion to see where the community stands on the merits of the issue, i.e. I think they might be amenable on the second front. But either way, it enshrines it in policy so that there will be no more disagreements in interpretation. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠19:21, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That discussion was about how to handle discussions where the community consensus was to redirect an article. That doesn't apply here. But you already knew that. So I'm not exactly sure why you brought it up, since you already knew it was about a different situation than the one we are discussing today. --Jayron3212:17, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That discussion is irrelevant, because it's about history-only restores. You recreated the redirect yourself (with an obvious supervote which re-litigated the AfD, which isn't allowed) and unnecessarily restored the history with it, which practically no-one asked for. Even if that had not been the case, it was a seven-year old discussion at a backwater page in which only three people supported, and the relevant question to this issue ("does this include history under redirects?") went unanswered. Black Kite (talk)
So let's have the discussion then. I followed what I believed was a reasonable interpretation of policy, and apparently there is disagreement here. So let's clarify it and establish a policy for history undeletion for the future. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠19:20, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
King of Hearts, the end result is not the same. If you had correctly closed the DRV as "no consensus" or "endorse", and then created a redirect over the deleted article, there would have been no problem. The problem is that (a) you closed a DRV discussion contrary to policy by imposing your own preference and ignoring the discussion's consensus, and (b) misused your administrator privileges to undelete a page's history that according to policy and the outcome of both the AfD and DRV ought to have remained deleted. This is a matter of administrator misconduct if we get down to it, and you should take it much more seriously. Sandstein 18:44, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Sandstein. I feel like the entire point of the discussion was missed. That DRV asked a very specific question which had everything to do with history and attribution. I don't believe anyone would have had a problem with going in and creating a fresh redirect. SportingFlyerT·C19:38, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Creating a new redirect (with no history) would be plausibly allowed even with an AFD, as the prior AFD did not delete a redirect, and policy only says that creating a new article with substantially the same content; a redirect is a different thing entirely. Arguably, deletion is primarily about removing an article history from public view, so recreating a history to turn it into a redirect is clearly against policy. But creating a redirect without undeleting is not overturning the AFD in this instance. --Jayron3218:45, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As I see it, a closer can always consider a compromise close , even if one had not been previously suggested. I If I thought an article ought to be deled and it were kept as a redirect or a merge, I would normally see no reaaon to challenge it. If I wanted it as a full article, I probably would accept it also, and try to build up the article again if possible. In nominating, if I think somethin isn't even worth a redirect or a merge, I say so. If someone comes up wirth a better idea than mine, I dont; call it a supervote. There sems to be a great deal of concern about the details of copyright. There are oither ways of indicating attribution than retainingthe edits----such as apending a list of the other editors in a note. DGG ( talk ) 19:59, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Both of King of Hearts' closes correctly assessed the strengths of the DRV participants' arguments.
Before creating the AfD, AfD nominator MER-C (talk·contribs) redirectedSquad (app) to Twitter with the history preserved under the redirect. The redirect was undone, after which MER-C took the article to AfD. Had the redirect not been reverted, Squad (app) would currently exist as a redirect with the history preserved. No editor at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Squad (app) explained why the page's history should have been deleted. Since the article's history did not contain BLP or copyright violations, the policy and the global consensus support its restoration.
Comment: After Sandstein closed Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Squad (app) as "delete", I could have requested at WP:REFUND that Squad (app) be moved to my userspace or Draft:Squad (app). Would that request have been denied? On what basis would the request have been denied? Requests to draftify are routinely granted at WP:REFUND for improvements or for use in other articles. From WP:REFUND (my bolding):
This page is also intended to serve as a central location to request that deleted content be userfied, restored as a draft or emailed to you so the content can be improved upon prior to re-insertion into the mainspace, or used elsewhere (you may also make a request directly to one of the administrators listed here). This means that content deleted after discussion—at articles for deletion, categories for discussion, or miscellany for deletion among other deletion processes—may in some cases be provided to you, but such controversial page deletions will not be overturned through this process.
Deletion on the basis of notability (and no other reason) does not bar the article's content from being "used elsewhere". After completing a merge of the article's content to List of mergers and acquisitions by Twitter#Squad, I would have then redirected the draft to the list. I did not take that approach since it's preferable to have the history be under the mainspace title instead of the draft title.
King of Hearts' close of Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2021 February 27#United Airlines Flight 1175 accurately assessed the consensus. Wikipedia:Deletion review#Purpose says: "Deletion review may be used: 3. if significant new information has come to light since a deletion that would justify recreating the deleted page". The DRV nominator and DRV participants presented "significant new information". Five DRV participants (Dhaluza, Cunard, Jclemens, SmokeyJoe, and DGG) supported restoring the article or allowing recreation. Two DRV participants (SportingFlyer and Hut 8.5) did not support restoring the article or allowing recreation. Closing as "Restore without prejudice against a new AfD" is a reasonable assessment of the consensus.
Cunard The consensus at Wikipedia_talk:Deletion_policy/Archive_46#RFC:_delete_and_redirect was in answer to the question "Should our standard practice be to delete article histories and contributions when a small article is converted into a redirect to a larger article?". The Squad AfD was not closed as redirect - it was closed as Delete, so that RfC is irrelevant. The purpose of DRV is not to re-litigate an AfD, it is to determine whether it was closed properly in the first place, which that one was. Yes, of course you could have asked for the article to be WP:REFUNDed to you at that point, but that's not relevant either to a discussion about KoH's DRV close, which is something we appear to be getting off the point of. Black Kite (talk)20:55, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The RfC is relevant in explaining why the AfD was incorrectly closed. Squad (app) was proposed to be converted into a redirect, and the RfC consensus was that the standard practice should not be to delete article histories when a conversion happens (or is proposed with no one explaining why a redirect should not be made). The article history should be deleted only when there is a BLP violation, copyright violation, or other reason that makes retaining the history undesirable. No such reason was presented at the AfD, so the history should have been retained.
Since you note that a WP:REFUND would have been fine, to avoid these contentious discussions, I wish I did this instead of opening the DRV:
Would this violate any policies? Additionally, if this ANI discussion results in the history of Squad (app) being deleted, would I be violating any policies if I did this:
I think my proposed draftication approach would be compliant with WP:REFUND practices. Even though it is not the main point of the discussion, it is important for me to ask this here to ensure I am not violating any policies if I take this approach now or in the future.
You would have needed to properly attribute the merge, and it may be controversial because you're attempting an end-around of a contentious deletion discussion and DRV. The least controversial thing to do IMO would probably to "merge" the information by rewriting the blurb in the list completely from scratch yourself to avoid any attribution issues. As noted above, that RfC isn't on point here, since that didn't deal with content deleted at AfD. Also, we are getting away from the point here, which is why the DRV consensus was ignored without explanation, so a sub-heading may be a good idea. SportingFlyerT·C21:41, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The merged material is properly attributed: "merged content from Squad (app). From this comment, 'the article was entirely written by User:Mcorw22.'" I will not rewrite the merged content since it is properly attributed and meets the content policies. My comment was to ask whether a WP:REFUND is fine after an AfD is closed as "delete" so that I can do a merge. As long as I'm not violating any policies, for future AfDs, I plan to ask for WP:REFUNDs to avoid contentious DRVs like this one. When I supported and completed a merge at the AfD, I only wanted to improve Wikipedia. Merging material about a non-notable acquired company to a company's list of acquisitions should be uncontroversial. I never expected it to become this controversial. Cunard (talk) 21:59, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
1) I have asked the closing admin's permission before refunding something which was just closed as delete before, especially where I've brought sources to an AfD, then I bring that to WP:REFUND. If it's just a simple GNG not being met, it should work. I assume DRV would be the case to go otherwise, but it's not in its purview - possibly a Village Pump question? 2) Whether the content could be merged was never the controversy, it was how it should be done, especially considered there have been sanctions applied in the past. SportingFlyerT·C00:38, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
RE: Squad (app). I find this a little frustrating, there being a trivial root cause from which a number of non-ideal actions have resulted trying to fix the problem without addressing the root cause.
The root cause is the AfD nominator:
Non-notable startup, future coverage unlikely because it was acquired by Twitter. User:MER-C 18:03, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
failing WP:BEFORE, and WP:ATD-M, seriously written policy matters. Everyone has ignored that policy. User:Cunard boldly tried to fix in a non-ideal way. User:Sandstein, I observed long term, holds little respect for Cunard's style of doing things like this. User:King of Hearts I know as someone who tries to implement the right outcome, even if it is not what everyone is saying, and this is somewhere near the boundary of Supervote versus "Consensus is ascertained by the quality of the arguments given on the various sides of an issue, as viewed through the lens of Wikipedia policy". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:57, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
RE United Airlines Flight 1175. I Endorse the DRV close. Has the close been altered since the start of this thread. "Restore without prejudice against a new AfD" is a perfect reading of the discussion. There are new sources, someone thinks the old AfD reasons for deletion are overcome, this is a trivial decision that should not have come to DRV but was actionable at REFUND. This should NOT be read as an "Overturn" of the old AfD. Perhaps,re-word to "Endorse, but restore without prejudice against a new AfD". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:02, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
My attention was directed to this discussion because I apparently have disagreed with a King of Hearts decision in the past. I do not remember the incident and the list of diffs included is long. Discussion closing is one of the more thankless tasks on Wikipedia, and those brave enough to attempt it deserve the benefit of the doubt. I looked at the outcomes in the two articles mentioned here. One retains an aviation incident that recently got heavy press coverage, the other has been changed to a redirect that everyone seems to agree is appropriate. The first is being reviewed again. The issue with the second, if I understand things correctly, is whether the the history, pretty trivial in this case, should have been retained. I fail to see any way in which our readers are remotely damaged by either of these decisions. Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. Perhaps both sides could reflect on how things could be handled with less drama in the future, but it seems to me that the amount of energy being put in to this discussion is excessive, given the minuscule impact of the incidents in question on the project. --agr (talk) 00:29, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I requested the second DRV, but I neglected to specifically state up front that I was seeking a restoration with history, so that may have caused some initial confusion that I only clarified later. My take is: SportingFlyer was clearly defending the prior AfD; Hut 8.5 was skeptical and suggested a draft; Cunard and DCG specifically voted "Restore" (along with myself); Jclemens and SmokeyJoe had "Endorse" votes that are not clear because I was not clear up front, but they did not oppose getting a refund and recreating. So I don't think the close with restore was inconsistent with the discussion, much less against consensus. Dhaluza (talk) 00:54, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think that what's happening here is that KoH is giving WP:ATD a bit too much weight in his closes. It's leading to cases where KoH sees a consensus to delete but finds that ATD undermines it. KoH -- the community is aware of ATD, and is able to apply it appropriately. Where the community decides to delete content, it's right for sysops to implement that decision.—S MarshallT/C01:01, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I recognize S Marshall's view as valid, but I argue the other side. KoH is one of few admins who respect WP:ATD for its standing. It is clearly and strongly written into WP:Deletion policy, which is one of the most black letter policies, and especially so from the standing of WP:DRV. ATD definitely undermines an apparent consensus at AfD where the nominator and participants are in apparent blindness to an obvious ATD-M option. The AfD community seems insufficiently aware of ATD. There are insufficient speedy closes due to nominators failing to follow the AfD WP:BEFORE instructions. When Cunard raised a policy basis undermining the AfD from its beginning, others, especially the closer, were wrong to ignore him. I agree with agr that people should reflect on how things could be handled with less drama. My suggestion is that a merge proposal mid-AfD should necessitate a relist for a minimum seven days, pinging all prior participants, and asking the nominator why they didn't consider that merge option. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:03, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
WP:ATD is subject to interpretation and application by the community in deletion and deletion-adjacent discussion, and we interpret and apply policies by consensus. As S Marshall correctly says, the community is aware of ATD and is able to apply it. Closers should not substitute their own views. In any event, policy is merely a codification of the community's ordinary way to treat particular matters. If policy is at odds with how a matter is ordinarily treated by consensus, that means that the policy should be changed to reflect this. Stifle (talk) 09:11, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Disagree with User:Stifle that Policy is merely a codification of the community's ordinary way to treat particular matters. Instead: Policy is merely a codification documentation of the community's ordinarypreferred way to treat particular matters. And on Squad (app), there are multiple facets of non-preferred actions in this story, and falling back to policy as worded should be strongly recommended. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:59, 13 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
SmokeyJoe, I agree with a relist when there is a merge proposal mid-AfD. I suggested a merge as an alternative to deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Los Angeles Review and pinged the AfD participants who had already commented. Two of the AfD participants switched from "delete" to "merge". None of the participants have opposed a merge or said the article history should be deleted.
I am hopeful that participants at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Squad (app) would have been supportive of a merge/redirect had they been pinged and had the AfD been relisted. I am particularly hopeful because the AfD nominator had previously considered an WP:ATD-R approach by redirecting Squad (app) to Twitter. The redirect was undone because Squad was not mentioned at Twitter. If the AfD nominator had known about List of mergers and acquisitions by Twitter#Squad, the AfD nominator likely would have redirected Squad to there. No arguments at the AfD were made against an WP:ATD-M so it is incorrect to say that the community had applied and rejected it for this AfD.
I agree with you and agr that this is too much drama for a very trivial issue. In the future, instead of starting a DRV, I will request a WP:REFUND of the article history to draftspace to complete a merge (my full plan here). The article's history will exist in draftspace instead of mainspace which is not ideal but it accomplishes the same goal of having access to the material in order to complete a merge, without this drama.
Cunard I think that is a reasonable idea (as long as there are no problems with the hstory, of course). SmokeyJoe There are already enough people whose main occupation at Wikipedia is gaming our deletion processes (not people in this dicussion, I hasten to add), the last thing we want is to give them another weapon to do that. Black Kite (talk)10:55, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don’t think that relisting due to the raising of an obvious merge targets not yet mentioned is a weakness to gaming, it would be a positive feature. Is ATD-M policy or not? —SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:11, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. I would leave that to a competent relister (and relister s must be qualified to close, including UNINVOLVED) to decide. In this case, the target was obscure, not easy to find by a content search for the title (squad), but obvious when discovered. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:48, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
So what are our expectations for delete !voters at AfD, then? Imagine that I'm reading an AfD and I agree that the article should be deleted. Should I type out: "Delete. I have been unable to identify a suitable merge target. I have considered the merge target proposed by editor A, above, and I do not feel that it's appropriate. I have also been unable to identify a suitable redirect target. I have considered the redirect target proposed by editor B, above, and I do not feel that it's appropriate." Or can I just type: "Delete" in the happy expectation that the closer will assume that I've read the preceding discussion with the right amount of care and attention and that I'm not a drooling idiot? Because if it's the former, then I think we have a problem with our processes.—S MarshallT/C15:09, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The answer is at WP:BEFORE, and in particular #C.4. The expectation is that the nominator has followed WP:BEFORE. Subsequent participants assume the nominator has followed WP:BEFORE. When they say “delete” it is based on the assumption that there is no suitable merge target. When later someone brings up a suitable merge target, it reveals that the nominator did not do their duty, and that the other participants were working under a false assumption. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 19:44, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see it that way because, although ATD has the force of policy, BEFORE doesn't. It's not even a guideline. It's an information page, which editors are free to disregard, so when !voting we can't assume that BEFORE has been complied with. (And some editors are new. It's always good practice to check.)—S MarshallT/C16:36, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
We can’t assume the nominator has followed BEFORE, WP:Okay, and indeed, MER-C may have followed BEFORE point by point and just failed to find the kind of obscure merge target, and indeed, trying searching Wikipedia content for “squad” is not helpful. But, late in the AfD, once someone has raised an as yet unexpected but in-hindsight-obvious merge target, the earlier participants need that to be brought to their attention. What Cunard did was non-ideal. Closing regardless of the new information was non-ideal. Cunard and Sandstein not quickly and simply agreeing to a redirect with the history available was non-ideal. King of Hearts boldly imposing the obvious solution was non-ideal. And more. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:10, 13 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The closure of Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2021 February 27#Squad_(app)_(closed) is patently obviously out of line with the consensus of the discussion, and King of Hearts has substituted their own opinion, which should have been cast as a !vote, for a correct neutral reading of consensus. The clear and obvious consensus of that discussion was to endorse, and the closure should be vacated and the discussion reclosed accordingly. Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2021 February 27#United_Airlines_Flight_1175_(closed) did not have consensus one way or another. Wikipedia:Deletion review#Closing_reviews states that a no-consensus result at a DRV of a deletion discussion may be closed as endorse or as relist, at the closer's discretion. However, King of Hearts chose not to follow this process and instead restored the article without prejudice to an RFD. This was not an option open to them, and accordingly this closure should also be vacated and the discussion reclosed with one of the permitted two possible outcomes. I do not especially care which. Stifle (talk) 09:18, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I consider that last point a little unfair on them. That DRV wasn't the "AfD close review" type, it was the "new information type". A relist would therefore have been inappropriate and, frankly, bizarre. An endorse of the original AfD close can occur in this category whether or not the article is recreated. I think a reasonable equivalent interpretation would be "not restore or restore" Nosebagbear (talk) 10:35, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Nosebagbear: I am sorry, I've possibly been unclear. The closure instructions say that a no consensus DRV must be closed as an overturn if the deletion was a speedy, and goes to closer discretion if it was an XFD. That was the distinction I was looking to make, not a question of new information or not. Stifle (talk) 14:04, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Sandstein on Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2021 February 27#Squad (app) (closed): They sought to prevent that foreseeable consensus outcome, which they do not contest, by merging part of the article elsewhere and now invoking attribution policy. But that policy was not intended to allow individual editors to prevent the community from deleting content by consensus. Consensus does not trump the attribution requirement of the Creative Commons license. King of Hearts was right in restoring it. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 11:03, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Better to keep the history (even if the content of the revisions has to be deleted) as it keeps updated if usernames change and ensures any attributions using the "permanent link" still function. That could even be extended to other deleted pages where the reason for deletion is notability and content has been copied (or could be) to another site, not necessarily within Wikipedia. Pages without a potential redirect target would have to be moved somewhere and blanked. Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia still recommends just using the page name, but when that is done the link is broken when disambiguation is necessary or there is a new primary topic for the title, or when the source page is deleted. Peter James (talk) 21:16, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure about the 2nd example, but the first is pretty clearly a supervote. I'm not going to second guess his motivation, but the close doesn't represent the consensus as given. Dennis Brown - 2¢12:02, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I was pinged to this discussion by Joe Roe as someone who has raised a similar concern before. The discussion Joe Roe mentions that I was involved in ([12][13][14][15]) was very similar to the Squad (app) case that Sandstein raises above: the closure advanced an argument not defended in the discussion, and would have been more appropriate as a contribution to that discussion (rather than a closure). I think extracting consensus from a deletion discussion without injecting one's own views is a real skill; I think concern about KoH's mastery of this skill is legitimate. (I have on a few occasions looked through the list of overdue RfCs to try to help out, and quickly determined that I do not have this skill, FWIW.) I have not looked at the UA1175 case. --JBL (talk) 21:52, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Is all this space (okay, at least half of it) *really* being wasted to discuss if a redirected article should have its history deleted or not? This is the course of action suggested by Peter James (without any bolding, but !votes and all that) in the DRV. I also suggested it as a possible (and likely best) way forward. No one in the DRV or AfD provided a policy-based reason why undeleting the history would make the encyclopedia worse. No one. And is anyone here going to really claim that deletion here is a better outcome than a redirect? Anyone? We got to the right place. I don't think there is an actual argument otherwise anyone has advanced (I'll note this hasn't gone to RfD...). The rest is process. Viva la WP:IAR. Hobit (talk) 13:48, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly. I think I worded my rationale poorly, leading people to think I was supervoting (i.e. basing my closure on the AfD rather than the DRV), but what I meant to say was: The DRV "endorse" !voters failed to explain how the "delete" !voters in the AfD articulated a policy-based reason why the history must be removed. The sole rationale given for deletion was based on notability, not content. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠14:44, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I strenuously disagree. Restoring an article is a use of admin tools; a better justification is needed to WP:IAR for that than just "eh, what's the difference?" - especially since that works both ways; creating a new redirect would have been entirely in line with policy and would have correctly reflected both the consensus of the DRV and the consensus at the AfD. Furthermore, I absolutely think that deletion is a better outcome than a redirect; retaining history that is of no value means that any editor, at any time, could revert the redirect and restore material that was legitimately deleted via consensus on an AfD and whose deletion was unambiguously upheld in a DRV. --Aquillion (talk) 03:08, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
How can you know that it will have no value? And yeah, they could also recreate the article. The only thing that would stop that is page protection. The history being there or not doesn't change that. But if this becomes notable, non-admins can quickly see what was there and use it as a starting point if appropriate. Yes, WP:REFUND exists, but lots of folks aren't familiar with that. And would you agree a redirect is appropriate here? If so, doesn't that make the AfD votes flawed? If not, I invite you to send the redirect to RfD... Hobit (talk) 03:21, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
How can you know that it will have no value? ... But if this becomes notable, non-admins can quickly see what was there and use it as a starting point if appropriate. ... And would you agree a redirect is appropriate here? These are all arguments that seek to re-litigate the AFD (arguing that the deleted article may have value, arguing that it may become notable in the future, arguing for a redirect instead of deletion.) By making them, you are overtly requesting a WP:SUPERVOTE to override an AFD whose unambiguous consensus you disagree with. --Aquillion (talk) 03:31, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Let's try again. Do you feel having a redirect is wrong/improper to have here? If so, can you articulate a policy/guideline-based case? As far as I can tell, no one in the AfD provided even a statement that it would be bad to have a redirect, let alone a policy-based reason not to have one. AfD is not a vote. Strength of argument trumps numbers. And there are no arguments at all against the redirect. Further, the redirect is exactly the right thing to have here. There is no way it would be deleted at RfD. Hobit (talk) 12:45, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment- I agree that the community understands what ATD is and how to apply it. In this case there was consensus that the article should go, that there was no objection to creating a redirect in its place, but that the page history should not be restored. All of this is a perfectly reasonable conclusion for a deletion discussion to reach. I don't think overruling it was a good idea, especially since DRV is the venue to go when you feel consensus has been overruled on a whim. ReykYO!13:26, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If this is about Squad, there was no consensus on whether the history should be deleted, and no reason not to restore it as a redirect. The only apparent consensus was based on discussion before an alternative was suggested (and it's also common for editors to participate in WP:AFD without having read the comments already in the discussion or the guidelines they refer to in their own comments). Is there consensus that deletion of a page can only be reviewed to reconsider whether there should be a separate article? Can this be reviewed at deletion review or is it now necessary to request a new process? Peter James (talk) 14:14, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The reason I gave very little weight to the "endorse" !voters as far as the edit history is concerned is that they simply stated that the AfD process was correctly carried out. Sure - but where has anyone advanced an argument as to why the content is unsuitable for public view? I think it gets to the crux of the matter: To prevent a merge/redirect, are "delete" !voters at AfD required to indicate why the content of an article needs to be suppressed, in addition to establishing why the subject is not notable? For me the answer is yes, and a satisfactory argument to that end has not been presented either at AfD or DRV. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠02:47, 13 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ultimately I just don't agree that "Overturn, participants should have made other arguments" is within the scope of DRV. It wouldn't be for DRV !voters, and it certainly isn't for a DRV closing statement. ReykYO!09:20, 13 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse both DRV closes. In the first case, there were compelling legal reasons to preserve the history and these constiture a strong argument which overrides a headcount. In the other case, there was a reasonable consensus to restore the content to assist review of the new evidence and the close reflected this. Both closes were pragmatic and reasonable but should perhaps have been explained better to avoid this further discussion. Andrew🐉(talk) 10:42, 13 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Honestly, this looks like a disagreement over process that ignores the actual encyclopaedic outcome. I don't see a problem with King's actions. Good faith disputes over the procedural details can be resolved by one-to-one discussion. In short: guys, please discuss this over a $BEVERAGE. Guy (help! - typo?) 23:13, 13 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
For Swarm, I think that there was enough support in the DRV for a redirect, along with extensive discussion on just how to carry it out , to justify the close. I and Cunard tend to be on opposite sides at deletion discussions more often than not, but I agree with what he did here and how he defended it. The close in the original afd did not take that sufficiently into account. A close should explicitly or implicitly take account of all reasonable alternativesthat have been suggested. DGG ( talk ) 19:58, 16 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
For UA1175, the DRV close was correct. The consensus at the discussion was to allow re-creation (& that's just what I said at the time) DGG ( talk ) 20:04, 16 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment- note that United Airlines flight 1175 AfD #2 was closed as keep. So the outcome of this should not change that without good reason. My read on this kerfuffle is that it's much to do about whether the history should be kept hidden. For the record, the history on United Airlines flight 1175 was not restored, and that needs to be fixed because I included some of the original content in the expanded article. As to WP:REFUND, I did consider whether to do that or DRv to get the original history restored, but REFUND says it is for "deletion debates with little or no participation other than the nominator", while DRv is for new information, so I decided to go with the latter. But I think I should have asked for restoration to a redirect with history; this way I would have been able to add the new content on my own schedule, instead of having to stay up late to cram it into a restored article that was already back at AfD. Dhaluza (talk) 01:38, 17 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Overturn Squad closure, Endorse United Airlines Flight closure. The Squad closure seems particularly egregious, but the United Airlines Flight closure seems within the realm of reasonable discretion, and not worthy of being overturned at AN. Jackattack1597 (talk) 23:08, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is an appeal for my current DYK restrictions to be removed under WP:SO. I have waited the 6 months required and upon reflection, I do see how my attitude and style that led to the ban could be seen to be combative and how it appeared to be POV pushing. I have in that time been more involved in collaboration, the main one being for FC Santa Claus. I have also been less reckless as I have in the past by ensuring I asked @Primefac: for consent any time I was thinking of doing something that might be close to violating my restrictions. I have tried everything in my power to do everything right by the restrictions. I do regret the situation on Irish politics that caused me to be put under a ban and I feel that with the restrictions lifted, I would be able to be a more productive community member.
