Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive230

WP:AIV

Resolved

 – Backlog cleared. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 13:54, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism is showing quite a large backlog. More administrator eyes would be greatly appreciated - one clear case for a block being this fellow, according to whom Bing Crosby has somehow risen from the dead to become Prime Minister of Austria... SuperMarioMan 22:12, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

If a dead pope can be put on trial, why can't a dead singer become a politician? Nyttend (talk) 02:28, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Depends on the district, I'd wager. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 13:54, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

I'd vote for a dead guy over many of the politicians we have... Normandie 13:24, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Admins, bring your mops and buckets

There is a backlog of backlogs at Category:Administrative backlog, with 20 items in that category at the moment. I would encourage admins to fill up their mop-buckets (but not to the brim, since most backlogs are pretty short - they're just old items that have passed under the radar) and take a look at some backlogs.

Additionally, due to the current Move to Commons drive, Category:All Wikipedia files with the same name on Wikimedia Commons‎ and Category:All Wikipedia files with a different name on Wikimedia Commons‎ are filling up quickly. These could do with a bit of help as well. — This, that, and the other (talk) 08:49, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Yo dawg, I heard you like Backlogs..... no, sorry, can't do it. But I'll dig into this. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 13:13, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

List of modern dictators

Some people are continously trying to add the PM of Hungary to the list. List of modern dictators Lock suggested. --81.182.233.191 (talk) 13:00, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Semi-protected for a fortnight, thanks for your report (though WP:RFPP might have been a more suitable venue for this request. ). Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 13:14, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, sorry for posting in the wrong place. --81.182.233.191 (talk) 13:20, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Technical help required

Can one of you please have a look at User talk:Admiralfilms? Your luddite, Drmies (talk) 18:34, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

There was an autoblock from between the time when you had them blocked with autoblock enabled and when you modified it. I think I got it, but we'll see what the user says. Syrthiss (talk) 18:40, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

I went back and thought I had unchecked that box. Maybe something got lost in that ton of database errors I've seen this morning. Thanks! Drmies (talk) 19:28, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

• (del/undel) 23:02, 5 January 2012 Drmies (talk | contribs | block) changed block settings for Admiralfilms (talk | contribs) with an expiry time of indefinite (autoblock disabled) ‎ (unblock | change block)
• (del/undel) 21:48, 5 January 2012 Drmies (talk | contribs | block) blocked Admiralfilms (talk | contribs) (account creation blocked) with an expiry time of indefinite ‎ ({{softerblock}}) (unblock | change block)

Yep, it didn't get checked the first time (database error or whatever). When you went back and reblocked, then it was checked. However, since there was 1 hr 14 m between the two actions its likely the editor tried to edit in the meantime and incurred the autoblock. Syrthiss (talk) 19:32, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks again! Drmies (talk) 19:55, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Edit filter modification

I was checking an edit filter to see if a long term vandal has appeared, again, and I discovered that he indeed did. However, I would like to have someone modify the edit filter that catches him (Special:AbuseFilter/213) to prevent an edit that he seems to have performed in the past which can be seen here. Somehow that made it through the filter (I believe it was a misspelling of a critical word). Perhaps this misspelling could be added to the filter, as well as some of the other less than helpful statements he made on the page. No one is ever going to need those words strung together anyway.—Ryulong (竜龙) 11:19, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh, and it appears these edits made it through fairly recently, so perhaps the phrasing in them can also be added to the edit filter to stop this idiot from making his opinions known.—Ryulong (竜龙) 11:20, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Has anyone dealt with this?—Ryulong (竜龙) 07:30, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

 Done I changed the filter in some way, drop me an email if it doesn't suffice and i'll do my option 2 on this filter. -- DQ (t) (e) 08:03, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Looks like your timing was right.—Ryulong (竜龙) 08:11, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Edit in a protected page requested

Resolved

My user name has changed from "BernhardMeyer" to "Pevos". Now I am changing all my signatures in past discussions. As Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2009/Comments/William_M._Connolley is protected, I cannot change it there. Could you please help me and replace "BernhardMeyer" by "Pevos" (three times in the source) and put in the edit summary: "Changed user name, see Special:Log/renameuser".

An example is here.

Thank you. --Pevos (talk) 13:58, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Done. Hut 8.5 14:37, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

UAA backlog

Resolved

 – Cleared.--v/r - TP 18:37, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

This is not as urgent as an AIV or RPP backlog, but still, WP:UAA has a backlog to clear.Jasper Deng (talk) 04:37, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Several folks have cleared it.--v/r - TP 18:37, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

RFC/U needs examining

Not an issue for Administrators' noticeboard. Referred elsewhere

 – these issues should be discussed on the RFC's talk page. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:56, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

There is a RFC/U concerning me that was recently started. It doesn't really seem to serve much purpose as the evidence seems random, or false and in many cases doesn't make any sense. Anyway I've still gone through and addressed everything and it would be useful if some uninvolved parties could take a look. it can be found at Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Shakehandsman. Thanks.--Shakehandsman (talk) 05:22, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

 Not done. That RFCU has been open for 3 days. Once certified, they generally stay open for at least a month, or at least until outside input dies down. 3 days is way too short to judge consensus before closing an RFCU. --Jayron32 06:48, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

I wasn't implying 3 days was sufficient at all, just that the whole exercise was extremely questionable in itself, that's not simply my own personal view, but one shared by at least two other editors.--Shakehandsman (talk) 07:05, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

I have not looked at your RfC/U just yet, but the recent trend in starting lame RfC/U's exemplified by Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Hentzer is worrisome. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 11:38, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

We close and delete an RFCU when they're not properly certified, and multiple people have alleged (toward the bottom of the page) that nothing was certified by more than one person. I don't have time to check it myself, but another admin should check the certifications and delete if these allegations are correct: the RFC/U policy says that 48 hours is the maximum time to allow before an improperly certified page is deleted. Nyttend (talk) 13:36, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm one of the certifiers, so you can take my comment for what it is worth, but the dispute here is about this editor's user conduct, ie long-term problems with BLP and POV editing. Multiple different editors and administrators on different articles have noted this over a long period of time, and there have been posts to various noticeboards, and even an OTRS complaint. As User:Youreallycan has pointed out on the RFC[1], WP has recently had experience of negative, POV BLP editing flying below the radar for a long time, that ended with an editor being topicbanned from BLP articles.I guessing he was thinking of this: [2] If RFC/U isn't the place to draw attention to such a problem as early as possible and try to fix it, where is? --Slp1 (talk) 14:19, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Question: It's been my understanding that the Certifying users need to be someone different than the filing editor (for a total of 3 editors who object to the behavior). If this is the case, the RfC/U in question needs to be deleted (procedurally) as we only have DC (The author), and one other user certifying. Could I get a clarification? Hasteur (talk) 14:22, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

No, proceedurely speaking the filer is the primary certifier. However, if somebody else can not certify alongside them (ie a second person) then the RFC/U is considered uncertified. However, this one, as Jayron32, said is certified & open--Cailil ^talk 15:34, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

• I am the editor who opened the RFC/U (and the editor who has repeatedly been accused of by Shakehandsman of harassment for using the correct WP mechanisms like RFC/U, WP:BLPN, and AfD to deal with issues with editors and articles). It would have been nice to have been notified of this discussion, but no harm done. I was unfamiliar with Shakehandsman before I noticed relatively minor driving offences prominently displayed in the BLP of a current British MP. That unnecessary negative information has since removed on undue weight and BLP grounds from at least three BLPs which Shakehandsman had edited. I believe all were Labour Party (UK) MPs. Shakehandsman also created the article Driving without due care and attention using as a source a piece in the Daily Mail about charges against Labour MP Harriet Harman, the subject of previous BLP disputes involving Shakehandsman. I wholly agree with Shakehandsman that the RFC/U needs examining. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 17:16, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Song article violations/Tbhotch

Resolved

 – reporting user blocked. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:53, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

I am reporting Legolas2186 for violations of song articles such as Judas e.g. he has removed music genres without adding a source, and this is not the first time it has happened sadly. I think a block would be very justified.

I am also reporting Tbhotch because he is terrorizing other users, plus he is supposed to be a banned editor. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.182.105.217 (talk) 14:18, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

WP:BOOMARANG -- MST☆R ^{(Chat Me!)} 14:38, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

This edit and This one, are the edits you should be reporting - even though you made them, yourself. -- MST☆R ^{(Chat Me!)} 15:08, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Boomerang indeed. Blocked. Elockid ^(Talk) 15:09, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Upgraded to a hardblock. This is just CharlieJS13 back again.—Kww(talk) 15:12, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

WP:SUBP

Did we get a new sandbox and I missed the memo? Drmies (talk) 01:26, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

That's the trouble with Wikipedia: no memos. G2-ed. — Edokter (talk) — 01:46, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Ah, is that the problem! Drmies (talk) 01:54, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Huh? Nyttend (talk) 03:58, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Huh indeed. I don't understand what the question is here. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:40, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

At the time of the initial post above, the content of User:Austyler/SUBP resided at WP:SUBP. The matter seems to have been taken care of. Deor (talk) 21:56, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Ah, okay; no wonder Drmies was confused. Hadn't occurred to me to check the page history. Nyttend (talk) 01:33, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

RPP backlog

Once again, WP:RPP is backlogged.Jasper Deng (talk) 03:10, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Copyright cleanup: help desperately needed

Hi. :) Help is desperately needed in the copyright cleanup department. I try to put hours into WP:CP every weekend and there are a few admins pitching in here and there, but it is backlogging nevertheless. This problem is only going to get worse now that Corensearchbot is back up and running. Great to have it, as it is the first line of defense against copyright problems, but there are only a couple of editors regularly checking WP:SCV, and one of them was just blocked as an impersonator. To boot, I've discovered that my earlier spot checks of his or her work there obviously didn't give me an accurate picture of his or her work.

We are desperately in need of more people to take on the work there. If even a couple of admins could make handling a few tickets a part of their routine, it could make quite a difference. I'm committed to continuing to help out there, but I just can't keep up with it like I used to.

Help? If you aren't familiar with the work and you want "on the job" training, just let me know. I'm very willing to help out. :D --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 03:28, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

I'll do some, if you train me. HurricaneFan25 13:44, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Request for Comment - Article Feedback Tool

Hey guys. We've just opened a Request for Comment on the Article Feedback Tool, version 5. Amongst other things, we're looking at anti-spam and anti-BLP vandalism measures, so as much participation as is possible would be most welcome :). Hope to see people there! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:13, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Closure request

Hi all, we have an old unclosed deletion review at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2011 December 23, please could someone oblige? All the best—S Marshall T/C 16:56, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

WP:ARBMAC related help needed

IP address, in its third edit started merge proposal on Kosovo article talk page. Bit later, User:PersonPaOpinion, (make-believe new user) in its eight edit starts supporting, while citing wikipedia guidelines. While article was carefully spited few months ago, on the agreement of the great number of editors, (with vast sockpuppets attacks), i am asking for admin help in stopping this new line of empty words, wrong unbacked POVs and false consensuses, that may create again. My proposition is that some unrelated admin interfere, and stop the agreement, close it, or guide it. I would close it, and if someone who is not sockpuppet or ip nationalistic warrior wants to propose it, but with arguments and reasons, should do it. As you know, Kosovo is under ARBMAC editing restrictions, and sockpuppets are not welcomed on its pages, because of the known reasons. --WhiteWriter ^speaks 23:25, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

user adding non notable persons to multiple articles

I am sorry, i just spent an hour browsing internal WP pages trying to figure out HOW to deal with this problem. but since WP is not set up in any welcoming or helpful format, i am putting the problem here. So, someone can slap me around and tell me where i should have placed it. User:Harvardcrimsonfan has been adding names of Harvard students to multiple articles as Notable residents, and notable alumni..note these are merely students who are being listed as Vollyball players or whatnot.HarvardCrimsonfan contribs These are not yet notable persons and are just cluttering up the articles in question. I have corrected the few pages that i watch but I do not want to start an edit war by correct all of their edits. I feel these edits are poorly thought out and not in the spirit of WP. Can anyone tell me where to report what i consider consistently poor editing choices? thank you EraserGirl (talk) 00:48, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Probably here, though I don't see much point in moving this report now that it's here. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 02:08, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Seems rather innocent on first look. Harvardcrimsonfan (talk · contribs) hasn't been around but for 7 months and hasn't made but less than 100 edits. Reverting their edits per WP:NNC is the correct thing to do. Going forward, the only thing that appears necessary is leave a {{subst:welcome}} template on their talk page plus add a personal note about adding non-notable folks to articles. --64.85.216.114 (talk) 17:10, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you so much for your helpful answer. I have not had good experiences when it came to internal WP issues. I have been keeping myself to myself but this seemed a little over the top to ignore. EraserGirl (talk) 02:36, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Sockpuppet vandalism from WMF IP?

Can anyone explain this edit from an IP that is registered to the Wikimedia Foundation? NawlinWiki (talk) 22:58, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Ooh, a WMF conspiracy...Doughnuthead is working for the WMF! <laughs evilly> HurricaneFan25 23:00, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Because User:Doughnuthead is using an XFF. --MuZemike 23:01, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

I thought the software didn't believe XFF's except from a carefully-chosen hand-picked and validated set of source IP addresses of ISP proxies? If XFF is being used to forge source IPs, the devs need to stamp on it immediately. Can someone please bring this to the attention of the Wikipedia ops team? -- The Anome (talk) 23:04, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Has anyone contacted WMF about this? LadyofShalott 23:10, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Should be fixed now. Let me know if you see any more edits from other WMF IPs. Prodego ^talk 23:30, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, that's great. Can you tell us a bit more about what the problem was, and how it got fixed? -- The Anome (talk) 00:38, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

That squid server was not added to $wgSquidServersNoPurge when it was deployed, causing it not to be a trusted XFF source. MuZemike's statement above touches on the problem (it does involve XFF), but is otherwise incorrect. It is a much less serious issue, fixed by wmf staffer Reedy by adding the server to the list. Prodego ^talk 01:29, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Ah! Thank you, that makes a lot more sense. -- The Anome (talk) 13:28, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Attention to Georgian Shepherd Dog

Would someone please look at Georgian Shepherd Dog. It is an absolute mess and new user ArsA-92 (talk · contribs) is having some problems with copyright and WP:OWN issues. (After I cleaned it up reversion of good changes again). I tried reaching out to this user (who might become a helpful editor with some experience), but that was rejected.--GrapedApe (talk) 22:31, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

The return of Jason Gastrich?

While doing routine patrol of some of the lesser namespaces, I found what appears to be an open letter from Jason Gastrich to the Wikipedia community, apologizing for all the sockpuppetry he did in 2006.

I have no opinion on how we should respond (if at all - should the account be blocked, for instance?), but I do feel it should be brought to the attention of more people. DS (talk) 15:06, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

An apology is a start, and six years is a long time for an editor (especially a younger editor) to mature. 1sdkid (talk · contribs) has only made that one edit on 23 December, so it's not as though there is continued socking going on by the look of it.

I would suggest that we open a dialogue with this editor, ask what their intention is re editing and whether or not they intend to be a constructive editor. If this editor is willing to stick to one account, then maybe a return to editing could be permitted. For now, let's keep the banhammers in their cases. Disclosure: I have no knowledge of this editors history, but as I said, six years is a long time. Mjroots (talk) 16:46, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Scrub the above. I see that Jason Gastrich (talk · contribs) is banned. Will comment further after a bit of digging. Mjroots (talk) 16:49, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

The ban was given via Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Jason Gastrich, and was for a year. It has now expired, so Jason Gastrich is not banned, merely blocked. Therefore it would seem that the banned template on his user and talk pages are now incorrect. What about allowing JG access to his talk page, and allowing him to submit a request to be unblocked? Mjroots (talk) 16:56, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Access to his talk page is appropriate so he can request unblock. One year ban has expired; he still has a indef ban on some articles. Glrx (talk) 17:53, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

I am apparently the blocking administrator; however, I have no memory of the issues; I decline to spend hours familiarizing myself with them. It would seem that the block has expired; I can not say whether a ban was or is appropriate, but, at this point, that should depend on his current editing. User:Fred Bauder Talk 17:55, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

JG notified of discussion and given a link to WP:UNBLOCK. He should be able to edit his talk page according to the block setting. Mjroots (talk) 18:31, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Review requested for topic ban closure

I recently closed an AN/I topic ban proposal as follows: "For obvious and repeated gaming of the system, User:Dolovis is indefinitely banned from 'moving, redirecting/making diacritic related redirects, or otherwise changing titles of articles that have diacritics in the titles', broadly construed."

Dolovis requested on his talk page clarifications of exactly what he could and could not do. My responses are bolded.

1. May I create articles? Yes, you may create articles.
2. May I create redirects for articles which are not diacritic related? Yes, so long as a reasonable person would not view the redirect(s) created as an attempt to skirt the topic ban.
3. May I create redirects pointing towards an article that uses diacritics? No.
4. May I move articles which are not diacritic related? No, but you may request at WP:RM any article move so long as the move has nothing at all do do with diacritics.
5. May I invoke WP:BRD for articles that are boldly moved other editors? No.
6. May I request other editors to invoke WP:BRD on my behalf? No.
7. May I request moves via WP:RM? Yes, but only moves that have nothing at all to do with diacritics.
8. May I take part in RM discussions? Yes, but only to the degree of expressing your support or opposition for a move, with an explanation/reasoning for it. You may not otherwise debate with the other participants of the move discussion, such as by replying to their support or opposition with a rebuttal.
9. May I edit articles that contain diacritics? Only if you make no changes whatsoever to the diacritics: no adding or removing any, or, in the case of articles that have a mix of uses, changing the balance of the uses to favor one of the uses.

Dolovis is unhappy with these clarifications. I believe they are necessary to prevent further recurrences of problematic behavior and are quite fair given the consensus at the AN/I discussion. Nonetheless, I have offered to put my closure and clarifications up for review here. If consensus is that the closure and clarifications are unfair or otherwise unnecessarily broad to prevent disruption and gaming, then I will be happy to adjust them accordingly. 28bytes (talk) 03:46, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

That seems like a reasonable clarification to me. What is the problem? Is there some argument that it's unclear/ambiguous, or is there some desire for Dolovis to do a bunch of other diacritic-related edits? (the former seems reasonable enough; the latter is something we ought to prevent). bobrayner (talk) 04:27, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

28bytes's closure and clarifications appear fine to me. Paul Erik ^{(talk)(contribs)} 04:30, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Concerning Point #9, Dolovis shouldn't be barred from hiding/deleting diacritics from North American based hockey articles. GoodDay (talk) 04:32, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

• I'm not saying the closure was incorrect, but it leaves an awkward situation. Personally, I'd like Dolovis to be able to request moves at WP:RM in some situations. Say he creates "John Smith" about an Eastern European hockey player. That person's native name is "Jöhn Smíth" and someone moves the article to that title with the summary "diacritics". Now, even though Dolovis is the only significant contributor to the article, he is unable to revert (fair enough) or even take it to discussion. I'd propose that Dolovis should be able to propose moves at WP:RM when he is a significant contributor to the specific article and it has been recently moved without discussion. Jenks24 (talk) 04:49, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

• I like the restrictions, but I have a much different take on the consensus, so I must disagree with the interpretation. The ban concerned gaming more than advocacy. The discussion at the bottom of the ban is relevant (Question on scope of topic ban). Here's my take.

1. Disagree. Dolovis may not create any article (or redirect) that has a diacritic in its title. This is to prevent gaming. He may create articles without diacritic titles. I am reading no diacritic article creation into the ban. Basically, Dolovis does not like articles with diacritcs, so he would not reasonably be creating such an article (except to game).
2. Agree.
3. Disagree. Dolovis may make a nondiacritic redirect to a diacritic article. That allows Dolovis to contribute by making diacritic names accessible. The ANI issue was Dolovits salting diacritic titles; he was not salting nondiacritic titles. The language in the ban proposal can be read either way, but the trouble is "Editing redirects currently at diacritic titles". He may not make a diacritic redirect pointing to a diacritic or nondiacritic article.
4. Disagree. Dolovis was originally banned from moving any article July 13, 2011,[3]. The ban allowed him to request moves via RM. That ban was modified to only cover diacritic articles on October 8, 2011.[4] If the relaxed modification is in place, he may move a nondiacritic article to a new nondiacritic name without going through RM.
5. Disagree. Dolovis may invoke BRD on a move when diacritics are not involved. (Same ban modification argument.)
6. Agree. Dolovis may not use an agent to avoid a ban. Under the earlier ban, if he wants an article moved, he must go through RM. He has no other avenue.
7. Disagree. Dolovis may request any move (including diacritics) via WP:RM. There was some discussion about Dolovits being disruptive in his advocacy (I made such a comment), but the ANI was not about his beliefs but about him gaming the system by salting moves.
8. Disagree. There was concern about overzealous advocacy, but no limitation on RM discussions. (Frankly, I think this limitation is a very good idea and Dolovis should follow it.) A comment was that the ban should not prevent Dolovis from civily and constructively participating in discussions. The keys being "civil", "constructive", and "participate". His POV pushing was mentioned at the start, but the disruptive nature of his advocacy was not addressed in the ban proposal nor did it get many comments.
9. Agree. Changing diacritics in an article is not stated but is implied.

Glrx (talk) 08:04, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

While Glrx's reading of #9 is not quite so clear from the ban, I fully agree with the rest of it. And given the fact that the history is of Dolovis trying to force his prefered titles by making moves into the diacritic-containing names impossible for non-admins, I'm not sure that this is necessary. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 08:42, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

The wording of Glrx's #1 concerns me. The problem (broadly) is Dolovis' stance against diacritics. This restriction (if it allows creation at all) thus needs to prevent Dolovis from creating articles that omit diacritics where consensus holds they ought to be present. First and foremost, the ban should prevent this. I'd have no problem with him doing it the other way (using the accepted diacritics), although it seems unlikely, given past behaviour, he'd even wish to do this. Dolovis should still be permitted to create articles on topics where there are simply no diacritics involved (and "I didn't know he used diacritics" would be a poor excuse, likely to cause the ban's extension). For any articles involving diacritics, known diacritics, or personal names of Eastern European ancestry and a "reasonable chance" of diacritics, then he ought to stay well away. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:26, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

@Od Mishehu re #9. I see this as a broad reading about changing diacritics in titles. If there is a wiki-link within an article, that wiki-link involves the title of an article. It seems a bit absurd to say that D must use RM to move an article to his preferred title, but he may change any wiki-links to the title spelling that he prefers. Yes, non-admins may revert those changes, but "otherwise changing titles, broadly construed" may cover wiki-link titles, so 28byte's clarification is reasonable.

@Andy Dingley re #1. I'm sympathetic, but the ban is not about using or not using diacritics -- it is about behavior. The diacritic issue is unsettled, and ANI isn't there to decide the issue. Dolovis should be able to add content without butting up against the diacritics issue or having his nose rubbed in it. Dolovis is probably more clever than I; he is certainly more motivated. If someone is allowed to create diacritic articles, then I can see a way to turn those diacritic articles into salted diacritic redirects without violating the bans.

Glrx (talk) 21:29, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Dolovis was banned from "moving, redirecting/making diacritic related redirects, or otherwise changing titles of articles that have diacritics in the titles". Broadly construed or not, it seems like a real stretch to interpret that editing a wikilink would somehow change that article's title. Jafeluv (talk) 23:08, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Seeing the games played makes the post "Request for move 'Føö' to 'Foo' as all the articles use the redirect 'Foo'." a real possibility after alld of the links have been edited to use the redirect. - J Greb (talk) 00:09, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

That would fall under "otherwise changing the titles", wouldn't it? In any case, I don't think it would be appropriate to try to interpret the restrictions beyond what the ban actually says -- especially when at the same time people are accusing Dolovis of wikilawyering and gaming the system. Jafeluv (talk) 13:39, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

• And this is a perfect example of what Dolovis does. He will find any possible ambiguity or perceived weakness and argue about it over and over again in a clear attempt to tire out what he considers his opponents so they give up and stop debating with him. There were a number people in that discussion that advocated for a full out diacritics topic ban. So I believe the restrictions he was given were fully in line with that. I think 28bytes answers were fine, they even allowed him to !vote in RMs which a normal topic ban wouldn't have allowed so if anything they were laxer than people requested. -DJSasso (talk) 12:11, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
• I'd made a few comments when this was running on Dolovis' talk page - [5] - regarding providing him an extremely limited venue to use t o try and gain back the community's good faith. These are reliant on WP:HOCKEY/PPF#Diacritics. I'm incorporating those here.
  1. I agree with Glrx. By stated stance , Dolovis does not want articles with diuretics. While it is unlikely that he would create an article with such, there is no reason to leave this as a loophole in the ban.
  2. Agreed.
  3. Mostly I agree with Glrx. The creation of reasonable redirects under titles without diacritics that point to existent article under a title with diacritics is a productive area. "Reasonable" though is limited to needed or likely needed redirects. Based on WP:HOCKEY's guideline, such redirects can, and IMO should, be used in the non-Quebec North American team and tourney articles.
     • Common sense though with 2 and 3 though is that he is not to create redirects with diacritics in the titles. Full stop.
  4. Articles - and I'd say pages - with old or new names with diacritics are off the table for him to boldly move. Full stop. So should article, or pages, that have, or are likely to have, diacritic titled redirects. Beyond that should be fair game.
  5. As with 4 - not with pages with a diacritic title, a redirect with a diacritic title, or like to have a redirect with a diacritic title.
     • Side issue A) I am not too adverse to him stating in a RM request that it is BRD based - as long as he clearly states the move is to be duscussed and that he is using RM as he is under restrictions.
     • Side issue B) I do have an issue with him bemoaning his being curtailed in the application of BRD - an essay that is trated as a de facto guideline - while he has no problem with preventing the use of WP:BOLD - guideline in fact as well as name - by other editors at his own whim. (Yes this was pointed out to him see [6].)
  6. Agree
  7. Also agree with Glrx, though with the same side caveat A as with 5.
  8. I still hold to the statement Glrx quotes. I'd rather Dolovis participates in the discussions and remember how he participates is something others will be looking at.
  9. I agree, to a degree. There is a very limited articles set that currently has any level of consensus about the use of diacritics - see the HOCKEY guideline I pointed to above. GoodDay has pointed out on Dolovis talk page that this is an area where Dolovis can be productive and allows for the removal of diacritics on some articles.

- J Greb (talk) 00:03, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

• J Greb, you seem to be under the misconception that I have been actively BOLDLY moving articles away from diacritics. That would be wrong, as it is others who are moving the articles without consensus. I drew their ire when I reverted some of these moves, as was my right until they successfully implemented a ban to prevent me from challenging their moves. I do not disapprove of diacritics, but I am an advocate for the use of RM when moving articles away from their COMMONNAME. Dolovis (talk) 04:14, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

  Cmt: bold moves by Dolovis to a non-diacritical title not preceded by a move to a diacritical title: [7], [8], [9], [10], [11]. HandsomeFella (talk) 10:10, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

  The double standard being placed upon me is obvious and disturbing. Other editors and bots, such as RjwilmsiBot, continue to make[12] hundreds, if not thousands, of second edits for the purpose of redirect tagging. As has been identified here and in ANI, this has the effect of preventing non-Admin editors from making BOLD moves, and thus (following the logic for my topic ban) is disruptive. I was blocked for one week, and now have a wide topic ban, for placing four redirect tags. What administrative action will be done to prevent those other thousands of “disruptive” edits from being made? Dolovis (talk) 17:25, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

  That bot doesn't have a history of purposefully doing it to be disruptive like you do. You admitted to doing it solely to stop people from making moves. The fact that people can't make moves after the bot edits is a side effect of its edit, not the purpose of its edit like yours were. You were shown you can't be trusted to edit properly thus you are now held to a higher standard, that is how the wiki works. You had a chance to contribute constructively instead you battled with people and ended up with sanctions. -DJSasso (talk) 17:29, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

  Is there a diff for the "You admitted..."? I missed it in the earlier discussions, and it seems relevant here. Glrx (talk) 18:08, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

  In October 2011: "...I was banned for making double-edits to redirect pages (which I did in an a naive attempt to slow down the controversial moves)...". Paul Erik ^{(talk)(contribs)} 18:19, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

  Beat me to it. Also relevant is his promise "I have heard the concerns and I promise to not create redirects (see WP:REDCAT) using multiple edits." from his original ban. -DJSasso (talk) 18:37, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

The terms of the topic ban remains as clear as mud. Let me try this one question at a time. Am I able to make diacritic related move requests though RM? Yes or No. Dolovis (talk) 04:27, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

No. 28bytes' #7 is crystal clear. Don't play that game here. Glrx (talk) 05:56, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Response by Dolovis

I am an experienced editor who makes constructive edits to Wikipedia. Any careful review of my edit history will confirm this. I was not able to actively take part in the topic ban discussion because I was blocked for one-week for making proper redirects that follow the instructions of Template:R from diacritics and WP:REDCAT because in four instances two edits were used at the time of creation (seriously). Yes, I had previously been banned from from making diacritic-related moves, but not from creating redirects, and no warning was given in advance of the block, (but I digress from the topic at hand).

When I create and edit articles, I follow the policies of Wikipedia, including the policies of WP:Article titles (which includes WP:COMMONNAME) and the WP:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle. There are several editors who have been aggressively pursuing a FAIT ACCOMPLI strategy of moving articles to titles containing diacritics and other modified letters wherever possible and with no regard for WP:COMMONNAME. These editors include User:HandsomeFella, the editor who instigated the topic ban against me, and who is an outspoken editor who strongly favours the use of diacritics in articles titles wherever possible. HandsomeFella has, in the recent past, uncivilly and falsely called me “The diacritic-hating one-man wrecking crew”[13], and he labelled one successful RM instigated by me as “a disruptive RM in violation of WP:HOCKEY and WP:COMMONSENSE”[14], and he is an editor who himself has moved numerous files to articles titles with diacritics including [15],[16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], and [24].

On January 5th, 28bytes' placed the following topic ban on my account: You are indefinitely banned from "moving, redirecting/making diacritic related redirects, or otherwise changing titles of articles that have diacritics in the titles, broadly construed."[25]. His statement that the topic ban would be “broadly construed” terrifies me as it might mean that I could be blocked the moment that I make any edit to any article that contains any modified letters. Upon requesting clarification, he informed me that I was additionally banned from:

1. creating English-language redirects pointing towards an article that uses diacritics;
2. from using the core Wikipedia policy of WP:BRD to contest a controversial move (and even from requesting another editor to undo controversial moves on my behalf);
3. from even making diacritic-related move requests at WP:RM;
4. from fully participating in move discussions; and
5. from freely editing articles (under this restriction I could be blocked if I even add an additional reference to an article which does not further support the diacritic-form of a person's name).

The true fact is that I am being held to a higher standard than any other editor on Wikipedia. This ban prevents me from openly voicing my opinion in discussions, where I have advocated that the existing policies of Wikipedia should be followed. This ban amounts to censorship against me, and must be reviewed by uninvolved, unbiased, and informed editors. I thank you for your review of this situation. Dolovis (talk) 06:08, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

• I have serious reservations about your notion of "fully participating in move discussions". Your advocacy is overzealous. Glrx (talk) 08:25, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

  This is an example of my oponents throwing out unverifiable statement about my editing. Show me the dif where my advocacy has been disruptively overzealous so other editors may draw their own conclusions. Dolovis (talk) 16:19, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

• Dolovis, you should probably appeal your ban to ArbCom. If anything is to be learned from this type of community discussions is that they usually result in "no consensus to overturn the ban". ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 12:33, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

• • Dolovis, if it was a toss-up between being restricted by means of a topic ban, or an indefinite block, which would you prefer? Personally, I would support you being allowed to raise possible moves at WP:RM. Your past behaviour has led to you being placed under these conditions, so don't moan on here that you are being held to a higher standard of behaviour than other (non-disruptive) editors. The topic ban is indefinite, which means "without a set length of time before it expires". Should you prove that you can edit in a collaborative way and accept consensus over the use of diacritics, then the topic ban may be looked at at some point in the future. Mjroots (talk) 14:41, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

    With over 30,000 constructive edits I have demonstrated that I do edit collaboratively, and that I do accept the consensus over the use of diacritics, which is spelled out at WP:COMMONNAME. If you are aware of a different consensus which has over-turned the policy of COMMONNAME, please point me to that consensus. I have strongly advocated the use of WP:RM for controversial moves. Dolovis (talk) 16:19, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

    I'll see your 30,000 edits and raise you my 100,000 edits. Mjroots (talk) 10:34, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

    • Number of edits don't show you edit collaboratively. A person could have 1 million edits and never talk to another user. Editing collaboratively requires discussing topics in a civil manor and not resorting to attacking user and trying to find loopholes to get your way such as your admitted use of double editing redirects to stop others from being able to move articles. Such edits show that you actually go out of your way not to be collaborative. Many users have asked you to stop your disruptive methods and discuss your issues in a centralized location civilly. You did not do so. As such you now find yourself in the position you are in now. -DJSasso (talk) 16:23, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

    • Indeed, he made such a request in the past, and the community agreed to relax his original restrictions. Our trust was subsequently abused, so here we are again. I would add that I endorse 28bytes' interpretations. Dolovis' response is precisely why we use the phrase "broadly construted" on these things, because he is showing he intends to try and wikilawyer around the edges of this as far as we will let him. Resolute 14:58, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

      • My stated concern here is that Admin 28bytes has over-stated the topic ban, and that the topic ban he has defined if too vague and too broad. My stated arguments are supported by facts and policy. You don't like my policy-supported logic, so you call it wikilawyering. Even though I disagreed with the previous ban, I followed it without exception. That demonstrates that I do follow a consensus even though I disagree with it. I followed the ban - I did not abuse your trust. I was subsequently blocked for one week for performing proper edits that were not ban restricted. No one else has ever been blocked for creating a perfectly valid redirects, double-edits or not - and I was blocked without warning. In any event, multiple edits to a redirect cannot be considered disruptive because all controversial moves should go through WP:RM. Dolovis (talk) 16:19, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

        Dolovis, I once wrote a very short essay, and I think it applies to your approach to dispute resolution on these redirects as well. As for the other issue, complaints that community restrictions are too vague and too broad are not unheard of, and are within ArbCom's remit. See Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Betacommand 3#Motion for example. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 16:35, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Blue Ivy Carter

Congratulations to Jay-Z and Beyoncé Knowles on the birth of their daughter, Blue Ivy Carter. Now we have repeated attempts to create an article for the baby, mostly consisting of one line and a link to an article (though NB: One was also vandalism). I've speedy deleted the last attempt and locked the title for 3 days, pending discussion. I'm inclined to redirect to the Beyoncé article, either to the article itself or the section dealing with the birth, but wanted input first. The father's article might be a target (though not a better one, imo), and note that Jay-Z also wrote a song specifically about the birth (and naming the child), so the song's article (if any) might be a reasonable target as well. Should we go ahead with a redirect, or move this discussion to a better venue? UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 13:30, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

A redir is necessary, but I don't think redir to the song is appropriate, as that makes a minor song article into a BLP. It's mother's song, send the baby redir to her. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 13:33, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

OK, if there are no objections, I'll go ahead and do that. Given the repeated attempts at an article, does anything preclude a protected redirect? UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 20:09, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

I've created the redir. Personally, now that it's a redir, I'd be inclined to unprotect or at least reduce to semi. As it's an R-to-section, semi would allow regular users to fix that when the Beyonce article gets its sections renamed. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:40, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Agreed, I've semi-protected the redirect. Thanks all. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 13:35, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Request for semi-protection of Indians_in_Afghanistan

Resolved

Hello there,

There seems to be a lot of aggressive editing by IPs on the Indians_in_Afghanistan page, with one IP continually violating the three-revert rule. Can the article be made semi-protected?

Kind regards

--Rvd4life (talk) 19:01, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

• Page semi'd by User:Magog the Ogre. (In the future, WP:RFPP will get you a quicker response.) I'm marking as resolved. --64.85.214.165 (talk) 10:43, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Article Feedback Tool - additional test deployment

Hey guys,

Just keeping you in the loop; we're going to be testing another change to the Article Feedback Tool on starting today, January 11. So far, we've done a bit of small-scale experimentation with the actual design of the tool, as announced on the blog, the village pump, and on various mailing lists. This has all been on a tiny fraction of articles (~22k total articles, about 0.6% of the English Wikipedia), and a lot of really useful data has been gathered without bothering the vast majority of editors or readers. Ideally, that's what we'd aim for with all tests :).

Even with Wikipedia readership reaching half a billion users per month, the feedback form its current position (at the end of the article) doesn’t see a whole lot of activity. In this test, we’ll be experimenting with a more prominent way to access to tool. When a user loads the page with the test version of the Article Feedback Tool, they will see an “Improve this article” link docked on the bottom right hand corner of the page (please see this for a mockup). Since this link is docked, it will stay with the reader while they’re reading the article. The introduction of this link will undoubtedly increase the amount of feedback. We need to, however, understand how it affects the quality of the feedback. We genuinely don't know what the impact will be, which is why we're doing these tests :). As with the last tests, it'll be on a very small subset of articles and probably won't be noticed by most people.

If you do encounter it, and it does bug you, you can turn it off just by going into Preferences > Appearance > Don't show me the article feedback widget on pages. If you've already ticked this option, the new link shouldn't appear at all; please do let me know if it does. We are working on a way to disable it "in-line" as well so you can simply dismiss the link without going to preferences.