I am aware that people may be upset with me for the past actions, but I would like a chance to put it right and show I can make DYKs in the affected areas without causing disruption. If dropping of the full restrictions is not desired by consensus, I would propose that the first line of my restrictions be changed to "A ban from proposing DYKs relating to Island of Ireland politics, Islam, and LGBTQ topics", so I can show my good faith in having changed. If this needs to be put in a specific template, could someone help me with that please? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk)08:41, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"Could be seen to be combative", "appeared to be POV pushing", "do everything right by the restrictions", "regret the situation". Why not "were combative", "was POV pushing", "do everything right" and "regret my actions"? I'm trying to get an overview, but is this even an admission of fault at all? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 11:42, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Your "attitude and style" weren't what led to these sanctions. You were topic banned because your DYK hooks were objectively, deliberately inflammatory and POV-pushing. You did this for years, so why should we trust that after just six months it will be different? There's no shortage of other editors working on DYKs and no shortage of other topics for you to write about, so what benefit to the project is there in allowing you to return to the problem areas? – Joe (talk) 15:07, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't want to bring up the stats but the original discussion highlighted only 14 cherry picked examples out of 518 that were considered to be under that description. I do understand now how that can be viewed but I do think there has to be consistency given 1831 Londonderry City by-election ran on Ulster Day and there was no comment. The benefit for allowing me to return is that much of my Christian DYK work is on hymns and churches and as for British politics, mostly tend to be on legislation passed. It's why I have volunteered to retain the restrictions on island of Ireland, Islam and LGBT topics to avoid those risks that could be seen as inflammatory. What can I do to convince you @Joe Roe:? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk)15:17, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
only 14 – how many times do you think the average editor has smuggled racist and homophobic slurs onto the main page? You've previously used DYKs on hymns to proselytise and insult the Prophet Muhammad, and obscure political articles for carefully-timed sectarian baiting.[16][17][18][19] If your record shows anything, it's that you're extraordinarily creative in finding a way to make even the most banal subjects as offensive as possible, so in your case absolutely anything "could be seen as inflammatory". – Joe (talk) 15:46, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Religion is already covered - the first restriction is A ban from proposing DYKs relating to British or Irish politics, Religion, and LGBTQ topics. It appears C of E is proposing to replace "Religion" with "Islam" to allow him to propose DYKs relating to Christianity.-- P-K3 (talk) 15:51, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
When looking at DYKs done since the restrictions were put into place, I cam across Template:Did you know nominations/The Twelve Days of Christmas (Correspondence). Perhaps it is unfair to blame the problems solely on the CofE, the reviewers and so on should have spotted the issues, but still: this hook is presenting a work of fiction as factual, which goes against the DYK rules ("If the subject is a work of fiction or a fictional character, the hook must involve the real world in some way."): and that hook is sourced (in the nomination and in the article) to [20], which seems awfully like a pure copyright violating site ([21]). For someone who has been here so long and created that many DYKs, that's quite worrying. Fram (talk) 17:01, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse modificationOpposeto the first line of restrictions as proposed, per WP:ROPE. This will allow him to write about British politics, but still be restricted from the other topics. I find the above discussion distasteful. We told him to come back in six months. He does so, says he understands what the problem was and regrets his previous behavior. In return, people are beating him up because his grovel isn't sufficiently self-deprecating. One of two things will happen if we accept the proposed modification. He might go on to be a productive DYK contributor. Or he might mess up again. If the later, we'll know soon enough and deal with it, probably with an extension of the ban which excludes WP:SO. -- RoySmith(talk)15:56, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
He doesn't really seem to understand the problem though, claiming that the DYKs were cherry-picked and "could be perceived" as all kinds of problems, as if they weren't intended as such all along. This wasn't some occasional lapse, but a years-long campaign to attack certain groups, to shock, and to proselytize, all on the main page. He doesn't understand what the problem was (well, he probably does, but it doesn't show in this discussion), the appeal makes it look as if the problem was what other editors incorrectly saw in his DYKs (no, in very few, cherry-picked, DYKs from an otherwise flawless record). Fram (talk) 16:02, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
But I do understand, I honestly don't know how I can say that I get what it was and I am willing to change and that I have changed by being more collaborative. I'm willing to do less "shocking" hooks. I'm honestly asking what can I do to prove I have changed but I feel like I am just getting kicked when I am down when I have done what I have been asked to. @Fram:, please tell me what I can do? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk)16:12, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Primefac's close said the sanctions can be appealed after six months, that's not the same thing as "come back in six months", as WP:SO makes clear. And note that CofE waited barely four months to (unsuccessfully) try to get his related AE topic ban lifted. There and here, he has not shown that he understands what the problem was at all. He describes his appalling record at DYK as a situation, as allegedly trying [to schedule a DYK] which was not desirable to consensus, an attitude and style that [...] could be seen to be combative, an unfortunate coincidence, and now cherry picked examples. He has self-declared extreme views on British politics and this was a central issue in his abuse of the main page. Why on earth would we open the door for him to do it again? Monitoring his nominations and potentially having to drag him back here will be yet another time-sink on top of the colossal amount of volunteer time already wasted on this, and for what... so we can have a few more hooks in the DYK queue? – Joe (talk) 16:23, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Joe Roe: You are making it sound like no matter what I say or do, I'll never get a chance to prove myself that I have changed. It may just be me, but that seems fundamentally unfair. I only did the arbcom one because I was told there was no limit to wait, opposed to this which I fully respected. I have already explained I am not good at wording things, which is partially due to a disability on my part. I didn't want to have to reveal that but no one seems to be willing to understand that I have taken that time to reflect and promised to change my approach to it if I am permitted to return to these areas. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk)16:32, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose The OP spent years conducting breaching experiments designed to get provocative content on the main page, and this is their allocution that they learned their lesson? Their apology shows no awareness of the problems that led to the initial ban. It has nothing to do with groveling, as the person above notes, and everything to do with showing no awareness about the problems they caused. We don't need deference, we need awareness and assurances that they understand that what they did was wrong. I see zero evidence of that. --Jayron3216:03, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not very good at wording these sort of things. But I am aware of what happened and how it is viewed as. I understand that what I was doing seemed as POV pushing and I have apologised for it and am willing to prove I have changed. @Jayron32: Please give me the opportunity because I honestly do not get what I can do prove that I have understood and willing to say I will refrain from it. I even made the proposed alteration so admins can still keep the leash on controversial issues that caused the problem. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk)16:17, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@The C of E: Did it seem to be POV pushing, or was it POV pushing? If it's not clear, that's the distinction that makes your appeals unconvincing to many. – Joe (talk) 16:27, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Joe and Jayron. The appeal request is tone-deaf and not at all contrite in relation to the behaviors that got them topic-banned in the first place.--WaltCip-(talk)20:48, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. C of E it may help those such as myself who are still making up our minds if you answered Joe's question above as to whether you think what you did was POV pushing or just seemed like it. P-K3 (talk) 21:36, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Pawnkingthree: The only reason I haven't out and out said that was because I was afraid of it being an entrapment. I was afraid that if I said it directly, people would just say "he admits it, so we will keep this on permanently". If I do say it, will that help and not be seen as I feared it? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk)21:39, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support modification per Roy and WP:ROPE. They have done what we have asked, that's a good sign. Like the opposition, I'm not convinced a full removal is a good idea, but how else are we supposed to gauge that if we don't give them a chance to show us? If we deny this request and it's appealed in another 6 months, how will we know if the removal is or is not justified? I think narrowing the scope of the TBAN as proposed will put us in a better place to evaluate the whole thing in the future. If they've learned, we'll have evidence that they can contribute in a related area without disruption. If they haven't, the disruption will still be limited, but we'll have direct evidence to justify a longer ban. At the very least, I hope we can give a bit more consideration than picking on a couple words in the first sentence. — Wug·a·po·des21:47, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I don't think it makes much sense to reduce the scope from "religion" to "Islam", considering that only one of their many offending religion-related DYKs had to do with that faith in particular (one which I felt was blown out of proportion anyway). M Imtiaz (talk · contribs) 22:11, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Joe and Jayron. Edit summaries like "I'm handcuffed" and "my hands are tied" show that the C of E thinks of himself as a victim and a glaring lack of awareness of the problems that led to the initial ban. The comments above are simply a continuation of this litany of self-pity. Nothing has changed. —Bloom6132 (talk) 23:38, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think you are misreading the intent with that message. That message was saying "I want to help but at the moment I cannot at the moment because if I did I would break the restrictions", not me just moaning and grumbling. I am aware of what happened and again, I have apologised and will change my ways @Bloom6132:. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk)07:22, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Not at all. If you were truly intending to say "I want to help but at the moment I cannot at the moment because if I did I would break the restrictions", why didn't you simply say it in that way? Your edit summary says a lot about your intent. Instead of saying something to the effect of "sorry would like to help but can't", you repeat your "moaning and grumbling", as if these sanctions were unjustified and unfair. —Bloom6132 (talk) 07:42, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You didn't say it would "break the restrictions". Your use of the terms "handcuffed" and "hands are tied" do come across as painting yourself as a victim. The terminology you employ here is no different. The only regret I'm sensing here is regret that you're now being called out for your behaviour (after years of being given a free pass), rather than regret for the behaviour itself. —Bloom6132 (talk) 19:02, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I have an idea.Bear with me, this doesn't happen often. The CofE says "If dropping of the full restrictions is not desired by consensus, I would propose that the first line of my restrictions be changed to "A ban from proposing DYKs relating to Island of Ireland politics, Islam, and LGBTQ topics", so I can show my good faith in having changed." Well clearly there isn't any consensus that dropping the full restrictions is desired, but equally there isn't therefore a way of him showing that he has learned from the topic ban. So my idea is this.
1. The topic ban is modified to "A ban from proposing DYKs relating to Island of Ireland politics, Islam, and LGBTQ topics". (Note that they are already fully T-banned from The Troubles and British & Irish nationalism, so that isn't an issue anyway)
2. However, before the C of E works on a proposed DYK in the areas that have been loosened (i.e. non-Ireland politics and non-Islam religion) they need to gain permission for this.
3. To gain permission, they need to approach one of a group of admins or other trusted editors who are familiar with the case, and say "I wish to work on Article X for DYK, and I propose This hook sentence as a hook.
4. If this is declined, they cannot submit that article for DYK.
5. If it is accepted, they must (a) have the article checked by a "moderator", and/or (b) inform one of the "moderators" if there is to be any change to the hook, before it is submitted for DYK, and gain permission.
6. Any gaming of this relaxation of the topic ban will be sanctionable.
7. I am happy to be one of the "moderators".
Before you say "Oh, you old bleeding heart liberal snowflake BK", I was one of the most vociferous critics of The C of E over the actions that led to the topic ban, and I nearly blocked them for it at the time, let alone TBanning. [22]. But - a little WP:ROPE seems to me to be no-lose; either we get improved and/or new articles, or we end up back here. And it's purely up to The C of E which path is taken. Black Kite (talk)02:33, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think that if it's necessary to have a mechanism which is this complex in order to loosen their restrictions, then it's best not to loosen their restrictions at all. Who has the time and energy (and interest) to be a full-time watcher to make sure that all of these steps are properly taken each and every time CofE wants to file a DYK? It's not as if not having their DYK is going to harm the encyclopedia in some way: DYKs are, at best, ancillary to the primary purpose of the project. It could easily survive and prosper without them, and certainly without CofE's. Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:21, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As I say, I don't mind doing it. DYK isn't the point really, though - to get that article to DYK you have to either (a) create it, (b) expand it 5x, or (c) get it to GA. These are all good things. Black Kite (talk)11:12, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Given Bike Kite's willingness to be involved in this process, I support their solution with an understanding that even slight problems could result in all of this coming back (or worse). This editor has done a fair bit of good stuff and I'd prefer to see them resume the good while losing the bad. I think it's less than 50/50 that's what will happen, but I think WP:ROPE is appropriate. Basically I trust Black Kite on stuff like this... Hobit (talk) 03:29, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per BMK. While Black Kite's proposal is not unreasonable, if the only option is to replace a pretty severe, nuanced restriction, with a somewhat less severe, nuanced restriction, it's more likely that the original restriction was valid to begin with, and the user needs to show that it is no longer needed, rather than that we should bend over backwards to accomodate the user's return to the community. ~Swarm~{sting}03:38, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
My idea is that if they can demonstrate over a period of time that they can work within the less severe restriction, we might not need the DYK TBan at all (the main TBan will still cover the major flashpoints anyway). Black Kite (talk)11:12, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support, cautiously, Black Kite's proposal. This is actually a fairly narrow loosening of the restrictions and it should hopefully prevent any gaming. C of E is amenable to it, let's see if they can abide by it.-- P-K3 (talk) 13:40, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose any relaxation of the topic ban. It wasn't just 14 cherry-picked examples out of hundreds, those were just some examples that were highlighted in the discussion that led to the topic ban. We have plenty of people working on DYK, and we simply don't need help from someone who abused it for years to push their own personal religious and sectarian bigotry. And as for accepting and addressing the problems, "could be seen to be combative and how it appeared to be POV pushing" doesn't come close - there's no "could be" or "appeared to be" about it, it was blatant and deliberate bigotry. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:11, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Maybe I'm too cynical, but the proposal reads more like PR-speak than genuine recognition of the problem. I would support BK's proposal, but only if we have a group of admins/editors explicitly willing to sign off on CofE's DYK hooks. Vanamonde (Talk)17:21, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I resent that accusation about yesterday, I think you misunderstood the intent behind it it. We had an editor who had a genuine question about how to nominate a DYK without naming the main contributor their request. There is nothing in the rules that says the main contributor has to be named so I gave, what I thought to be the correct answer around that. No boundry pushing here. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk)07:35, 13 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - While others here have stated that rope can be given to The C of E, I feel that it would be a very bad idea given his previous behavior and gaming attempts (and given his comments here, I do not feel that he has reasonably allayed concerns). I would have been more open to BK's proposals had they been simplified to a more simple proposal (i.e. any "loosened topic" hook that The C of E proposes must have a co-nominator, rather than go through all the hoops of asking for permission in every step) and be paired with a strong implementation of restriction #3 (that any of his hooks can be vetoed without appeal), but I'm frankly not that confident in DYK's self-policing ability given previous incidents. As for the editing restrictions, if anything, I'm actually inclined to support it being broadened to politics in general given that he has, on at least one occasion since the topic ban was implemented, proposed a hook about a non-UK/Ireland country that at first glance seems somewhat questionable. For instance, see Template:Did you know nominations/Rhodesia/Zimbabwe government buildings where the hook calls Robert Mugabe a "drunk Superman"; although the quote is in the article and is cited, given that Zimbabwe is a former British colony and The C of E previously had a userbox in his userpage indicating that he supported "the restoration of the British Empire", the nomination gave me at least some pause. At the very least, it felt to me like another case of gaming and "trying to push his [British imperalist] beliefs" on the main page, though of course other editors may see it differently. Narutolovehinata5tccsdnew13:26, 18 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Question C of E, you're "proposing to replace "Religion" with "Islam" to allow you to propose DYKs relating to Christianity"? Is that correct? Not so may Islamic hymns, are there. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:39, 18 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support some form of lifting the t-ban, per WP:ROPE. I would prefer a more straightforward solution suggested by The Rambling Man: just lifting the t-ban for some probationary period (say 3 months), and then revisiting the matter for lifting it unconditionally at the end of the probationary period. As the second choice, modifying the t-ban to limit it to "proposing DYKs relating to Island of Ireland politics, Islam, and LGBTQ topics", as suggested by C of E. BK's proposal would be my third choice. Seems way too complicated but it's better than the status quo. Simply rejecting C of E's request out of hand seems too vengeful. They did as asked, and a bit of WP:ROPE is in order. Nsk92 (talk) 07:59, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Although it's quite possible that I've used it myself, I've never quite understood the ROPE argument. Someone is disruptive, so the community gets together and stops the disruption with a sanction. The editor asks for the sanction to be lifted, and we're just honky-dory with the probability of their being disruptive again -- as they have been in the past, so there's no "assumption" of bad faith, there's a record of bad behavior -- instead of keeping the status quo, which is working just fine. The vast majority of editors who use the ROPE argument will never have to deal with the disruption that may come about, so they're basically saying "I don't mind making more work or difficulty in editing for someone else". Sanctions are not punitive, they're preventative, but an editor who has edited disruptively in the past is obviously more likely to need more prevention sometime in the future. If editors are convinced by the sanctioned editor's appeal that they've changed, that's a different matter, but hand-waving and citing ROPE is actually uncollegial and unfair to the rest of the community. Beyond My Ken (talk) 07:44, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
WP:ROPE is based on the assumption that people can and do change and that a measure of forgiveness is a good thing when exercised with prudence. All of our sactions including bans and blocks, are appealable and none are forever. In this particular case it appears that the editor continued to edit constructively in other areas while serving out their t-ban. They also expressed a reasonable degree of contrition for the problems that led to the t-ban and promised to do better. Under these circumstances, yes, I think extending them some WP:ROPE is reasonable, despite a record of past disruption. Note that all three options that I am suggesting above involve putting somev additional safeguards in place rather than lifting the t-ban unconditionally now. Nsk92 (talk) 09:19, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"In this particular case … [t]hey also expressed a reasonable degree of contrition for the problems that led to the t-ban and promised to do better." I think you're one of the only editors in this discussion who believes a half-assed, exculpatory "apology" like the one above – which includes terms like "Could be seen to be combative", "appeared to be POV pushing", and "only 14 cherry picked examples out of 518" – constitutes a "reasonable degree of contrition". —Bloom6132 (talk) 11:29, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I was trying to word it as politically correct as I could. If you are asking me to be more direct about what I had meant @Bloom6132:, I apologise for everything I had done in relation to what caused my restrictions. I realise now how requesting that DYK request for the 12th was not suitable. The thing that slightly concerned me was the lack of consistency in relation to the similar hook that ran on Ulster Day. But I do understand how my actions were damaging and that is why I have proposed the alteration to let me prove I have changed (and I thank @Nsk92: for being willing to say I can have a chance_. I am prepared to take either Black Kite or TRM's suggestions if that is felt better. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk)16:03, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I have to note that (not having participated in the Ulster discussion) that the reason why that was allowed to run could have simply been because no one at DYK had noticed about the request being problematic until it was too late. I imagine that had the issue been brought up then, at the very least the special occasion request would have been declined. It wasn't a "lack of consistency" but rather "people not beieng aware". Narutolovehinata5tccsdnew00:29, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
So you're deciding to be politically correct only now that it's self-serving and beneficial for you. Quite a contrast to your editing philosophy that included a userbox that flat-out stated: "This user is politically incorrect". —Bloom6132 (talk) 20:49, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose relaxation and support extension to BLPs, perhaps. I was intending to support per Black Kite's proposals, but it appears that the breaching experiments noted by Jayron have been continuing even through this discussion: see this BLPN discussion over C of E's latest lark: putting a living person on the front page of WP for April Fools' Day and taking the piss out of his name (a name, I might add, that the subject himself never uses except when officially forced to). I don't think I've ever seen the last bit of WP:ROPE used up before it was even offered—but this has to be it. I honestly don't understand their total vacuum of judgement when it comes to the man page. ——Serial14:17, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This was no "breaching experiment". It was only because it came up as an article that could be expanded with a hook I felt was interesting. The issue of his dislike was added later after the DYK was created as far as I can recall. I am willing to change it. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk)18:36, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I see that my appeal is not going anywhere, so I henceforth withdraw my appeal. I will go on to work harder to earn people's trust in me and hope that in the future, I can be forgiven for what happened in the past. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk)18:36, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If this needs an extension, that extension should simply encompass DYK as a whole. A need to expand the scope of partial bans from an area indicates a need for a ban from the area. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:15, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support extension of topic ban I am aware that the C of E withdrew their appeal, but in light of the further evidence that they are abusing DYK ( Nominating Adolf Hitler Uunoa for DYK despite the obvious BLP concerns)I think an extension is warranted to all of DYK, or at minimum to include BLPs. Jackattack1597 (talk) 23:50, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support extension of topic ban per above. Once you open a thread on WP:AN, your conduct is under observation even if you choose to withdraw from the topic. The DYK nomination is patently unacceptable. --WaltCip-(talk)00:05, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Given the above incident and other questionable nominations since the topic ban was enforced, I'm now starting to lean towards extending the topic ban to biographies (not just BLPs specifically), and I would not be opposed to a full topic ban from DYK if similar behavior continues. DYK should never be an excuse to mock anyone or anything, even if it's for April Fools. Narutolovehinata5tccsdnew08:08, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support extension of topic ban – to BLPs at the very least and preferably to DYK. Would've thought he'd be more prudent with his DYK contributions while under sanction and cautious not to push the envelope. But hey, tack this to his ever-growing list of main page abuses (actual and attempted). "Only" 15 cherry picked examples now (to paraphrase what he said above). —Bloom6132 (talk) 15:17, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Leaning oppose to extension of topic ban. Goodness knows that I personally have had many issues with The C of E's approach to DYK over the years. However, to my mind the chief issue with his editing has always been his sheer stubbornness in resisting any changes to his hooks, which has often resulted in long and often acrimonious discussions and in clunky hooks occasionally getting approved. In my opinion, probably all that is needed by way of sanction is a requirement that all hooks and articles submitted by The C of E to DYK get the approval of an administrator in addition to that of the usual reviewer. The C of E has often shown poor judgement in hook selection, and this is chiefly what has gotten him into trouble, but I've seen little evidence of malice on his part, and before banning him from BLPs I would like to see some evidence that this has been a significant problem with his editing over time. Gatoclass (talk) 17:48, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Request to remove one way IBAN
I had an IBAN imposed in October of 2019 and I am requesting the removal of it.
The details are at: Wikipedia:Editing_restrictions#Placed_by_the_Wikipedia_community.
I admit that the IBAN was imposed correctly and to avoid disruption and I was 100% at fault in that case. However, I am asking that the IBAN be removed at this time. I don't believe I had any recent interaction, even tangentially but it is hard at times to keep to the IBAN due to the nature of the details.
I am not sure about notifications or comments, but I would request that any discussion I have here be sanctioned by BANEX.