We’ll also be doing some preliminary analysis on whether such a prominent link cannibalizes editing behavior. The team is very aware that the new link may compete with the edit tab and section edit links. Since the test version of the tool is deployed on a limited number of articles, we will only get a rough read on how much, if any, cannibalization takes place. Per our research plan, we’ll continue to monitor the tradeoff between giving feedback and editing.

If any of you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me or drop a note on the talkpage.

Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:25, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Warning embedded/hidden in edit-text?

Wasn't sure where to bring this. Can someone go Jim Rome and click edit, and tell me if the warnings embedded/hidden in the article code are normal/allowable? And, if so, under what policy or guideline would the rules regarding this be found. I see the good intentions of doing this, but I also see a large potential for vandalism if it's permissible to "hide" messages in the edit-text. Also, it's kind of bean-y to say what not to do. I mean, if I was a vandal, I would never have thought to change his name to "Pterodactyl" until seeing that. Anyway, sorry if the warnings are standard procedure, I just wasn't sure what I was looking at. Quinn ^➳WINDY 21:35, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, hidden text is not that unusual. Help:Hidden text gives some reasons when and when not to use it. 28bytes (talk) 21:45, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Please create a redirect from Klein–Gordon field (with an endash) to Klein–Gordon equation

I tried to create

Klein–Gordon field

with the content

#REDIRECT [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein–Gordon equation]]

and it said the title is blacklisted (which seems rather unlikely). Note that we already have Klein-Gordon field, a redirect with the same target.

False vacuum (talk) 17:41, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

 Done. Note that you don't need the "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/" business in the redirect; I'm not sure if that's why it was giving you an error message. 28bytes (talk) 17:43, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

The incorrect format is exactly why it was giving the error message: there's an edit filter to prevent that sort of malformed redirect. --Carnildo (talk) 00:59, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

As well there should be. Sorry for being stupid. (I've created many redirects before, so why I screwed up this one is a mystery to me.) False vacuum (talk) 03:50, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

New format opposed

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

There was a discussion about adopting a new format at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_active_Indian_Navy_ships. This was suggested by Rademire and was opposed by Mittal.fdk. The reason for the opposition was that "I disagree that this page is better than the former." Lately it has come to notice that the page has been changed to a different format. Can the Admins restore it?Aheadearth (talk) 03:49, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Note to Admins, this user passes the duck test outstandingly. Just awaiting CU to confirm as most recent sockpuppet of Chanakya.Talk^Woe90i 12:34, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Reporting Wingard

I am reporting User:Wingard because they are continually removing commas from dates from several daytime soap opera pages, claiming they've never seen commas in dates. The commas have always been there, and it's quite disruptive. We've tried being nice, but they aren't listening. Please help, thank you! Musicfreak7676 (talk) 19:00, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

They have been blocked for edit warring by Daniel Case. TNXMan 19:23, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

review of some revdels requested

See [26], the revdel done on January 3 seems highly inapropriate, the summary the admin doiong them used makes it clear that they completely do not understand what revdel is for, as they indicate that their edits were "silly mistakes" so they went and removed them entirely, even coming back and removing their own username from the page history. This is exactly what revdel is not for, I can't imagine why he thought it appropriate to use it in this manner to hide his own mistakes. I would revert the revdel myself but I recently had a minor disagreement with this admin so I'd like fresh eyes on this. I did try to discuss this with them first on their talk page but they seem to have taken a wiki-break and have not replied to my inquiries about this. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:12, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree with your interpretation. The very first warning on the revdel page reads: "Redaction to hide block log entries or hide mere poorly considered actions, criticisms, posts, etc, outside these criteria and without required consensus, or agreement by the arbitration committee, will usually be treated as improper use and may lead to arbitration and/or desysopping." (emphasis mine) TNXMan 19:18, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Agreed, that's not what revdel is for. It appears the admin misunderstood RD6. 28bytes (talk) 19:19, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I think what we've got here is a well-meaning admin who took a long break from using their tools and came back to a Wikipedia they didn't really understand anymore. Our initial disagreement was over one revert I made of an edit of his, next thing I knew he was over at ANI accusing me of wheel warring. [27]Beeblebrox (talk) 19:25, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Agreed that is not a valid use of RevDel and those 3 entries should be undeleted. GB fan 19:46, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Would someone care to do that and then inform him of the results? I don't think he is interssted in listening to me so it would be best if someone else handled that end of it. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:50, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I'll do it. 28bytes (talk) 19:51, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

 Done. 28bytes (talk) 19:55, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:57, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Question about RFC/U

I originally posted this on Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee, but perhaps I am more likely to get an answer here.

I have recently started an RFC/U for an editor with what I perceive as a pattern of problematic editing (Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Shakehandsman). After failing to have the RFC/U shut down with threads on AN and AN/I, the editor has now declared that they have left Wikipedia. I am concerned that this editor may simply wait for things to settle down and return to editing, or just create another account in order to avoid the RFC/U altogether. I suppose my question is this - if an editor ducks out of an RFC/U by falsely claiming to leave Wikipedia, can the RFC/U be re-opened once the editor commences editing again (with the same or a new account)? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 19:11, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes. I know of at least one that's being put on held indefinitely (though I don't think he'll come back, it's not impossible). There's also an arbitration case in this state as well. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:06, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, you can put RFC/Us on hold. Despite the number of editors who think they'll just duck out until it all blows over (partly driven by their erroneous belief that there's a strict 30-day timer on RFC/Us, so if they take a 30-day wikibreak, they can ignore the whole thing), it's not commonly done, but the usual process seems to be adding a short note to the page explaining the situation and then removing the link from the list of open RFC/Us. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:30, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Is it safe to assume that the same principle applies even if an RFC/U is not explicitly put on hold? If an editor returns after an RFC/U has been closed due to inactivity (i.e., the editor left), the RFC/U is no more or less resolved than one which has explicitly been put on hold. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 19:34, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

• As the admin who placed it on hold, you might have just asked me or at least bothered to let me know about this thread. If you actually bother to read the statements I made on both the RFCU itself [28] and the talk page [29] you would find that I made all this perfectly clear when doing the close. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:39, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

  Yes, I think anyone who looks at the RFC/U which I linked above will see that. I am sorry that I didn't notify you of this thread, but although prompted by the Shakehandsman case, the question I have is more general. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 19:49, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

It was also already answered, so I'm a little unclear on why you felt the need to ask it at all, let alone go to arbcom about it, but whatever. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:54, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand why you find thread annoying, but read my question above. That is the question I am asking and it has not been answered. If you believe your statements at the Shakehandsman RFC/U answer it, please spell it out for me because I can be a little slow sometimes. Thanks. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 20:12, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

• There is another example of an RfC/U on permanent hold at Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/YellowMonkey. Perhaps it would be worth having three categories for RfC/Us – open, closed, on hold. --JN466 20:19, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

  Perhaps, but does "closed" mean "closed" or "on hold" if an editor returns to editing? What if an editor is found to have returned to editing with a new username, but their RFC/U was not placed "on hold" because it was believed that they left the project? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 21:12, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't think any new categories or procedures are needed. If the situation you describe were to come to pass, the old RFC could be re-opened, or a new one with links to the old one, or, more likely straight to arbcom since it would be clear they did in fact leave just to shut down the RFC. Something like that has happened, in the case of A Nobody (talk · contribs). He kept making lame excuses, first for ignoring an RFC and then an Arbcom case. When it became clear he was full of it he was banned. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:05, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

User:Matt2005

I have noticed that many of Matt2005 (talk · contribs) edits have been disruptive, but had not been reverted. I have gone through the United Stated Network Schedules, but there are probably 250 other edits that need to be looked at.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 08:12, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Some pending RPP requests

WP:RPP has some rather old unanswered requests waiting for someone with the mop.Jasper Deng (talk) 05:20, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

 Done TNXMan 16:21, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Community consultation on SOPA act

Not strictly an administrator's item, but probably of great interest... In order to allow time for the WMF to technologically support any action taken regarding WP:SOPA, we need to be able to begin preparing in advance. For that reason, we are launching a discussion to try to determine what consensus may have developed for community response. Please weigh in on the consultation page, at Wikipedia:SOPA initiative/Action. Thank you. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 17:46, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Username issue - grandfather rights?

Today, I came across [email protected] (talk · contribs). Noticing the username was in violation of WP:UN I gave the user a welcome and issued a warning re the username. I did not block the editor as I wanted to give them a chance to respond. On checking whether or not Teskey had edited since I informed them of the issue, I discovered that this editor had been editing sporadically since 2006. It struck me that this could be another case similar to [email protected] (talk · contribs), which was also created before the policy was formulated - see (see discussion from 2009). Therefore I would ask that Teskey is granted grandfather rights. A change of name should be encouraged, but it cannot be demanded. Mjroots (talk) 16:41, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

If they've been editing without trouble since 2006, I'd certainly be happy to let them keep their username. 28bytes (talk) 17:02, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Ditto. I suspect the user may be related to be User:Teskey as there looks to be a similar editing history. If they lost the account there may be a possibility to usurp the account. --RA (talk) 17:16, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Is there any way of searching all registered usernames to find ones that (1) have the @ character, and (2) are not blocked? Nyttend (talk) 18:12, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Why? As far as I know, it is not possible any more to create user names with "@" in them, so all you'd find would be user names that have been created before the rule to forbid them was established. Therefore there'd be no reason for us to do anything about it. --Conti|✉ 18:28, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't see any need to go there with this name, but for future reference we do have a dedicated noticeboard for such discussions at WP:RFCN. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:19, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

My point was that we could find all the existing usernames and let their owners know that they're grandfathered, lest someone later come along and try to block them because of the policy. Nyttend (talk) 19:45, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Nyttend had a point there. If all user who have e-mail addresses as their username and are grandfathered in could be sought out, then the fact can be recorded on their talk page so that if another editor stumbles across them and attempts to report them, they will be aware that there will not be any action taken over the user name. Mjroots (talk) 19:55, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, that is a good idea. Now back to the question of how to do it.... Beeblebrox (talk) 19:58, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure its a great idea. Do we have any evidence that such users are being inappropriately blocked? If they are not, I think we can leave well enough alone; this sounds like a solution in search of a problem. I patrol UAA fairly regularly, and I and several other regular admins there (AFAIK) are pretty concientious at looking for grandfather issues and are highly unlikely to block borderline cases like this outright. --Jayron32 03:56, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Maybe a note at WP:UN saying that it is not possible to create such usernames now and any that are found have been granted grandfather rights would suffice to cover the situation? Mjroots (talk) 08:21, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

They are grandfathered in. I don't know where that is documented, but I know we don't do forced renames or blocks for this sort of thing. MBisanz ^talk 13:07, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:UN#Exceptions already mentions the idea of grandfathered usernames. I don't know that any more policy guidance is needed; it is not possible to account for every grandfathered username, except to say that blocking someone who has been editing at Wikipedia for years, for a username violation, is universally a bad idea. WP:UAA instablocks should usually be for very new accounts, anything which has been around and active for a long time should, at worst, be taken to WP:RFCN and in most cases should be left alone. --Jayron32 20:36, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

User:Victoriaedwards

Could an admin please have a word with this user? I have tried twice [30][31] to speak to this user about using edit summaries, only to be summarily reverted. Given their penchant for multiple edits to a single page, it's rather annoying to have to look at each edit to try and figure out what they're doing. Will notify. → ROUX ₪ 17:07, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I guess my question would be - are there specific issues with their edits that are masked by their non-use of edit summaries? I don't believe that edit summary use is enforceable by any current policy. I didn't see that they have ever used edit summaries, and their blanking of the talk notice indicates that they have read your note. Syrthiss (talk) 17:14, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I read and blanked the talk notice. Since I don't know what an 'edit summary' is, I am glad to see the use of edit summaries is not mandatory. Victoriaedwards (talk) 17:53, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

For your edification, I present the English Language wikipedia players performance of WP:ES. I do note that Roux's notes did not include a link to that, but at the same time I view the statement of a long-term contributor not knowing what an edit summary is with some bemusement. Regards, Syrthiss (talk) 18:19, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the link, Syrthiss. As a long-term contributor, I have been 'briefly describing the changes I have made' using 'Edit summary', and will continue to do so. (: Victoriaedwards (talk) 19:25, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I see where you have occasionally done so, but it would be helpful to other editors if you did so more consistently. Looking at your last 200 or so edits, it seems like you only do so about once every 25-50 times you edit an article. This isn't really a good thing, you should enter an edit summery after every edit. In the edit summary box below the edit window, please write a brief description of what you do, and do so each time you make a change to an article. Doing so is helpful to other editors, which is why you should do it. Not doing things because they are, in your words, "not mandatory" is not a good way to work in collaboration with thousands of other people. It would be best if you did things that were helpful or useful for others, instead of demanding to be forced to do them. --Jayron32 20:05, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Page protection icon

Resolved

Hi!

It's been so long since I last page protected anything, I had to resort to going back to New Admin School! Anyway, I have semi-protected Romania, and added a small pp icon to the page... but for some reason I can't see the icon. What have I done wrong? Stephen! ^Coming... 19:18, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

It's showing up OK for me. Cache issue, perhaps? 28bytes (talk) 19:22, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Probably. I have refreshed the page on my PC, and it still isn't showing. I suspect that my PC needs to be upgraded to something a little faster - maybe a modem attached to an abacus. Still, at least I managed to do it correctly, even if I did need to check I had done it right! Cheers Stephen! ^Coming... 19:28, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Ooooh! A 300-baud acoustic-coupled modem? Awesomeness! (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 21:12, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Uninvolved admin, please [dispute at WP:TITLE]

Could we have an uninvolved admin, preferably one who has not edited or discussed with the conflicting parties, to close the RFC at Wikipedia_talk:Article_titles#RFC_on_Recognizability_guideline_wording? This is the very start of a policy.

The unhappy brave volunteer who answers this call will find a great deal more has happened since, chiefly bitter protests against the poll, and revert-warring on the page itself. But I do not want to raise behavioral issues; this has had quite enough drama. I think that if we have a closure on the poll, the rest of the matter will go away. JCScaliger (talk) 20:58, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

• Comment. That short-lived RFC was started in good faith to resolve an issue that had not been settled in unruly discussion that preceded. It was immediately subverted, in controversial circumstances, and I for one explicitly abandoned any involvement. A travesty of due process cannot be thought to reflect consensus for a major provision of core titling policy.

The accompanying disputes have been carried on at diverse pages (including here, WP:ANI, WP:3RRN, various user talkpages, with related discussion at WT:DAB and several contested RMs). Frankly belligerent and false statements are still being made about the history of the wording involved. As a participant consistently calling for orderly, collegial process and a fresh look at all the issues, I have been intimidated to the extent that I will not post at WT:TITLE until there is a moderation in behaviour.

If the matter is to be reviewed, let it be done thoroughly and let it be done centrally: perhaps here, where we might expect participants' conduct to be better. At least it would be under scrutiny.

Noetica^Tea? 00:29, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

• Duplicate. This is a duplicate request. Another request for closing this RFC has been listed here since January 4th, above. --Born2cycle (talk) 02:40, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

• Note: I have added a note at that other request, suggesting that it might be considered superseded. This new request supplies more detail. Noetica^Tea? 03:35, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:SOPA initiative/Action & watchlist notification

Not an issue for Administrators' noticeboard. Referred elsewhere.

Wikipedia:SOPA initiative/Action is it possible to add it to watchlist notifications? Bulwersator (talk) 14:43, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

There's already a project-wide banner ad, but in any event the place to ask about this would be MediaWiki talk:Watchlist-details. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:34, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

It may be better to duplicate it as maybe somebody disabled irritating banners Bulwersator (talk) 09:32, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

What to do about this AfD?

I came across this AfD. It's untranscluded, but reading some of the comments I don't think that transcluding it is the right step to take. Could an admin do what they think is the best course of action for this? — Train2104 (talk • contribs) 20:34, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

I've added an AfD header and listed it in today's list so that it gets a full 7-day discussion. --MuZemike 00:34, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Transcluding it is always appropriate, unless one of the speedy keep criteria apply. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 09:30, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

"Improve this page" toast

Not an issue for Administrators' noticeboard. Referred elsewhere.

Personally, I think the "Improve this page" toast at the bottom right obstructs the text in the article. It would be better located at the bottom of the article or in the sidebar. X-Fi6 (talk) 14:34, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

You might want to take this issue to WP:VPT, it is not really an administrative issue, and personally I don't even know what you are talking about, so you should probably specify what device and what browser you are using. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:31, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps this? You can leave a message on the talk page for the people who are developing the tool. --Kateshortforbob _talk 12:20, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Unfair and shortsighted

Dear Wikipedia, Please explain me something,

For the last few days I have been trying to add some information about sex toys to wikipedia. All information were significant, not intending to promote brand, but to write about milestones that have been made. And I have add really small information about three gadgets - 2 vibrators and 1 dildo. 1st vibrator is a vibrator that received a very important award for its design - for a first time a sex toy was awarded!, second is a male vibrator (you have not mentioned it in your text, than there was a dildo which is a first art piece design by a street artist that is at the same time fully functional dildo. There is nothing like this in the world.

You ask for references and links to prove a person knows what one writes, yet you reject information from the source itself. If I wanted to promote brand, I would add any photo and any vibrator just to show the brand. I am showing something historical. If you talk about historical thing such as turning original "green outfit" of a Santa Clause to a "red" one everyone knows now, by a commercial company, since it was made by Coca Cola, you reject it in Wikipedia since it's a brand that is being promoted this way? Yes, it's coca cola in their advertisements changed and promoted "new Santa"!

I dont understand why I have to be no-one and have nothing to do with the brand to be reliable source of valuable information. Yes, I do know the brand - I do photos for them and keep Facebook Profile for Polish funs alive. I am a sex educator and had been doing sex education for years before I found out about Fun Factory. For me finding really fun stuff on internet and wikipedia is a great value - I have always appreciated idea to have been able to get to know really hot interesting stuff. When I stumble uppon Delight (Red Dot Award winner first time in history for a sex toy), Jim O. (dildo by Boris Hoppek street artist) and Duke (male vibrator) I was wondering WHY noboby wrote about things like that on wikipedia. As a sex educator I woul LOVE to know these things. I would LOOOOVE to see those gadgets.

I believie this is highly unfair and shortsighted rejecting information just because it comes from the source and only because it comes from a commercial company look at this as filthy self-promoting brand. I believe this kind of information, if it makes knowledge wider, should be desired at any times!

I do not agree with throwing out my contributions to Vibrator (sex toy) definition. They were significant in meritorical sense.