Thank you. Sir Joseph(talk)23:19, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I am inclined to keep an interaction ban that has been successful, not only in keeping Sir Joseph away from TonyBallioni but in keeping Sir Joseph on-Wiki (see the ban discussion: Sir Joseph's very survival on Wikipedia counts on it as the patience of the community is wearing thin). Perhaps Sir Joseph could enlarge on how the ban is preventing him from editing Wikipedia and how he would interact with TonyBallioni if it were lifted. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 14:19, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, as you see in the interaction analyzer, we edit lots of the same administrative pages and there are times when I want to comment on a discussion but I can't. I also feel that there is no more need of an IBAN and we shouldn't keep it just to keep it. It's been well over a year and we shouldn't be punitive. Sir Joseph(talk)14:26, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
OK, you want to be able to comment in discussions where TonyBallioni has commented. I would support lifting the IB for that with the advice that I think you would wise to continue to avoid commenting on, about or in response to TonyBallioni; just comment directly on the topic being discussed. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 01:12, 13 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support removal - SJ is aware of the issue and knows to avoid interaction with TB. He has demonstrated that it's possible for him to do so as a mature adult. It's easy enough to restore it, so what's the big deal? Realistically after 6 mos, t-bans and i-bans become punishment to those who have to carry the full responsibility of that ball and chain. They should never be forever anymore than PP should be forever on an article. Atsme💬📧14:44, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support reduction per WP:ROPE. Would it be possible to reduce the IBAN to merely avoid direct interaction (i.e. addressing directly or responding directly to comments) rather than merely avoiding pages/sections where the other is active? If not, I would also support a full elimination of the IBAN (pending TB's comments regarding the issue) as a second best option. --Jayron3215:16, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
*Support reduction I think Jayron makes a good argument and we should allow SJ a rope and if there will be a slight problem the ban could reinstated again. --Shrike (talk) 19:36, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I reread the arguments one again and I now Support removal but I urge SJ to minimize his interaction to TB to absolute minimum --Shrike (talk) 08:01, 14 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support removal. Both his admission and the time that has passed with no further events suggest that SJ has learned from the experience, and could interact productively with TB. François Robere (talk) 20:20, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I guess this has started while I've been away from Wikipedia for a bit. I oppose removal and ask that this be kept open a bit after my response of Sir Joseph's IBAN with me. There is literally no reason to remove it. What does it accomplish? Sir Joseph and I do not edit the same topic areas. I actually can't think of a time where I have come into contact with him recently just through going through the normal pages that I go through. My experience with Sir Joseph is that he harbors grudges and would likely use lifting this as an opportunity to go through my contributions to bring me to a noticeboard at the drop of a pin over something that's not an issue, comment negatively at me for no reason elsewhere, or generally make my life unpleasant on Wikipedia.I'm also going to point out that my concerns here have some merit as it was made while I was on a wikibreak for a few weeks. Sorry if I'm being overly cynical, but I suspect Sir Joseph looking through my contributions for no reason, noticed I wasn't around, and then decided to ask for this because he knows that the community is usually unwilling to remove a 1-way IBAN if the other party is opposed. If he's already looking through my contribution history while under an IBAN, forgive me if I assume that he's going to do the same when he's not. TonyBallioni (talk) 12:57, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You're expressing a lot of ABF in that response and I hope you rewrite it. More helpful than sharing your assumptions would be sharing if you've had any problems with SJ in the last 17 months or not. Because if the answer is "not", it may be you who is holding a grudge here. Levivichharass/hound14:37, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Assume good faith is not a suicide pact. I don’t comment on or interact with Sir Joseph because of the IBAN: its not fair to him. I’m not going to pretend that I think he is going to behave any differently towards me today than he did when the IBAN was placed. That’s not an assumption of bad faith or holding a grudge, that’s having an extremely negative experience with someone and not wanting to be subject to it again.The community traditionally does not lift one-way IBANs if one party objects. I’m simply asking that the community give me the courtesy of considering my request that SJ keep from interacting with me. There’s literally no reason for him to do so since we don’t edit the same areas and he’s at no risk of violating his ban on accident. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:15, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"I'm not going to pretend that I think he is going to behave any differently towards me today than he did when the IBAN was placed" is the very definition of holding a grudge. I'm not suggesting you need to assume good faith, I'm suggesting you should not assume bad faith, like don't assume he went through your contribs, and let go of your grudge. Levivichharass/hound16:23, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think that’s an odd definition. I don’t wish Sir Joseph any ill will. I’m not asking he be banned from the site. I’m asking that he continue not to talk about me. By your definition you’re suggesting, anyone who has experienced someone behaving overwhelmingly negatively towards them should have their concerns dismissed as a grudge or as assuming bad faith. That’s not particularly fair—it means that people who have legitimate concerns with the way others have treated them simply to have those concerns ignored. The community already decided that Sir Joseph was acting inappropriately towards me. I don’t have to demonstrate that. My concern that Sir Joseph will continue acting that way is a real one, and I think I’m within behavioural norms to express it. I also don’t think I need to defend every word choice I made from in-depth analysis and reframing of arguments when expressing that, so I’m not going to continue engaging in this thread since you appear to have made up your mind, and I am also fairly resolved that I continue to not want to have to worry about Sir Joseph interacting with me. I’ve made my request known. The community can decide, and I’ll accept the result. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:47, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I do not support the concept of lifting sanctions just because "it's been a long time." The IBAN appears to be working, so why would we lift it? Just for the hell of it? I do not see how it is limiting SJ from doing anything except interacting with Tony, and that's a good thing that we should want to continue. Beyond My Ken (talk) 07:32, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
would likely use lifting this as an opportunity to go through my contributions to bring me to a noticeboard at the drop of a pin over something that's not an issue, comment negatively at me for no reason elsewhere, or generally make my life unpleasant on Wikipedia. - I guess a verbal commitment to not do these would be a positive step. starship.paint (exalt)16:49, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose removal as the other party opposes the lifting of the ban, and also WP:IBAN says Although the interaction-banned users are generally allowed to edit the same pages or discussions so long as they avoid each other, they are not allowed to interact with each other, so I don't see how Sir Joseph's stated reason for lifting the ban, we edit lots of the same administrative pages and there are times when I want to comment on a discussion but I can't is valid as he can still comment on a discussion, just not directly to TB.-- P-K3 (talk) 18:02, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It prevents him from commenting on discussions started by TB, and it might be understood by some admins as preventing him from commenting on points previously addressed by TB. François Robere (talk) 17:18, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No it doesn't. It prevents him from commenting on me (directly or indirectly) or replying to me. WP:IBAN does not say that he can't comment on RfCs or the like started by me. Shrike (replying to you here), my view is that WP:ROPE is a really bad essay for IBANs: it'd force me to gather diffs and write out a long explanation of why SJ's behavior towards me is continuing a long trend of thinking everything I do is wrong and going out of his way to comment on me in other forums. I didn't request the original IBAN myself because I thought it'd look bad for an admin to request one from someone who has criticized them, and I'd be pretty unlikely to request it again for the same reasons. That being said, it was very much a relief when someone else proposed it, and I'd rather not have to go back to worrying about him showing up out of the woodwork to say negative things about me.To Jayron32's point, my understanding of WP:IBAN is already in line with what he is calling a "reduction". SJ is not prevented from commenting in or on discussions I have already commented in. He has done so on multiple occasions since his IBAN: he opposed the RfC I recently started on community based desysop. He has supported an RfA where I was one of the main opposers. He commented in the anti-harassment RfC last year, where I also participated before him. He opposed and RfA where I was the nominator. He made this comment at AN after I had blocked the person who started the thread and commented in the thread. He made this comment on a thread about the SashiRolls ban that I had proposed after it was enacted. He made this comment in a block review thread I had already commented in.I would be fine with a clarification to Sir Joseph that he is free to take part in discussions that I take part in or start so long as he does not directly or indirectly reference me or reply to me, but he already seems to be aware of this as he's been doing it pretty regularly. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:16, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@TonyBallioni: I too would like to know under what conditions you would consider supporting the IBAN being lifted? Or a theoretical other one-way iban with you if that is easier to answer. I'm finding it difficult to interpret your view, and thus the merits of the request, without knowing this. Thryduulf (talk) 00:40, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Thryduulf: sorry for only getting back to you now. I'll answer it theoretically since I think it's easier to explain that way. I would be open to lifting a one-way IBAN if the the party consents the overwhelming majority of the time, if not always. In cases where the other party doesn't consent, my analysis would go something like this: has an issue been identified where the IBAN is causing undue difficulty for the party who is under it to edit Wikipedia productively? If yes, would it be better to extend to two way? If not, does it seem likely the issues would return?If you want me to apply my logic above; it'd stop after the first question. The things Sir Joseph says this IBAN prevents him from doing (commenting on administrative discussions I am present in) is both not actually in line with what IBAN says, but as I pointed out above with diffs, he does regularly anyway, oftentimes disagreeing with where I stand, which is fine.My conclusion based on that is that he wants the IBAN lifted so he can directly comment on me. Given my past experience with Sir Joseph, I'm not exactly confident that he'd do so in a way that wasn't combative/hostile and containing personal attacks. That's something I'd like to avoid. I hope that makes sense. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:08, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes that does make sense, thank you. I still need to think a bit before opining on this request but you have made that easier. Thryduulf (talk) 00:12, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose removal - I hadn't !voted until now because I was waiting to hear from TonyBallioni. Not knowing that TB was on a Wikibreak, I interpreted his apparent silence as his being OK with removing the IBAN, and since the !voting was going in that direction, I didn't see any purpose in !voting myself. But now that I know that Tony is opposed to removing the ban, I also oppose it, as I would for almost any one-way IBAN in which the victimized editor objects to its being lifted. Beyond My Ken (talk) 07:27, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support removal - 17 months with no issues seems long enough for another go. Not a fan of indefinite sanctions with no clear reason why they need to continue. Also not a fan of 1 way ibans either, but that is more a in general thing and not specific to this instance. PackMecEng (talk) 13:18, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose removal 1 way IBANs should only be removed with the blessing of the user who the affected user cannot interact with, with limited exceptions in case of abuse.Jackattack1597 (talk) 23:06, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose removal per TB. I'm a very firm believer that sanctions for harassment should not be lifted, ever, over the objection of the victim. Sir Joseph's relentless harassment of TonyBallioni was beyond the pale, and did not stop after many warnings until the moment they were formally sanctioned. Many editors were calling for Sir Joseph to be sitebanned. As TonyBallioni has explained, the sanction is not actually preventing Sir Joseph from doing anything, so why is he asking for it to be lifted if not to resume his harassment campaign? Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 15:08, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Sanctions, blocks and topic bans only apply on the Wiki they were imposed on. Administrative actions on one Wiki have no power on another Wiki unless there has been a global account action. Community bans, which is what was imposed on you, are only effective in the community they were imposed in. Be aware though that another community (i.e. language) may take that you've been topic banned on en-Wiki into account if you happen (not presuming you would) to cause issues there. Canterbury Tailtalk00:32, 15 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
User:Sandbh - I would advise you, first, to limit your editing to encyclopedias in which you are fluent in the language, and, if you think that you are fluent in a language but are not sure about that, it isn't enough. We have many editors who are not competent in English, and we have a culture of being patient with editors who try to use English with difficulty. Some non-English Wikipedias may not be patient if your command of the language is less than fluent. Second, before you start to edit other Wikipedias, develop a clear and realistic idea of what your mistakes were here that led to your topic ban, and be extra careful to avoid repeating those mistakes. A good record or a less than good record are likely to be taken into account by the English Wikipedia in deciding how much to welcome you back when your topic ban is over. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:22, 15 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I find it disconcerting that an editor who received a topic ban here only after a very extended period of general disruption and discussions in multiple venues, including at ArbCom, is considering taking their behavior patterns to other WMF projects before their topic ban has even been discussed being lifted here. That seems to be an indication that Sandbh has not taken onboard the validity of this community's concern for their editing behavior. Whether this is sufficient for additional sanctions I am not certain, but it is -- as I said -- disturbing.I'm not very familiar with Meta. Is there a venue there in which Sandbh's apparent interest in expanding the scope of their disruptive editing can be brought up? I think it only fair that either other wikis be warned about this, or that Sandbh's topic ban be expanded to be a global one, if such a thing as a global topic ban is possible. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:58, 15 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with BMK on this – this kind of query (especially combined with barely editing in the three months since the topic ban was imposed) is definitely raising some large red flags. Number5722:02, 15 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
For what it's worth (not a strict analogy), some indefinitely blocked editors are encouraged to show that they can be productive on other projects under the standard offer and we've seen some appeals based on the offer declined because they've just waited out the six months. Perhaps a more charitable (or naïve) interpretation from me. Sdrqaz (talk) 22:10, 15 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The suggestion to edit productively elsewhere is often made to those appealing indef blocks or site bans, but I think that those who are topic banned here are generally advised to productivey edit here in other subject areas, rather than to edit on other wikis in the subject area they are banned from on en.wiki. I think it would be ill-advised and rude on our part to subject our fellow Wikipedians who speak other languages to the possibility of disruptive behavior that we have sanctioned here. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:12, 16 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah like I said, not a great analogy. But I think our hands are tied: the English Wikipedia community only has jurisdiction over English Wikipedia and the bans it imposes (to my knowledge, anyways) do not carry over to other projects like Simple etc. It's not something I would personally encourage, but it's hard to see what else can be done. Sdrqaz (talk) 02:11, 16 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, no one was metaphorically run over or killed. For this level of infraction, you'd get points on your license. If it happened again, you might have to attend safe-driving classes. The Wikipedia equivalent might be WP:CLEANSLATE, but for some reason they're asking for the death penalty, as if were a vandal troll and irredeemable. Seems a bit much when other options are available.--Tenebrae (talk) 02:38, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Which is why I asked if there was someplace on Meta where a possible global sanction could be suggested. We can't do anything, but we are also part of the global WMF community, which, possibly can do something. Beyond My Ken (talk) 07:35, 16 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
So...one project finds an editor's behavior disruptive enough to topic ban them, the editor threatens to go to other language projects, where, presumably, they'll repeat their behavior pattern, and there's no mechanism by which other projects can at least be warned about this possibility, or the editor officially warned away from potentially disrupting another project? That seems like a hole in the system ripe for exploitation. Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:55, 16 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Speaking for simple the topic ban wouldn't apply there. However, we don't typically give much leeway to people on sanctions from en.wiki as we often get a flood of them when people say go edit elsewhere and proove yourself. As such people on indef blocks/bans here only get one strike there before they are blocked there. Topic bans we don't have an equivalent policy but I suspect we would likely follow suit if they showed the same behaviour there. -DJSasso (talk) 19:01, 16 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you Canterbury Tail; Robert McClenon; Sdrqaz|; AmandaNP and DJSasso for your prompt and considered responses. For the record, 1. the discussions resulting in my community imposed topic ban occurred at ANI, rather than in multiple venues (I'm happy to be corrected if I have this wrong). 2. Arbcom declined to take on the case, which involved at least two other editors besides myself. 3. I have chosen not to edit much for the past three months, and may well serve out my topic ban here on the same basis. That said I've used my time productively to complete a topic ban related article accepted for publication in a reputable peer-reviewed Journal, drafted a submission for the relevant international body; and have had several productive ongoing discussions via PM and Zoom, with WP colleagues.
Please don't be deliberately specious. The discussions about disruption in the subject area of the chemical elements -- of which your behavior was very much a part -- took place in multiple venues. That they ended up with a TB for you, decided as the result of an ANI thread, doesn't mean that the prior discussions didn't take place, nor does it mean that the topic ban wasn't the result of the totality of all the discussions.I will not accept any comments from you about this subject at my talk page. If you have anything to say, you'd best say it here. Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:37, 17 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, to clear up any confusion, while the discussions that led to my TB occurred at ANI they were informed by edits and actions that occurred mainly at WP:ELEM and periodic table.
I expect the non-en editors will be able to judge the calibre and appropriateness of my contribution. I further expect I will have nothing more to contribute to this current thread. Sandbh (talk) 22:53, 17 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Having glanced at their most recent contributions, I'm also a bit concerned that the OP appears to be making proxy edits at the request of an article subject (Louise Katz), based on apparent off-wiki requests. Symmachus Auxiliarus (talk) 00:21, 18 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I participated in some of the previous ANIs regarding Sandbh. At least until the last one, where I got frustrated enough that I decided to take at least the twelve days of Christmas off WP, so I didn't appear at the ANI thread. Currently I am back and WT:ELEM seems to be functioning just fine; article work is being done, and no one seems to be wanting to take anyone else to ANI for the last two months.
Like others who have posted here, I was a bit concerned about Sandbh editing on other wikis in his banned topic area rather than editing on this wiki in non-banned topic areas. But to be fair, before doing so, he came here first to ask whether he could or not. He could have simply researched this issue, come to the same conclusion, and then begun editing. IMO his choosing to ask should be commended and not characterized by saying he "threatens to go to other language projects". Asking a question does not constitute making a threat, and IMO 'threatens' is a loaded word that seems to fail WP:AGF. In response to this, Sandbh did not immediately fire back in the same venue (as was his wont a few months ago), but IMO wisely considered discussing the situation in user talk space. Would that discussion have been civil? Alas we will never know, because the discussion was declined. This, too, was no doubt a wise action, but it means that we cannot yet learn to what extent he has learned his lesson. YBG (talk) 05:38, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
First, User:Sandbh, as others have noted above, your en-wiki topic ban does not restrict your editing on other wikis in any way. However, whether it is a good idea for you to edit on the same topic on German Wikipedia is another matter. IMO, it is not a good idea. Once your topic ban expires here, if the problems that led to the topic ban continue, it can be extended and even made indefinite. In any such future discussion what you were doing while t-ban was in effect may be a consideration. Again, IMO it would be much better for you to develop a record of editing here on en-wiki on other topics in the meantime, instead of going to other wikis and editing there on the same topic from which you are t-banned here. Not only will that look better for you later, but, once your t-ban expires here, you would not be boxed in into continuing editing just on that single topic. Second, I want to revisit the concern raised by Symmachus Auxiliarus above regarding your apparent proxy edits to Louise Katz. Several of your edit summaries [24][25][26][27][28] indicate that you were acting based on off-wiki requests of the subject of the article. Note that if you know the subject of the article personally, you yourself have a WP:COI with respect to the article and should not edit the article directly. Moreover, even if the subject of the article somehow contacted you at random, COI requests should still be made and discussed at the article's talk page, via edit request, before being incorporated into the article. Nsk92 (talk) 21:56, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Unblock request by Wikipedia Paid Editor Jacobmcpherson
I'm happy to participate in the Wikipedia community while complying with the Terms of Service. Please let me know what I'd need to do to meet those as a Paid Editor. I remain open to learning more about how to operate this way within the Wikipedia ecosystem.
It is ultimately my goal to help Wikipedia articles remain factual, which is why many people choose to work directly with me.
It would be helpful for me to get clarification on some points around how Wikipedia operates so I can better follow guidelines going forth. Here's some initial ones:
Why wasn't this article (Draft:Neil Krug) considered notable by Wikipedia standards?
Can you also please clarify what Wikipedia considers as a consensus and how many editors need to be involved before one is reached?
Lastly, there has been at least 8 articles I’ve participated in that have now been nominated for deletion – one of these going back to 2011 (of which my involvement was minimal). What’s the reasoning here?
I mean your questions don't seem directly relevant to why you were blocked (although I'd also note that the block reason doesn't seem either fully accurate or fully complete). Not all of your work was "advertising or promotion", however, you were also repeatedly not complying with utilising AfC etc. After you not using it was disputed once, then it would move from the "very strongly advised" to "required". The AfDs (which I would imagine did come from the nom looking at your additions in the listed thread) do have their reasoning provided. Mainly notability, with some excabating factors like promotional content, which alone I wouldn't view as sufficient to delete. Nosebagbear (talk) 20:10, 16 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
One suggestion is to stop using buzzwords like "ecosystem" instead of writing precise sentences that don't use cute euphemisms you read somewhere and thought it would be fun to adopt. I am a volunteer editor here in large measure to try to eradicate this kind of marketing-ese PR balderdash from encyclopedia articles that students and other people who aren't professional writers look to as exemplars of acceptable common parlance. "Silo", "solutions", "pivot", and "ecosystem", used outside their specific agricultural, chemical, physics, and biology contexts, are the first examples that are immediately jumping into my mind, along with "impact" as a substitute for the verb "to affect" and the noun "effect" that apparently people have decided are too difficult to use correctly. (If there's not a physical striking, there's not an "impact"; there's an "effect." It's not that hard.) I don't believe I'm alone in this philosophy. Thanks for taking this to heart. - Julietdeltalima(talk)20:27, 16 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What about the "Environmental Impact Statement"? [29] The OED says "The phrasal verb impact on, as in when produce is lost, it always impacts on the bottom line, has been in the language since the 1960s. Many people disapprove of it despite its relative frequency, saying that make an impact on or other equivalent wordings should be used instead. New formations of verbs from nouns (as in the case of impact) are often regarded as somehow inferior." [30] I think the water is well under the bridge on the use of "impact" in the way that you disdain, considering it's been going on for about 50 years now. And, yes, the rules about "affect" and "effect" are difficult to remember, so avoiding them to avoid pedantic criticism is reasonable.Your larger point is sorta valid, but I see no reason that "pivot" can't be used about a corporation in the same way that it's often used about a second baseman, or as an instruction to a dancer. Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:31, 17 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
These are perfectly reasonable points. Re: the "environmental impact statement": I have no problem with that usage; an impact is physical, and dumping a bunch of paraquat into a wetland is as physically impactful as a meteorite strike. Re: "pivot", the dancer and second baseman are indeed physically making turns on an axis; a business entity, though, which by definition is not a natural person capable of engaging in a physical action, may take up a new business strategy very quickly, but it doesn't have quadriceps and the only way it "pivots" is in a TED Talk. And re: the positive effect this talk has had on my affect, anybody who is capable of recognizing more or less instinctively, e.g., what happens when a baseball gets lodged in the ivy at Wrigley Field, or alternately in a catcher's mask or other paraphernalia, and/or of explaining the infield-fly rule, has more than enough candlepower to learn "affect" and "effect"... It's the uncritical American-business-school-ese, and the privilege-loaded baggage that goes along with it, that makes me tetchy. Wikipedia editors are, possibly, on the precipice of becoming the de facto "usage panel" of some international agglomeration of national English varieties, simply because we are free (and ubiquitous, thanks to Google, augh) and hence more accessible in, e.g., Odisha and Eswatini and Tristan da Cunha than is the OED. But this must necessarily be a conversation for another day (and forum). Onward and upward! Thank you, BMK! Holy cow! - Julietdeltalima(talk)00:51, 18 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Convert Block to Site Ban
Having read the discussion on the appellant's talk page, I have come to the unpleasant conclusion that the appellant either doesn't understand and isn't about to understand, or does understand and thinks that our rules are for other editors. I recommend that the community convert the administrator block to a six-month Site Ban. The question about why Neil Krug isn't notable illustrates exactly why we insist that paid editors use Articles for Creation. Notability isn't the only concern; neutrality also is. Allowing paid editors to move non-neutral articles into article space would show non-neutral articles to our readers, who trust that neutral point of view is the second pillar of Wikipedia, and would create extra work for volunteers to clean them up. This editor is creating too much work to clean up their mess.
Technically if the Community denies the appeal it automatically converts to a siteban unless we specifically exempt it. I don't see any particular reason why this can't be handled under an admin block, however Nosebagbear (talk) 12:13, 17 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The difference is that unless determined specifically to be a site ban, another admin can unilaterally lift the indef block if they deem there is an exigent reason for doing so - whether or not the appeal was denied.--WaltCip-(talk)16:04, 17 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think Nosebagbear's point is if this appeal received due consideration from the community and fails, it is a site ban unless we specifically say it shouldn't be treated as such. WP:CBAN is quite clear that 'Editors who are or remain indefinitely blocked after due consideration by the community are considered "banned by the Wikipedia community".' Nil Einne (talk) 17:16, 17 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The section above is appealing a partial block: does a denied or no-consensus result convert into an indefinite ban from the affected portion of the block? –xenotalk17:27, 17 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say yes; I think that passage is meant to say that admins shouldn't unilaterally lift a block that the community has specifically said it thinks is correct. I think that interpretation also jives with how we've been applying it here recently where we've considered and retained blocks but also found a consensus to not apply this clause for whatever reason. I'll dig through the archives later, but I think that happened in the case of some quasi-third-party appeals. — Wug·a·po·des18:59, 17 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure why moving to site ban would be required where the editor is already constrained from article space in the status quo - Robert McClenon: are you suggesting the incident editor's contributions to non-article namespaces should also be banned by the community? –xenotalk17:27, 17 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose This seems moot, given that an unsuccessful block appeal to AN becomes a ban anyway, but ignoring that I'd rather give the editor time to show that they understand and can abide by editing restrictions. Blocking paid editors who follow rules is counterproductive, as it only creates demand for those who don't.I'm far from convinced from Jacobmcpherson's responses that they will follow them, but I would have liked to have had time to find out. - Bilby (talk) 01:55, 18 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - My reason for proposing a site-ban was to ensure that this single-admin block is not subsequently lifted by a single admin acting in good faith on a bad-faith request. I will also comment on two points by User:Bilby. I may have overlooked or forgotten the rules that an unsuccessful block appeal is a de facto ban, and that makes my concern less urgent. Second, Bilby says, and I agree, that blocking paid editors who follow rules is counterproductive. Jm has been ignoring the rules for years, either through ignorance or because they are for other people, and I have no reason to believe that they suddenly want to be a good paid editor. (I personally think that there are no good paid editors, only neutral ones and bad ones, but that is only my opinion.) Robert McClenon (talk) 16:18, 18 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose site ban as inappropriate (and at least premature): All new editors require guidance to develop adherence to site purpose. If the practice is to move to banning disclosed paid editors because they took a few missteps and need assistance complying with site purpose, the obvious result will be an increase in undisclosed paid editing. The problem with shifting the balance to undisclosed paid editing is it causes a much greater editorial and administrative overhead. Edits by disclosed paid editors can be very easily monitored and tracked. Addressing undisclosed paid editing requires off-wiki sleuthing, trawling microwork sites, issuing take-down notices, administrator and Arbitration Committee involvement, editor investigations of contributor's personally identifying information, and a custom checkuser queue almost no one wants to work (with a backlog that often breaks 100 -
Per Xeno's request - there are currently 95 tickets in the "Paid editing" queue on OTRS. Without researching or commenting on the specifics of this matter, I agree with Xeno that driving paid editing underground completely is not really in the best interests of the project. Further, given the fact that the Terms of Use specifically envision a process whereby paid editors can and should disclose, it seems pretty obvious that banning paid editing outright would be an issue in and of itself. Remember that we do have respected users who would meet the definition of paid editing by virtue of their publicly revealed work as a Wikimedians in residence or in similar roles. It's not particularly helpful to drive paid editing completely underground, because then everyone (and I do mean everyone) becomes a suspect. Risker (talk) 17:45, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, this is a kneejerk reaction. He's only partially blocked as it stands and we allow paid editing. He is discussing proper editing and disclosure. Fences&Windows00:25, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Appeal of partial block from article space by Wikipedia Paid Editor Jacobmcpherson
I'm afraid I didn't give the original blocked editor clear enough guidance. This section should hopefully be more focused.
Jacobmcpherson is currently blocked from editing article space by Justlettersandnumbers (who had given leave for me to modify the indefinite block to partial).
Presently, the user is requesting the ability to edit article space again. A no-consensus result will result from them remaining blocked from article space with a block remaining modifiable by administrators. A strong decline would (theoretically) result in a community restriction from article space requiring a consensus at AN to reverse.
Thanks for the ping, xeno. I also oppose a site ban, and suggest that as a matter of priority we establish a procedure for (a) warning anyone who requests an unblock here to be advised that the outcome may be a community siteban, and (b) allowing withdrawal of that request within a reasonable time of being so advised.
In this specific case, I indeffed the editor because of extensive failure to make proper paid-editor disclosure, aggravated by an WP:IDHT attitude to our paid-editor guidance. I had no intention that the block should be permanent – provided of course that the editor agreed to comply in full with our policies and guidance for people in his position. He's had plenty of time to do that, but has chosen not to. Instead he has continued to ignore policy – this statement, for example, is demonstrably less that 100% transparent and clearly in violation of the WP:TOU. Xeno, with your agreement, I suggest that the original site-wide indef-block should be re-imposed until and unless this person (a) makes full and complete disclosure of the actual client (who made payment, and on whose behalf) for all paid edits to date and (b) agrees to comply from now on with our paid-editor guidance as if it were policy. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:22, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Jacobmcpherson, what Justlettersandnumbers is saying is in order to fully compliant with paid editing disclosure, one needs to disclose both the client as well as the employer. It seems only an employer is listed on your user page. Are you able to comply with that understanding? –xenotalk18:50, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. In case it's not 100% clear from my reply to xeno above, or lost in my general wordy blether, firmly oppose unblock from article space, and recommend re-imposition of the original indefinite block until and unless the editor provides full and honest disclosure of all paid edits and the related client and employer. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:05, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If the editor resumes paid activities before providing proper disclosure I will undo my modification, or you may. –xenotalk19:10, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I tried my best with the format provided by Wikipedia, since the clients listed on my user page all came through the company listed. Please let me know how I can better generate the list. The current parameters don't seem inclusive of all possible paid editing scenarios. I remain open to finding a solution Jacobmcpherson (talk) 19:44, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Jacobmcpherson: To help clarify, the client that paid for the editing for each article listed on User:Jacobmcpherson was the subject of the article? Perhaps something like
* [[Subject Inc.]] (Client: Subject Inc.)
Please also note you must disclose any affiliate partners involved, such as freelance sites.