Regards, Anna Moderska 78.8.160.55 (talk) 01:24, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

• Were you editing under another IP/Account? The only contribution uder this IP was to AN.Animusv3^{Talk to me! Contribs} 01:31, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
  • In fact, are you User:Morderska? Animusv3^{Talk to me! Contribs} 01:40, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Read up on original research and reliable sources. These are our policies, and they apply equally to all articles (as best we can). If you can learn to write within these policies, you will more likely succeed. Best wishes. Rklawton (talk) 01:34, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, the difficulty that such articles have had, arises in part from the difficulty of finding reliable sources. It is possible to write them: if, and only if there are good 3rd party sources. If the award was one notable in the mainstream, not just this field, and if it was covered in substantial coverage by mainstream reliable sources, not just press releases or based on press releases, do that one first. Try it as a subpage of you userpage, by starting the page User:Mordovska/whateverthenameis and let someone experience look at it. DGG ( talk ) 04:17, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Old RM never closed

Could an admin please close Talk:Seattle Sounders#Re-requested move as appropriate? Thanks, Number 57 11:08, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

 Done. Jafeluv (talk) 11:54, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

New method for article quality evaluation

This was proposed by my 6-year old at breakfast, prompted by my "Ask Me About Wikipedia" shirt:

Whenever I color someone's Wikipedia blue that means they didn't do a good job. They get a zero. Whenever they get a pink circle that means they did really really really bad. If they get this color [holds up yellow marker] they get a one THOUSAND.

Fellow editors, you are placed on notice: the time for screwing around is over. I've notified the Foundation of course, in the usual way. Please, let's make this a yellow day. Drmies (talk) 14:33, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Is there anything to obtain "OVER 9000!"? Blackmane (talk) 16:47, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

It is probably as good a system as the feedback tool that was introduced last year. Is she open to bribery? Something that would survive a journey across the Atlantic? - Sitush (talk) 16:49, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Shouldn't the shirt read "Ask me about Wikipedia."? I don't believe that there is a need for capitalisation and the period is missing. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 17:25, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Mine says, "ASK ME ABOUT WIKIPEDIA" (no punctuation). So I guess I'm shouting when I wear it. Any complaints should be addressed to the Foundation, as they ordered the shirts. -- Donald Albury 17:54, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Blocked them all. All that shouting is disruptive. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 20:07, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't have one :) If I did then perhaps "Ask me about Wikipedia?" would reflect my nature best. - Sitush (talk) 20:12, 13 January 2012 (UTC) ::::::You don't have one cause you didn't get to hang with the cool people in Boston, all expenses paid. Kid at the grocery store asked me if I worked for Wikipedia--I guess the proper answer is no, no? Drmies (talk) 01:42, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

In Soviet Russia, Wikipedia asks me Blackmane (talk) 16:47, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

WP:OWN issues

I am not reporting anyone (just yet) but I've been accused of WP:OWN on Selena and have since left the article so I can be mature about editing on Wikipedia. Now, I have took interest in helping out with Bad Girls Club-related articles. One in particularly Bad Girls Club (season 8) has so many issues with a user, its not even a joke. I'm not sure if its me or him/her but can someone please investigate this and/or tell me where should I go or do about the situation (note: user has been warned by previous admins and myself for several months). If its me who has OWN issues, then I'll gladly back out, just need some helpful advise. Thanks in advance, Jonayo! ^{Selena 4 ever} 23:30, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

HELLO?????? Anyone here who can help? The user has now reverted back the citation needed tags and yet no one here can help? Jonayo! ^{Selena 4 ever} 01:50, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

I imagine this hasn't been replied to because it is not an "issue affecting administrators generally"; this would be considered an "incident" so probably belongs at AN/I. (But it would have been nice if someone would have told you that right away....) Looking at the accused user's talk page, am I missing something or were their first messages they received warnings and a block? I see no welcome template or (hardly) any other personal notes -- most everything is a warning template. That's disappointing.

I see they have opened discussion on the talk page, but really that should have been your first action. No comment on the {{cn}} tags, but the {{pbneutral}} template goes on the talk page, not the article. And the {{Advert}} template? The article is three sentences, I don't see any weasley wording, so I must be missing some history between you two on that. What I see here is two editors vested passionately in the same article but have different opinions and an utter communications disconnect. To answer your question: This will be best handled at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard. Rgrds. --64.85.216.193 (talk) 14:49, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree with the IP. Also, an RFC can be filed on this issue if WP:DRN doesn't work. Hope these links help. As for the issue itself, Junebea1 (talk · contribs), the user in question involved in the dispute with AJona1992 has been warned numerous times in the past for violating WP:BLP and WP:DE. The discussions at ANI, which can be found here and here, are examples of the discussions and issues involving the said users in question. Darth Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 17:11, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

The advert tag is for the "episode" summaries which displays it as such. Thanks for replying, Jonayo! ^{Selena 4 ever} 20:06, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

No hard feelings. Darth Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 00:40, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Reporting Wingard (again)

Once again, he is edit warring. He said he will no longer edit war, but he wilfully continues to do so. 24 hours was not enough of a block. He should get an indefinite block or something. This needs to stop.  MegastarLV  (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:17, 16 January 2012 (UTC).

Yes. They need to be blocked from these pages. They are disrupting others and are being ignorant to guidelines and want the pages to be updated to their liking/their fitting. Its wrong. SoapJar 20:20, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Bocked 1 week for continued edit warring. --MuZemike 20:42, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

This behavior has been ongoing since 2009. Wingard only purpose on Wikipedia is to slavishly update the episode counts for soap operas, and will revert anyone who tries to do it before him. I'll agree with the one week block, but think if the behavior is continued after the block and indefinite block should be placed on the account. AniMate 21:08, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

FYI, this would better be suited to WP:AN3 if a three-revert violation occurred, or to WP:ANI if the edit warring were somewhat slower than 4+ per day. Nyttend (talk) 23:16, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Notice around proposed blackout re SOPA — from the closing administrators

To note that Risker (talk · contribs), NuclearWarfare (talk · contribs) and myself have closed and summarised the discussion around the proposed site blackout, all revealed at Wikipedia:SOPA initiative/Action#Summary and conclusion. Please note our request that all administrative actions that have a time period for consideration be extended past the normal time period for the period of the blackout (24 hours). — billinghurst sDrewth 23:58, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Article Vandalized

Resolved

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_data_storage

Some dork vandalized this article. Can someone restore this article to it's pre-vandalized condition, because i don't know how? kthanx — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.130.121.48 (talk) 10:56, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Fixed at 10:55 by Shadowjams (talk · contribs) -- Luk ^talk 11:02, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Suicide threat

[[32]]. Possibly trolling, but needs prompt attention. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:21, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I've emailed the foundation. In the future, per WP:SUICIDE, we should always just forward on the claims to them and let them figure out what to do (unless we have some reason to believe the threat is very serious, than a brave and committed person might also contact local authorities). Qwyrxian (talk) 01:42, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

I've already done that. Posted here and the e-mailed immediately - I think the instructions suggest doing both... AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:14, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Blackout preparations for excluded articles

See Wikipedia_talk:SOPA_initiative#Note_on_excluded_pages. If we exclude pages from the blackout, we'll need to protect them in a clean state before the beginning of the blackout. Cenarium (talk) 01:32, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Blackout preparations: RfA, AfD, PROD

So, like it or not, we're on strike tomorrow. One question to consider is what about our time-bound processes? That's basically RfA, PROD and AfD. The RfA that is currently ongoing, MikeLynch, there is consensus to extend it by a day, so it'll close on Sunday rather than Saturday. I'm going to suggest that we do the same thing for deletion: let's just extend all ongoing PROD and AfD periods by a day. Admins should just slow down and not close AfDs or delete PRODs started before the blackout for an extra day. That seem like a reasonable solution?

Any other things we need to tidy up before the blackout starts? —Tom Morris (talk) 10:51, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I actually prefer to ignore the lost day on AfD and PROD. It's just one day, I think our processes can survive being visible one day shorter once in 10 years. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 11:03, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

We should at least not close any time-bound process for 24 hours after the blackout ends. -- Donald Albury 11:22, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

The last sentence of the administrator's closing note at Wikipedia:SOPA initiative/Action says "Internal Wikipedia processes that are dependent upon time-specific discussions, such as Wikipedia:Requests for adminship and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion discussion should be considered suspended during the course of the blackout, and their scheduled duration extended 24 hours." - SudoGhost 11:28, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

@Albury: Apart, obviously, those that are already a day late. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 11:32, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

You'll be able to get around the blackout relatively easily (if the implementations I have seen are what is going to happen). So we can still close AFD's and block vandals etc. --Errant ^(chat!) 11:46, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

No, you won't be able to edit even if you can read. The write API is going down too. There'll be no edits, no blocking people... and no WP:ANI! —Tom Morris (talk) 11:51, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

In fact, only stewards and sysadmins will be able to edit English Wikipedia during that time. vvv^t 11:53, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm with Martijn Hoekstra, we should just carry on as normal here, if a discussion is close then extended it by a day (in the case of AfD, just move it to the next days listing, the one RfA has been sorted already, as for PROD's more offten or not they don't get deleted on the dot of 7 days so use discretion with deleting them. The more we get hung up on the internal policies of this this the less effective it becomes. Mtking ^(edits) 01:05, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Our community and social processes will be delayed by a day, but the technical processes won't as far as I understand; for instance, blocks and protections set to expire during the blackout should still have expired by the time we are back online, i.e. they cannot be extended by a day like our deletion processes can be. Needless to say, we'll have a few more PRODs and AFDs to handle when are get back online. --MuZemike 12:18, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Guess that means I'll be adding 24 hours to any blocks I issue today. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 16:26, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Does it, though? If the purpose of the block is to give them a chance to reevaluate things, the reason why they can't edit should be immaterial. Having said that, it would depend on the reasoning behind the block, I suppose. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 19:15, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

This climbing-the-Capitol-Dome political stunt feels like a 24 hour block for every Wikipedia volunteer and user. Edison (talk) 23:02, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

We need to make sure that the bots we depend on don't crash when the site gets locked. --Rschen7754 19:31, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

It appears the bot owners are already discussing those issues. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:03, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

You guys realise that SOPA's been shit-canned right? So all you're gonna accomplish here is pissing off a lot of people... HalfShadow —Preceding undated comment added 23:48, 17 January 2012 (UTC).

Reasons for concern [33]Nobody Ent 00:51, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

It's not cancelled and it never was [34]. It still poses the same existential threat to Wikipedia as it always did. 87.115.118.8 (talk) 00:54, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

SOPA isn't dead, and the US Senate still intends to vote on PIPA. The issue is not dead, unfortunately. Resolute 01:08, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

If blocks are extended due to the SOPA blackout please include a note to that effect in the block log summary. Nobody Ent 00:48, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Honestly, I wouldn't bother extending any blocks myself. It seems more punitive than anything to do so. Resolute 01:08, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

• For what it's worth, anonymous editing has been disabled for last-minute cleanup. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 04:48, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Blackout article needs semi

• 2012 Wikipedia blackout (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

This is highly visible and it's attracting some vandals at the moment. RPP is too slow in view of the upcoming blackout.Jasper Deng (talk) 04:16, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

I got it for 3 days; it may well need further protection after the blackout it over, which should be able to be handled throuhg normal channels. And this shall be my last post before we go dark. Good luck everyone, in that weird, wild place we call the real world! Qwyrxian (talk) 04:23, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

We go dark in 91 minutes as of this post. Good luck!Jasper Deng (talk) 04:27, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

A life?

Anyone know where I can get one? Apparently I'll need one tomorrow. Seriously, what are we all going to get up to? I intend to spend some time over at Commons doing some cat checking etc. Mjroots (talk) 08:48, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I'll grab an offline copy and spend some time trying to work out how WP:SYSTEMIC may have affected the consensus for this outcome :) - Sitush (talk) 09:14, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Why do we have to do this on a work day? How am I going to slack off now?--Atlan (talk) 10:15, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I guess I'll finally be able to shower, shovel the driveway, dust my knick-knacks ... all those things I've been putting off since Wikipedia started (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 10:19, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Random projects. DMacks (talk) 10:25, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Sister projects should still be running. Perhaps you want to come help edit Wikinews or build up Wiktionary... —Tom Morris (talk) 10:46, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

In all seriousness, a day off for everyone should help damp down the explosion of drama which has been taking place over the last month or so. Nick-D (talk) 10:52, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

FWIW, you can also concentrate more on your paid activity or field of study :) --MuZemike 12:18, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

That's supposing that particular editors either have one or go to one, which doesn't apply to all editors. Mjroots (talk) 12:59, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

There's always pRon ... which is what the internet is really for (note: this is not an advocation of pRon, nor an invitation for those who are not of legal age in their jurisdiction) (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 13:21, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

It's the perfect chance to work on article-related stuff that's not articles! Maps! Pictures! Cannolis! OH GOD WHAT AM I GOING TO DO --Golbez (talk) 13:26, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Or if you really want to work on articles, you can always copy the wikitext today, then modify it locally with your text editor of choice (or for the truly hardcore, in your local copy of MediaWiki). Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 18:10, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Maybe I'll add some mangled edits to 'pedias in other languages I halfway understand. Edison (talk) 23:06, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I'll probably read. Question is, do I grab a good fantasy novel, or do I read up on the Halifax Explosion so I can back to working on that article afterward? Either way, I am going to enjoy not watching for vandalism for a day. Resolute 01:11, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Hm. I was briefly interested with the Halifax Explosion & then realised that it has nothing to do with Halifax. So, my secret shall remain just that. FWIW, I've done my research, will be working with a text editor and doubtless will be one of those conributing to the NPP deluge in ca. 28 hours' time. You shoulda just granted me the AP permissions. ;) - Sitush (talk) 01:18, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

I think this deserves a wider audience . Mjroots (talk) 08:19, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Reality TV "stars"

I am having quite a few problems at Daniel Grady Faires that ultimately appear to relate to COI issues/possible sock/meatpuppetry and, more generally, as to where we draw the line regarding notability for the self-promotional bleurgh that is reality television. I am stumped right now - can someone please provide me with a policy/guideline discussion that covers what seems (to me) to me a problem that is likely to grow, bearing in mind the egotism and money surrounding reality TV. Is there anything in WP:GNG that specifically covers this stuff? I know the basics but, really, is our bar this low? - Sitush (talk) 00:35, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Addendum: this one is frustrating me but Wiki is going on a Sickie shortly - the break might do me good but the general point remains. - Sitush (talk) 00:37, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

I've previously had experience with a self-promotional reality TV star, namely Sam Pepper, whose article we deleted a while back under WP:BLP1E. BLP1E, plus sources (often the only people who cover reality TV are crappy tabloids, which should really fail reliable sources). Also, be aware that (a) if you nominate them for deletion, they'll use their Twitter/Facebook hordes to come after you, and (b) there's a high chance the pictures that get put up with the article are copyvios. —Tom Morris (talk) 12:43, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Conversion of sysop.js to gadgets

Please review MediaWiki talk:Sysop.js#Conversion to gadgets and share your thoughts there. — Edokter (talk) — 13:53, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

You mean MediaWiki talk:Sysop.js#Conversion to gadgets :) -- Luk ^talk 14:03, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Indeed... — Edokter (talk) — 14:19, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Audit Subcommittee vacancies: Call for applications (2012)

The Arbitration Committee is seeking to appoint at least three non-arbitrator members to the Audit Subcommittee.

The Audit Subcommittee ("AUSC") was established by the Arbitration Committee to investigate complaints concerning the use of CheckUser and Oversight privileges on the English Wikipedia, and to provide better monitoring and oversight of the CheckUser and Oversight positions, and use of the applicable tools.

Matters brought before the subcommittee may be time-sensitive and subcommittee members should be prepared and available to discuss cases promptly so they may be resolved in a timely manner. Sitting subcommittee members are expected to actively participate in AUSC proceedings and may be replaced should they become inactive. All subcommittee members are subject to the relevant local and global policies and guidelines concerning CheckUser and Oversight.

If you think you may be suitably qualified, please see the appointments page for further information. The application period is scheduled to close 31 January 2012.

For the Arbitration Committee, –xeno^talk 18:00, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Discuss this

Deletion review requested

I'm asking you to review a deletion I made for technical errors; this isn't a dispute of any sort. Please see the "User:Edgarde/Review-Christgau" section of User talk:Edgarde — I restored a page in his userspace, protected it, and then deleted it without thinking to unprotect it first. When I go to User:Edgarde/Review-Christgau, the button next to "Undelete 92 edits" reads "protect", not "change protection"; however, is there any chance of lingering protection causing problems? I don't remember ever before deleting a protected page. Nyttend (talk) 01:33, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Should be no problem from a technical point of view. If it gets restored, it will default to "unprotected" regardless of whether it was protected when you deleted it. 28bytes (talk) 02:47, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I actually just deleted my semi-protected userpage (clearing a comment out of the edit history), and when I restored it I had to reapply the semi-protection. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:10, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Okay, sounds good; thanks for the input. I don't expect it to be restored — he'd requested U1 speedy deletion, and I restored it with his permission to make use of the information, but per his input I deleted it as soon as I was done with it. Nyttend (talk) 03:19, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

AIV backlog

There is quite a backlog to clear at WP:AIV.Jasper Deng (talk) 05:06, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

•  Done

Diffs of edits in violation of consensus on en., with explanations and outcomes

Carefully watching Recent Changes during the blackout while editing was locked, I noted these diffs as problematic, and approached the editors with superior editing rights via their meta.wikimedia talk pages (and in one case by user email).

Diffs of edits in violation of consensus on en., with explanations and outcomes

Time	Diff	Problem	Discussion	Cause	Outcome
03:13	diff	Non-steward edit (vandal reverted)	at meta	User unaware of Steward only editing	Resolved, user now made aware of need to not conduct non-steward edits
11:56	diff	Non-steward edit (improved content)	at meta	Unaware of powers, SOPA block specifics	Resolved, user now aware of powers, need to not conduct non-steward edits
07:38	diff	Non-steward edit (improved content linkages)	at meta	Manual timezone calculation plus editor doesn't use java	Resolved, user aware of need to not conduct non-steward edits
06:12	This edit summary: "06:12 . . Nyttend (Talk contribs) changed event visibility of "(Deletion log)": hid username for 1 event (Is it possible to do RevDel when Wikipedia is engaging in blatant WP:POINT violations?)"	Editorialising edit summary without right of reply	at meta	At en.	Noted here
05:30	diff	Non-steward edit (reverted vandalism)	at meta	Vandalism immediately prior to close, revert requested	Resolved, counselled

Tentative analysis: three minor incompetence errors with a probable fourth (and we're all incompetent sometimes), plus one error of judgement in editorialising at an inappropriate moment. This is a fairly good outcome for a "picket line." All other edits so far appear to be essential maintenance, appropriate WMF blackout connected, or user space tinkering. More over, all of these edits would otherwise be "legitimate," if the encyclopaedia were open to general editing. None were problematic edits by themselves, but only became problematic due to the context of the blackout and site lock. Numerous other Steward edits occurred within the ambit of Steward edits that would be appropriate at any time (copyright, legal, etc.)

I'm concerned with Nyttend's editorialising while editing while other users do not have the right of reply, and would appreciate other users discussion about this. I've mentioned this being here to Nyttend.

I'd like to emphasise none of these edits would be controversial if the encyclopaedia had been unlocked. All of these edits improved the encyclopaedia. And I firmly and strongly believe Nyttend's comment lies within productive dissent in terms of consensus. I think it problematic that he made it while there was no right of reply; but, feel that now that there is a right of reply there is no longer a problem. (Just to be especially clear.) Fifelfoo (talk) 05:09, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

(And to further clarify, this isn't a request for administrator action, this is a note indicating that with a fine toothed comb, these were the only five edits I would consider problematic to be made while normal users cannot edit the encyclopaedia. Users with superior technical privileges made a variety of other edits during the blackout and edit lock, all of which were appropriate (such as Nyttend's work on copyright violating material itself, or BLP, etc.) or directly connected with the community's instructions to WMF as established by a consensus process that had been independently closed by the community.) Fifelfoo (talk) 05:18, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I was never presented with any policy pages prohibiting me from performing actions that were (1) possible and (2) permissible at other times. See my comment at Filfelfoo's talk for further comments. Nyttend (talk) 05:14, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

As I noted at meta, I also took the time to restore an edit I've been meaning to for a while (it was incorrectly deleted under RD1), so if you want to add that to the table you can do that. Not exactly essential, but certainly done to be constructive, and not in an attempt to go against the protest in any way (I figured I wouldn't have the Orange Bar of Doom to distract me like it had when I've meant to do it before). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 05:19, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with the RD1 principle; if it connects to policy that Stewards, Staff or other such users to fundamentally maintain function, like copyright, reported BLP, legal, etc. then the undelete would fall into the same category to my mind. If not, then if you could point out the log, I'll add it to the table. Fifelfoo (talk) 05:27, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

See WP:RD1. It was another admin trying to remove a copyvio who accidentally deleted two revisions in the process. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 05:30, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, criteria 1 relates to critical encyclopaedia maintenance and would be covered by the need to maintain the encyclopaedia even during critical incidents. Reversing a failed RD1 action to my mind has precisely the same need to occur, even when the community has decided that "emergency access," only should prevail. Fifelfoo (talk) 05:33, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Good. Just want to make sure we're all on the same terms. This was the restoration, for the link. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 05:35, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, also a bit of a faux-pas staff and stewards doing anything not related directly to the SOPA event... But let it go, and hope people learn. Rich Farmbrough, 05:22, 19 January 2012 (UTC).

On the other hand all such super-users responded with extreme collegiality and with turn around times on responses that I consider to be "very rapid." While one item is under discussion, and I don't want to misrepresent that; most of the others were "oh really?" type mistakes, the mistakes we forgive each other for collegially all the time. I'm surprised that there were only five such edits I picked out, that's a very very high degree of compliance with the consensus. Fifelfoo (talk) 05:27, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

A whole bunch of admins futzed with their user rights. Withdrawal symptoms I suppose. Rich Farmbrough, 05:32, 19 January 2012 (UTC).

I also noted that, but didn't consider it breaking the consensus. (It was silly though). Fifelfoo (talk) 05:34, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

This all falls into the "who cares" category. If someone was edit warring or causing problems, that's something to be dealt with, but doing non-controversial things falls into the "who cares" category. --B (talk) 05:43, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Is there seriously a discussion about edits and administrative actions occurring during the blackout? Yes, we had consensus for the blackout, and yes, the database was locked to prevent editing. However, the actions would be perfectly fine under non-blackout circumstances. No action will be taken here, so this discussion is pointless. Alpha_Quadrant ^(talk) 05:45, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Whichever way this is seen, my apologies in advance for deleting pages during the blackout. I guess I was the only one who managed to delete pages during the blackout. I didn't intend it to be seen negatively. Kind regards. Wifione ^Message 06:56, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I was tempted to see if I could delete the main page while no-one would notice ;) No damage whatsoever was done here, and it was a 'blackout' not a 'strike' so I don't see the reason for generating drama over it. It's not like Civilopedia was busing scab admins into En-Wiki ;) Nick-D (talk) 06:58, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• Far out, this isn't an attempt to generate drama, its a presentation of a proof of a null hypothesis: Stewards, Staff and other Super-Super–Users did not act inappropriately. Any actions that could be construed to be inappropriate were accidental, or matters of reasonable disagreement. When this was brought to the user's attention, they all responded rapidly, and took onboard the issues collegially. Nobody authored terrific articles online in circumstances where people were expected not to contribute content. It is an indication that our editing largely works. An administrative system was subjected to close scrutiny during a "crisis" and it functioned. This is, in its own weird way, an attempt at "wiki-love". Everyone, pat yourselves on the damn back. Fifelfoo (talk) 09:27, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry if I'm taking this the wrong way, but Stewards who aren't aware of their powers? If they have steward access, they should know that they have superuser rights to Wikipedia. And going by concensus they should not have been editing full stop. A slap on the wrist of abusing powers is unacceptable. Mrlittleirish 09:42, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm one of the people who made a change, in response to an OTRS complaint that OTRS agents were not able to address themselves. So far as I know, what I did (reverting a particularly nasty bit of vandalism) was technically possible for any administrator and was not a steward action. I took action expecting absolutely no controversy, particularly as the nasty bit of vandalism was still fully visible to our mobile users. :) If we ever find ourselves in position to do another blackout, I think we need to make clear in advance what expectations are with respect to this kind of thing. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:45, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Admins did not have edit access - only stewards and staff did. As for your actions, I think they were perfectly fine and this discussion is silly. If a steward were using the blackout to gain an advantage in a content dispute, that's a problem. Deleting vandalism is not. --B (talk) 14:22, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

It's been interesting watching this. I must admit that when I first discovered that stewards and staff were editing the wiki during the blackout, I was pretty angry. 130,116 active registered users, included me, had just had our ability to work on writing and editing articles involuntarily removed, and here were other editors carrying on as before. I wasn't happy about that. It felt like an abuse of privilege. I think having administrators, and stewards, and WMF staff with additional powers is a good thing. Their contributions make a difference to the encyclopedia. But those powers are there for a reason - and its not to allow them to dodge a "lock out" on the site during a protest.

Having thought on it a bit, I feel a bit calmer. "Assume good faith" is a good mantra. I think Fifelfoo has done a good job of presenting the material above, and answering some of my grouchier responses earlier today (thanks!). I doubt that Maggie or any of the others were trying to make the rest of us angry or feel excluded when they edited articles during the blackout. I doubt that they thought it was an "emergency" that needed fixing either though, and I still think that there were some poor judgement calls going on above. I think that waiting a few hours and making a non-emergency edit as a regular editor would have been a better way to deal with the situation and show leadership. This sort of thing does cause "damage" in terms of a loss of trust and confidence, at least in my case.

I'd agree with those above that suggest we should now be getting on and building a (still) better encyclopedia. The last few days has been pretty unpleasant for many of us - things can only get better! Hchc2009 (talk) 22:13, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I thought it was important enough to stay up after my bedtime to get it done. :) I didn't handle the OTRS request (can't do that, when I'm working), but when vandalism is potentially brand-damaging, it doesn't seem like a good idea to leave it in place after it's been pointed out. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:09, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

User subpage

I noticed this a couple of days ago and have decided to bring it here before I forget about it. I can't tell whether this is a possibly benign test of the article-creation wizard, is intended to be an attack page, or violates BLP even if it isn't intended as an attack. (The user's only edit in article space was not so hot either, and the user name may violate WP:CORPNAME as well.) Could some admin take a look and decide whether anything needs to be done about the page? Deor (talk) 15:51, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

I've warned him for creating attack pages. More edits of that flavor are likely to result in an indefinite block. Reaper Eternal (talk) 16:53, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Username is that of a company, probably should be blocked and asked to get a new name. Dougweller (talk) 19:17, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

out of scope user page and user talk page

Resolved

 – The Blade of the Northern Lights saw to it. Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 11:11, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

see out of scope user page and user talk page User talk:Master23Mind--Musamies (talk) 07:12, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

User:Joyson Noel/Joaquim Heliodoró da Cunha Rivara

Could someone bring back this draft? Joyson Prabhu ^{Holla at me!} 16:29, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

 Done. Elockid ^(Talk) 16:32, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Advice?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Should I just quit? Please see the bottom of my talk page. I've worked for years at being a good admin and a good Wikipedian, and above all tried to treat others as I'd like to be treated. I've had my failings, and Baseball Bugs will be happy to trot out his prize examples of one or two out of the six or eight times in the last decade I blew my top. (I'll give you the whole list, if you want it; I'm acutely aware of my failings.) Now I've just done it again, and this time really feels like the end of the line. I already tried taking a break, but I just come back to the same crap happening at RM that I tried to get away from.

I know I'm not the only one he's wearing down. Does anyone care? I don't try to excuse my behavior, except to say that every man has his limits, and if you cut me, yes, I bleed. You like blood? I know there are vampires here who do: go on, enjoy it!

I cry out for sympathy from what I know can be a cold, cold community. I've given my best to you, for years. Please Wikipedia, how do I suffer this? Or if this is it, then let this be an announcement to the vultures: these bones are ready for picking. Oh, cruel Wikipedia... I don't want to leave; I've poured so much love into this project... :'( -GTBacchus^(talk) 05:54, 19 January 2012 (UTC) is this how it ends? please, someone help me. I'm ready to hand in the mop, if that'll make it better...

Yeah, that'll sure show 'im, huh? HalfShadow 06:04, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

How do I go about requesting a self-desysop? You're right, HalfShadow, asking for sympathy is inappropriate here. Where's the form I fill out to quit? Sorry for the histrionics. Please carry on, and someone delete this section, and me. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:09, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

GTBacchus, we've all had days like that. Your error was in hitting "save". It's your talk page, and you can remove that right now. (Indeed, I urge you to do so, it will make you feel better.) In fact....to heck with archiving. Just wipe that entire discussion out. Then, take a couple of days off from this place and think about what you have done here that you've really enjoyed. When you come back, go do those things. But please come back. Risker (talk) 06:08, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Already tried that. What I really enjoyed is fucked up. I want the kind of break where I'm not an admin anymore. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:09, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

GT, I agree 100% with Risker above. There are lots of unfeeling people (for many reasons) that only derive pleasure in dragging other people into the depths of despair - BUT, there are also a lot of very good and kind folks here too. I'm only leaving the link because you asked, and I'd rather you chose to delete the thread, get a good nights sleep, and come back and find an area away from those that frustrate you. You can request the de-mop at WP:BN, but if you do - I hope you'll still find a place to edit here, as your work is greatly appreciated by many. Cheers. — Ched :  ?  06:20, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the link. I've already made the request. Sleep didn't work for the last six months; I don't see why another night should help. It's likely I'll still correct grammar, and maybe sort stubs or something. See ya around. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:22, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't see the point in doing anything rash. Just stay away from it for a few days. It's only a website. Notice we all got along without it for a day. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:38, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Not rash. Long simmer. Cooked. Cheers. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:51, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

There's absolutely no shame in setting down the mop for a while. Some of our best admins have done it, and have come back refreshed and ready to go. GTBacchus, just remember your work is valued here, even if we don't say it often enough (which we don't). Enjoy your time away from the mop. We'll welcome you back the moment you're ready to dive back in, however long it takes. 28bytes (talk) 06:47, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, and goodnight. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:51, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Try a week of not editing wikipedia, not reading wikipedia at all, and not thinking about wikipedia at all. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:06, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• Whoever does this desysopping self-request procedure: is there some way we could slow it down for a cooling-off period so GTBacchus can be persuaded to reverse his decision? We can't afford to lose him. Tony (talk) 08:24, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
  • See the relevant bureaucrat's noticeboard thread; the 'crats have done exactly that. Graham87 08:43, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Topic ban from moves proposal

So this episode was sparked by yet another case of Born2cycle (talk · contribs) obsessing about a requested move and pestering closing admins about decisions he disagreed with? This really needs to stop. It's a disruptive pattern, and that guy needs a topic ban from move discussions. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:14, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• Support! Disruption should not need days of discussion (is it disruptive enough yet?). Just do the topic ban. Johnuniq (talk) 09:30, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
  • How nice of you to notify the user you were discussing implementing disciplinary procedures against Fifelfoo (talk) 10:22, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
• Support, WP:POINTy section below nicely illustrates B2C's tendentiousness. The unpleasantness B2C brings to discussions frequently outweighs the good of their points -- especially since it's so difficult to find the points in the wallso'text. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:38, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  Switching to neutral, some of the objections mentioned below seem to be sinking in.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:38, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  Switching to oppose per this plan for improvement. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 02:07, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

  Defending yourself against accusations is now regarded as tendentious??--Kotniski (talk) 18:03, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  No, but titling it can't-i-defend-myself-against-the-evil-admin-cabal sure as heck is. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:04, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  (edit conflict)So defending myself against an accusation of tendentious, in 7 paragraphs, is now an example of tendentiousness? Wow, there are a lot of violations of that on this page. If you're going to accuse me of tendentiousness, please indicate which of the specific characteristics of a tendentious editor you believe I demonstrate. I also request that admins potentially biased from having disagreements with me in the past identify themselves accordingly. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:05, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  WP:REHASH is a good example -- see WT:D for a recent example. "Sure, let's have endless discussions about whether each of countless titles should be disambiguated even when it's not necessary for disambiguation..." "Not overturning this bad decision sets a bad precedent..." "saying there is "no consensus" on the questions of ambiguity and primary topic (which is the basis for the "no consensus" close) is nosensical..." "This dab page seems pointy and a violation of WP:DPAGES..." "'lack of consensus' alone is not a good reason to revert..." --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:04, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  You believe those are an example of WP:REHASH? The first -- "Sure, let's..." (sarcastically) addresses Station1 (talk · contribs)'s "nothing to resolve" argument. The second ("Not overturning this sets a bad precedent...") addresses his "not worth the effort" argument. The third, "saying there is..." was part of any FYI to Powers. The fourth, "This dab ..." was about a dab page that JHunterJ had just created. Not only are these not the same arguments, but Station1 and JHJ seem to have been persuaded by at least some of what I said, and REHASH is all about repeating the same arguments without persuading anyone. I suppose if you just skim the words without actually reading the discussion, it might look like a violation of REHASH, but really I don't see how it can apply in that discussion at all. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:37, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. I'm not 100% sure if only admins (which I am not) are allowed to participate in this "vote", but it seems ridiculous to me that someone should receive such a restriction, and allegations of POINTyness, for arguing an issue on which so many people have expressed agreement with him (and where the responses from those who disagree have been, frankly, so unsatisfactory in length and clarity). In full disclosure, I'm one of those people who agrees with him about how this matter has been mishandled, and I've appreciated him taking the lead in fighting it. Theoldsparkle (talk) 17:50, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment Discussions here definitely aren't restricted to admins.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:55, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
• In the area of article titles, B2C is one of relatively few who are able to think things through intelligently and see the errors in the well-meaning but mistaken arguments put forward by others. He gets frustrated when those others stick obstinately to their positions in spite of those errors having been pointed out, I suppose. But just as we wouldn't want to lose GTB, we also wouldn't want to lose B2C from this "topic" area.--Kotniski (talk) 18:00, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• Support I've actually sided with B2C in the past (Yogurt and Catholic Memorial), but I must say his style is appalling. this thread which related to the yogurt probably says it best. Hot Stop^UTC 18:02, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Actually, it's a bit confusing, but I think that thread demonstrates how I respect and follow consensus. At 15:07 on December 7 Greg L decided to archive it[35], inviting a revert if someone disagreed. I initially disagreed with closing that thread, and so re-opened at 15:10. But within 20 minutes I saw that others wanted it closed, so I closed it at 15:27. Perhaps unaware of all that, you re-opened it at 15:32, and I got blamed for it not being closed by by Kai445 (at 16:03) and Greg L (at 16:18). So then I tried archiving it again at 16:35 [36]. That one stuck. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:30, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
    • It has nothing to do with who opened or closed the thread. It's comments like "at best, he was really pushing the envelope, and he clearly knew he was on thin ice", "I suggest that it would be helpful that he admit changing the spelling, as surreptitiously as reasonably possible, to be more in accordance with that used in his own region of the world, was not entirely innocent", and This particular section, started by Derek Ross, is about whether his motives for the original move that precipitated eight years of angst on the project were as "innocent" as he proclaims they were above...If you don't agree this is important enough to discuss, then find something you do think is important" why I chose to illustrate that section. You were told multiple times by editors on both sides of the issue that your edits weren't helpful, but you continued nonetheless. Hot Stop^UTC 20:42, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
      • Oh, now I understand what you were talking about. Yeah, I need to learn to use less harsh language, and to be less argumentative. I know what I was thinking at the time -- something along the lines of "justice delayed is still justice" - but that's contrary to how WP works. We don't look for "justice" or "punishment". We seek to end undesirable behavior. Evaluating the behavior of someone years ago has no place on WP. Got it. And thanks. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:59, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
• Support While I am sure he has good intentions, what I have seen of his discussion style when I have seen him in move discussions tends to sway closer to incivility and definitely tendentiousness as opposed to civil even tempered discussion. Any good points he brings up are far outweighed by the baggage he also brings with him. -DJSasso (talk) 18:10, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose as a target of B2C’s questioning of RM closes, I actually don’t mind being challenged. However, when those challenges become adversarial or admins are essentially being demanded to Justify their actions, they become tedious. But there’s a simple solution. There is no requirement to provide any rationale for an RM or AfD close. So, not providing rationale just disarms those who disagree with the close. It’s pretty much a truth that no matter what the close is, someone will disagree with it. And they have a right to express that disagreement. Since as far as I can tell, admins are not obligated by guideline or policy to provide rationales or justify their RM or AfD decisions to other editors, editors who want to disagree with the actions of an admin should be cognizant of that fact. Admins should be collaborative and communicate civilly with editors to answer their questions, but I don't think we (admins) are obligated to justify our actions until everyone who disagrees is happy. B2C pushes the limits in this area, but if he understands the above, he can still productively disagree.--Mike Cline (talk) 18:18, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