Jacobmcpherson, You have to disclose where the money came from. For example: I'm Joe Smith, and I form Joe Smith Inc. for my Wikipedia business. Joe Smith Inc. gets contracted by 'StarBizPR' on behalf of Bill Actor. I need to write something like 'I edited the 'Bill Actor' article for payment on behalf of StarBizPR via Joe Smith Inc.' MrOllie (talk) 20:25, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Jacobmcpherson, Right, but if you were for example an owner of that company, you would not put in your disclosure that you were paid by that company. You'd write where the money came from - if it was directly from the article subject, you would write that. MrOllie (talk) 20:56, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I see, this wasn't 100% apparent to me in the format provided by Wikipedia - as there's various types of organisational structures, and I tried my best to accurately depict my particular scenario / relationship as a paid editor. The other issue, is there doesn't seem to be way to list multiple "articles" from the same "employer" in the current template Template:Paid. Hopefully this clarifies my approach to the situation Jacobmcpherson (talk) 21:14, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Nevermind, it looks like the template was updated since I last looked - made changes to my user page. Out of curiosity, where I would I participate in discussions around paid editing on Wikipedia? I'm really interested in providing valuable input that will hopefully improve the relationship between Wikipedia and paid editors Jacobmcpherson (talk) 21:28, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I will definitely work on my neutral TOV and, if in doubt, know to discuss things in a page's talk page first. I also agree to follow the 5 pillars as a guideline for future editing Jacobmcpherson (talk) 21:04, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose While I don't think an indefinite block is warranted, I do think that the current restriction should remain in place at least for the time being. Jackattack1597 (talk) 22:30, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
When I gave JazzClam a 2-week {{uw-cserblock}} earlier today, I was thinking: if this was set up like AEL (without a table), I'd likewise just note the block in an indented bulletpoint below the original sanction. I guess the block log records this well enough, but it does preclude logging a warning, for example. El_C20:57, 18 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Possibly, it's never really been too pressing of an issue because RESTRICT violations are so much more infrequent than AE ones...? Still, I'd support a log setup for best recordkeeping practices. Less chance of repeat violations falling through the cracks that way. El_C04:54, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There is a dispute between at least two editors and maybe more involving the capitalization of "Black" when it is used as a proper adjective referring to a racial or ethnic group. A dispute request was filed at DRN referencing African American Vernacular English, but it is not an article content dispute and is not about African American Vernacular English. It is a content dispute that may apply to tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of pages, because we have at least tens of thousands of biographies of such people. It is a Manual of Style dispute that should be resolved by a Request for Comments about capitalization standards. One editor is complaining that they are being hounded or harassed. I see no evidence of hounding; complaints of hounding are more common than actual hounding.
I do not accept this resolution. The issue is one of proper English construction, and yet I am being ignored. The rules of English are clear that only proper nouns are capitalized, and black is not a proper noun. As further proof of this, white is not capitalized, ergo black cannot be as well. Asian is because Asia is a country continent, and thus a proper noun. As to harassment, my claim and evidence has been submitted, as the referenced used, Generalrelative, continues to stalk my work and try to erase my edits. - Blaugraf — Preceding unsigned comment added by BlauGraf (talk • contribs) 13:00, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
For those confused about the above comment, note that BlauGraf modified their initial comment almost an hour after this reply [31] while leaving no indication they had done so. Nil Einne (talk) 04:51, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Good catch, BlackcurrantTea. I'll just ping Robert McClenon here in case he wants to restore his original comment. And while I don't want to pile on, I will note that BlauGraf also removed a comment I made on my own talk page when leaving a comment of their own: [32] A small thing in and of itself but if it's part of a larger pattern that could be a problem. Generalrelative (talk) 20:37, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, User:BlackcurrantTea, User:Generalrelative. My original comment had only been ridiculing User:BlauGraf for a silly error that they compounded by trying to alter the past. I see no need at this point to restore it, but altering another editor's comment on a talk page is not a small thing in and of itself. It is fraud, and it violates far older rules than the so-called rules of English that are older than the English language. It is not a small thing. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:16, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, and the "rules of English" are descriptive, not prescriptive -- or did I overlook the existence of an International English Academy which enforces the rules? --Calton | Talk15:42, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Given BlauGraf's behavior and rhetoric, I'm not sure if I need to weigh in here at all. Still, perhaps against my better judgment, here goes:
This user is not being ignored, as they claim. They are in fact being treated with an abundance of WP:AGF not only by Robert McClenon but also by two members of the Arbitration Committee: [33]. I too have been treating them with WP:AGF, explaining my rationale for reverting their efforts to contravene MOS:VAR in edit summaries ([34], [35]) and on my talk page: [36]. Note too that I was not the only editor to revert them here: [37], though I was the one to leave a template warning for edit warring and a follow-up on their talk page, which have since been deleted: [38].
They have also not been ignored on the MOS talk page, where I referred them over a week ago: [39] After one final round of edit warring [40], they did finally post there on the 17th ([41]) and were offered a very patient explanation as to why they are wrong by SMcCandlish: [42]
Re. the accusation of hounding, this user appears to think that because we are active on some of the same pages it means that all of this activity comes from me watching their contribution history. I did check this history after realizing that they were edit warring over style at African-American Vernacular English and was concerned about related problems on multiple articles (an acceptable use of contrib history per WP:HOUNDING). But it was entirely coincidental that I was also involved in reverting an earlier wave of edits this user made back in January, when they were pushing the Myth of the clean Wehrmacht and in other ways white-washing Nazi-related topics. For the very civil discussion we had about this back in January, see this deleted thread from their talk page: [43].
Yes. Obviously, we should write "irish", "zimbabwean", and "canadian", since Ireland, Zimbabwe, and Canada aren't continents. [sigh] — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 04:49, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Good lord, such obvious mistakes shouldn't be the subject of extended discussion. For the record, you have it lucky in English: in French, it's a fair bit more complex - it's minuscule except when the word is explicitly referring to an ethnicity/nationality and it is a noun (so "Les Français parlent en français avec leurs amis français":"The French speak in [f]rench[a] with their [f]rench[b] friends")... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 02:55, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There is no reason to be offended - Asia is a proper noun as it is a continent (and thus proper). Non-proper nouns are not capitalized. However, it is very apparent that this collective organization has seen fit to disregard the apparent rules of English construction. As for the reference that I was responded to, that is correct at its base, but fails to take into account that the response received was improper, and no one has actually accepted the fact that colors are not capitalized, where proper nouns are. However, as this seems to be something that you, collectively, are pushing, I cannot be heard.
Secondly, there is reference to an edit made on a page relating to the German Army. My family served in the Army, and I will not discuss that further, since your anti-German slant is quite apparent. I will correct a mis-statement: nothing I corrected was related to the Nazis, it was relating to the German Army. The Army may have served when the Nazis ruled, but not all soldiers were nazis, in the same way now that every American did not become a democrat when Biden was elected, and the American Army now is not the Democratic Army. Do you see the correlation?
It is quite obvious you wish to push some sort of hatred, and so I will do my best to continue to remain within my fields of expertise. I do ask that the generalrelative person be banned from editing any of my articles. His harassment has not ceased. - Blaugraf
@BlauGraf: This isn't a Wikipedia thing. You seem to have missed the general movement to capitalize Black. This New York Times article which explains it is one example, but far from the only one. Sometimes it is surprising to find out that something you thought was correct is no longer correct. I remember noticing one day that newscasters had moved from pronouncing Kiev as KEY-ev to KEEV. Similary I discovered that what I had always known as Rangoon was now generally known as Yangon. Things change. You'll get used to it. Mo Billings (talk) 16:51, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I respectfully disagree. Just because a left-leaning newspaper begins to do something that is popular, doesn't make it right. The Russian Revolution was popular, as were the Nazis - and neither were right. Language does not change just because some people want it to. They have to conform to the rules, that is why we have rules. I learned this language 31 years ago when we came here from East Germany. BlauGraf (talk) 17:59, 19 March 2021 (UTC)Blaugraf[reply]
Actually, language does change because some people want it to. That's exactly how language changes. I guarantee some of what you learned 31 years ago is no longer considered correct usage, but you probably just accepted those changes without any fuss. If you want to have a political argument, Wikipedia is the wrong site for it. On the other hand, if you just like dogmatic application of rules, there are several Wikiprojects were you will feel at home. Mo Billings (talk) 18:22, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The short version: The RfC concluded with a clear consensus against "Black but white", both for NPOV reasons and consistency reasons, but did not come to a consensus in favor of "Black and White" over "black and white" or vice versa. So, as before the RfC, that is left to editorial judgment at a particular article. The only firm result was to not use one capitalized and the other not, in the same article/category/list/context (see MOS:ARTCON, WP:CONSISTENT).
The main argument for capitalizing both is that they are serving the function of proper names, as demonyms. The main argument for lower-casing is that they are not consistently capitalized in contemporary reliable sources, so the first rule of MOS:CAPS (don't capitalize that which sources don't consistently capitalize) should apply. Neither of them are poor arguments, and it is often not possible for us to arrive at 100% consistency with all style guidelines, because they can sometimes produce "conflicting consistencies", as it were (in this case, consistency with proper naming vs. consistency with lower-casing when in doubt). I will note that MOS:TM would not allow us to lower-case a trademark (a proper name) like "Macy's" to match its logo (which looks like "macy★s") just because the company liked it that way. I.e., the interaction of MOS:TM and MOS:CAPS is to go with the upper-case consistency of proper names in English, not with the lower-casing consistency of "things not always capitalized in sources". But the proper-name argument about ethno-racial "color labels" isn't as strong as it is with regard to trademarks. In the end, we may simply need to add "(sometimes capitalized)" to the lead of the article on the term, if we're generally treating it lower-case, or "(sometimes not capitalized)" if the other way around. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 04:47, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
PS: The claim that there's a general trend across English to capitalize "Black", in isolation, is simply not true. Associated Press Stylebook does this, so various US newspapers that follow it also do so. Some others have independently started doing it, too. However, The Washington Post capitalizes "Black" and "White", as do various others (some of which have been doing so since at least the 1980s). And yet others are sticking with lower-case across the board, especially non-US publications. Of those that use "Black but white", the vast majority of them are American. The style is an Americanism, a recentism, and a leftism all at once. This is not a new question/debate, it's simply become a louder one over the last year, and one that is not any closer to resolution than it was a generation ago. Probably further from resolution, actually, because the growing trend to capitalize both has been somewhat upset by sudden activism to capitalize only one of them. That it is socio-political activism (i.e., a WP:NPOV and WP:NOT#ADVOCACY problem) is immediately apparent from the statements issued by the news organizations that chose to go with "Black but white" and put out a statement about it. Anyway, all of this is just rehash, since it all already covered in detail at the RfC and discussion surrounding it.
To the extent there's an administrative matter: Blaugraf should be warned away from making WP:GREATWRONGS-style arguments about what "is" "correct" in English (which has no official rules or rule-making body, unlike continental French and Spanish). How to write English on Wikipedia is determined by consensus in the MoS guidelines; it's why they exist. Personal dissatisfaction with a line-item in it here and there is something everyone at WP lives with (0% of editors agree with 100% of it, or any other guideline or policy for that matter). The last time we had someone pursuing this kind of "English must be written the way I say it must" stuff about an MoS matter, it led to a great deal of disruption, then a topic-ban, then a broader t-ban, then a block, then an indefinite block (mostly via WP:AE). Let's not go there again. But others involved need to be pointed to Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Article titles and capitalisation#All parties reminded. An WP:IDONTLIKEIT attitude is not a rationale; have a discussion on the talk page about whether to use "black" or "Black" in that context (the the RfC result is a consensus that either are permissible, if used consistently), and remember that if it's "Black" then it also means using "White", and "black" means using "white" (in the ethno-racial senses). If anyone seems hellbent on editwarring and other disruption, leave {{subst:Ds/alert|mos}} on their talk page, and thereafter it can be more expediently addressed at AE, if it continues. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 05:13, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
User:SMcCandlish - Thank you for explaining that the reason for capitalizing Black and White is that they are being used as demonyms, and that whether that is "correct" or "incorrect" is outside the scope of this discussion. (But dishonestly altering a talk page post is not outside the scope of this discussion.) Robert McClenon (talk) 21:21, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure what the last part refers to; there're probably aspects of this disputation that I've glossed over. I should be clear that I advocated at least mildly in the original RfC on this to prefer "Black and White", relying on the demonym rationale. I see that rationale in play across the site regularly. E.g., while I was editing animal breed articles, as is my wont, and going over the Florida Cracker cattle and Florida Cracker Horse articles in particular (which have different capitalization because of what the formal name of the standardized breed is, i.e., does it or does it not include the species word at the end?), and I noticed that Florida cracker, the article on the human [sub]culture namesake, was not capitalizing cracker. This stuck me as weird. (More on that in a moment.) Looking around further, I see that many similar epithets are capitalized. E.g., Kiwi for New Zealander is usually capitalized, as just one example. Another is that Coloured, in the southern African mixed-race ethnic sense, is almost universally capitalized. The more I look, the more I see a norm toward capitalization of such informal demonyms. Though in the course of looking, I do also come across additional exception like the cracker case. However, even that is not consistent and doesn't seem to represent a consensus. At the closely related Georgia cracker article, it's obvious that this was originally written capitalized (most of the article still is) then later moved to lower-case by someone, without any apparent discussion (there is no RM thread about this at either Talk:Florida cracker or Talk:Georgia cracker). This overall "capitalize them as (or serving as if) proper names" trend is why I've drafted language for MoS to this effect, at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Overhauling MOS:CAPS#Peoples and their languages. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 09:17, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@SMcCandlish: a point so minor that it almost isn't worth mentioning – "Kiwi" is a noun, and so wouldn't exactly be comparable to adjectives like "white" and "black". You can be "a Kiwi", but no one is "a White", which probably effects whether or not people choose to capitalize it. Volteer1 (talk) 06:35, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Nah. All these terms are regularly used as nouns and as adjectives: "his cute Kiwi accent", "police violence against Blacks and other minorities". Which terms are more apt to be used which way, which ones more often appear as singular nouns, etc., varies by term and dialect. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 22:59, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I apologize - I am only getting back to this after a long weekend. I edited something because I saw I had made a glaring mistake in my haste to type a response (typing country instead of continent). I do not understand why this generalrelative fellow wishes to ascribe some heinous motives to me, but it was exactly that - an error. I fixed it, and moved on. This is the indicative of the type of harassment I have been referring to herein. I wish to be left along by him, and yet he is intentionally trying to cast me as some villain. BlauGraf (talk) 12:34, 22 March 2021 (UTC)Blaugraf[reply]
BlauGraf, when you say trying to cast me as some villain, what specifically are you referring to? Believe it or not, throughout our interaction history, my goal has been to balance assuming good faith on your part and protecting Wikipedia from disruption.
And while it's nice that you've apologized, your response here makes it seem as though you do not recognize that it isn't okay to alter a comment after someone else has replied to it. This is even clearer on your talk page, where Nil Einne was kind enough to explain to you that our talk page guidelines require you to make sure you give a clear indication you have changed your comments if someone has already replied, especially when someone directly quoted something you said which are are modifying. Your response was to say I recognized a glaring error in typing, in my haste to make a reply, and I fixed it. The error was mine, and I corrected same. I am not sure what you are saying. No one is concerned about the error, but rather with the cover-up. And neither here nor there have you addressed Robert McClenon's concern about the fact that you altered his comment, which as he rightly points out is not a small thing.Generalrelative (talk) 15:41, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah @BlauGraf:. Rules aside, I think basic human etiquette would suggest it's a problem if you correct a mistake which someone has already commented on without making it clear you did so. When you do that, it means to the casual observer, it looks like the other person is the one who made the mistake, not you. Per WP:AGF, I might assume you simply didn't notice that someone had replied to your comment. Except that you also modified someone else's comment. This makes it hard to assume you didn't notice people had replied, and it's an even worse problem. You need to take very great care when modifying someone's signed comment, there are a few limited cases and ways where this is acceptable, but this was very far from one of them. In this case, User:Robert McClenon has explained that they too were commenting on your error. Indeed, I actually read their comment around the time of my first reply, and I did not properly understand it precisely because you had already modified their comment, so it said something which is not what they actually said. You put words into their mouth so to speak, again basic human etiquette should tell you how wrong this is. You made a mistake. People may have made fun of you for it, but it's not a big deal. We all make mistakes. For some reason, instead of just acknowledging you made a mistake, you tried to re-write history which is why this is a big deal. You aren't being harassed. You are making major mistakes and then just brushing editor's aside when they tell you you did so. (Let me repeat the major mistake is not that you wrote country instead of continent which probably we all would have forgotten about by now and we definitely wouldn't care about. The major mistake is that you tried to make it seem like you didn't do so after people had already pointed out you did.) Nil Einne (talk) 16:10, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Side comment: If you feel a need to substantively change your own post after others have replied to it, try striking the "bad" material with <del>...</del> and adding the replacement text with <ins>...</ins>. Such revision markup is why those HTML elements exist. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 22:46, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal to Close with Warning
I originally said that I was not requesting administrative action. Then User:BlauGraf altered my words (in a way that made them not make any sense). I am now proposing that this discussion be closed with the only action being a warning that any future violations of talk page guidelines, even if they seem minor, may result in a block or other sanctions. Any discussion of the capitalization of demonyms can take place elsewhere.
Robert McClenon (talk) 06:27, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I take umbrage at your suggestion, sir. I edited a mistake that I MADE, and I corrected. The mistake was mine, and I corrected it. You are acting as if I did something heinous, instead of recognizing a glaring oversight on my part - an oversight that you then attempted to malign me for. 2601:141:4100:EF50:2C82:B269:8266:EFE6 (talk) 10:02, 23 March 2021 (UTC)Blaugraf[reply]
Editing another user's comments is a very serious thing on Wikipedia. You are not being taken to task for editing your own comment (although it's considered poor form to do so after others have responded to it). You are being chided for editing someone else's comment (namely Robert McClenon's). — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite20:36, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
User:BlauGraf - I am acting as if you did something seriously wrong because you did something seriously wrong. You altered my words in order to facilitate your coverup of what had been a minor error on your part. Altering my words, so as to make them make no sense, is not a small thing. That wasn't a mistake on your part. The reason why I am proposing that you be given a warning rather than a block is that blocks in Wikipedia are preventive and not punitive. This has its advantages and disadvantages, and one of the disadvantages is that permits flagrant misconduct such as yours to go unpunished, while you try to claim that you should not even be warned. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:09, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@BlauGraf: How are someone else's comments your mistake? As long as you continue you speak such silliness, you have little hope of lasting here, that is definitely true. Your user page says you use to work for law enforcement. If someone being questioned said "Asia is a country" and then later an officer comments "You said Asia is a country, it's actually a continent not a country. There are many countries in Asia." then the person being questioned says sorry I meant to say "Asia is a continent"; do you then amend the record so that in the official transcript the first comment is "Asia is a country" with no foot note or any other explanation and the officer's comment becomes "You said Asia is a continent, it's actually a continent not a country. There are many countries in Asia."? If that's accepted practice under US law enforcement, no wonder things are so bad there. I'm fairly sure it's not though, not least because law enforcement officers will be up in arms if they're forced to look like idiots because it's acceptable to amend record to put words into their mouths. Nil Einne (talk) 04:29, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It is obvious that you have never worked in law enforcement, so I am simply not going to get into a massive debate here, let me simply turn you towards deposition "errata" sheets, where mistakes are corrected routinely. In this instance, I made a typo that I did not edit, and it was seized upon to insult my intelligence. It is obvious that you and your fellows are attempting to run me off. So I shall simply stop responding. BlauGraf (talk) 11:26, 25 March 2021 (UTC)blaugraf[reply]
You and your friends seemed determined to drive me from this board, and I am very close to simply leaving, as you wish. However, I will say that the pattern of driving someone away with whom you disagree is frightening, and wrong. BlauGraf (talk) 18:43, 24 March 2021 (UTC)blaugraf[reply]
So, to summarize: you did something bad, it has been explained to you very clearly what is wrong with it, and now instead of apologizing you are whining about how it's deeply frightening to be told not to do bad things. I'm sure you will be deeply missed. --JBL (talk) 19:04, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Review requested: I have blocked Mathsci for three months for IBAN violation
On 17 March 2021, Mathsci made this edit which made direct reference to this edit by FS. WP:IBAN notes "make reference to or comment on each other anywhere on Wikipedia, directly or indirectly;" This edit by Mathsci was in my opinion a clear violation of the IBAN, as it directly commented on an edit by FS. I raised issue with this on Mathsci's talk page, and gave a very sternly worded final warning to Mathsci regarding violating the IBAN. See discussion on Mathsci's talk page. In that final warning, I warned Mathsci that any further violations would result in a three month block.
Today at 04:25 UTC, FS made this edit that added a {{nowrap}} to two locations in a translation. At 05:03 UTC today (less than an hour later), Mathsci commented out the {{nowrap}}s placed by FS. WP:IBAN notes "undo each other's edits to any page, whether by use of the revert function or by other means;" This edit by Mathsci is, in my opinion, an unequivocal bright line violation of the IBAN.
Accordingly, and per the final warning I noted above, I have blocked Mathsci for three months for violating the IBAN [48]. I invite feedback from other administrators regarding this block and my handling of the situation. If another administrator feels the block is inappropriate they are welcome to shorten or eliminate the block if they feel it necessary to do so without further consultation with me. Thank you, --Hammersoft (talk) 18:49, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As I've pointed out on Mathsci's TP, FS should also/instead get blocked - he's also on a similarly sliding slope of seemingly unending disruption with Mathsci AND other editors. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 20:00, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I have placed a warning on FS' talk page at User talk:Francis Schonken#WP:IBAN violation regarding the IBAN violation. Whether or not FS made an edit that affected Mathsci's edit is no excuse for Mathsci to effectively revert FS' edit. WP:IBAN makes no allowances for such cases. I have not blocked FS for this incident. However, I don't think blocking FS for it would be entirely inappropriate either. There's a narrow window within the IBAN policy that could be construed as allowing the edit, as FS' edit [49] did not undo Mathsci's edit [50], whereas Mathsci's edit [51] clearly undid FS' [52]. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:18, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I've ne'er been a big fan of technicalities. For background (for others) Reception of Johann Sebastian Bach's music. Also, I don't think we should be extending "benefit of doubt" to established editors over technicalities - they should know better; and it's not like the problem between FS and Mathsci is something that begun today (and also per WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY). FS also seems to have a propensity for, exactly, arguing technicalities: saying that this somehow isn't a "content fork" while it's basically a slightly modified copy of this is very much too close, to my taste, to something like WP:WIKILAWYERING... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 20:31, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Without seeming to be ominous (I'm not), FS' actions are not going without notice. It is important to understand that FS' actions are irrespective of Mathsci's. Mathsci isn't responsible for FS' actions nor vice versa. If one or both violate policies, guidelines, or sanctions, I am confident appropriate actions will be taken. I believe in this case that Mathsci's actions created a bright line, unequivocal violation of the IBAN with FS. This is why I took the action that I did. FS' actions do not provide an excuse under which Mathsci can act. WP:IBAN isn't written that way, nor should it be. If it were, it would create a situation where edit warring was accepted under an IBAN so long as the person who did it was under the IBAN with the person with whom they were edit warring. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:47, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is a perennial problem, with those two, yes, but also with the IBAN model itself, overall, especially when it involves a relatively narrow scope of articles, where the IABAN'd editors are therefore more likely to meet (if not greet). Recently seen the acrimony it still didn't prevent from rising to the fore with the Newimpartial and the now indeffed Lilipo25 IBAN, for example. But how to get around that challenge?
To that: a few years back, I tried to account for that problematic with a custom DS (GMO) IBAN for Tryptofish and SashiRolls, which also added a 2nd-edit page prohibition (which ended up giving Tryptofish a huge advantage, since they began editing many of the affected pages first). The sanction was overturned soon thereafter, anyway, for unrelated reasons (of which I am largely unfamiliar with to this day), or rather, converted into a normal IBAN, but one-way against SR. Anyway, regardless, in hindsight, I later recognized that this custom page-level IBAN was a poorly-formed idea on my part. Sorry, this is probably not helping much. In any case, it's a conundrum. El_C20:38, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that an IBAN is an effective tool in situations such as this. Both FS and Mathsci are heavily involved in classical music areas of interest on the project. They are dancing on the same floor in close proximity to each other. They are going to bump into each other and cause an IBAN violation. My concern with this incident is that Mathsci's edit came so close on the heels of FS' edit, and clearly undid what FS has done. I can't think that was anything other than intentional. I also do not think that a topic ban would work in this case either. I'm open to suggestions on what we could do instead in this case. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:51, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Agree that in this case the IBAN is showing itself to be very much de facto ineffective. Short of the almighty Banhammer, a topic ban would be the logical next step (even if that would mean we'd lose 2 valuable contributors in an area - then again WP:UNBLOCKABLES); but then this has been going on for far too long... A real conundrum, as El C states. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 20:59, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As Hammersoft noted, when the editors in question have been utterly ignoring their IBAN as though it never existed, there's no reason to expect that a TBAN would be treated any differently. M Imtiaz (talk · contribs) 00:22, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
At least a TBAN has much less grey areas. "Classical music (in the usual broad [common practice era, c. 1600-20th century; if we need to extend to include contemporary music why not] or even in a very broad [all of documented Western music, from the middle ages to the present day] sense), broadly construed" is much harder to claim technicalities than "technically didn't alter the other's edits". Then if we have further ignoring of sanctions, the outcome is predictable... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 00:30, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
endorse block regrettable but inevitable. We need the expertise, but not at the price of the melodrama. No call on whether FS should be blocked as well. I wish people who have so much to offer could get along and not fight. What a waste. --Deepfriedokra(talk)00:38, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
endorse (Non-administrator comment) very regrettably as per DFO, but this seems to be correct enforcement of an interaction ban (even if it was on a minor, if clear cut, infraction) and there's no sign that further disruptive behaviour between these two editors which we're trying to prevent would stop at this stage. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 02:17, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Pianissimo At their recent RfA, Hammersoft said that their username was an "intentional oxymoron. Imagine lightly tapping with a hammer...". But a three-month block from all of Wikipedia seems to be quite a heavy blow. Please consider that there is now an option to make a partial block and this seems to be appropriate when editors are treading on each other's toes in particular places. In this case, Mathsci was breathing down FS's neck at Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, BWV 1. Why not give Mathsci an indefinite block from that article alone? If they should seem to follow FS to another such article then block them from that one too and so on. If the parties observe a creeping limitation of their access to such articles, then they may learn to be more circumspect. See also proportionality. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:22, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
We have been proportional. The community should not need to mollycoddle editors who want to edit here. Mathsci has already had lots of chances and warnings. They've already gone through a series of escalating blocks and found their editing completely restricted for periods, but seem to have failed to learn anything from it. So frankly it's getting to the stage where it's becoming apparent they seem incapable of learning "to be more circumspect" and there's definitely zero reason to think partial blocks will do it. Partial blocks are useful, and perhaps if there was no previous iban violations, a partial block from one article and maybe its talk page would be a good way to try and deal with the problem instead of a 24 hour block or whatever. But it's ridiculous to suggest an ever expanding list of partial blocks because an editor refuses to be serious with their iban. If an editor can't resist the urge to poke another editor even when we've told them in no uncertain terms they need to resist, they can fuck off, no matter how good their general work is. Nil Einne (talk) 10:49, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Andrew Davidson: It is indeed a heavy blow, and one I didn't want to take. I tried very hard to avoid it. Please see this thread, where a final warning was given for something that other administrators likely would have blocked Mathsci but I chose instead to warn for, with a custom written personal warning. This block was preceded by other blocks for violations of the IBAN and other infractions of the IBAN. The message is not getting through. If lightly tapping the hammer isn't getting through, heavier blows might. This is the action that I've taken. To continue your musical analogy (which seems apropos, given the subject area in which Mathsci and FS work), we were at pianissimo years ago, before the IBAN was put in place. With all the disputes that happened around that, we reached mezzo piano before the IBAN. At the IBAN institution, we reached mezzo forte. With the block this past November, we were at double forte. With the month long block in February, we were at triple forte. We're now in what I've heard some brass players like to say as "blow their ears off" territory that would make Tchaikovsky proud. I've suggested, and pinged you to, your alternative for partial blocks to Mathsci. If Mathsci is amenable, I will start a sub-thread here to seek community input on what would be a novel sanction (so far as I'm aware). --Hammersoft (talk) 13:52, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hammersoft's block is well within the range of reasonable admin actions available to him; indeed, before the block, Mathsci received more advice on how to avoid a block than many might have received—or expected. And yet. Someone is clearly at fault in that equation; it is not the administrator. ——Serial18:26, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Google Street View
I have been trying to add information about museums that have been added in 2020 and 2021 on this page, but for a reason, the edition is removed, I have been looking for the information for these museums, in which I found references that specifically cite that these museums have been added to Google Street View and on a certain date. I have written several comments regarding that this information should be on the talk page but no one gives me a clear answer regarding this information. What should I do?--JSeb05 (talk) 21:41, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What happens is that the User FDW777, keeps reverting my edits and the information that added the page, this information has exact date and are from reliable sources, I have tried to talk to the user, but he has not given me a clear answer.--JSeb05 (talk) 22:35, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry if I'm not good at editing or citing references, I'm new to editing pages. These sites were added to Google Street View in 2020, first of all, the page mentions in multiple sections about the different museums around the world (For example, the National Museum of Iraq), these virtual tours are considered as Street View. In 2020, Google cooperated with different museums in Germany, Italy and Austria for virtual tours, I gave sources and dates of the Street View as well as news reports of such events., these sources talk specifically about Street View (1)(2)(3). The reason why I added that map of Turkey is because the red lines represent the urban centers of those cities or towns that were added in March 2020. That tool compares different layers of blue lines and detects which ones are added by Google on a certain date.--JSeb05 (talk) 17:22, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
FDW777 is correct, JSeb05, that if you add some content and it's removed then you should discuss this on the talk page. It takes a lot of experience to find out which pages reflect common practice, which pages are interpreted how and which pages are not really looked at. In seven years I don't think I've ever seen Wikipedia:Discuss and Vote before, but the "failed proposal" sign at the top should be a dead giveaway. WP:BRD is a page that has a lot more meaning to the community. It's just very annoying if someone keeps adding the same thing again, even if it's alongside discussion—it serves to highlight your differences and make things feel like a fight, whereas in a discussion one person might learn something new and change their mind, or two people might find their views actually align quite a lot and there is a compromise to have (e.g. the content belongs on a different article, or some of it is actually fine for this article). — Bilorv (talk) 23:14, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry again, I did not know about it, I will try to be more careful when adding this kind of information, thank you very much for telling me this.--JSeb05 (talk) 23:34, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Motion regarding Tenebrae
Due to a conflict of interest, User:Tenebrae is indefinitely banned from any mainspace edits related to Frank Lovece or Maitland McDonagh, broadly construed. Violations will be enforced by escalating blocks. They may request edits on talkpages. This restriction may be appealed in six months. For the Arbitration Committee, Barkeep49 (talk) 12:50, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Mikehawk10 stated in closing: Some of the sources provided by those who argue Turkey are a belligerent do not seem to strictly indicate anything beyond support, but it should be noted that support does not preclude Turkey from being a belligerent. Future reporting and investigations may change this, and a new RfC may be appropriate at that time, but there does not appear to be consensus at this time among editors that Turkey qualifies a belligerent.
I believe there is enough due WP:WEIGHT to list Turkey as a full belligerent and list the Turkish leaders involved as commanders and leaders. I provided a number of sources for this relating to Turkey deploying Syrian mercenaries (the article infobox currently erroneously lists the mercenaries under Azerbaijan) and fighter jets and also reliable sources confirming Turkish involvement, which I will quickly recap. I have also since come across three more incriminating sources for Turkish involvement that were not included in the RfC (1, possibly 2, were published afterward). These sources include Columbia University, JISS (note that Israel provided support to Azerbaijan), and even an Azeri source, Turan Information Agency.
The mercenaries were recruited by Turkey and transported on Turkish military aircraft.[53][54][55][56] Many major third-party sources also described Turkey's role as "decisive" and "critical".[57][58][59][60]
These sources are currently cited in the infobox:
the transfer of foreign terrorist fighters by Turkey from Syria and elsewhere to Nagorno-Karabakh, as confirmed by international actors, including the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair countries - European Parliament[61]
The presence of the Turkish fighter aircraft ... demonstrate[s] direct military involvement by Turkey that goes far beyond already-established support, such as its provision of Syrian fighters and military equipment to Azerbaijani forces. - Stratfor[62]
Ankara denies its troops are involved in fighting but Aliyev has acknowledged some Turkish F-16 fighter jets remained in Azerbaijan after a military drill this summer - Reuters[63]
The European Parliament has made an official statement condemning Turkey for its involvement in the war and confirming the Turkish government was responsible for deploying "terrorist fighters" (their choice of words), Stratfor has literally stated Turkish military involvement goes far beyond support and confirmed the presence of Turkish fighter jets, and Reuters confirmed that even Azerbaijan admitted that Turkish F-16 fighters were provided.
And now, here are the three additional sources I have since found:
This page identifies perpetrators of the conflict in Artsakh, highlighting...(ii) Turkish commanders overseeing and advising the operations
1. Defense Minister Hulusi Akar Akar, Turkish Defense Minister since 2018, was one of the first Turkish officials to make public threats against Armenia after Azerbaijani aggression in July 2020. In a meeting with Azerbaijani high command that month, he pledged Turkey's support to the Azerbaijani cause in Artsakh. Following that meeting, Turkish weapon shipments were delivered to Azerbaijan. Akar was in Baku on September 28-30 and played an important role overseeing all operations in Artsakh. His Ph.D was on WWI-era Armenia and American views of the Armenian Genocide, which Turkey still denies.
2. Lieutenant General Şeref Öngay Öngay is the Commander of the Third Army of the Turkish Ground Forces, which is based in eastern Turkey and has responsibility for the Caucuses...The Armenian delegation at OSCE say he “took part in planning and conducting” Artsakh operations. He was also spotted in Azerbaijan on 4 September 2020, as well as October, planning joint operations with the Azerbaijani military.
3. Major General Bahtiyar Ersay Ersay, whose title is officially “Chief of the Operations Directorate of the Land Forces of Turkey,” oversaw the Azerbaijani General Staff in Artsakh following the sacking of former Azerbaijani Chief of Staff Najmeddin Sadikov...Ersay was confirmed to reside in Azerbaijan as recently as March 15th 2021, using the title "Commander of the Turkish Mission in Azerbaijan". Since the Azerbaijani Chief of the General Staff still remains vacant, and Ersay has been seen wearing Azerbaijani military attire, it is likely he is de facto in charge of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces.
Ersay was also involved in Syria and Libya, potentially recruiting and overseeing the mercenaries that fought there. Because of this and his commando past, he is likely the Turkish commander most directly involved with these jihadi mercenaries.
4. Major General Göksel Kahya Kahya is an important Turkish drone commander who heads the Turkish Air Force’s 1st Supply and Maintenance Center. Prior to the Artsakh conflict, he led the deployment of Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones in the Libyan Civil War. This drone expertise was then shifted to Azerbaijan, where he was based since July 2020 and oversaw the well-documented use of TB2 drones. These drones both were instrumental for the Azerbaijani victory in the conflict and made possible the devastating human rights abuses against civilians.
5. Adnan Tanrıverdi Tanrıverdi is a retired Turkish general and the founder of SADAT Inc. International Defense Consultancy, a private defense contracting company started in 2012...Tanrıverdi has significant influence over Erdogan, using SADAT against Erdogan enemies in the "coup" in 2016, and helping re-organize and purge the Turkish Armed Forces. As a result, SADAT has been referred to as a shadow military. Reportedly, he and SADAT have played an important role in recruiting, equipping, and transporting about 3,000 Syrian mercenaries to both Libya and Artsakh. Importantly, SADAT is also the primary organization training these Turkish-backed mercenary proxies. Though he lacks any official position in the Turkish government/military, his influence is significant.
All of these figures should be added to 'Commanders and leaders' in addition to Erdogan at the top of them.
Turkey strongly supported the decision by Azerbaijan to begin in September 2020 a military campaign intended to wrest back the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh from Armenia. Evidence rapidly began to accumulate that Ankara was maintaining a similar pipeline of Syrian client fighters to the battleground, as had been the case in vis Libya. The components and tools of this strategy were familiar. Again, official denials from Ankara and Baku were rapidly belied by reports from the battle zone.
Once again, the Syrian fighters were recruited by the SNA, in cooperation with SADAT. The fighters were offered monthly fees of $1,500-2,000 for agreeing to serve in the southern Caucasus. The contracts, again, were for three to six months. The main recruitment centers were in the cities of Afrin, Al-Bab, Ras al-Ain, and Tel Abyad. The route taken out of Syria, according to fighters’ testimony, was also similar. Fighters crossed the border at Kilis and were then transported to the Gaziantep Airport. From there, SADAT-chartered A-400 transport aircraft flew them to Istanbul Airport, and from there they boarded flights to Baku, Azerbaijan.
The specific SNA-associated militias used for this deployment differed from those who provided the manpower for Libya. The main pools of manpower for this deployment were the Sultan Murad, Suleyman al-Shah, Hamza and Failaq al-Sham brigades. The first two of these brigades draw their support from ethnic Turkmen populations in northern Syria, and hence may have been assumed to have had a greater natural affinity for the Turkic Azeris than would Syrian Sunni Muslims of Arab ethnicity.
But in its general contours, the deployment in Nagorno-Karabakh resembled the blueprint established in Libya. In both cases, the role of SADAT was paramount in the recruitment, organization, and transport of the fighters; the SNA was the chief pool of manpower; and the deployment took place alongside the use of specialists from the official Turkish armed forces.
One of the Turkish commanders died in a helicopter crash earlier this month, and Azeri news agency Turan Information Agency confirmed his role:
As a result of a plane crash with a military helicopter, which occurred on Thursday, March 4, in eastern Turkey, Turkish General Osman Erbash, who was at the origin of the creation of the Bayraktar combat drones, was killed.
The son-in-law of Turkish President Erdogan, the owner of a company that produces Turkish drones, Selcuk Bayraktar, wrote about this in his Telegram channel.
Their cooperation consisted in testing developments for the combat use of drones.
In addition, General Erbash in Turkey is called one of the authors of the strategy used by Azerbaijan to succeed in the Second Karabakh War.
I trimmed everything not directly related to my argument. And if you bothered to look at my discussion with the closer, you would know he suggested there was "significant additional information or context was left out of the discussion" and encouraged making a closure review. --Steverci (talk) 23:43, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
User:Steverci - You will recall that you brought this dispute to DRN in December 2020. When I began the moderated discussion that ended in my launching the RFC on 14 January 2020, I wrote, on 22 December 2020: "Be civil and concise". I have often written that overly long statements may make the poster feel better, but they do not clarify the issues or help resolve a content dispute. A 1460-word closure appeal does not clarify the issues. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:40, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Admins and editors: I made a long unsuccessful attempt to resolve this dispute in December 2020 and January 2021 that ended in composing and posting the RFC. This is another area where there is battleground editing because there have been battles, and where ArbCom has imposed discretionary sanctions. My sympathies to anyone who tries to help resolve it. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:40, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Is this article move protected? There's no indication of such, but there's also no "move" tab (although the talk page has one). The article is written with "Imperial State of Iran" as the subject matter. Having "Pahlavi dynasty" as the article title is discordant. Either the article should be re-written to match the title, or it should be moved to "Imperial State of Iran" with "Pahlavi dynasty" as a redirect. The current combination is not ideal. Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:30, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Reading this, I had a faint feeling of déjà vu. Checking some more, I found this contribution from me when I came across the article by coincidence in 2017. Nobody responded, I forgot about it, and the curious "former country"="royal house" situation is still there. There is currently a split proposal discussed in the talk page, but with very little participation. The solution is obviously to split the article, but the level of interest is probably too low to expect anyone to do the job. --T*U (talk) 10:51, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Time sensitive main page image issue
There's been some concern raised that the image for WP:TFA (currently on the main page) is unnecessarily graphic. There's a discussion at Talk:Main_Page#Buruli_ulcers which I participated in, which I would tentatively describe as having a consensus to remove or replace the images, although no consensus about what to replace them with. Could an administrator have a look and see whether it is appropriate at this time to remove or replace the images? The TFA coordinators have been pinged, but as far as I can tell none have responded, and the problem is time sensitive on account of involving the current main page. Finally, I apologize if this is not an appropriate forum for such a request. Tamwin (talk) 06:00, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This was all kicked off by an article in The Daily Dot. (To quote Arbitrator Beeblebrox at the COIN discussion: "We have advised the oversight team that after careful review, we do not believe linking to the article constitutes suppressible outing. The article includes Frank Lovece's denial that he is Tenebrae, and per WP:RSP the Daily Dot is considered a generally reliable source for internet culture. Whether any link to the article should be on-wiki is therefore purely an editorial decision. It really does not matter if Lovece and Tenebrae are the same person or not, the COI is manifest and well documented". Based on that, I think it's fair to include the link.)
The COI promotion of Frank Lovece and Maitland McDonagh has been going on for almost the entire 15 years of Tenebrae's presence here. During that time, a number of editors have tried to address the problem and have been blocked for outing. Tenebrae has been well aware that he has been breaking Wikipedia policy, and appears to have used Wikipedia policy to silence his critics. But even without any outing claims, as Beeblebrox says, the COI is manifest and well documented.
On the basis of his chronic abuse of Wikipedia for promotional COI purposes, I think a topic ban is insufficent. I propose a community ban for User:Tenebrae. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:13, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
A sentence I meant to include but forgot: In my view, someone who has been so deceitful for so long, and has pushed the subjects of their COI so intensively, should not be trusted to work on any part of Wikipedia. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:22, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Supportish If it is true that "a number of editors have tried to address the problem and have been blocked for outing. Tenebrae has been well aware that he has been breaking Wikipedia policy, and appears to have used Wikipedia policy to silence his critics." That is battleground beyond the pale, and no trust can now be given. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:20, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support a topic ban might be effective if it actually covered the breadth of the COI editing, but it does not, so cannot. Combined with the sheer egregiousness of the behaviour (15 years of persistent, consistent promotion) and compared with the somewhat light-weighted response (a t-ban which all but reads as encouraging an appeal in six months (yes I know that's a matter of interpretation, but that's how it will be read, and should have been far more robust: had it been, this discussion might not be necessary)) ban imposed by the community is appropriate. ——Serial11:54, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
For clarification: our wording does not intend to encourage an appeal. ArbCom offers an appeal for essentially every action we take. It also does not mean we have to grant them. We hear a truly fabulous number of appeals each year and grant very few. Additionally, our topic ban does not preclude the community making a wider topic ban. CaptainEekEdits Ho Cap'n!⚓15:10, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support what tips the scale over for me is the misusing of Wikipedia's inner processes to silence his critics. This behavior is unacceptable in a collaborative environment, and indeed battleground behavior beyond the pale. This is deception of large magnitude. Jip Orlando (talk) 13:16, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I won't formally 'support' this proposal, since I don't really consider it appropriate for someone who has been as inactive as I have been on Wikipedia for some years to do so. I would however point out that in addition to the other issues already mentioned, there seems to be strong circumstantial evidence (as noted in the Daily Dot article) of sockpuppet accounts being used by Tenebrae. He has previously admitted to editing as an IP in a manner that led to one previous block (see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Tenebrae/Archive) and there are a number of other named accounts and IPs which seem not only to have edited the same articles as Tenebrae (including i.e. the Lovece biography), but to have otherwise consistently edited in the same broader intersection of topics that Tenebrae did. It is probably pointless to start a formal sockpuppet investigation now (the IPs would certainly be 'stale') but this may also merit consideration here. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:29, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Second this Like Andy I'm a long time from properly editing so won't interfere in the current management of the project by supporting or opposing. I do share the same concerns that if the likes of Skippu or Hal Raglan - which though stale appear to be socks of his - reappear or similar other accounts start showing the same traits then they should be investigated. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 19:05, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Weak oppose. It may be worth looking at broadening the scope of the topic ban if Tenebrae doesn't take the hint, but his edits away from areas where he has (or appears to have) a close connection are constructive. People make bad judgements, and they do strange things when they feel threatened and sometimes it's difficult for them to back down. Give him some rope and maybe he'll see the error of his ways, or maybe he'll hang himself. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts?13:50, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support - What a mess this entire thing is, including the sanctions levied on community members who tried to bring this out in the past. ArbCom would be well advised to spend a little more energy on protecting editors who have nothing but the good of Wikipedia at heart, as too often they get steamrolled. Protecting whistle-blowers is just as important as protecting editors from being outed, and both must be accommodated. In any case, from what I can determine from reading the Daily Dot article, the discussion at the ArbCom noticeboard, and some various other things, it seems to me that Tenebrae, whether o not they are the person that they are supposed to be, has used Wikipedia for their own purposes for a long time, and a CBAN is well-deserved. Beyond My Ken (talk) 13:53, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support Using a source that you or someone with a very close connection created to support wrongnaming someone is absolutely disgraceful behaviour and brings the project into disrepute. There can be no other solution but a ban. SmartSE (talk) 14:37, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
With great prejudice. ArbCom faltered. A topic ban isn't enough. This brings the project into disrepute. El_C14:39, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think we "faltered" at all. We did the part that had to be done by arbcom, an off-wiki private discussion about Tenebrae's conflict of interest. It involved both off-wiki websites and suppressed material, so there was no way to have a public case about that specific aspect. That opened the door to freer discussion that is going on now. There's nothing here the community can't decide for itself. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:08, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Beeblebrox, it's my contention that ArbCom's action was too soft. Not sure why the off-wiki facets of this serve as justification for this action not being potent enough. What about the on-wiki issues? That isn't to say the community can't handle this matter, either, but I do feel that invoking that explanation sidesteps my point. El_C17:20, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Having thought about it some more, I think it was clear to ArbCom that there's enough information available publicly for the community to decide on the appropriate level of sanction. And ArbCom did the minimum they thought necessary, effectively passing it over to the community to take further if we wanted. I think ArbCom's action was good. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:29, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I do think that an ArbCom block would have been the appropriate action here, which of course doesn't at all precludes it being followed by a community ban (we've seen such things before, I believe), but maybe I'm in the minority thinking the "minimum" was good enough. I don't feel I need to press the point further, though. This doesn't change my thinking that this is a good Committee batch, but I do think a more decisive action was called for in this case. For whatever that's worth. El_C17:42, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If we had done a full case and solicited evidence submissions from the community, I suspect we would have come to very different conclusions, but it's kind of hard to solicit evidence when you are discussing something privately. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:48, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I just presumed that with how long it took the Committee to investigate this, enough on-wiki evidence would have came up to remove any doubt. But maybe not...? Again, I don't see the need to press this further (further), though. El_C17:53, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
very weak oppose in favour of a very broadly interpreted topic ban from anything to do with Frank Lovcae and/or Maitland McDonagh, in every namespace, that is strictly enforced. That would explicitly including adding them as a source, suggesting or commenting on their use as a source anywhere on Wikipedia, no editing of articles (or their talk pages) about or significantly covering them or their work or which make extensive use of either as a source (defined as more three or citations to works where one or both is listed as a contributor). There would be exactly three exceptions: (1) They may (but are obviously not required) to discuss their COI on their user and/or user talk page. (2) They may answer questions about their past edits, if explicitly asked. (3) To the extent necessary, they may discuss these topics as part of any permitted appeal of their restrictions. Any violation would result in a block, of at least 1 month, without further warning. Thryduulf (talk) 15:11, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support per Tenebrae in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2019. starship.paint (exalt)
Tenebrae in 2009: [64]blatantly promotional article ... everyone has the responsibility to follow Wikipedia policies and guidelines. Please also note the policy at WP:COI.
Tenebrae in 2010: [65]This article, whose virtually sole editor is the subject himself, suffered from extreme and extensive WP:NOTADVERTISING and WP:COI violations
Tenebrae in 2011: [66]Wikipedia admins take a very, very dim view of article subjects adding multiple links to their own sites. Read WP:COI.
Tenebrae in 2012: [67]The editor ... is clearly involved ... when he or she created this article, has has added promotional content. I would strongly suggest that this editor cease attempting to use Wikipedia for ... promotional purposes, as per WP:NOTADVERTISING, WP:COI and other Wikipedia policies and guidelines
Tenebrae in 2013: [68]blatant WP:TONE, WP:COI and POV vios
Tenebrae in 2015: [69]This is some of the most blatantly COI editing I've ever seen on Wikipedia
Tenebrae in 2016: [70]I would ask that COI editor not to edit-war
Tenebrae in 2017: [71]apparently promotional COI editor.