You're mistaken; per WP:ADMINACCT unexplained administrator actions can demoralize other editors who lack such tools. Nobody Ent 18:22, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Two points: RM and AfD close instructions do not require any additional comment or rationale in the close language. WP:ADMINACCT does indeed require admins to explain their actions when asked and I think in this case both involved admins did that. But I find nothing in that paragraph that requires admins to justify themselves to the point that everyone who disagrees with a decision is happy. It is perfectly acceptable for an editor to say I don't agree with your explanation, but I do believe it is disruptive for an editor to continue to say I don't and won't accept your explanation and am going to keep pestering you and challenging your competency until you change your mind.--Mike Cline (talk) 18:36, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree there is no requirement for admins to justify themselves to the point that everyone who disagrees with a decision is happy, but that's not the issue. Not at all. I addressed this in the section below. But WP:ADMINACCT does say that administrators are expected ... to justify [their actions] when needed, and that's all I request, once in a while, and usually only when others agree with me, as was the case here. If you have the impression that I challenge every decision with which I disagree, or even any but the most confounding ones, you're simply mistaken. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:54, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

B2C, you must admit you push the limits sometimes. But do you see what my position above is? I oppose the suggested topic ban. I am supporting you in this discussion. --Mike Cline (talk) 19:03, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, thank you. Much appreciated. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:37, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

A more reasonable interpretation of adminacct is the admin make a succinct explanatory remark at the time of the action. In some cases this can be as simple as "per wp:snow," but more contentious discussions would require slightly more. Concur that this is no requirement to make editors happy. Nobody Ent 19:10, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• Support Neutral Repeated long-winded tendentious editing. Nobody Ent 18:23, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Per Born2cycle's comments below. Nobody Ent 03:19, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

• Support To Mike's point above, he doesn't understand he is pushing the limit and has declineed to pull back, instead throwing up walls of text that would fatigue even the most patient person. I agree this ban is needed, specifically in light of characteristics 4 and 9 on WP:TE, which are fairly obvious from the linked to Yogurt discussion above and his own responses so far in this thread. MBisanz ^talk 18:23, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Thank you. I suppose some might see this as another example of being tendentious, but this is the first time anyone has identified specific characteristics of [{WP:TE]] that they believe apply to my behavior, and so my first opportunity to respond to such. 4 has to do with not being given the benefit of the doubt. For the most part most people do give me the doubt all of the time, so far as I can tell, but there are some people who don't sometimes. I recognize that's a sign there's room for improvement in what I'm doing, but it's hardly a clear violation of WP:TE. 9 is about repeating the same argument without convincing others. To the contrary, if I'm not convincing anyone, I back off. In this latest Catholic Memorial School instance, many others agreed with, if not were convinced by, my arguments. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:47, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
    • Yeah...I see it as a clear violation. MBisanz ^talk 18:49, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
    • I don't think you do back off if you aren't convincing anyone someone. I think that is the major problem people are having with you. You just keep going with the same arguments over and over with overly long comments that say a lot without actually saying much and refuse to either change your own mind or to let it go when people disagree with you. -DJSasso (talk) 18:55, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
      • I realize many have that impression, and so there must be something to it, and I'm responsible for that. Perhaps I take Wikipedia:Consensus#Reaching_consensus_through_discussion too far? What I try to do is what it says: "... editors try to persuade others, using reasons based in policy, sources, and common sense". Perhaps citing a specific case where you think I went beyond that would help. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:17, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
        • Read the whole page. "The continuous, aggressive pursuit of an editorial goal is considered disruptive, and should be avoided."--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:23, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
          • And I agree with that and believe I naturally abide by it. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:41, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
            • How many people have to tell you differently before you change your belief?--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:50, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

      When has B2C embarked on one of these adventures when nobody else agreed with it? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 19:28, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

      Rarely, if ever. However, as with edit warring, being right isn't an excuse for being disruptive. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:38, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

      Yes, of course. But how is trying to find consensus through discussion, which includes trying to persuade those who disagree, and asking questions like this, disruptive? --Born2cycle (talk) 19:57, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

      SoV—there is an accusation just above, by DJSasso, that B2C doesn't back off when nobody is convinced. That is what I am trying to clarify. Thanks, ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 20:01, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

      I meant it more in the sense of the person(s) he is repeatedly aiming the comments at is not agreeing with him. Have adjusted my comment accordingly. -DJSasso (talk) 20:06, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

      Wouldn't trying to persuade someone who already agrees be the disruptive and pointless behavior? In fact, identifying someone who disagrees, or "The Most Interested Person" ("Wait until someone reverts your edit. You have now discovered a Most Interested Person") and working with them one-in-one in discussion lies at the heart of what WP:BRD recommends. What am I missing?

      I mean, I certainly agree that repeating the same argument with someone who disagrees is problematic, and obviously some people are under the impression that I do that, but I know there is no evidence of it, because that's something I avoid because I know it's pointless and problematic. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:19, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose any admin-area topic ban of any editor. If otherwise warranted, block or ban the editor as needed, but don't wall off the admins. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:24, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
• Support – an editor who digs in and opines ceaselessly until everyone else gives up. Oculi (talk) 18:26, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
• Support - Just reading some of these arguments that are being linked to is giving me a headache. I can't imagine how bad it would have been to be a participant in those discussions. Born2cycle seems to be acting as an obstacle to the RM process so it's in Wikipedia's best interest to keep him away from that area. -- Atama頭 19:13, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• I'm striking my support, or at least suspending it, given Born2cycle's comments below. If he amends his behavior then a ban is no longer necessary. -- Atama頭 22:00, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

• Support - If there are only problems with B2Cs editing in this area, we should remove the editor from this area. The other alternative is to remove B2C from the English Wikipedia entirely. If B2C wants that, I'm sure we can facilitate it. Mjroots (talk) 19:42, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Neutral - Per B2Cs comments below. Should the issues persist then we can revisit this. Let's give B2C a chance to show they mean what they say. Mjroots (talk) 11:18, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. While I understand there is some frustration with B2C's persistence, it just so happens that in many cases he's absolutely right. Powers ^T 19:44, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Thank you, Powers. We probably disagree about as often as we agree, don't we? For the record, I just want to say that I recognize and appreciate that being "absolutely right" does not justify being tendentious or disruptive. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:53, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
• oppose—I don't see compelling evidence here for a ban. B2C is overly-confrontational sometimes, and I wish that would stop, but I don't see anything rising to the level of a ban. RMs don't have any formal official appeal venue, so what can you do when you think one was closed poorly? Talk to the closer, see if there is any support for a "rerun", etc. Often, though, this kind of thing leads to a lot of static, but we should closely examine who is responsible for that static. Consider the Corvette fiasco—if you concede going in that questioning the closure and seeing if there is any consensus for a re-run is ok to do, did B2C do anything wrong here? Is B2C responsible for the character of the ensuing discussion? I'll reconsider if new evidence is brought to light here. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 19:46, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
  • That's a good example of his problematic behavior. "But at least you seem to admit that WP:PRIMARYTOPIC has to be ignored in order to have opposed this move" - B2C. "I 'admit' nothing of the sort."-Pablo --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:54, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
    • And that exemplifies a problem how? --Born2cycle (talk) 20:19, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose per JHunterJ. Admins should expect that their actions will come under greater scrutiny than those of regular editors but they don't need to be specially cotton-wooled with targeted topic bans like this. If there's harassment or hounding it should be dealt with at an individual level first using policies that apply to everyone, which from what I can see doesn't seem to have been attempted. Specifically limiting interaction with admins would set a dangerous precedent and seriously impact an editor's ability to raise concerns he believes are legitimate. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 19:57, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  The proposal as far as I can see doesn't call for limiting his interaction with admins. It just limits him from move discussions. -DJSasso (talk) 20:00, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  The ban -- which I presume includes questioning admin's RM closing decisions -- is allegedly justified because of my "pestering closing admins ", in direct contradiction to WP:ADMINACCT. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:09, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  No, there's nothing in ADMINACCT that allows pestering admins. Just look at your recent interaction with Aervanath. The title of the section was "does local consensus trump community consensus". You opened with "I'm perplexed by your 'no consensus' decision. Perhaps there was an oversight here?" After some discussion, you proceeded with "Based on the replies there, would you consider reversing your decision, explaining it better, or at least reverting it and letting someone else close it?" Shortly afterward: "Saying that this term is ambiguous and requires disambiguation, in the face of no dab page and a long-standing redirect from this term to this article, makes no sense.... Please address these serious fundamental problems with your explanation that multiple people have noted, or reverse the decision." Shortly after that, "You give equal weight to a pure WP:JDLI argument based entirely on personal preference as you do to one solidly steeped in policy, guidelines and convention." After that, you have "By the way, if you're making your decisions solely on LOCALCONSENSUS interpretations of policy and guidelines, that explains much." That easily passes the questioning line into badgering, and that's not even counting the discussion on the actual talk page. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:34, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  Okay, that helps. But I was very frustrated, and it's unclear what an editor is supposed to do in this situation. While you believe this constitutes badgering, and I'll admit it's getting close to the line, others say this about it: "He may well have acted differently elsewhere, but this subsection seems to be about a particular RM that, even if he had been abrasive, in my view (and others) he'd certainly been correct."[37] I mean, it's not like I do this in any situation where I happen to disagree... in the vast majority of such cases I accept the decision and move on. This is an exceptional case, and I'm not the only one who thinks so. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:56, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  Problem is, you do so many RM discussions that your exceptional cases show up more often than most peoples' routine cases. :-) --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:33, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  That may be part of the reason it came to a requested ban yes. But I think the major reason its here is the part that talks about you obsessing about another requested move. Most of the comments in the discussion are talking about your actions in the move discussions themselves. Secondly there is a huge difference between asking once nicely for some clarification and then continually asking them for another explanation when you don't like the one they gave. A admin only needs to give you an explanation once, whether you like the explanation or not is not their problem. -DJSasso (talk) 20:15, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  Okay. Is there any room for a compromise here? Like my agreeing to only questioning admins once? And maybe limiting my participation in any RM discussion to, say, five comments (which might seem like a lot, but it's not for me, which is probably the main problem - so this could solve it). --Born2cycle (talk) 20:27, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  I'd say there's definite room for compromise, but not in the direction you're going. Until you drop the "I'm doing what policy says, and none of the rest of you know what you're talking about" attitude, you're going to keep having trouble. Restricting the number of comments is not the point here.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:37, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  Well then what do you suggest? I also think you misunderstand me. When I quote policy in defending my behavior, I'm trying to explain why I believe my behavior is consistent with community expectations. That doesn't mean I'm right or that I'm not missing something; I'm just trying to explain my point of view. Above you said it comes down to REHASH, but your example of four statements were all parts of separate arguments to 3 different people. I'm not saying there isn't a problem, I'm just saying that that particular example is not a violation of REHASH, and not any characteristic of TE, as far as I can tell. I've suggested that it's simply too many posts/comments that's the problem, but you've just rejected that. Okay, then what is it? --Born2cycle (talk) 20:49, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  I didn't say it came down to REHASH, I said that was a good example of your tendentiousness. Another good example, as shown here and elsewhere in the thread, is you reading statements too narrowly, to the point of inaccuracy.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:43, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  My mistake. I'm sorry. You did not say it came down to REHASH. I said you did because that's how I understood the essence of what you were saying. I asked which criteria of WP:TE applied, and REHASH was the only one you mentioned. So in my mind you were implying that it came down to that. I'm sure I'm not the only who misreads on occasion. Again, my apologies. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:11, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  My mistake, I read it as a ban from challenging RMs. In this case my rationale is that the proposed topic area ban is far too broad and the evidence too narrow to justify a ban of this scope. Why would we ban him from 'all RMs' when the problem area is exclusively described as 'challenging RMs'? That's excessive. Deal with the issue at the individual level first, THEN try a topic ban on challenging RMs, and only THEN try a topic ban on participating in RMs altogether. Jumping to the last step is inappropriate. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 20:13, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  The proposer has been criticized by B2C in the past for unwillingness to explain an RM close, and from the way this proposal is worded it seems like it is that aspect in particular driving this ban proposal, which is bothering me, too. If I wasn't willing to have this on my talk page I wouldn't close RMs. Or be an admin. Admins do arbitrary, bizarre things, and to ban people when they question them is really disturbing. I think if this ban goes through, it needs to be made really clear that despite the proposal's wording, it is ok to question admin actions. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 20:20, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. There is nothing wrong with bringing solid and well-substantiated reasoning to the RM process the way B2C does it. If anything, RMs could use more folks like him. If someone is getting a headache reading his replies, fixing it is as easy as clicking away from the page and contributing to something unrelated. That said, apart from providing the titling insight, B2C himself could try contributing more to other areas every now and then. We are creating an encyclopedia, after all, not an Ultimate Guide to Titling Everything the Right Way.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 19, 2012; 20:51 (UTC)

Question. I'm currently involved in a couple of ongoing WP:RM discussions, including Talk:Fixed-wing_aircraft#Clarification_of_article_scope.2Frequested_move and Talk:Taiwan_(disambiguation)#Move_request. Does anyone think my behavior there is problematic?

I believe I have the most contribute to WP in the area of RM discussions, because that's where my interests and expertise lie. But because these discussion are often contentious, by arguing strongly one way or the other I seem to sometimes engender animosity in others. Over the years, their numbers grow. Let's just say most of the names involved here are familiar... Is that a reason to justify banning me from these discussions? I repeat Eraserhead1's question from below: "Is there any solid evidence of misbehaviour from Born2Cycle that stands up to scrutiny or do some people just not like him? " Thanks. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:44, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I do think you fall for the trap of saying rather too much, and replying to people too quickly, allowing discussions to take place at a slower pace is probably more sensible. If you're replying within a couple of days that should be fast enough - and not so fast that people think you're obsessed. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 20:58, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)It's starting to head in the wrong direction. "The current title, Fixed-wing aircraft, is an exception/compromise for no good reason", assuming bad faith from the people who made the original decision, and everyone who's !voted to keep it for that reason since then. "the only objective/non-JDLI way to decide this" - iow "I understand policy perfectly, so the rest of you just shut up". --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:11, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, I see now how you might interpret it that way, but that's certainly not how I meant it. What I meant was that everyone agrees if it wasn't for the inability to pick either "Airplane" or "Aeroplane", the title wouldn't be "Fixed-wing aircraft". In retrospect, I realize I might be wrong about that (we might need both articles), but that's beside the point, which is that I meant no disrespect to anyone. I agree I should be more careful how I word things so that they won't be misinterpreted like this. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:25, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• Neutral - a topic ban here would be an effective ban altogether. Moves is, after all, what Born2Cycle does. A RFC/U however, would perhaps have merit, although that too may end up being wikilawyered into stalemate. pablo 21:00, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Is there anything to justify an RFC/U? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:03, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
    • Take a look and decide for yourself. I can't do everything around here. pablo 21:52, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
      • We shouldn't be taking an editor to RFC/U unless diffs are easy to find showing actual bad behaviour - you don't necessarily have to do it, but someone should. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:46, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
        • You are correct in that diffs would be required for a RFC/U. pablo 09:48, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment Eraserhead has hit the nail on the head. Editors should question an admin's actions when it needs clarification but it's B2C's lamprey like approach that is causing any number of people to grind their teeth in frustration. I've had a read through the yogurt RM discussion and B2C, your responses there verge on histrionics and dramatic arm waving, to describe in less than flattering terms. Even after the participants repeatedly ask you to drop it, you just went on and on and on. I've also read GTBacchus's talk page, which sparked this whole discussion as well as yours,and GregL's. The one thing that leaps out at me the most is your near-obsessive need to have the last word. That I believe is why this topic ban has been proposed. Blackmane (talk) 21:08, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

That's why I suggested a compromise of limiting me to how many comments I make per RM discussion, but Sarek said that wasn't the problem --Born2cycle (talk) 21:25, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't think that's the issue really. Lets take a look at Catholic Memorial School. From my reading of the discussion you look to have presented a strong case. However that's kinda beside the point. Its not a WP:VITAL article, nor is it a particularly well read article, like say iPad (getting about 400k hits a month), only getting about 1000 views a month.

In an ideal world the admin would have changed their mind when you questioned the move. However they didn't, maybe they don't agree, or maybe they felt they will lose face if they change their mind. Given its a minor article of little importance when they didn't change their mind you should have stopped and moved on to discuss something else. The project isn't damaged if a 1000 views a month article is at the wrong title.

If you really think the article is at the wrong title the right way to go about it is to do another move request in 6 months and get that discussion closed by someone else, then the original closing admin doesn't have to lose face and so there is much less WP:DRAMA. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:49, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, yeah, except my concern was not so much that title per se, but that title being used as a precedent for more "unnecessary disambiguation" on similar even-longstanding-redirect-does-not-establish-primary-topic reasoning. Still, what I'm hearing is that even poor justifications for bad decisions should be accepted for the sake of harmony, because harmony is more important than any title. Or something like that, yes? --Born2cycle (talk) 23:05, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I think that's life.

It took until September 2011 for us to use the common name for the world's largest country. America still isn't a redirect to United States, even though I've never heard anyone use it to refer to the Americas.

I think harmony is more important than such a move request, yes. People make bad decisions sometimes <shrug>. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:21, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• Support - B2C has been disruptive regarding page moves for years now, it's well past the time that it was stopped for good. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:13, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
• Support. Born2cycle's manner of arguing over article naming has a negative effect on other editors. I personally found it so grating that I took a month-long break from editing and a more patient editor than I, GTBacchus, is abandoning his admin bit in frustration. I'm sure we aren't the only ones who've been moved to avoid discussions over article titles due to Bon2cycle's participation.   Will Beback  talk  23:31, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Based on Born2cycle's statement below, I am hopeful that this problem can be solved without a formal topic ban and am striking out my support for it.   Will Beback  talk  01:41, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Is there any evidence of poor behaviour that shows these issues? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:36, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  I don't want to put words in GTBacchus' mouth, but I think his frustration is not just due to B2C's manner. It's also frustration with the idea that policies and guidelines are prescriptive, or sometimes it seems like it is even frustration with the fact that anyone even has that opinion. Obviously B2C is a posterboy for this movement; that combined with the fact that both parties are more than willing to "debate at length", there you go. The talk pages of the relevant guidelines/policies are littered with many exchanges between these two, often quite nasty on both sides. See this reply for an interesting example. Quite a bit of talking past each other. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:33, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

If policy isn't prescriptive how on earth do you propose to resolve any matter that isn't trivial? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 00:15, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Since Bacchus took my name in vain earlier, I think it's worth pointing out that he appears to lack the proper temperament to be an admin. I recall a couple of years ago when he unleashed the most obscene, vile diatribe against me that anyone ever has - and that includes socks, trolls, and other malcontents. I started to wonder about his mental state, frankly. And this recent situation reinforces my theory that he's got bigger problems than wikipedia. He needs to get away from here for awhile and focus on what's important. No matter who gets banned, there will always be contentious editors. Maybe wikipedia doesn't do a good enough job of screening or testing of potential admins. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:14, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment. You've gotten my attention. I promise to change in the following ways: 1) Comment less and less often on RM discussions in which I'm involved (I presume the number of RM discussions in which I'm involved is not the problem), especially when engaged in a dispute. 2) I will be more agreeable and less disagreeable. 3) If I must disagree, I'll try to find something positive to say first, or at least be apologetic about disagreeing. 4) I'll be more careful how I word things to make it less likely for me to be misinterpreted, which I know occurs often. For example, when I refer to policy I'll be more careful about presenting it in a way that is conveyed as being positive and productive rather than combative. 5) I'll look for signs from others, especially those who have taken the time to commented here, to let me know how I'm doing. 6) I will continue to welcome, and will encourage even more, specific suggestions on what I could do to improve my disposition in all discussions in which I'm involved. 7) I will not think, believe, convey or say that just because I'm not violating the letter of any policy or guideline does not mean there is no problem to address. Thank you. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:22, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

• Sounds like a plan. Switched to oppose. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 02:10, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. B2c's post above, showing that he gets it, is commendable. Great if other editors whose tendentiousness discourage participation in articles and talk pages where they operate could learn from this example. Writegeist (talk) 02:24, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Recommendation: When arguing a position, take your time and formulate the best possible reasoning in your first post. Where applicable, prefer diffs over rhetoric, and the shorter and tighter you can make your writing the better. Do this well, when other editors post opinions, you won't have any need to reply because you've already anticipated and addressed their points. If they simply disagree, don't respond unless you have good reason to believe to you can change their minds (part of AGF is assuming they read and understood what you wrote in the first place). Wikipedia policies/guidelines/essays are numerous, vague, and contradictory, editors are going to end up disagreeing what to do in particular circumstances. Despite what the idealism of consensus says, sometimes it just comes down to numbers; win some, lose some. The confident editor is willing to let the other party have the last word because they know their argument is better.

The ideal way to contribute to a debate is one and done. Nobody Ent 03:16, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

That is more than a tad unrealistic. People don't anticipate everything everyone else says. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 08:30, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Support time-based topic-ban from RMs and WP:TITLE. The user in question has been disruptive and tendentious, and shown clear wp:ownship syndrome for a long time. A signal needs to be sent that this is unproductive, even destructive at times, as we've seen over the past few days. Tony (talk) 05:45, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Wheres the evidence? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 08:11, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose Not only on my usual pointing out the inefficacy of any Draconian topic bans, but on the basis that there is grossly insufficient argument in favour thereof in this case. Collect (talk) 12:39, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
• Opppose He understands titling issues in a way others don't. Saying less is often more, slowing down, not needing to answer every point - those are things he could learn but that doesn't support a ban. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)
• Comment User:Born2Cycle’s 01:22, 20 January 2012 (UTC) post does not come as a surprise; he obviously saw the writing on the wall and had only two options. The trouble is, he can logically *observe* that he has to change in order to not have privileges stripped from him, but he doesn’t internally *feel* the need. He’s merely following the path of least pain and is once again gaming everyone here. Now I see why User:GTBaccus—an admin—became so profoundly frustrated with B2C and decided to just quite Wikipedia altogether. The mentality underlying those who voted “Oppose” here exemplify why GTBaccus commented about how utterly broken Wikipedia is when dealing with tendentious editors. I’ve stated my intention, here on GTBaccus’s talk page to start an RFC/U over B2C. It is my intention that the remedy be an outright indefinite ban of B2C across all of Wikipedia. “Indefinite” doesn’t mean “forever” but it does mean he will not be playing everyone here like lab rats as he goes about his business on Wikipedia. The community has every right to protect itself from chronically disruptive editors. His lies and misdirection at justifying all that he did at the recent MfD over a dirt‑file page he created amply demonstrates his method of operation and how he thinks. Greg L (talk) 16:41, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
• Support. Born2cycle is too disruptive on a human level to be allowed to continue to work with human volunteers. This thread ought to be a formal RfC but short of that, I think B2C should be banned. I see from B2C's tendentiousness and IDHT behavior such as was shown at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User talk:Born2cycle/dicklyon. How many more good editors will B2C grind down? There should be a stop put to the damage. Binksternet (talk) 17:23, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
• Neutral at this point. I'm one of those who at one time was finding that B2C and I had the same position on many issues. Over time, that has changed and we now often disagree. If B2C is able to adhere to the limits above, then it may bypass the need for a community ban. My thinking before that was posted that I would support a ban that allowed B2C to only post once in each discussion with a support or oppose and the reasons. I felt that because despite all else, B2C does bring valid points to many discussions. On the down side, there is the frustration for administrators. While they need to justify their decisions, do they need to have a long drawn out disucssion when the decision is clear but not to the liking of someone. While B2C implies that he many be the most involved in RM discussions, that does not give any extra weight to his opinions. I could say that since I close a large number of the RM discussions I have a more knowledge and my option should have much more weight. But that would simply be a stupid assumption. It is all too often that you look at the listing for a proposal and say 'I know how that is going to play out'. Then you look at the discussion and surprise, you are wrong. No one is going to be right every time. And maybe that is part of the problem here. I don't believe that B2C accepts the fact that his opinion is not always going to be right or gain consensus. That's just the way it works. The bigger issue here is what, if any, damage B2C causes in discussions. I suspect that his appearance scares some participants away. I know that his participation scares away admins from closing many of the discussions that B2C participates in. So at what point does the damage outweigh the good? At this point, I'm willing to see if he can live with his suggested improvements. The problem is that they are all rather subjective. And he needs to add one - any violation of his terms results in a 3 month community ban from RM discussions - that will let him show the community that he understands the problems and they will really be fixed and we don't need another long discussion about this. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:09, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Should editors be discouraged from asking admins to justify their actions?

Yes, I challenged the closing of Talk:Catholic_Memorial_School_(West_Roxbury,_Massachusetts)#Requested_move at Talk:Catholic_Memorial_School_(West_Roxbury,_Massachusetts)#Close_challenged, and notified the closing admin, Aervanath (talk · contribs), at User_talk:Aervanath#does_local_consensus_trump_community_consensus accordingly. Others, including JHunterJ (talk · contribs), TechnoSymbiosis (talk · contribs), LtPowers (talk · contribs), and Bkonrad (talk · contribs), shared my concerns and puzzlement about the closing, even after Aervanath tried to explain further.

Aervanath also started a section about this at Wikipedia_talk:RM#Review_move_decision, where Mike Cline (talk · contribs) concurred with the decision, for an equally puzzling reason. Mike's reason was also questioned not only by me, but by JHunterJ (talk · contribs), Kotniski (talk · contribs) and Theoldsparkle (talk · contribs). Peterkingiron (talk · contribs) weighed in effectively favoring reversing Aervanath's decision. It was that discussion that GTB found so off-putting.

Yes, I question RM decisions once in a while. I question decisions not whenever I disagree, or "didn't get my way", as has been suggested elsewhere, but when I have a question about the decision. Most times when I disagree, I recognize that the other arguments are reasonable, and closing in their favor, or "no consensus", is also reasonable. But in a few cases, like this one, the closing decision seems to make no sense at all. In this case Aervanath's decision rested on the assertion that there was "no consensus" on the questions of ambiguity and primary topic, even though the term in question had been a redirect to the article for years, and that was not even challenged. Because of the lack of competing uses on WP for this name, this case is more definitive than even Paris, Michael Jackson and Harvard with respect to ambiguity and primary topic (because of Paris (disambiguation), Michael Jackson (disambiguation) and Harvard (disambiguation); there is no Catholic Memorial School (disambiguation)).

I think I've questioned perhaps a handful of RM decisions of the hundreds I've been involved in. Even if I'm off and it's as many ten, or twenty, I believe I violated no policy or guideline in doing so, and in fact was simply expecting admins to meet their responsibilities, especially WP:ADMINACCT which states:

"Subject only to the bounds of civility, avoiding personal attacks, and reasonable good faith, editors are free to question or to criticize administrator actions. Administrators are expected to respond promptly and civilly to queries about their Wikipedia-related conduct and administrator actions and to justify them when needed."

I'm getting the impression that some admins don't appreciate having to explain and justify their actions, and others don't like it when I try to get other admins to do so. I'm sorry having to justify decisions occasionally is not "fun"[38], but I suggest it's necessary (frankly, I think WP would improve with more of it).

GTB and others claim my behavior amounts to a violation of WP:TE - but I've reviewed it and I don't see which aspect applies here, and no one has explained that either. If I'm blocked for this, I will have been punished for trying to hold admins responsible for justifying their decisions when they make questionable ones (and questioned not only by me, but a number of other editors). I know WP cannot be improved by discouraging editors from asking admins to justify their questionable decisions. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:25, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

There are five Wikipedia pillars; three apply here. When a (1) consensus of editors is telling you that you're being (2) incivil, repetitive demanding of "policy" justifications for actions is (3) bureaucratic. Snippy comments like this [39] add up and using many words while saying little wears folks down after time. Nobody Ent 18:19, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Incivility aside, insisting on justifications is not bureaucratic. If a regular editor were to close a discussion without explanation it would be a simple matter for other regular editors in the discussion to simply revert his action. When an admin closes a discussion it's a different matter and when an admin leaves a weak or confusing justification behind it undermines the community's faith in that admin's ability to read consensus. As in the Catholic Memorial School RM mentioned above, other editors agreed that the close rationale was insufficient and I don't see any problematic behaviour from B2C in explaining his view and seeking clarification. He may well have acted differently elsewhere, but this subsection seems to be about a particular RM that, even if he had been abrasive, in my view (and others) he'd certainly been correct. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 20:08, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

It should be perfectly legitimate to ask an admin for an explanation.

With regards to the discussion as a whole is there really a justification for having it? Is there any solid evidence of misbehaviour from Born2Cycle that stands up to scrutiny or do some people just not like him? In the real world, and on Wikipedia there are certain people I don't like - its not worth wasting too much energy over, and trying to remove them from the project because you don't like them is something that just creates WP:DRAMA - which is obviously bad.

The big tip I have is to be prepared to admit when your wrong - it makes you a better person, and be prepared to agree to disagree with people, if people were happier to do that we'd all get along better. And remember - only one day until the weekend! -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 20:28, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Lack of evidence

I'm still waiting for diffs of this being more than a minor problem.

I'm appalled that you guys are sitting here slamming someone, in this case Born2Cycle, without really presenting any evidence of wrongdoing.

Just because you don't like him is not a good reason to remove him from the community. In the real world you have to work with people you dislike and remain professional, that's life. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 08:15, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Eraserhead, I may be prepared to provide a raft of diffed evidence in a few days' time—possibly Sunday UTC. I cannot manage to gather it over the next day, and it's really not a task I relish; I'm particularly upset at the departure of GTBacchus, which demonstrates that something needs to be done to protect the project. Admins, please do as you think best—close it or keep it open. I'm sorry to dangle something indecisive in this way, and I'll take your advice as to whether this timeframe is unsatisfactory for the noticeboard. Tony (talk) 15:19, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

• Yes. Plenty of evidence will be collected that demonstrates the following:

1. Born2Cycle has been chronically tendentious.
2. He has been told of this on at least several occasions
3. He denied it or otherwise exhibited an utter lack of being able to see this tendentiousness

It will also be clear that his manner and method of operation is to game and mislead. This isn’t about “slamming” someone we dislike. It is all about how tendentious editors are like a cancer: insidious, slow, agonizing, and seldom acute—like when someone writes Go to hell! in frustration and gets a 24-hour block.

Chronic tendentiousness is very deleterious to a collegial working relationship, which is essential to a collaborative writing environment. The simple fact is that WP:Tendentious editing is still Wikipedia:Disruptive editing and the community has every right in the world to protect itself from it.

But this isn’t the place for such evidence to be presented; it should be an an RFC/U on Born2Cycle. Greg L (talk) 17:07, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

With respect to diffs, it's hard when behavior is so diffuse and persistent, but not blatantly out of line in any given diff. A good example, though, is his long distractor post in the immediately preceding subsection above, titled "Should editors be discouraged from asking admins to justify their actions?" where he seeks to deflect criticism by focusing on a nearly irrelevant abstraction. He does this in discussions all the time, especially when people give him criticism or feedback on his tendentious behavior. As Greg says, however, this is probably not the time or place to try to make a case to do something about him. I'll volunteer to help dig up some diffs, such as times when I have attempted to tell him something about the problems he is causing and he has come back with nothing but denial and deflection. Dicklyon (talk) 21:19, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Greg, Tony and Dick. Is Noetica going to appear next as well? You guys always seem to like casting your votes in quick succession. If you aren't interested in providing evidence, don't post threatening that you will, because it comes across as casting accusations with the illusion of evidence. If you are interested in providing evidence, gather it first and then post. If you want to open an RFC/U, go for it. You should be prepared to accept that there will be opposition to it, but if you think it's the right next step, by all means. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 22:59, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Sure enough, it looks like I commented only 4 hours after Greg, and 6 hours after Tony. What are trying to say? Dicklyon (talk) 06:48, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

On the long-standing legal principle under common law of innocent until proven guilty until evidence is presented we must assume that Born2Cycle is innocent.

Of note I have great respect for GTBacchus, but that doesn't mean I am going to abandon all principles to target someone he dislikes.

With regards to evidence there's no rush - if it takes you another few weeks to gather so be it, but you shouldn't be commenting until you have that evidence. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 00:10, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh… please do desist with your posturing (and “common law” arguments) and save it for the RFC/U when, I expect, you’ll advance some sort of great theory for why the burden of proof for not allowing B2C to disrupt this place until editors are tearing their hair out of their heads and admins are quitting Wikipedia altogether should be the same burden of proof as required to execute someone in the U.S. As for the shortcomings of this ANI, I wasn’t an advocate of this ANI and my first posts here were to end it. Maybe you didn’t know that evidence is being prepared here on a sandbox. So if you didn’t know, you do now. You are welcome to add evidence there too. Arguing your case will have to wait for the RFC/U to start, so please use the sandbox for what it is intended for. If editors want to !vote in the RFC/U to allow B2C to be part of the community despite the evidence that will be presented, their arguments will be scrutinized to see if they are credible and make sense. Greg L (talk) 00:44, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

P.S. And with regard to noble-sounding notions like “innocent until proven guilty”, there is no such wording on Wikipedia. We AGF until “bad faith is evident”; until it is clear that a given editor is not interacting with others “in a respectful and civil manner” (which is a prerequisite of Wikipedia’s Five pillars to be able to participate here). If not, all manner of remedies are available to us. Now is the time to end this poorly prepared ANI while those who’ve had the pleasure of interacting with B2C prepare their evidence. Greg L (talk) 00:52, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Greg, if you bring some compelling evidence to the table I will change my mind. I don't view changing my mind as a big deal. Rather than complaining about my posts I don't see why you, or someone else, hasn't presented some diffs showing wrong-doing.

If there isn't anything compelling that he has done wrong then the case should be dropped as all it is doing is creating additional WP:DRAMA, which will drive more people away from the project.

The fundamental reality of this project is that it involves large numbers of people, so you aren't going to like everyone. Additionally you are also taking part in a project with large numbers of intelligent people, some of whom have a critical academic background. No-one here gets to be the cleverest person in the room, nor do they get to avoid having their positions challenged from time to time. Having your positions challenged and people presenting a strong case is a fundamental part of WP:CONSENSUS as that works on the strength of argument. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 10:12, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Taking a look at the sandbox with regards to this Born2Cycle's behaviour there seems less than ideal. Although he did in the end admit he was wrong for creating that page. Furthermore by going straight to MfD the user who did it didn't exactly go for the low drama route to solve it. The right answer would have been to ask nicely on his talk page first. Finally other involved editors had significantly subpar behaviour.

With this diff I'm not sure what anyone can point to that's bad about that.

With regards to Born2Cycle discussing things a lot, if he's the only one block him for WP:DEADHORSE. If he's not then follow through the WP:DR process rather than staying at the same level which is unlikely to succeed, you can't criticise him for doing that. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 10:51, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

B2C drove an admin away from Wikipedia out of shear frustration from his tendentiousness. This isn’t about me “liking” B2C or not; it’s about how someone has to step up to the plate and see to it that this sort of chronic disruptive editing stops. Not surprisingly, B2C has been chronically tendentious with other editors, who have told him that, but he’s only ignored them and stated that the problem lies with them. Furthermore, B2C was contradicting his own serial lies on the MfD. I don’t understand why you feel he is such a good fit for participating in a collaborative writing environment and should be allowed to continue to disrupt Wikipedia. I can guarantee you that there are many editors who don’t share your sentiments. Now…

You seem to be willing to argue in his defense before evidence is fully prepared on the sandbox—in fact, we only just got started. That suggests you will !vote on B2C’s side in the RFC/U; that is your right. But please note that not one bit of evidence of B2C’s chronic tendentiousness with GTBaccus is on the sandbox yet. There must be an ocean of that given GTB’s galactic frustration. But now that GTBaccus sang his his swan song this morning (he’s gone), someone else who is familiar with all those goings-on will have to step up to the plate and add it to the sandbox. One thing GTBaccus was exceedingly correct about is that Wikipedia is utterly broken in its ability to deal with tendentious editors.

It’s my intention to use the sandbox and the processes used in the upcoming RFC/U to serve as a paradigm for how we go about dealing with editors like B2C so Wikipedia no longer stays broken in this regard. Greg L (talk) 18:12, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

P.S. Let’s be exceedingly clear on something here, Eraserhead1: I didn’t start this ANI. I didn’t know about it until recently. And when I did weigh in, it was to say that it was going nowhere, I didn’t support it, and I motioned that it be closed. The material being gathered has only just started and there is far, far more to come. More to the point, the material being gathered is not for this ANI so you might as well not be so anxious to pronounce your displeasure with it here. When the evidence has been gathered together from the far reaches of Wikipedia, it will be used for an RFC/U, so please save your defense of B2C for there. I think I’m done here. This ANI should have been closed yesterday, IMHO. Happy editing. Greg L (talk) 18:34, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Motion to close

I motion that this entire thread and its sub-threads considering Band-Aid solutions be closed. The proper place to address true, chronic tendentiousness is elsewhere. Greg L (talk) 17:09, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Since the topic ban proposal has clearly failed, I don't see any further administrative action necessary here. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 23:01, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

I second that. I'd archive it myself, but have contributed, so won't, but it would be nice if someone uninvolved could. If a RFC/U is being prepared, there needs to be no further discussion here. pablo 18:35, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Arrogant User

User:137.120.238.48 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/137.120.238.48 I know this is probably in the wrong place, but I don't have the faintest idea where to report this guy or get administrator intervention. A quick look at his history [40], especially in the editing of Street Fighter X Tekken, reveals he simply doesn't understand the idea of WP:NOR or WP:V. He also comes across as extremely arrogant whenever I try to explain to him why what he is doing is wrong [41] [42] and he simply refuses to listen to advice from me. [43]. He only seems to post once a month, which I can understand would prevent him from getting banned, but if he's simply refusing to listen to me, then could I at least request that an admin speak to him, and try to get him down a peg or two? Or at the very least tell me which page I SHOULD be reporting this to? 88.109.28.100 (talk) 15:06, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Close this thread because it was also shotgunned at WP:ANI. For discussion, go to Arrogant User. Glrx (talk) 19:33, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Advice?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Should I just quit? Please see the bottom of my talk page. I've worked for years at being a good admin and a good Wikipedian, and above all tried to treat others as I'd like to be treated. I've had my failings, and Baseball Bugs will be happy to trot out his prize examples of one or two out of the six or eight times in the last decade I blew my top. (I'll give you the whole list, if you want it; I'm acutely aware of my failings.) Now I've just done it again, and this time really feels like the end of the line. I already tried taking a break, but I just come back to the same crap happening at RM that I tried to get away from.