Tenebrae in 2019: [72]I'll see if the percentages of apparently COI contributions has changed since August 2014
Support. We issue topic bans for editors who get into trouble in a particular area. Users who abuse the encyclopedia and pull the wool over other editors' eyes for their own personal gain, we ban them. This is such a serious violation of everything we are supposed to stand for, there's only one answer. Drmies (talk) 17:43, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support This is a shocking violation of community standards by someone who repeatedly used accusations of COI against other people (probably correctly in most cases). Trust is gone. Cullen328Let's discuss it18:32, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support A long-term abuse of process and of trust by an experienced editor is not something that can be fully addressed by a simple topic ban. Meters (talk) 19:08, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Very strong support after years upon years of tendentious, unethical COI editing, it is apparent that Tenebrae cannot be trusted to uphold some of the core tenets of Wikipedia and has no respect for WP:BLP (which is related to both his COI editing and other wild indiscretions.) Add to that the other problematic editing, when faced with criticism, often claims "I didn't do it!" despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, making any sort of attempt at collaboration a total time sink. VAXIDICAE💉20:35, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support Given the length and scope of the COI editing, if there was no ban here, I'd be hard-pressed to think of *any* situation that would call for one. This wasn't a simple oopsy-daisy. CoffeeCrumbs (talk) 21:19, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support He engaged in decades of unchecked, cynical COI editing. Someone who would engage in such a thing while manipulating process to avoid scrutiny (and get people blocked for whistleblowing) is not a person we want editing the encyclopedia. ♟♙ (talk) 21:53, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support we block or ban new editors for COI on the regular, so make it the same across the board. Considering this has been going on for as long as it has, there's really no excuse. Sro23 (talk) 00:21, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I do not know all the facts of the case yet to voice support or not, this is a lot to read, but the "If you look across my 155,000 edits, 99% of them have been constructive and useful" defense is seriously offputting. Like, "officer I drove without drinking 99 times, why are you giving me guff for #100?" ValarianB (talk) 01:19, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That depends on your jurisdiction, how far over the limit you were, and any other circumstances (did you injure anyone, were you speeding, did you run any red lights, etc). In the UK, the starting point for the least serious drink driving offences is 12-16 months disqualification.[73]Thryduulf (talk) 02:22, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Tenebrae keeps talking about "one offense", but clearly the community is discussing multiple ongoing offenses over the course of 15 years. That Tenebrae won't admit to that is irrelevant, it's what the community thinks about it that matters -- but Tenebrae doesn't think this discussion is representative of the community, here he says of this discussion: "The group is composed virtually entirely of people I've been on opposite sides of RFCs with the past, people with a personal dislike...". Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:58, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well obviously the plural of anecdote is not data and the claim is "virtually entirely" not "entirely", but as a data point the only discussions (other than this one) that Tenebrae have both been involved with appear to be:
The only article page we have both edited within a year of each other is Melanie C[74] where Tenebrae added references (to UPI) 237 days after I reverted some vandalism. Hardly evidence of a personal dislike even if we were (sort of) on opposite sides of an RFC about template:Cquote. Thryduulf (talk) 03:31, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support Unfortunately, their responses below and in other noticeboard threads indicate that they don't understand the fundamental COI issues at stake here, so there's not really a basis for community trust at this point. DanCherek (talk) 02:19, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as I would have rather seen Tenebrae given the opportunity to work with a topic ban on the COI topics, and I would also add the other articles from the COI thread to those as well. I saw his AN/I thread at the beginning of this year and declined to comment on it at that time, and I can't see this ending in anything other than a site ban, but my hope is that however unlikely it may seem at the moment, he can eventually make a return after admitting to any wrongdoing and commit to avoid further wrongdoing, and offer a heartfelt apology to specific editors he may have wronged and the community as a whole, accepting the ARBCOM topic ban and committing to working only on articles to which he has no professional or personal connection. BOZ (talk) 04:19, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support Arbcom did their job on this and the community has its work to do also. Full support, COI concerns using the wikipedia allows me to fully support a site ban. I wouldn't pile on but this is worth it for me. Govindaharihari (talk) 08:03, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support - as has been said above, we've banned people for far less before. Tenebrae is clearly a net negative to the project what with seemingly using and abusing Wikipedia for personal gain, and seemingly not being on the same planet as the BLP policy. ƒirefly ( t · c ) 08:51, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Article was by banned user User:Hillbillyholiday, who had a history of personal clashes with me, cherrypicked selective information, ignoring whatever didn't fit his thesis, among other editorial lapses, and was a poor attempt at WP:OUTING. The subject in the article denied any connection
During that time, a number of editors have tried to address the problem and have been blocked for outing. Are there banned/retired-in-frustration editors owed an apology or reinstatement? Schazjmd(talk)18:08, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Other than me Cloven Freak was indeffed, but Cloven Freak is the pseudonym used in the Wikipediocracy investigation, and is likely the comment referred to in the Daily Dot piece: "When Wikipediocracy asked if Tenebrae wrote the Drag Race story for Newsday, the edit was "oversighted," totally removed from the page history so that even administrators cannot view it.", so that doesn't count. Nola Carveth was blocked directly for bringing up Tenebrae on Jimbotalk in 2015, but again it was a throwaway account. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:26, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I raised this problem about Tenebrae with several Admins from 2012 till I retired in 2015. I'm also named in the Daily Dot on that Basis. Although none were acted upon, my biggest gripe was that in one disagreement on X-Men: First Class he refused to engage citing that I had a COI - eventually to the point I submitted myself to a COI investigation and was cleared. Yet any time his COI was raised it was brushed away. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 18:55, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, using throwaway accounts to do things that you know perfectly well will get you blocked is exactly the wrong way to address a COI issue. This should have been caught and dealt with sooner, I think we can all see that, and it sounds like Mr. Jamieson here tried to do it the right way, it's unfortunate that that effort failed. (do you have links to any of those old discussions? Might be worth looking at for clues as to why this was not taken seriously) Beeblebrox (talk) 19:07, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Looking in from the outside, using throwaways or posting offsite seem to be the -only- avenues. Honestly a pretty perfect use of IAR. Arkon (talk) 20:12, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I made a broad description of the problem at RFC:COI, but any actual discussions I had took place off-wiki to avoid the potential pitfall. In the emails I still have, I addressed the problem with Dweller(in response to the original Demi Moore Talkpage issue) and Starblind (Which was in response to a later issue he was having with Tenebrae), but in those make reference to having passed more of the information to Alison and NewYorkBrad who I think like Dweller were heavily involved in the Demi Moore mediation. In that Demi Moore debate, I strongly suspected Tenebrae Socked as an IP to support his own position, but he repeatedly denied it. I think I asked AndytheGrump to contact me off-wiki about that potential socking, but nothing ultimately came of it. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 22:58, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
At the very real risk of being attacked rather being engaged with as a normal human being, I'd like to ask for perspective. May we do that?
If you look across my 155,000 edits, 99% of them have been constructive and useful. I've created more than 100 articles about comics creators, plus popular articles such as the important List of African-American firsts. Please look at the support that this overwhelming bulk of my edits has gotten through the years. So suggesting that I was on Wikipedia solely for nefarious COI purposes is simply false, as any reasonably minded person can see via the objective, on-the-record Contributions page. A great deal of what I've done is RS-cite birthdates, birth names and birthplaces. (Additionally, you'll see many edits on the two named pages are neutral, non-contentious grammar and copy-editing and cite-formatting.)
Some of you are basing your judging on me as a human being based solely on 1% of my total output. I'd like to quote from WP:COI: "That someone has a conflict of interest is a description of a situation, not a judgement about that person's opinions, integrity, or good faith." (emphasis added).
And please note, too, that Lovece footnotes are in some cases the only RS source, to my knowledge, for certain things; if not, by all means replace them. But leaving BLP claims uncited because one journalist is being blackballed seems counterproductive. To my knowledge, David Schwimmer never directly said anywhere else that he was not related to Lacey Schwimmer and did not appear in Biloxi Blues. To my knowledge, Lori Loughlin had never personally clarified the conflicting claims of her birthplace. And though it's not a BLP article, there is no other source, to my knowledge, of the distributor of Belladonna of Sadness clarifying and explaining the myriad different running times of that movie. I'm not sure why we'd remove these kinds of facts and clarifications from Wikipedia.
So let's please have a dialog and not a crucifixion. I recognize some names as editors from whom I've taken a different side in RfC debates, so this strikes me as perhaps imbalanced. I'd like to see some of my many collaborative colleagues join this discussion, if that's alright with everyone. I'd like to believe it would be, and that this isn't being deliberately titled.
So no statement on the actual issue at hand here then? No comment on your alleged COI connection with Frank Lovece? That's what you need to address. What, if any, is your connection with Frank Lovece? Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 20:33, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, and re: "I'd like to see some of my many collaborative colleagues join this discussion, if that's alright with everyone." Nobody is stopping anybody from taking part here, but please be aware of WP:Canvassing (in case you haven't come across it before), which prohibits the solicitation of favoured contributors. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 20:47, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Tenebrae, not to pile on, but to bolster Boing's query: please act with a modicum of grace on your way out and clear all of that up, once and for all, expressly so and for the record. El_C20:51, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Tenebrae, you've quoted the COI guideline out of context. Where it refers to someone having a COI as "a description of a situation, not a judgement about that person's opinions, integrity, or good faith", it isn't referring to someone who acts as if he doesn't have that COI. SarahSV(talk)21:02, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
A great deal of what I've done is RS-cite birthdates, birth names and birthplaces. you claim this an awful lot, but a quick look at your recent contributions show everything is not on the up and up with regard to WP:BLP, especially given your excessive citing and even replacement of RS with United Press International, which isn't inherently unreliable but the sources you're using are clearly not reviewed by any sort of editorial team and are clearly taken from Wikipedia itself.
I could continue but I'd hardly construe adding non-rs and replacing actual RS or adding non-rs and passing it off as RS in a BLP is not "good editing" and I'd expect someone with 155k edits to understand how to actually identify a reliable source vs. one that is clearly circular and copied from Wikipedia. VAXIDICAE💉21:06, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Conflict of interest has never been an issue in my 15 years on Wikipedia — where, unfortunately, those years have been the occasional incident of obsessive editors attempting to "dig up dirt" on someone who articulately disagrees with them, and who throw any evidence-free allegation they can think up. The past couple of weeks have seen these same editors falsely accuse me of WP:3RR and sock-puppetry, both investigations of which were quickly quashed by admins who immediately saw right through them. My edits and my character have withstood similar scrutiny in past such attacks, and believe me, any actual COI would have been uncovered long, long ago.
And:
...corny as you might think, I have the integrity and ethics that come from years in my profession, and I would never commit nor countenance conflict of interest. Period.
Tenebrae writes above that "Lovece footnotes are in some cases the only RS source, to my knowledge, for certain things". A statement which might possibly sometimes be true, though I have to question, after looking at this [75] particular edit, whether Tenebrae actually understands what 'RS' means. Tenebrae cites his favourite source from an article written in 1977. Lovece was born in 1958. The article cited (no longer online at the original URL, but available in an archived form) is from a fanzine (Tenebrae states this in the edit summary). An article written by someone aged nineteen or so. Even ignoring any possible CoI issues, that isn't remotely 'RS' for anything. Tenerbrae routinely hectors others about the need for 'RS' (see his edit summaries), but has a self-evident blind spot when it comes to a source which he seems to have an as-yet unexplained entirely inordinate preference for. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:58, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Any of us, obviously, are free to replace any edit they want to. My sole concern is that BLP claims and niche claims like the running times of newly restored cuts of obscure art films be RS cited, no matter by who. If you can find other RS cites, go for it. Of course. Tenebrae (talk) 00:21, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You haven't explained why you think that a nineteen-year-old writing in a fanzine should be seen as RS. As for BLP claims, I'm personally of the belief that biographies which are heavily dependent on material which cannot be found in more than a single source are generally a bad idea. That isn't Wikipedia policy though, obviously.
In any case, the proposal here isn't to remove every single citation to Lovece from Wikipedia. Instead, any edits to article space are, as I understand it, intended instead to rectify the undue prominence Lovece (and his employers) have been given by the selective inclusion of material which could equally have been cited elsewhere. And also intended to rectify situations where RS policy seems not to have been appropriately applied. If Lovece (as an adult journalist) is a valid source for anything (I have no particular reason to think he can't be cited for some things), he can be used. Like any other source, where appropriate, in a non-partisan manner. By editors who don't raise concerns about CoI editing. AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:04, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
So, I see ... no good faith discussion but snottiness and attacks. That comment "C'mon guys, I was on Wikipedia PARTLY for nefarious COI purposes!" snarkily and unfairly ignores more than 154,000 edits to falsely make it seem that a statistically insignificant 1% or less of problematic edits is the only thing in the world.
And to clarify: Stating an WP:RS-cited objective fact about someone you may or may not know is not a conflict of interest. Objective facts are objective facts. If I were to cite that someone I knew wrote a book, and I list it in the bibliography with the publisher, isbn # etc., that is not a conflict of interest.
I'm interested in something one person said, which was effectively, "Sure, invite anyone you want. But don't invite them — that's canvassing." Quite a catch-22. How about if I invite solely editors who have commented on my talk page, whoever they are, friend or foe. Would that satisfy any concerns?
And as a side note, someone said, "It's obvious that United Press International, a decades-old journalistic institution is a mirror of Wikipedia." Is there any proof of that? UPI was doing "This Day in History" long before there was Wikipedia. They have news bureaus all over the world, and access to every standard database, such as voter-registration records.--Tenebrae (talk) 00:13, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
So posting this nonsense on my talk page and WT:Verifiability wasn't enough forum shopping, you also do it here? I explain very clearly on my talk page why that specific instance is not an RS and if you can't understand what WP:CIRCULAR is and how it applies when this is literally just taken from our own article you're just reinforcing my strong support for your site ban and ban from all BLPS. And for clarification since you like to misrepresent what people say, I said that piece was circular, I never said all of UPI is. VAXIDICAE💉00:19, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
So you're saying that because Wikipedia has a page of dates that UPI must have swiped that date from us? That UPI has no other resources and has to swipe from Wikipedia? What about the Associated Press or ABC News? Are we to assume that any news organization providing This Day in History dates swipes it from Wikipedia? That seems like a personal assumption without any proof. I've seen WP:CIRCULAR sites where there's a credit line: "Source: Wikipedia." I'm not seeing that at UPI, AP or ABC News.--Tenebrae (talk) 00:26, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That is literally not what I said, but if you keep up this intentionally misleading editing claiming I said things like " "It's obvious that United Press International, a decades-old journalistic institution is a mirror of Wikipedia."", you'll probably get blocked sooner than this thread gets closed. Tenebrae, if you want to discuss my edits, the place isn't here. Make another thread at the appropriate noticeboard but let me reiterate that if you intentionally misquote me again, I will be asking for an immediate block. VAXIDICAE💉00:28, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
And does everyone see this? Uncivil threats. The language I'm seeing here is not that of a dispassionate discussion but of people with a personal dislike who feel free to hurl insults and make threats. As for this person's particular point, you said, without proof, that UPI swipes from that Wikipedia page of dates that you linked to. You cited WP:CIRCULAR, which says don't link to mirrors of Wikipedia. I'm not sure how I'm misrepresenting what you said. But that's neither here not there — I haven't touch your reverts of UPI, and all I did was ask questions. But hate being what it is, even something as innocent as asking questions elicits threats.--Tenebrae (talk) 00:54, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
A statement of fact is not a threat. Your ability to become the victim in any discussion is really remarkable, almost magical. You should figure out a way to monetize it. VAXIDICAE💉00:55, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
See what I mean about hurling insult and sarcasm and not not engaging in constructive dialog? That was in lieu of addrssing my point: "[Y]ou said, without proof, that UPI swipes from that Wikipedia page of dates that you linked to. You cited WP:CIRCULAR, which says don't link to mirrors of Wikipedia. I'm not sure how I'm misrepresenting what you said."--Tenebrae (talk) 01:01, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I literally provided it no less than 3 times, on my own talk page when Ponyo thanked me for removing the non-RS, in response to you here and on WT:Verifiability. But again, this isn't about me, you need to stay on topic. You're welcome to open a thread about my editing, but if you continue carrying on here, I'll just ignore you. VAXIDICAE💉01:03, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I have a major problem with comparing United Press International in the 21st century with Associated Press and ABC News. UPI has been in a long, sad decline for at least 40 years and is a flickering shadow of its former self. It is now owned by the Unification Church. It no longer has a White House correspondent or a United Nations correspondent on staff. It makes no attempt to cover general news but is struggling to survive by providing "national security" coverage to other highly biased outlets like Newsmax after losing contracts with thousands of mainstream news outlets. Cullen328Let's discuss it02:17, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I did not mean "Sure, invite anyone you want. But don't invite them — that's canvassing." I meant we are not stopping your collaborative colleagues from choosing to comment here of their own accord, but that you must not invite them. As for editors who have commented on your talk page, there is already a notification there of this discussion and its title is linked so it should be pretty obvious what it is about. I suspect any approach by you would be seen as a violation of canvassing policy - but others might comment here if they disagree. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 00:24, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, seeing as how the people with a personal dislike of me would go to the trouble of seeking this out, and my more collegial colleagues may have no idea this is happening, that makes this rather one-sided.
And even for though who dislike me, can you honestly say that the more than 150,000 edits I've made and the more than 200 articles created have not been beneficial to Wikipedia? Seriously — greats like George Tuska and Joe Maneely had no articles. List of African-American firsts is an important thing for this encyclopedia to have. Just in the last week or so, while everything's going on, I uncovered an essentially lost Tony Curtis movie, The Last of Philip Banter (film) and created an article for that. I can't go over every single one of my tens of thousands of edits, but to say the 1% or less that are at issue means that other the 99% of good and sometimes even important contributions means nothing — that's not right.--Tenebrae (talk) 00:48, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Take this how you like, and maybe I shouldn't say it at all, but perhaps it might be worth reflecting on why someone who edits largely in regard to mass-media entertainment material and personalities, as opposed say middle-eastern politics or climate change, should need to have to worry about "people with a personal dislike" of them to the extent that it could become an issue. There are topics where attracting enemies is inevitable (I should know, I edited a few myself in the days when I was here more regularly), but that really shouldn't be happening in the fields you have generally confined to editing within. There will be disputes about policy, and about the inclusion of specific content, certainly, even in the least-controversial of subjects, but if you are finding "personal dislike" as opposed to simple disagreement to be a problem, maybe you should ask yourself where exactly the problem lies, and whether it isn't perhaps closer to home than you'd want to admit. AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:38, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I think you've seen that the language being used here seems less than town-hall civil. Just the fact no one will acknowledge the more than 150,000 useful, productive, constructive edits I've made, as if they've all disappeared or don't matter, suggests to me this is less about my work and more a personal vendetta. I think a more well-rounded community would recognize the good and suggest WP:CLEANSLATE or something similar, rather than immediately going for the nuclear option.--Tenebrae (talk) 01:52, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't RFA question 2, and you're not being asked about your best contributions to Wikipedia. The questions that you have been asked are about your pattern of COI editing, and continued evasion isn't helping the snowballing of support !votes. DanCherek (talk) 01:59, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I am happy to acknowledge that you have made some very beneficial contributions to Wikipedia - and that makes this whole affair even more disappointing for me. But no amount of good contributions renders WP:COI policy inapplicable to you. And when you have been in breach of a key Wikipedia policy literally for years, *that* is the thing that you need to address in any discussion of that breach. As for a clean start, that can not happen if you do not face up to what you have been doing wrong. You steadfastly fail to do that, and instead blame it all on people who dislike you. (And for the record, as the author of this proposal, I have no reason whatsoever to dislike you.) Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 08:33, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
How about a 'good faith' explanation for why you have chosen to cite Lovece as a source so frequently? Along with an explanation for why you think that a nineteen-year-old Lovece writing in a fanzine should be seen as a source for 'objective fact', per the edit of yours I linked above? AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:26, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia policy at WP:PRIVACY/WP:OUTING advises, "do not confirm or deny the accuracy of the information." Asking someone to out themselves is improper.
And as I said above, if you have an issue with any particular cite, then substitute a better cite. Or, in the case of non-BLP claims, remove the cite and add a "citation needed" tag. No one's edits are perfect — neither mine nor yours — and I've even replaced cites I made in, say, 2006 with a cite in, say, 2010. Incidentally, lots of early comics history, before comics scholarship became a thing, is cited to fanzines, including the original Alter Ego and The Comics Reader — many of which contain interviews with comics creators like Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and Dick Ayers. I believe Doctor Strange has a cite to Ditko telling an a mid-1960s fanzine something historic. Nothing inherently wrong with fanzines. And as I said, if any given cite doesn't work for you, sub another or "cn" it. --Tenebrae (talk) 00:48, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think you are citing WP:OUTING out of context there, but whatever. How about answering this question. Wikipedia:Conflict of interest states that "Conflict of interest (COI) editing involves contributing to Wikipedia about yourself, family, friends, clients, employers, or your financial and other relationships". ArbCom seems to have ruled that you have been editing in a manner which runs contrary to that. Do you contend that ArbCom's conclusions regarding this are false? AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:24, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
WP:OUTING does not give you a free pass from WP:COI policy. It doesn't mean you don't need to declare a conflict of interest if that would involve self-identification, but that you *must not* edit in a conflicted area or manner if you are not willing to identify your conflict. And the COI is not only about citing Lovece. It's about getting his name into article content wherever you can - "Frank Lovece says...", "According to Frank Lovece...", etc. It's about writing his BLP article. It's about contributing to his spouse's BLP article. It's about inserting his spouse's name wherever you can. It's about intermingling Lovece's journalistic interactions with your Wikipedia editing and making them two prongs of the same work. Tenebrae wants to deadname someone (clearly against considerable community opposition) and uses Lovece citations for the purpose without declaring any connections. That is not acceptable if you have that connection. Disinterested editors can cite Lovece all they want, but if you have a personal connection with him then *you* can not do so without declaring your COI. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 08:54, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Finally dug out my old notes from 2012 which were filed away on a backup hard-drive. Despite my comment above, in my notes I have User:Hal Raglan as a meat puppet, as I couldn't confirm it as a Sock despite the similar behaviour. My most likely guess if that's true would be the subject of the article created. I also had Howard Drake and User:Horkana likely to be similar. I did have User:Skippu as a Sock along with User:JimCorrigan plus 24 IP Addresses though, some of which absolutely out the editor. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 11:12, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Just for the record the Nola Carveth account isn't anything to do with me, and everyone I think I've spoken to was in a raised position to have marshalled this without a throwaway account. I also wasn't editing much at the time as I was primarily on mobile and the interface at that time was terrible on mobiles so wasn't even aware that it had been raised. Since finding out it was raised (via wikipediocracy) Nola Carveth's identity has interested me. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 11:40, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Observation: When someone gets caught doing something like this, do they ever actually comment on the important questions to anyone's satisfaction? I don't believe I have ever seen that happen, and I don't think it will here either. 2001:4898:80E8:A:8E84:23BB:8A74:14CA (talk) 00:43, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No. You're right. Guilty or innocent, this sort of thread is the most horrible thing a Wikipedist can endure. The mind runs and hides. Denial sets in. Panic takes over. No, it is likely impossible to deal with accusations like this. And how does one defend oneself against such a charge? --Deepfriedokra(talk)02:05, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
First of all i never said you were idiotic, i said that the idea of there being NO Chechens in Aksay during the post you linked was idiotic since i posted several sources. It might have sounded more harsher than i intended so i will refrain from using such words in the future. My bad. Hello Elijahandskip, I see no reason to ban either of us to be honest. Despite this hiccup we are making progress in the talk page and Calthinus has several times mediated and helped us come to a conclusion. We have already come to an agreement on 1 of the pages we disagreed on > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aukh and now the last one is in Uchar-Hadzhi which IrelandCork linked. Calthinius is looking over the sources and will make a decision soon. What if me, IrelandCork and Krackduck just dont write in that talk page anymore and let Calthinuis make his decision? then be on our way. --Goddard2000 (talk) 15:21, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I dont know if you have read our discussions but surely a 1 month ban wouldn't be fair? Calthinus has been following our discussion very closely and i think it would be fair to have his input since he has probably read everything and is an unbiased mediator, wouldn't you agree? Elijahandskip --Goddard2000 (talk) 15:37, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, there's a bit of disruptive conduct, as Calthinus noted on the 18th, on the part of all. But on the surface much of this may be a product of inexperience on the part of all three users (IrelandCork, Krackduck and Goddard2000). I therefore gave a welcome message + DS/EE alert to all three. I've also warned (here) IrelandCork and Krackduck against adding comments inside of Goddard2000's own signed comments, which Goddard2000 rightly complained about multiple times (yet to no avail).
My recommendation would be for all three to take a serious break from the page and gain some experience elsewhere, but I doubt that they'll go for that right now, as at least one side will probably feel too strongly about anything left outstanding. So, I will say this. Tone it down, please, all of you. There are dispute resolution requests you may avail yourself of when you reach an impasse on the article talk page, like WP:RFC or WP:RSN. And try to be more concise, so as to make such outside input into the content dispute more likely. El_C15:16, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with El C. A break is definitely in order. Goddard2000 I suggested the 1 month T-ban (short for topic ban) as a way to force a break from the page. I am fine not doing a topic ban as long as all three editors don’t edit it for a while. A while doesn’t mean a week...it means 3+ weeks. I don’t know what your interests are in, in terms of editing Wikipedia, but if you want something that is completely different, feel free to join me on the Current event WikiProject. Either way, all 3 editors, Goddard2000, IrelandCork, & Krackduck should take a break from the page and if you can’t then a 1 month T-Ban should be handed out. Elijahandskip (talk) 16:59, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Elijahandskip Yes i agree, lets leave it up to Calthinius on that page, we have nothing more to add. I will only post in the talk page if Calthinius asks me a question regarding the sources i posted. I wont talk to Krakduck or Irelandcork. --Goddard2000 (talk) 18:20, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed on restriction. But I'm rather surprised that WP:Ethics request is turned into content dispute again. It's completely another issue. Baseless comments like "idiotic" and "hypocrisy" and "you're presenting me Nazi" from an aggressive editor who barely keeps himself from swearing here are unacceptable. Besides, Elijahandskip, El_C, Calthinus, I gave Goddard's diffs with inappropriate behavior, two times, but being accused of it myself, wasn't referred to my inappropriateness even ones. Please kindly refer me to one so that I get what I've done wrong and what makes possible for you to ignore such harsh comments from the opponent.--IrelandCork (talk) 05:48, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
IrelandCork, as mentioned, it's best to move on from these grievances at this point. Also, I've joined in 2004 and became an admin in 2005, and I've never knew WP:ETHICS existed. Not sure what you're trying to say by invoking it (unethical behaviour?), but whatever it is, it isn't what the page is for. As it says at the top: This page is intended to serve as an index or collection of essays. It is not a policy or a guideline.El_C06:15, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
El_C Sorry, it's not a grievance. I only wanted to understand what's the accusation based on and what exactly was wrong, so that I refrain from such in the future. Regarding WP:Ethics, I did not expect it's OK here to declare someone a "hypocrite, Nazi-caller", and one's words as "idiotic", in some other Wikipedia's, such as Russian, there are very strong policies of discussion etiquette. I wonder if I called him a hypocrite, a Nazi and an idiot, how it would be possible to be tolerated, for me it's just unacceptable, but that user took that disdainful tone as a rule of thumb. Obviously none will be happy to ever engage with him after such.--IrelandCork (talk) 07:08, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
IrelandCork, the fact that you double-down on repeating these grievances (or whatever you call them) as a response to my message raises all sort of red flags for me, tbh. El_C11:47, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@IrelandCork:, right now would be a perfect time for you to drop the stick so you shoot yourself in the foot. Knowing an admin said "red flags for me" in the previous message, any more messages about the topic will probably be things you "shot yourself in the foot" on and you will regret those edits for a long time...talking from experience. Elijahandskip (talk) 12:22, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Elijahandskip sorry, I don't get it at all. The last request was about showing me where my wrongdoing took place, to understand and to avoid such in the future. I've not insulted anyone, wasn't aggressive, disputed only one exact content issue, and tolerated repeated insults, but instead I get more and more warnings, and the root cause is still unknown. If it's difficult to show a diff, I'll be very grateful if at least a quote is given--IrelandCork (talk) 12:59, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Negative, IrelandCork, you are not blameless, and the more you WP:NOTTHEM it up, the worse it looks for you. You (and Krackduck) intruded into Goddard2000's signed comments repeatedly (despite them rightly protesting against that violation), which is aggressive, whether you were aware of it at the time or not. But now you definitely ought to be and not pretend as if it didn't happen. El_C13:14, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Now I get it, even though it was quite a bit later than I was initially accused in smth., but let's leave it there. Thanks for taking time to explain!--IrelandCork (talk) 14:04, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
More eyes desired at Aimee Challenor, where the pageviews went from <200 a day to... how many?! (110,000 yesterday). From what I can tell (which is not necessarily the full picture) it's Graham Linehan inciting everyone's favourite type of user, a furious reddit dot com poster, to form a mob over some Extremely Important Reddit Drama. Only source about this as of time of writing is The Spectator, not good for factual claims per WP:RSP. The sexual abuse committed by Challenor's father, and partner's tweets, however, are covered widely. Just want more eyes to look at edits as they come in as all new edits are BLP-sensitive and will be widely seen even if they only last for an hour, and to handle anything that's reaching revdel proportions. — Bilorv (talk) 13:30, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It's all over the front page of reddit, I doubt Linehan is a significant factor. The main issue is that reddit has attempted to oversight her name, and there's been a subsequent Streisand effect, with many major subreddits temporarily shutting down. Hemiauchenia (talk) 15:23, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It started with Linehan's blog. I don't know or really care about the rest of the context, other than that it sounds like it could become big news, but it is not that big news yet. — Bilorv (talk) 15:34, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That's not where it started. It started when a moderator of /r/ukpolitics was banned for linking to an article in the Spectator magazine where, tangentially, a Reddit admin was named. The article didn't refer to the person as a Reddit admin and the moderator was unaware of the fact. In response to the banning, the other ukpolitics mods turned the subreddit private while they found out what had happened. Other subreddits also went private in solidarity. Yes, Linehan has picked up on it because of course he has, but that's not where it started. 217.38.56.218 (talk) 10:19, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Started is probably the wrong word, but it seems likely difficult to determine what role any particular outlet or whatever played in this. You could rule out certain stuff based on timings, but otherwise, how much of it was organic and how much of it was a result of promotion by others I doubt we'll ever know. Nil Einne (talk) 13:31, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I looked into this better an Bilorv's comments seem fair enough and the IP is just wrong. Linehan was posting about this long before the Reddit stuff blew up. While it's unlikely we'll ever know for sure why anyone did any particular thing, it's clear Linehan didn't just pick up on it, he was already involved. Notably, even if the ukpolitics posting was unrelated to Linehan in any way, from what Reddit said it seems like there's a fair chance part of the reason for their reaction was because there was already concerns on their part due to what Linehan had been doing. Nil Einne (talk) 14:08, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
A week, or when consensus seems clear, whichever comes last. This should probably be relisted as it is still being actively discussed. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:50, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
DRV doesn't really relist. It just sits there in the ready to be closed pile until someone closes it (normally after discussion has died down). Barkeep49 (talk) 03:10, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
“Bentonville” entry error
Issues such as this should be raised at the talk page of the article in question or fixed directly. I fixed the sentence by removing the ", either by Union soldiers part". Closing. --Hammersoft (talk) 12:35, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
This sentence from “Bentonville” history is incomplete.
Although no Civil War battles were fought inside Bentonville, the city was occupied by both armies and saw almost all of its buildings burned, either by Union soldiers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.160.105.186 (talk) 05:57, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I was adding resources to the article, the user reverses my editing without even looking at the sources, and is looking for an editing war. Stop this vicious user once and for all, who ruins all my efforts with the push of a button. Note that I added authoritative sources to the article and the user did not even look at them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:5EC0:9016:5B3E:540:A83C:A545:FE33 (talk) 14:59, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This consultation is part of the Arbitration Committee's revision process for the discretionary sanctions procedure, which sets forth a special set of rules that apply in topic areas defined by the Arbitration Committee. The purpose of this revision process is to simplify and clarify the procedure and resolve problems with the current system of discretionary sanctions.
For some background, see User_talk:Carlossuarez46/Archive_12#Please_don't_create_any_more_articles and User_talk:Carlossuarez46#Places_in_Iran. The former link involves the discovery of large quantities of misinterpretation of a source an original research to create a couple thousand place stubs in California that largely turned out to be barely verifiable, false, or non-notable, probably well over 1,000 have been deleted, created by a single user, Carlossuarez46. It is the latter one that is causing this report, though. It was found that something similar happened with creating short stubs from a directory of abadis in Iran - an abadi is a very generic term that in Iran can refer to everything from decent-sized cities to wells, farms, individual buildings, and even gas stations. At Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mazraeh-ye Dariush Baharvand Ahmadi, it was found that Carlossuarez46 created over 5,500 stubs for abadis that are uninhabited. While some abadis are notable, given the background of these, it seems unlikely that any of the ones that are uninhabited are notable, which is the consensus of that AFD. There's no way that 5500+ articles can reasonably be processed through AFD and PROD, so it's looking like a batch deletion of this mess is the best call. I believe there's a list of the relevant ones in existence somewhere. Hog FarmTalk00:58, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The list of articles to be deleted (linked at the AFD) is at User:Hog Farm/C46 population not reported. I removed the three pages I found that had additional content beyond the original creation, and others with further information may also be exempted from such soft deletion. Carlossuarez46 altogether made about 70,000 articles (pages 2–8 here) on places in Iran from 2011 to 2014 using the 2006 census, and I did not find any approval to do so in accordance with Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 66#Proposal: Any large-scale semi-/automated article creation task require BRFA. While the discussion linked above indicates half of these tens of thousands of places with are not actually "villages" in Iran (may include e.g. neighborhoods and census tracts) and their status and notability are likewise questionable, these 5,500+ pages have no population reported and are not conceivably auto-passes of WP:GEOLAND. Reywas92Talk01:37, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(Non-administrator comment) I've noticed a lot of stubs about misidentified populated places, usually in California, in WP:PRODSUM for several months now. Based on the aforementioned evidence, I recommend that Carlossuarez46 be banned from creating articles about places. Thoughts? –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 02:32, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Mass creation seems to have stopped in April 2020 with a run of stubs for ancient sites, so I'm not sure that an article creation ban would be necessary. Hog FarmTalk03:01, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There are large blocks of items beginning with the same word, which likely identifies what they actually are; for instance, place names beginning with Chah-e are most likely wells. I'll ping... Paraw (talk·contribs), the only active user who is fa-N, to scan the list and identify such prefixes so that they can be processed in bulk AfD or mass PROD. Which items on the list reported a population of 0 in the 2016 census, like the farm named in the AfD? –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 07:10, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all 5573 article I think we have explained all in a/m talking and we ask and recommend the mess deletion of no notable, no village and no populated articles. Please Delete all 5573 article. In FAwiki, as last talking there is Consensus that Abadies there aren't notable.@4nn1l2Shahram08:38, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I have no objection to a mass deletion (we did the same in the past for other similar issues with 1000s of articles by other editors), but an alternative may be to mass-move them to draftspace: that way, people have six months to rescue ones which are mistakenly moved or which they have edited. After six months, the remainder will get deleted anyway. Perhaps other groups of articles by the same editor need to be looked at as well, something like Alīābād, Yardymli gives little confidence, so perhaps all 233 articles with the sentence "suspected that this village has undergone a name change"[76] should be deleted or draftified as well? These are in Azerbaijan and Artsakh, so not duplicates of the above proposal. Fram (talk) 08:40, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I can delete the articles no problem, but I do not have capacity to go through all of them to see what it salvageable and what is not. If there is consensus that all of them have to be deleted, no problem, but I remember that with Sander v Ginkel articles, which I also batch deleted (after time was given to improve them) people were still unhappy with the deletion. May be just move them to draft and let sit there for six months before getting deleted?--Ymblanter (talk) 08:53, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
We have come a long way since it was alright to mass-create articles for places, and experience has taught us some lessons about cleaning up the resultant inaccuracies. It's not completely clean-cut, though and I point to Robert, California (AfD discussion) as a counterpoint. For safety, I recommend restricting any mass deletion to articles that don't tell the reader anything beyond the shaky claims about being villages. If the statement that "X is a village" is shaky in the first place, then an article that says "X is a village and nothing else is recorded about it" isn't particularly useful. Although Robert, California did start out that way, as you can see at Special:Permalink/288124514.
Delete all Native Farsi speaker here. Please just delete them all. No more discussions or hesitations. I checked User:Hog Farm/C46 population not reported with Petscan, and all of them should be gone, except Sharafabad, Markazi. You can check it yourself. Go to the Templates&links tab and insert "User:Hog Farm/C46 population not reported" in the field All of these pages: from the row Linked from. Then go to the Page properties tab and specify a size Larger or equal than 3000, 2900, 2800, ... 2000 respectively and check it for yourself. 4nn1l2 (talk) 09:08, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I wondered why we didn't ask Carlossuarez46, an active editor and admin, to help clean up his own mess and to go through his creations and delete G7 or draftify all problematic or potentially problematic ones. Turns out that he was contacted about these specific articles (which follow the many similar deletions of US locations he created), at User talk:Carlossuarez46#Places in Iran. His responses there are extremely disheartening though, and the callous disrespect he shows for basic collegiality, sourcing requirements, ... is rather concerning in an admin. He could save us all a lot of work (he should have done so when the first deletions started to happen), but he doesn't seem to care about this at all. Fram (talk) 09:18, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely subpar responses. It isn't realistic to expect individual review for each page of such a massive number of pages, when an error rate for these reaches a certain threshold. El_C13:21, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Not to be "that guy", but if you don't understand that a Census tract is not automatically notable, perhaps you don't need to have the Autopatrolled bit, no less the admin bit. At this point, I'm forced to agree with mass deletion as I don't think our Draft: system needs to be flooded. Seeing the discussion on his personal talk page did not fill me with hope that he is willing or capable of reviewing these articles himself. This would make me also support a sanction to prohibit article creation outside of draft space, which is very problematic for someone with the admin bit, but seemingly necessary. Dennis Brown - 2¢15:00, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
So, to summarise, so far we have mass creation of California place stubs based on the GNIS database, a lot of which have now been deleted as misidentified railroad sidings/ponds/post offices, a mass creation of Iranian place stubs based purely off the census records, thousands of which appear to be misidentified farms/gas stations/isolated buildings, and looking at the recent edit history of Azizkend and it's associated talk page it looks like there may be issues with their Armenian place stubs as well (again this is an article created using only a place name database). I think this is going to need a major clean up effort - we are dealing with potentially thousands of hoax geography stubs here. Kind of reminds me of the Neelix case from a few years back. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 15:23, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support deletion Having spot-checked the list, these articles don't meet Wikipedia's standards for verifiability and should be deleted. I also agree with Dennis Brown that based on their comments on their talk page on this topic, Carlossuarez probably should not be auto-patrolled. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 16:15, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support mass deletion of User:Hog Farm/C46 population not reported. They don't need to be checked further. When Carlos writes "population not reported", it means the census data said less than 3 families – so obviously not a "village" as claimed. Spot checks by multiple users have confirmed that they are not remotely close to meeting WP:GEOLAND. The problem is that the Iranian census describes both populated and unpopulated places with the same word, abadi (see this comment from 4nn1l2 for useful context), and according to one source up to 25% are "non-residential".[77] The tens of thousands of other articles also need to be dealt with, but this list is a good first step. Thanks to Hog Farm and Reywas92 for compiling it. – Joe (talk) 16:52, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
On the broader issue, I was really hoping that Carlos would be more receptive to helping clean these up. We all make mistakes and if you're mass-creating articles (which I think is usually a very valuable contribution), it's understandable that a simple mistake can create a big mess. As an admin, he could easily have acknowledged the problem and G7'd them all, saving everyone all this trouble. Instead he flat out refused to listen, insisting that other editors laboriously "prove" that each place wasn't notable individually, even after he'd been presented with ample reliable sources showing that they were not notable as a rule, and it had been explained that the burden is on him to substantiate his claims. I don't want to drag anyone to ArbCom over something like, but yeah... autopatrolled is bundled with the sysop bit, so it technically is tool misuse, and I worry about him going on another stub creation spree with no oversight. – Joe (talk) 17:00, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support mass deletion I have participated in a few Afd's for these articles, It's about time that someone brought this to administrator attention. I would even support some sort of block for disruptive editing.--Kieran207(talk-Contribs) 18:12, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is an odd can of worms we've opened. If this were not an admin, I would have already removed the autopatrolled bit from the editor without discussion. Because they are an admin, only Arb can authorize a bit change, and since autopatrolled is automatically included with the admin bit, they would have to remove the admin bit. Without further evidence of gross incompetence or abuse of the admin bit, I don't see this happening. The same for sanctioning an admin. Conventional wisdom has always been that if you can't trust an admin to operate without being under sanction, you can't trust them with the admin bit. Carlossuarez46 is walking a very fine line here, and if I were them, I would be volunteering to never create articles outside of draft space, rather than risk a sanction and possible Arb case to review their bits. If one of the "community desysop" discussions had ended with the community being granted the ability to desysop someone because they lost in faith in them, this would be a textbook case, although I don't pretend to know the outcome in either case. Dennis Brown - 2¢21:21, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The more I think about this, some sort of sanction on creating articles is needed. See their responses to the questions about them in the California place names one I linked in the starting post here, or in the places in Iran one. They went on a CFD editing run per their contribs after I notified them about starting this AN discussion. And these 5500 are just the tip of the iceberg. There are tens of thousands of stubs they created that are still dubious, just not quite as bad as this batch request. And they won't provide helpful answers to basic requests about this. IMO this is a WP:ADMINACCT issue. Given the sheer amount of poor quality article creation and lack of communication to questions about it, there should be a restriction on creation of geography stubs - a requirement to send new geography articles through AFC sounds reasonable to me. Hog FarmTalk21:55, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think that a AFC requirement or removal of autopatrolled are fundamentally incompatible with being an administrator, for an administrator being trusted to be able to write articles is the bare minimum we should expect. I also don't think the proposed restrictions really get to the crux of the issue: the problem here was the mass creation of stub articles based only on database entries. I think a better set of restrictions would be a ban on article creation using automated or semi-automated tools and a requirement that any new articles they make have multiple substantial sources in them (as in sources containing a significant quantity of prose). 86.23.109.101 (talk) 22:33, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support batch deletion - I was initially against this idea but I now can't see any alternative. Having reviewed and PRODed many of the offending articles, I now see that it will take several weeks to getting around to properly looking at them all. Since they make no valid claim to notability, the chances of any of them actually being notable is low enough that I think the positives of batch deletion outweigh the negatives significantly. Spiderone(Talk to Spider)00:32, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Speaking as the person who just fixed Escalle, Larkspur, California, I point out that the problem is not notability, and there is a significant likelihood that some of these places are notable. The problem is that we have one-sentence articles hanging around for years (almost 13 years in the case of Azizkend (AfD discussion)) where that one sentence is an outright falsehood, because the source databases were not properly filtered and everything was labelled "populated place" or "unincorporated community". I think that you'll get wide agreement on mass-deleting one-sentence articles whose dodgy mass-creation makes them likely false. Don't make it about things being "just a mill" or "just a railway station", and about notability, though, especially if arguing in the same breath about how great a burden it is to evaluate notability of all of these subjects. You will not get agreement from people like me about "just a" anything. But you will get consensus on long-standing one-sentence likely falsehoods with shaky foundations. Uncle G (talk) 11:53, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Concerning community restrictions: It is true that only ArbCom can currently desysop (the last community desysop proposal is still open, but is certain to fail, like its predecessors). However, if needed, we can just impose a ban on creation on the articles. A ban violation would be a solid ground for a desysop. However, I do not see any issues with the recent article creation, and I do not see why such topic ban would be needed, In fact, Carlossuarez does not now create any articles, for the last year I only see one, which is a dab and is completely uncontroversial. All the articles we are talking about are from the 2000s, and I do not see any current need of a ban.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:08, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support sanctions on Carlossuarez46. He made a big mistake and now even cleaning up his mess gives us headache. I PRODed 100 farms and wells (mazraeh and chah) but got reverted by another contributor who claims these abadis pass WP:GEOLAND. Being unwilling to clean up his own mess, Carlos has wasted a lot of valuable volunteers' time. The fact that he has not contributed to this thread so far means a lot to me! 4nn1l2 (talk) 10:26, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The PROD reasons were probably unclear as the articles say "village" and give the population from a census, which would make them notable. Some of them seem to be hamlets or something similar, but others are only farms. Peter James (talk) 15:02, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm the PROD remover@4nn1l2 and Peter James: indeed all the articles that I de-proded stated that they were villages and they also had a number of families. If they are an exception to the general rule that legally recognized places are notable then probably needs to be discussed at a bundled AFD nomination not PROD. I think its fairly likely the rest of the PRODs will be contested by Necrothesp or Phil Bridger or someone else anyway. In any case although we may make an exception that a place that is just a well or petrol station isn't notable even if its legally recognized if we assess that its an exception there's no requirement that a place has people living there to be notable under GEOLAND. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:28, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think that you've missed the thrust of the argument here, possibly because those Proposed Deletion nominations didn't give it. It's not whether these places are notable. It's that the articles have been mass-created as bad stubs that give incorrect context, because everything has been translated to "village". The problem is that editors do not have the correct context to even begin working on the articles. Tolombeh-ye Mehdi Shariati is actually a pump, for example. But an editor looking to do cleanup or expansion won't know it from the bad stub at hand, which says that it's a "village" and leaves it at that. There are over 5000 articles in this class. Uncle G (talk) 19:44, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support mass deletion and topic ban on geo article creation I support mass deletion of the articles, and I also think that Carlos deserves some sort of sanction. I'd be in favor of a a topic ban on creating new geography articles because of the degree of disruption that the non notable stubs have caused, and I think that that would be the minimum that we would be considering if this were a regular user and not an admin. ( I have to imagine that a new user would get a disruptive editing block for creating this many non notable articles and refusing to clean them up.) Jackattack1597 (talk) 13:27, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Alexis Jazz, you have certainly become old, man! You used to be a Commoner and are well aware of Petscan. The Alexis Jazz I knew didn't need some hours (days[!]) to check the status of these articles. He wasThey were able to be done with it in less than 10 minutes. According to the English Wikipedia, the UK has only 3700+ hamlets[78], but Carlos has made 70,000+ articles on Iranian ābādīs! Both Iran and the UK belong to the Old World, so what Carlos flaunted about the New World does not apply here. 4nn1l2 (talk) 15:46, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@4nn1l2: Getting vilified causes one's hairs to turn grey. I have rarely found Petscan to be of any use over CirrusSearch, personally. I can't use it to do a history check. The kind of checks I ran on Commons also often took a while. I agree that likely 90%+ of Hog Farm's list should be deleted, but I'd like to filter out the <10% that should be kept or discussed. Btw, feel free to use something from Gender neutrality in languages with gendered third-person pronouns. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 17:03, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed. I always use neutral pronouns on Commons. I don't know why I switched to "he" on the English Wikipedia. Sorry for that! 4nn1l2 (talk) 17:17, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. I'm running the thing now. It takes hours because a) of the sheer number of articles (dealing with 5000+ pages wasn't a common occurrence, even on Commons) b) I'm doing a history check, which is slow. c) There are other things I have to do, I'm spending somewhat less time on wiki nowadays. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 00:34, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support sanctions and mass deletion I'm glad to see interest in addressing disruptive mass stub creation, and admin status should be no barrier to the article creation restrictions which are clearly necessary here. It's unfair for an editor who mass-creates thousands of articles from tables (which are specifically excluded from establishing notability per WP:GEOLAND) to demand that others do the work of searching exhaustively to disprove notability. Mass-created geography stubs are a widespread problem [79][80] and a huge time sink since some editors insist on article-by-article deletion instead of PROD or batch work. In my opinion we should have a general rule or process that allows geo stubs to be deleted immediately, with no WP:BEFORE requirement, if they are sourced only to databases. The few notable articles that may exist are useless as long as they're buried under a massive pile of crap. Any editor who would like to search for these hidden gems is welcome to look through the easily-accessible databases and recreate them with better sourcing. –dlthewave☎05:08, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support batch deletion and sanction - I came to this as someone who is far from a deletionist. Indeed I have been accused on more than one occasion of being some kind of inclusionist. The thing was I started seeing lots of California location articles showing up at AFD that were by the same creator, and written using the same unreliable sources. My efforts to try to save these articles quickly turned into a conclusion that every one of them had the same problem - the editor who created them basically hadn't cared about even the most basic rules of notability and verifiability, and had systematically mischaracterised what a source they had regularly cited (Durham) was actually saying. Diving deeper I saw that the creator was one of Wiki's most prolific article-creators and had created many other location articles all around the world many of which appeared to have similar problems. Reaching out to the creator I saw that they were basically dismissive of any requests for help with dealing with the problems that they had created. Further checking showed that, as a direct result of their negligent editing, some counties of California had more "ghost town" articles (places that they couldn't find population data for ended up being labelled this) that inhabited places - a clearly ridiculous situation.
The Iranian articles are a very extreme case of this negligence. Carlos claims to be able to read Persian, yet they did not notice that they were creating thousands of places with names like "Well no. 3" and "Mechanic Hoseyn Sohrabi", each of which blatantly says that is not populated and may never have been populated according to the sources they relied on to write the article. These articles simply have to go - the only thing I'd like to do is just to check that these are only the articles where Carlos was the creator, since he has edited his phrase stating that the location is not populated into a few GNG-passing articles he did not create.
We should not forget that this negligent editing can have real-world consequences. Wiki's location data gets mirrored onto e.g., Google Maps and you can end up with people going to places thinking they are populated but which are in reality open desert. For this reason, although many of these articles were created some time ago and Carlos has not created any recently, as their negligent editing in 2009-2014 is still having an impact today which they refuse to do anything about it, I support sanctions against Carlos. Frankly, I would support Desysoping him due to a failure of accountability (WP:ADMINACCT), but if this is not possible I would support removing autopatrolled from them. If an Admin without autopatrolled is somewhat unusual, this can be raised with Arbcom.FOARP (talk) 07:49, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Alexis Jazz has raised what to do about the article creator on another noticeboardbelow, so I'd like to focus back on the original request by Hog Farm and Reywas92, which is what to do about the articles in the list at User:Hog Farm/C46 population not reported.
Summarizing the above so far:
It appears that we have 9 people supporting mass deletion of the articles on that specific list; and 1 wanting to do more checking xyrself.
The Proposed Deletions that there is disagreement over, such as Special:Diff/1014460959, appear to have been of articles not on this list.
Ymblanter has offered to do the mass-deletion if there is agreement.
Any people opposed?
Any more people wanting to do some checking for themselves?
Obviously, there's no rush to closure here; we give AFD discussions a week, after all.
I'm just trying to keep focus on the original proposal and whether there is consensus supporting an administrator doing this.
Uncle G (talk) 08:10, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Uncle G: I would like to confirm your second point. For PRODing 100 articles, I went after specific articles with special conditions. First, all of nominations have the terms mazraeh and chah (farm and well respectively) in their names. Second, they had some population, because I assumed and still assume the 5000+ "uninhabited" abadis are definitely gone sooner or later, so I spared them. Third, I nominated those with a population of less than 100 people and 20 families, because Iranian villages must have a population of at least 100 people or 20 families according to the law. See my comments here and there to become more familiar with Iranian villages. We don't have the concept of hamlet in Iran (except in Mazandaran and Gilan which have a Mediterranean climate). Generalizing this Anglo-Norman concept to arid Iran is a kind of Eurocentrism. Settlements in Iran are basically of two kinds: 1) cities [شهر]; 2) villages [ده، روستا]. We don't differentiate between towns and cities. We don't have communities or concepts such as incorporated, chartered, etc. Everyone should read this academic article about Iranian villages. The following paragraph is of interest:
The basic statistical unit. Much of the available information about rural areas in Persia and, to a lesser degree, in Afghanistan has been collected at the village level. As delimitation of villages varies according to different government sources, however, that is not a guarantee of accuracy. Uncertainty is greatest in the Caspian lowlands and Ḡilzay country, where the so-called “villages” are generally artificial groupings of maḥallas (see, e.g., Bazin, 1980, I, pp. 100-01) and qalʿas respectively. In other areas, too, it is often difficult to ascertain whether a small settlement is an independent village or a mazraʿa attached to a larger village nearby (see, e.g., Patzelt and Senarclens de Grancy, p. 225). Gazetteers of inhabited places in Persia thus include from 14,721 (Mofaḵḵam Pāyān) to 80,717 names (Pāpolī Yazdī, 1989), and estimates of the total number of villages range from 42,000 to 58,000. A figure of 48,592 was used by the Persian government for purposes of land reform (McLachlan, p. 686). In Afghanistan conflicting figures have been published: In 1339 Š./1960 the Ministry of agriculture and irrigation enumerated 14,205 villages (Survey), a figure that was increased to 15,270 after the agricultural census of 1346 Š./1967 (Natāyej); the Ministry of interior, on the other hand, listed 20,753 villages, of which 15,599 were classified as “independent villages” and 5,154 as “associated subvillages” (Aṭlas). Although the Ministry of agriculture’s figures for villages and the Ministry of interior’s enumeration of “independent villages” are similar, they only partly coincide. Combining both lists would produce a total of 22,425 inhabited places (computed from Aṭlas). It is thus necessary to use the data from gazetteers with caution.
The article is a bit old. It dates back to 1994. According to the latest data, Iran has 45,926 villages. Now Carlos should explain how he managed to create 70,000 articles on Iranian "villages". 4nn1l2 (talk) 09:34, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Not in this section. ☺ Let's keep it just to the articles and getting a consensus on what we do to them. It looks like there's a case to be made for Hog Farm et al. creating another list. But Proposed Deletion rationales would need to explain all of that and not just be "fails WP:GEOLAND". Because if people don't get a decent rationale they will not know all of that and will work from what the article says on its face. I suggest that you work with Hog Farm et al. on another list, for a second discussion, and we focus here on the "population not reported" one initially. I also suggest that you update any still active unchallenged Proposed Deletion rationales of yours to at least point to Special:Permalink/1014651141#The articles, specifically. Uncle G (talk) 11:23, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Some of the places are groups of houses separate from other groups of houses; if these places are not hamlets, are too small to be villages, and "farm" is inaccurate, what would they be described as? Peter James (talk) 07:25, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Akili: extensively vandalized (I filtered a bunch of vandalism, but unfortunately the "Reverted" tag was not made available retroactively. The list could have been shorter otherwise.)
We should take a closer look at these 528. Some additional filtering may be possible. (please ping me with suggestions)
If someone who is normally a WikiGnome actually added a source in some instances, sadly I couldn't realistically differentiate between that. I filtered all edits from known WikiGnomes. There's other theoretical issues (every edit before a revert was also filtered, but someone adding a source right before someone else reverts an earlier edit is probably extremely rare), but the lists should mostly be accurate. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 20:06, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Alexis Jazz: I have indeed editedAhmadabad, Avaj, but what does that mean to you? New counties/townships (شهرستان) get created in Iran by splitting, etc. Avaj County was created in 2011.[81] Carlos has used the data of the 2006 census when this abadi was in another county. I just updated the data in 2017. Why didn't I react back then? See my comment here near the facepalm and you will understand why this topic matters to me now. I was not and still am not an editor of the English Wikipedia, so why should I care? 4nn1l2 (talk) 20:37, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@4nn1l2: It could indicate that there's something special about the article, but in this case you were a WikiGnome. I'm thinking of some better/other ways to filter. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 21:18, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I have two questions:
Hog Farm, Reywas92, 4nn1l2, et al.: Is this list of 528 articles small enough for you three (and whomever else) to review by hand?
Alexis Jazz: Do you think that Hog Farm's list should be reduced by these 528 articles?
I ask because I looked through some of the ones that you mentioned and I'm not yet convinced that we have a case for removing them. That Darafsh used the same prose wording for the likes of "the water beneath Haji Ali" and called it a "village" with "population not reported" only emphasizes the robotic nature of these contributions, and that this is boilerplate wording constructed from a problematic source database. And the source cited at Special:Diff/300106952 is a WWW page that gives a Google Maps reference to a farm, emphasizing the fact that there's an echo chamber of bad information on the WWW that we at Wikipedia are part of.
I think it can be trimmed a little bit. Akbarabad-e Olya is just Carlos, bots, a gnoming edit, and somebody adding a hatnote. Mazraeh-ye Afzalabad is Carlos, two bots, a AWB run, and a gnoming edit. Mazraeh-ye Kaleh Chub is Carlos, the same AWB run, three bots, somebody changing the spelling in a category, and somebody reverting said change. There's a few others like those. The 528 list looks pretty close, although there's some false positives in there. Hog FarmTalk22:55, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I personally am still persuaded by your argument that a collection of articles calling things like "the best farm" and "Wood Head farm" (fa:مزرعه) a "village" are bad stubs with falsehoods as their context. ☺ So perhaps that 528 article list can be re-filtered, at least for the obvious groups with falsehoods revealed by their titles. Uncle G (talk) 23:46, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Hog Farm:Akbarabad-e Olya is on the list because of Prana1111's edit. (I already filtered M.k.m2003 as a WikiGnome) Mazraeh-ye Afzalabad is on the list only because of the edit by SACRED. Mazraeh-ye Kaleh Chub includes a manual revert, if Bearcat had reverted NikolayEfesenko (or the "reverted" and "manual revert" tags would be available everywhere) it wouldn't have made the list. I can probably filter small edits (like these -4 overlinking edits, edits marked as minor were already excluded but these were not marked as minor) and I think there are some other ways to get that 528 further down. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 03:41, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Would it be possible to exclude anything with the AWB tag, as well? Anything done with Auto Wiki Browser is likely to be gnoming, formatting, or something minor like that. Hog FarmTalk14:55, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - "Never edited by Carlos. But it follows the same style. So... wut?" - It is not a surprise to see other editors creating articles in the same style as Carlos, people learn how to write articles from other editors on Wiki, particularly admins. This is why this behaviour is so harmful. FOARP (talk) 14:36, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Suggested edit restriction for Carlossuarez46
[Note: The section below was originally posted on ANI. Since it concerns a proposal for a sanction, it should have been posted here on AN. Since there is an ongoing discussion about the editor in question here on AN, it should have been connected to that discussion. For these reasons I have moved it here. Beyond My Ken (talk) 08:15, 28 March 2021 (UTC)][reply]
I suggest an edit restriction is put in place that requires Carlossuarez46 to inform the community before mass-creating articles and give the community a reasonable amount of time to respond, Carlossuarez46 should explain based on what they will be creating articles and how they can ensure that the articles they create will be accurate and about notable subjects. Carlossuarez46 should also respect the comments on these announcements.
I have kept the details deliberately vague, as is usual to avoid gaming the system. We're all grownups (right? right?) and the goal of this restriction is simply to make sure we won't suddenly have another 5000+ dubious stubs that may require mass deletion.
I am aware Carlossuarez46 is an admin, and as usual, I don't care. Adminship doesn't make one immune from edit restrictions. If they stop being an admin in the future for any reason, that wouldn't affect this edit restriction. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 03:10, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support stronger sanction: no article creation outside of AFC - Normally, I would not support sanctions on edits this old, but this is the type of action that might go unnoticed for years, and it indicates a lack of understanding of our general policies on article creation. Personally, I think this sanction is too weak. That they are an admin only makes the point stronger that a sanction is needed. Admin are supposed to know better. I would support this sanction, the stronger sanction I am recommending, or even stronger sanctions. The fact that they have been editing yet refused to participate in this discussion, thus avoiding all accountability for their actions, makes me think they shouldn't be an admin at all. Dennis Brown - 2¢11:56, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support stronger sanction I would prefer Dennis Brown's stronger sanction to the originally proposed ones, but if Dennis' don't pass then I would support Alexis Jazz's sanctions because something needs to be done about this, and Carlos shouldn't get off scott free just because they are an admin after causing this much disruption through creation of thousands of articles and refusing to clean them up. Jackattack1597 (talk) 12:26, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support stronger sanction: no article creation outside of AFC - The question is can we trust them to create articles that are not formally reviewed? Since almost all of there article creation is this sort of stub, and discussions have been going on on their talk page for months about there mass-created articles, in which they have not recognized that any of this creation is problematic in any way, I don't think I can trust them to create articles that then sit around for years and spread false content. To show the full extent of this mess, compare this Wikidata entry to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Snow Bend, California. Thanks to mass creation, azbwikipedia and zhwikipedia now have articles claiming that an obvious non-community Carlossuarez46's mass creation of stubs has essentially polluted the entire internet with false content. Hog FarmTalk18:10, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support. He has created lots of 1 or 2 sentence stub articles and many of them are suspected hoaxes and are getting nominated for deletion. He only uses 1 source, from the GEONet server and most of the time doesn't cite sources, and when he does they are unreliable like this pdf source in Azerbaijani (feel free to translate it) that was politically biased. I think we should prevent him from making articles or even de-adminship. Cupcake547Talk. Thanks, 20:48, 28 March 2021 (UTC).[reply]
Lately I've been adding information on the composition of hundreds (if not more) of settlements in Iran. I can see that I have also edited some of the settlements where the population varies from 0 to 3, which just means that a reliable reference have not only recognized their existence but also their composition. --Semsûrî (talk) 20:50, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You edited "the well of Abbas Ali" (c.f. Special:Diff/1014289529) and called it a "village", citing an aggregation WWW site that cites Google Maps, and hence Wikipedia, as one of its sources. You seem to be making the very same errors as Carlossuarez46, just more indirectly, and should probably take a lot more care. Uncle G (talk) 22:55, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Uncle G I'll take a look at the edits I made at these troubled pages (User:Hog Farm/C46 population not reported) and try to verify the 'village'-ness or revert my edits. I can see that I haven't edited that many of them. Regarding Cham-e Abbas Ali, I will revert my edits made since I must have mistaken it for another settlement in the area. I can't seem to find it in the source either. --Semsûrî (talk) 10:14, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I found Abza-e Dudera (or Owzā Dudarā[82]) and it is stated that it has a population of 24. Searching its coordinations ('31.36302, 50.81570') on Google Maps gives this result[83] which to me does look like a populated place. --Semsûrî (talk) 10:21, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Let me formally oppose per my reasoning above. The real problem here is not that Carlossuarez46 created a bunch of purely sourced stubs in 2006. At that time, we still did not understand very well what can be done and what can not be done, and whereas there is no way someone would create such stubs today, it was not uncommon at the time (you know, eventualists, article rescue squadron and so on). The problem is not that Carlossuarez46 continues to create stubs of doubtful quality, because he does not. In the last year, he created only one article which is a dab, and the quality is ok. Ban for article creation is not going to solve any problems. We could also propose a topic ban for Iran, we have even general sanctions in the are, and such topic ban would equally not solve anything, because Carlossuarez46 is not editing in the area. The problem is that currently Carlossuarez46 refuses to discuss the issue and do something about this. On top of this, Carlossuarez46 is administrator, and I see here breach of ADMINCONDUCT. I think the only issue to be discussed here which solves a real problem is a desysop, and then someone should prepare and file an ArbCom case. May be we are not yet ready for arbitration, then this thread must be closed with a formal warning, or may be a block if people think it is acceptable (I do not see why we need a block here, but I understand that other opinions are possible), but I do not see why we need a topic ban on article creation in this situation.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:05, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The Iranian stubs have been created in 2014 using old data from the 2006 census while the data of the 2011 census was available. 4nn1l2 (talk) 21:12, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Respectfully, Ymblanter, I think the fact that this activity lasted for almost a decade, during which time the person concerned was an Admin and expected to be familiar with WP:GNG (already a guideline in 2007) and WP:GEOLAND (created as an essay in 2008, promoted to guideline in 2010), and which many times the problems with their articles were pointed out to them (see e.g., here). One of the worst periods for Carlos's article creation activities appears to have been in July 2009 after the creation of the leaderboard for who as created the most Wiki articles - I don't think I am breaking WP:AGF by saying that their article-creation activities were likely motivated in part by a desire to score highly on that board rather than being here to create an encyclopedia (i.e., they have been WP:NOTHERE for more than a decade). FOARP (talk) 08:35, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support stronger sanctionsAs far back as 2009 Carlossuarez46 has been completely dismissive of anyone who suggested that his article creations were questionable, consistently refusing to acknowledge that his mass-productions include errors or fail to demonstrate verifiability and/or notability. His continued rebuffing of those who have put in far too many man-hours cleaning up his mess is callous and unbecoming. Looking at the logs, Carlos has not used admin actions in many years, other than to delete pages to make way for moves of his mass-creations, so perhaps he doesn't need those privileges! Very sad to see downright false information not just here but on Wikidata and other languages that is even harder to fix due to his sheer incompetence and refusal to conduct adequate verification before mass-spamming of articles, even after being informed of the problems! Reywas92Talk21:08, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I would like to comment on the possibility of an Arbcom case here. I would support anyone proposing a possible Arbcom case request in addition, but not in place of, community sanctions, for the purpose of determining if this is enough for a desysop. I doubt that Arbcom would ultimately decide that a Desysop is warranted since the misuse of article creation occurred years ago, but I think it's worth a case request to investigate further. Jackattack1597 (talk) 21:33, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The simplest way to get arbcom to deal with this if needed is to establish a mainspace article creation ban . A subsequent violation of such a ban by an admin would be probably fall within their view of ADMINACCT. And if there are no subsequent violations the problem is solved. Sanctions are for prevention. If similar things happen with other editors, the ban is a good precedent. DGG ( talk ) 21:40, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support stronger sanction - Ban on mainspace article creation per DGG. If Carlos restricts themselves to their present work on categories this is harmless, but anything beyond this they simply cannot be trusted to do. For more than a decade they abused their position as admin to create vast number of articles that they must have known (because, as an admin, they are expected to know) failed WP:GNG and WP:GEOLAND. This was done with the apparent goal of simply boosting their article-creation stats to score higher on this board (i.e., WP:NOTHERE behaviour). We all may make mistakes, but most of us don't simply keep on making them even after they've been pointed out to us. Most of us will try to fix our mistakes. Most of us won't simply be dismissive and refuse to help as it becomes apparent that we have created an immense problem for others to clean up. Admins are expected to be accountable per WP:ADMINACCT yet Carlos shirked any accountability for their GEOFAIL stub creation. Yes, it will be a novelty to have an Admin who isn't even trusted to create articles, but here we are. FOARP (talk) 08:46, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
It has come to my attention that a large number of stub articles on Turkish placenames have been recently created (example at Alatarla, Oltu). They all seem to be taken from a single unverifable secondary source, and none of them have coordinates, though they do have population numbers. It's not the same editor (these were created by User:Lugnuts), but they present the same issues of review and potential cleanup. Mangoe (talk) 19:54, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I've been editing many of these articles and can verify that I haven't stumpled upon one that did not exist. Perhaps a better reference should have been used for population (like nufusune.com) but this is a separate issue. --Semsûrî (talk) 20:50, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
OK, before people get their pitchforks ready, please DO NOT tar me with the same brush as the work done by Carlossuarez46. I started to work on the lists of populated places in X for Turkey a while back. The first list, and all the lists for places starting with A, had already been completed. So, with a bit of research into the existing articles, I started to set up new pages based on what I'd found. The source I've been using was already used in some of these articles.
I don't add coordinates because I simply do not know where that data comes from, or how to add it correctly. However, The Anomebot2 has been adding coordinates to hundreds of these articles (I assume from their name, it's a bot...), and editor Deor has been adding maps too (example).
From what I can tell, Carlossuarez46 created all the Iranian articles on here FIRST, and then they have been copied across other wikis afterwards, which seems to be the big problem based on the verifiability of the EN article. 99.99% of the Turkish articles I've created already exist on the Turkish WP, with the vast majority already existing on other wikis too (Kurdish, Armenian, German, etc). If you still think there's something wrong, or close to being a problem on the scale of Carlossuarez46's, then please get your evidence together, and log a new thread at ANI. Thanks. LugnutsFire Walk with Me07:32, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The problem, Lugnuts, like I said in the ANI discussion about your cricket edits, is that you are mass creating these based solely on an unreliable site. Yes, the villages exist, so the problem is different than the CarlosSuarez one above: but once you are made aware that the source you use may be unreliable, you should doublecheck this, and preferably start using a different source, instead of simply continuing. You claim that Elmadüzü, Oltu has a 2012 population of 64: the Turkish article gives a population of 302 in 2007, and 406 in 2014. Which one is correct? Çengelli, Oltu; you claim population 154 (2012), Turkish Wikipedia claims 307 in 2007, and 398 in 2014. Without some good indication that this source is reliable, you shouldn't continue to create articles based on it, and preferably either resource the others ot move them to draftspace until you can. Creating hundreds (thousands?) of stubs based on one unreliable source really isn't acceptable. Fram (talk) 08:28, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure why you continue to target me and my work with your harassment Fram, but if you still think there's something wrong, or close to being a problem on the scale of Carlossuarez46's, then please get your evidence together, and log a new thread at ANI. Thanks. LugnutsFire Walk with Me08:38, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - I genuinely have no particular view on Lugnuts's work. I will however note that Carlos is not the only editor at or near the top of this list who has engaged in problematic mass-creation of articles. What matters in terms of sanctions is how they responded to it - and particularly in Carlo's case the fact that they are an Admin and should be held to a higher standard. The person at the top of that leaderboard created stub articles en masse using an algorithm based on data from GEONET - an unreliable source - but they at least seem amenable to at least agreeing to a solution to that problem, and it may be that, after this AN has been dealt with, we can follow a standard path to clearing up these GEOFAIL articles. There is absolutely no need for drama in doing this. FOARP (talk) 08:57, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Brinja People
I want to set up a page for the Brinja People and to be able the add to it see
The final decision in the RexxS arbitration case has been made and the case subsequently was closed. The final decision is viewable on the main case page. One remedy was passed as part of the final decision, which is included below:
Currently MDanielsBot clears the AIV board of reports anywhere from 4-8 hours old, as they are deemed stale. I certainly don't take filing reports there lightly, so I have become concerned when two reports I filed in the last month were cleared out without any apparent attention (Ds Abhishek, Special:Diff/1007893544; Nawzad Shekhany, Special:Diff/1014006514). In the former case, the user went on to post promotional content twice more before being blocked.
I realize this was probably deemed necessary because the board was being overloaded/abused with frivolous and/or illegitimate reports. My concern is that legit reports (particularly of spammers/self-promoters) are being wiped out without ever having been looked at. Is there no better way to manage the backlog? If an admin was able to tag the report with a template to say no action is required, no further explanation needed... or at least increase the time before the bot clears the report, to give more time to investigate... I'd at least have confidence that my reports are not being made in vain. Thanks. --Drm310🍁 (talk) 20:27, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This should probably be discussed at a more relevant venue like WT:AIV, or WP:AN, focusing mostly the question of what the bot should do, in an ideal world. After that's decided, Mdaniels5757 could be contacted to implement / update the bot to follow the new desired logic. Headbomb {t · c · p · b}21:06, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
We can tag reports with no-action required, it's just a lot of admins don't (or AIV is understaffed, a reasonable statement in modern days). I agree that this is not really the place to discuss it however. Izno (talk) 21:43, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note that MDaniels hasn't edited for two months, and his talk page says he is on a wiki break until December, so he may not be ready available to implement changes.Jackattack1597 (talk) 13:34, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If the bot's operator is unavailable, I suggest the bot be blocked for the time being, and other methods be used to manage archiving. -- The Anome (talk) 14:08, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
IMO, a bot should only be blocked if its operator is unavailable and the bot is causing problems that the operator is not fixing (which does not seem to be the case here, yet—only if we get consensus that there is something to be done and the operator doesn't address it). There is a real issue with critical bots being maintained by one user who could disappear at any time. Many of these bots continue running without any problems and blocking them for reasons other than stopping a disruptive bot is not productive. Also, the fact that an operator hasn't edited in a couple months does not mean they are unavailable. Has an effort been made to contact him? (I can see MDaniels is active off-wiki, for what it's worth.) — The Earwig (talk) 14:40, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In my experience, the reports that MDanielsBot removes are almost always issues that aren't truly urgent, and at AIV we want to prioritize action on the more urgent reports (e.g. a vandal making dozens of edits in a short time frame) over the ones where the editor seems to have stopped vandalizing or spamming for the time being. The relevant policy is WP:PREVENTATIVE: Deterrence is based upon the likelihood of repetition. For example, though it might have been justifiable to block an editor a short time ago, such a block may no longer be justifiable right now, particularly if the actions have since ceased or the conduct issues have been resolved. If MDanielsBot removes your report, and you think that it still needs attention, then I would just add the report to WP:AIV again. Mz7 (talk) 18:38, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That's fair, but I would claim that most reports of such accounts do get actioned successfully, and they only tend to slip through the cracks when AIV is backlogged, which is when we want to prioritize the more urgent requests anyway. Mz7 (talk) 20:09, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Meh, the bots don't typically get super upset, and run to your talkpage / noticeboards when you decline reports from them. Often times, that's why admins will decline to action reports. SQLQuery me!01:54, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The reason the bot exists is because admins don't like declining reports at AIV because it can get you yelled at, and no one likes to get yelled at. If a report has been there for 4-8 hours, as Mz7 says, it is definitionally not urgent and ongoing and doesn't meet the purpose of AIV. If you get a repeat spammer or someone who vandalizes once a month for 12 months straight, WP:ANI is a better place to file a report because it probably takes more than one sentence to explain.I'll also note that MDanielsBot isn't the first bot we've had that did this SQL ran SQLBot for a significant time before, and this is a replacement for that. Anyway, this looks to me like the bot is working as intended. If there's an issue that requires explanation, even if it's relatively simple, ANI is the best place to go. My rule of thumb is that if an issue takes more than one sentence to explain why someone should be blocked and anyone can see, AIV is not the right place to report. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:03, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, WP:SEP will always be a thing on a volunteer project. ANI would be the right place for low-rate vandals, were it not for the (mostly but not entirely non-admin) peanut gallery who will go immediately hunting through the reporter's contributions, for an opportunity to shout "WP:BOOMERANG! WP:BOOMERANG! WP:BOOMERANG!". Often based on a simple mistake, or some bizarre interpretation of policy. Maybe we need a page for "middle ground" reports. Oh, who am I kidding, it will just turn into another ANI. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:21, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
DLive Moderators have a heavy political corporate bias and agenda
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I really am just showing again that over 4 normal people wanted to prove that your description of Dlive is laughably biased, and ignorant conspiracies.
4 people have been banned from editing in actual truth, while they keep painting the website as a white nationalist website when that is clearly not true at all.
We have corrected the new actual appearance of the gaming website it is now, and the editors clearly keep painting it as a conspiracy website. Go there yourself and see, this has been edited 4 times by a certain group of far-left agenda type 'wikipedia editors' (who actually do not actually prove what they are saying except random blogs by 1 random reporter nobody knows)
This is pathetic, and your website is now having active corporate entities with biased people, editing out truth to attack competition (dlive is clearly being attacked, i have no affiliation with it, just stating obvious facts as an independent voter)
Thank you, please help keep the website not far-left agenda, it is becoming a haven for editors on this site to be more far left than center. It is reported in many websites, so please realize it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 47.40.141.252 (talk) 15:15, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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It's a need to have someone answer the question of what the images on the Wikimmedia Common, flagicons images and Templates:Country datas are for, when the few users systematically remove flagicons (flags and other symbols such as coats of arms) in infoboxes of several articles at once and block their addition based on the assumption that they are "disruptive", anachronistic etc, after when I read MOS:INFOBOXFLAG, I concluded that there is no rule that recommended or commanded their remove. If these users are right and proceeding correctly, then there is no point to doing several activities such as editing Templates:Country datas or participate in some Wikimedia Commons projects (flags, coats of arms etc), because it isn't possible to use them. The various articles are then in two different styles, some with flagicons and others without, so Wikipedia seems to me to be inconsistent. The details and arguments for and against are here: WikiProject Military history, which was later complicated such as by discussing about the appropriateness of using the one term. Dragovit (talk) 01:00, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What is correct venue for discussion of overturning a close of a talkpage thread?
So, an editor SNOW closed a discussion thread. (I think it was technically not an admin action, but de facto probably is), and I wish to contest this. But where? I thought that WP:Deletion review might be best? (Closing something down isn't exactly the same as deleting it, but kind of, and after all the people there are skilled particularly at assessing closes).
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Could someone please protect the BLP Mizkif immediately? The vandalism is coming in every few seconds and it is impossible to revert to a clean version because of the continuous edit conflicts. Meters (talk) 21:26, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
On mobile the message Content that violates any copyrights will be deleted. Encyclopedic content must be verifiable. Any work submitted to Wikipedia can be edited, used, and redistributed—by anyone—subject to certain terms and conditions. is not displayed in the new style editor. If you press the X next to "Editing (title)", you switch to another editor that does show the notice.
I'm reporting this here for now because I'm not sure if this can be fixed by an admin/interface admin (maybe the new editor uses a different message?), or maybe nobody is supposed to see the notice anymore, or maybe it's a bug that belongs on Phabricator, or maybe it's all by design so it's not a bug but a feature.
I edit in mobile web view most of the time and I prefer not seeing any editnotice, it'll allow the editing window to fully occupy my phone screen. I bet if any editnotices are shown it will irritate mobile editors eventually. enjoyer|talk02:06, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Enjoyer of World: IMHO either the notice should be removed altogether regardless of device or everyone should see it. If anything, my personal impression is that mobile users need to be warned more than desktop users, not less. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 03:20, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Alexis Jazz, warned for what? It's a very generic message about copyright and verifiability that everyone who've edited Wikipedia must have known by now. If anything, it should only be shown once and removed after. enjoyer|talk04:16, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Enjoyer of World: Warned, informed, tomayto, tomahto. My personal impression (I have no stats at hand to back up my claim) is that proportionally mobile users are responsible for more copyvios and vandalism. (which would make sense for a number of reasons anyway) — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 06:48, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I fully protected for a week and reverted to what I think is a pre-war version. No problem with correcting the version without asking me (and I will be off to bed in about half an hour anyway).--Ymblanter (talk) 20:31, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
RogerNiceEyes(talk·contribs·count) is a brand-new user whose editing has been solely concerned with adding images to articles. Since he started actively editing in the beginning of March, he has accumulated some five thousand edits doing this, at a fairly high rate of speed that doesn't seem to leave a lot of room for double-checking. I have no doubt that he is editing in good faith, as many of the images are topically-related and many of the articles lacked images to begin with. Unfortunately, Roger's enthusiasm far outstrips his accuracy. Myself, Ymblanter, and Pjposullivan have all noted instances where Roger has accidentally added images that he seems to believe are related, but are on closer inspection, are not the topic of the article:
There are other issues, noted on his talk page: his captions are non-existent or one-word at best, images are often crammed in randomly, and his edit summary is invariably solely the word "Added". The above examples are cherry-picked from the last two days, and from a limited sample of his edits on those days at that - I'm certain there are more, but his edits are so prolific it would be very difficult for one human to check them all.
I messaged him yesterday about the accuracy and captions, but he carried on making more of the same edits and same errors today. I left him a second message begging him to take more care, and he appears to have stopped editing for today since then, but without a response, it's impossible to know for sure if he's seen it or it was just a coincidence. In fact, he has never responded to any talk page message that I can tell, and he doesn't have email enabled. Roger solely edits from the mobile app, so he may not even know he has talk page messages, thanks to the terrible app interface.
I don't particularly want to stop him from editing entirely - as I said, many of the images are useful. It's just that he's creating a great deal of cleanup work in his wake, and wasting other peoples' time (especially after being asked and warned) is unfair on a collaborative project. Ymblanter suggested that we implement a mass rollback on his edits rather than expecting people to manually review them. I'm bringing this here to get some input on what, if anything, should be done with this. ♠PMC♠ (talk)16:04, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, indeed, I fully support this. I first noticed the user a few days ago, when they added a few photographs which did not conform with the Freedom of panorama requirements (example). Whereas I do not expect them to know anything about freedom of panorama, and I do not doubt they are acting in good faith, the fraction of errors is too large to let this go.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:07, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I have also been watching this work and dropping hints about how to do it better. My guess is that it is based on a list of articles which have images in other language equivalents, e.g. the most recent edit adds an image used in fr:Xanthomonadales. It is potentially useful if done well, and some of it is done well, but I agree that the number of errors makes it of dubious benefit overall. Certes (talk) 16:13, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the sheer number of additions makes the accumulation of errors and the necessary response more drastic. Also, not to forget the fact that after thousands of edits, there has been neither improvement nor response from them. Pjposullivan (talk) 16:43, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Moved to Talk:Igor Krutoy