I know I'm not the only one he's wearing down. Does anyone care? I don't try to excuse my behavior, except to say that every man has his limits, and if you cut me, yes, I bleed. You like blood? I know there are vampires here who do: go on, enjoy it!

I cry out for sympathy from what I know can be a cold, cold community. I've given my best to you, for years. Please Wikipedia, how do I suffer this? Or if this is it, then let this be an announcement to the vultures: these bones are ready for picking. Oh, cruel Wikipedia... I don't want to leave; I've poured so much love into this project... :'( -GTBacchus^(talk) 05:54, 19 January 2012 (UTC) is this how it ends? please, someone help me. I'm ready to hand in the mop, if that'll make it better...

Yeah, that'll sure show 'im, huh? HalfShadow 06:04, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

How do I go about requesting a self-desysop? You're right, HalfShadow, asking for sympathy is inappropriate here. Where's the form I fill out to quit? Sorry for the histrionics. Please carry on, and someone delete this section, and me. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:09, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

GTBacchus, we've all had days like that. Your error was in hitting "save". It's your talk page, and you can remove that right now. (Indeed, I urge you to do so, it will make you feel better.) In fact....to heck with archiving. Just wipe that entire discussion out. Then, take a couple of days off from this place and think about what you have done here that you've really enjoyed. When you come back, go do those things. But please come back. Risker (talk) 06:08, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Already tried that. What I really enjoyed is fucked up. I want the kind of break where I'm not an admin anymore. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:09, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

GT, I agree 100% with Risker above. There are lots of unfeeling people (for many reasons) that only derive pleasure in dragging other people into the depths of despair - BUT, there are also a lot of very good and kind folks here too. I'm only leaving the link because you asked, and I'd rather you chose to delete the thread, get a good nights sleep, and come back and find an area away from those that frustrate you. You can request the de-mop at WP:BN, but if you do - I hope you'll still find a place to edit here, as your work is greatly appreciated by many. Cheers. — Ched :  ?  06:20, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the link. I've already made the request. Sleep didn't work for the last six months; I don't see why another night should help. It's likely I'll still correct grammar, and maybe sort stubs or something. See ya around. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:22, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't see the point in doing anything rash. Just stay away from it for a few days. It's only a website. Notice we all got along without it for a day. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:38, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Not rash. Long simmer. Cooked. Cheers. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:51, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

There's absolutely no shame in setting down the mop for a while. Some of our best admins have done it, and have come back refreshed and ready to go. GTBacchus, just remember your work is valued here, even if we don't say it often enough (which we don't). Enjoy your time away from the mop. We'll welcome you back the moment you're ready to dive back in, however long it takes. 28bytes (talk) 06:47, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, and goodnight. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:51, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Try a week of not editing wikipedia, not reading wikipedia at all, and not thinking about wikipedia at all. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:06, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• Whoever does this desysopping self-request procedure: is there some way we could slow it down for a cooling-off period so GTBacchus can be persuaded to reverse his decision? We can't afford to lose him. Tony (talk) 08:24, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
  • See the relevant bureaucrat's noticeboard thread; the 'crats have done exactly that. Graham87 08:43, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Topic ban from moves proposal

So this episode was sparked by yet another case of Born2cycle (talk · contribs) obsessing about a requested move and pestering closing admins about decisions he disagreed with? This really needs to stop. It's a disruptive pattern, and that guy needs a topic ban from move discussions. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:14, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• Support! Disruption should not need days of discussion (is it disruptive enough yet?). Just do the topic ban. Johnuniq (talk) 09:30, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
  • How nice of you to notify the user you were discussing implementing disciplinary procedures against Fifelfoo (talk) 10:22, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
• Support, WP:POINTy section below nicely illustrates B2C's tendentiousness. The unpleasantness B2C brings to discussions frequently outweighs the good of their points -- especially since it's so difficult to find the points in the wallso'text. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:38, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  Switching to neutral, some of the objections mentioned below seem to be sinking in.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:38, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  Switching to oppose per this plan for improvement. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 02:07, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

  Defending yourself against accusations is now regarded as tendentious??--Kotniski (talk) 18:03, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  No, but titling it can't-i-defend-myself-against-the-evil-admin-cabal sure as heck is. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:04, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  (edit conflict)So defending myself against an accusation of tendentious, in 7 paragraphs, is now an example of tendentiousness? Wow, there are a lot of violations of that on this page. If you're going to accuse me of tendentiousness, please indicate which of the specific characteristics of a tendentious editor you believe I demonstrate. I also request that admins potentially biased from having disagreements with me in the past identify themselves accordingly. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:05, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  WP:REHASH is a good example -- see WT:D for a recent example. "Sure, let's have endless discussions about whether each of countless titles should be disambiguated even when it's not necessary for disambiguation..." "Not overturning this bad decision sets a bad precedent..." "saying there is "no consensus" on the questions of ambiguity and primary topic (which is the basis for the "no consensus" close) is nosensical..." "This dab page seems pointy and a violation of WP:DPAGES..." "'lack of consensus' alone is not a good reason to revert..." --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:04, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  You believe those are an example of WP:REHASH? The first -- "Sure, let's..." (sarcastically) addresses Station1 (talk · contribs)'s "nothing to resolve" argument. The second ("Not overturning this sets a bad precedent...") addresses his "not worth the effort" argument. The third, "saying there is..." was part of any FYI to Powers. The fourth, "This dab ..." was about a dab page that JHunterJ had just created. Not only are these not the same arguments, but Station1 and JHJ seem to have been persuaded by at least some of what I said, and REHASH is all about repeating the same arguments without persuading anyone. I suppose if you just skim the words without actually reading the discussion, it might look like a violation of REHASH, but really I don't see how it can apply in that discussion at all. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:37, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. I'm not 100% sure if only admins (which I am not) are allowed to participate in this "vote", but it seems ridiculous to me that someone should receive such a restriction, and allegations of POINTyness, for arguing an issue on which so many people have expressed agreement with him (and where the responses from those who disagree have been, frankly, so unsatisfactory in length and clarity). In full disclosure, I'm one of those people who agrees with him about how this matter has been mishandled, and I've appreciated him taking the lead in fighting it. Theoldsparkle (talk) 17:50, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment Discussions here definitely aren't restricted to admins.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:55, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
• In the area of article titles, B2C is one of relatively few who are able to think things through intelligently and see the errors in the well-meaning but mistaken arguments put forward by others. He gets frustrated when those others stick obstinately to their positions in spite of those errors having been pointed out, I suppose. But just as we wouldn't want to lose GTB, we also wouldn't want to lose B2C from this "topic" area.--Kotniski (talk) 18:00, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• Support I've actually sided with B2C in the past (Yogurt and Catholic Memorial), but I must say his style is appalling. this thread which related to the yogurt probably says it best. Hot Stop^UTC 18:02, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Actually, it's a bit confusing, but I think that thread demonstrates how I respect and follow consensus. At 15:07 on December 7 Greg L decided to archive it[44], inviting a revert if someone disagreed. I initially disagreed with closing that thread, and so re-opened at 15:10. But within 20 minutes I saw that others wanted it closed, so I closed it at 15:27. Perhaps unaware of all that, you re-opened it at 15:32, and I got blamed for it not being closed by by Kai445 (at 16:03) and Greg L (at 16:18). So then I tried archiving it again at 16:35 [45]. That one stuck. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:30, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
    • It has nothing to do with who opened or closed the thread. It's comments like "at best, he was really pushing the envelope, and he clearly knew he was on thin ice", "I suggest that it would be helpful that he admit changing the spelling, as surreptitiously as reasonably possible, to be more in accordance with that used in his own region of the world, was not entirely innocent", and This particular section, started by Derek Ross, is about whether his motives for the original move that precipitated eight years of angst on the project were as "innocent" as he proclaims they were above...If you don't agree this is important enough to discuss, then find something you do think is important" why I chose to illustrate that section. You were told multiple times by editors on both sides of the issue that your edits weren't helpful, but you continued nonetheless. Hot Stop^UTC 20:42, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
      • Oh, now I understand what you were talking about. Yeah, I need to learn to use less harsh language, and to be less argumentative. I know what I was thinking at the time -- something along the lines of "justice delayed is still justice" - but that's contrary to how WP works. We don't look for "justice" or "punishment". We seek to end undesirable behavior. Evaluating the behavior of someone years ago has no place on WP. Got it. And thanks. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:59, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
• Support While I am sure he has good intentions, what I have seen of his discussion style when I have seen him in move discussions tends to sway closer to incivility and definitely tendentiousness as opposed to civil even tempered discussion. Any good points he brings up are far outweighed by the baggage he also brings with him. -DJSasso (talk) 18:10, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose as a target of B2C’s questioning of RM closes, I actually don’t mind being challenged. However, when those challenges become adversarial or admins are essentially being demanded to Justify their actions, they become tedious. But there’s a simple solution. There is no requirement to provide any rationale for an RM or AfD close. So, not providing rationale just disarms those who disagree with the close. It’s pretty much a truth that no matter what the close is, someone will disagree with it. And they have a right to express that disagreement. Since as far as I can tell, admins are not obligated by guideline or policy to provide rationales or justify their RM or AfD decisions to other editors, editors who want to disagree with the actions of an admin should be cognizant of that fact. Admins should be collaborative and communicate civilly with editors to answer their questions, but I don't think we (admins) are obligated to justify our actions until everyone who disagrees is happy. B2C pushes the limits in this area, but if he understands the above, he can still productively disagree.--Mike Cline (talk) 18:18, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

You're mistaken; per WP:ADMINACCT unexplained administrator actions can demoralize other editors who lack such tools. Nobody Ent 18:22, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Two points: RM and AfD close instructions do not require any additional comment or rationale in the close language. WP:ADMINACCT does indeed require admins to explain their actions when asked and I think in this case both involved admins did that. But I find nothing in that paragraph that requires admins to justify themselves to the point that everyone who disagrees with a decision is happy. It is perfectly acceptable for an editor to say I don't agree with your explanation, but I do believe it is disruptive for an editor to continue to say I don't and won't accept your explanation and am going to keep pestering you and challenging your competency until you change your mind.--Mike Cline (talk) 18:36, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree there is no requirement for admins to justify themselves to the point that everyone who disagrees with a decision is happy, but that's not the issue. Not at all. I addressed this in the section below. But WP:ADMINACCT does say that administrators are expected ... to justify [their actions] when needed, and that's all I request, once in a while, and usually only when others agree with me, as was the case here. If you have the impression that I challenge every decision with which I disagree, or even any but the most confounding ones, you're simply mistaken. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:54, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

B2C, you must admit you push the limits sometimes. But do you see what my position above is? I oppose the suggested topic ban. I am supporting you in this discussion. --Mike Cline (talk) 19:03, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, thank you. Much appreciated. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:37, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

A more reasonable interpretation of adminacct is the admin make a succinct explanatory remark at the time of the action. In some cases this can be as simple as "per wp:snow," but more contentious discussions would require slightly more. Concur that this is no requirement to make editors happy. Nobody Ent 19:10, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• Support Neutral Repeated long-winded tendentious editing. Nobody Ent 18:23, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Per Born2cycle's comments below. Nobody Ent 03:19, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

• Support To Mike's point above, he doesn't understand he is pushing the limit and has declineed to pull back, instead throwing up walls of text that would fatigue even the most patient person. I agree this ban is needed, specifically in light of characteristics 4 and 9 on WP:TE, which are fairly obvious from the linked to Yogurt discussion above and his own responses so far in this thread. MBisanz ^talk 18:23, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Thank you. I suppose some might see this as another example of being tendentious, but this is the first time anyone has identified specific characteristics of [{WP:TE]] that they believe apply to my behavior, and so my first opportunity to respond to such. 4 has to do with not being given the benefit of the doubt. For the most part most people do give me the doubt all of the time, so far as I can tell, but there are some people who don't sometimes. I recognize that's a sign there's room for improvement in what I'm doing, but it's hardly a clear violation of WP:TE. 9 is about repeating the same argument without convincing others. To the contrary, if I'm not convincing anyone, I back off. In this latest Catholic Memorial School instance, many others agreed with, if not were convinced by, my arguments. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:47, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
    • Yeah...I see it as a clear violation. MBisanz ^talk 18:49, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
    • I don't think you do back off if you aren't convincing anyone someone. I think that is the major problem people are having with you. You just keep going with the same arguments over and over with overly long comments that say a lot without actually saying much and refuse to either change your own mind or to let it go when people disagree with you. -DJSasso (talk) 18:55, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
      • I realize many have that impression, and so there must be something to it, and I'm responsible for that. Perhaps I take Wikipedia:Consensus#Reaching_consensus_through_discussion too far? What I try to do is what it says: "... editors try to persuade others, using reasons based in policy, sources, and common sense". Perhaps citing a specific case where you think I went beyond that would help. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:17, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
        • Read the whole page. "The continuous, aggressive pursuit of an editorial goal is considered disruptive, and should be avoided."--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:23, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
          • And I agree with that and believe I naturally abide by it. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:41, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
            • How many people have to tell you differently before you change your belief?--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:50, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

      When has B2C embarked on one of these adventures when nobody else agreed with it? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 19:28, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

      Rarely, if ever. However, as with edit warring, being right isn't an excuse for being disruptive. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:38, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

      Yes, of course. But how is trying to find consensus through discussion, which includes trying to persuade those who disagree, and asking questions like this, disruptive? --Born2cycle (talk) 19:57, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

      SoV—there is an accusation just above, by DJSasso, that B2C doesn't back off when nobody is convinced. That is what I am trying to clarify. Thanks, ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 20:01, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

      I meant it more in the sense of the person(s) he is repeatedly aiming the comments at is not agreeing with him. Have adjusted my comment accordingly. -DJSasso (talk) 20:06, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

      Wouldn't trying to persuade someone who already agrees be the disruptive and pointless behavior? In fact, identifying someone who disagrees, or "The Most Interested Person" ("Wait until someone reverts your edit. You have now discovered a Most Interested Person") and working with them one-in-one in discussion lies at the heart of what WP:BRD recommends. What am I missing?

      I mean, I certainly agree that repeating the same argument with someone who disagrees is problematic, and obviously some people are under the impression that I do that, but I know there is no evidence of it, because that's something I avoid because I know it's pointless and problematic. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:19, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose any admin-area topic ban of any editor. If otherwise warranted, block or ban the editor as needed, but don't wall off the admins. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:24, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
• Support – an editor who digs in and opines ceaselessly until everyone else gives up. Oculi (talk) 18:26, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
• Support - Just reading some of these arguments that are being linked to is giving me a headache. I can't imagine how bad it would have been to be a participant in those discussions. Born2cycle seems to be acting as an obstacle to the RM process so it's in Wikipedia's best interest to keep him away from that area. -- Atama頭 19:13, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• I'm striking my support, or at least suspending it, given Born2cycle's comments below. If he amends his behavior then a ban is no longer necessary. -- Atama頭 22:00, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

• Support - If there are only problems with B2Cs editing in this area, we should remove the editor from this area. The other alternative is to remove B2C from the English Wikipedia entirely. If B2C wants that, I'm sure we can facilitate it. Mjroots (talk) 19:42, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Neutral - Per B2Cs comments below. Should the issues persist then we can revisit this. Let's give B2C a chance to show they mean what they say. Mjroots (talk) 11:18, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. While I understand there is some frustration with B2C's persistence, it just so happens that in many cases he's absolutely right. Powers ^T 19:44, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Thank you, Powers. We probably disagree about as often as we agree, don't we? For the record, I just want to say that I recognize and appreciate that being "absolutely right" does not justify being tendentious or disruptive. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:53, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
• oppose—I don't see compelling evidence here for a ban. B2C is overly-confrontational sometimes, and I wish that would stop, but I don't see anything rising to the level of a ban. RMs don't have any formal official appeal venue, so what can you do when you think one was closed poorly? Talk to the closer, see if there is any support for a "rerun", etc. Often, though, this kind of thing leads to a lot of static, but we should closely examine who is responsible for that static. Consider the Corvette fiasco—if you concede going in that questioning the closure and seeing if there is any consensus for a re-run is ok to do, did B2C do anything wrong here? Is B2C responsible for the character of the ensuing discussion? I'll reconsider if new evidence is brought to light here. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 19:46, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
  • That's a good example of his problematic behavior. "But at least you seem to admit that WP:PRIMARYTOPIC has to be ignored in order to have opposed this move" - B2C. "I 'admit' nothing of the sort."-Pablo --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:54, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
    • And that exemplifies a problem how? --Born2cycle (talk) 20:19, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose per JHunterJ. Admins should expect that their actions will come under greater scrutiny than those of regular editors but they don't need to be specially cotton-wooled with targeted topic bans like this. If there's harassment or hounding it should be dealt with at an individual level first using policies that apply to everyone, which from what I can see doesn't seem to have been attempted. Specifically limiting interaction with admins would set a dangerous precedent and seriously impact an editor's ability to raise concerns he believes are legitimate. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 19:57, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  The proposal as far as I can see doesn't call for limiting his interaction with admins. It just limits him from move discussions. -DJSasso (talk) 20:00, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  The ban -- which I presume includes questioning admin's RM closing decisions -- is allegedly justified because of my "pestering closing admins ", in direct contradiction to WP:ADMINACCT. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:09, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  No, there's nothing in ADMINACCT that allows pestering admins. Just look at your recent interaction with Aervanath. The title of the section was "does local consensus trump community consensus". You opened with "I'm perplexed by your 'no consensus' decision. Perhaps there was an oversight here?" After some discussion, you proceeded with "Based on the replies there, would you consider reversing your decision, explaining it better, or at least reverting it and letting someone else close it?" Shortly afterward: "Saying that this term is ambiguous and requires disambiguation, in the face of no dab page and a long-standing redirect from this term to this article, makes no sense.... Please address these serious fundamental problems with your explanation that multiple people have noted, or reverse the decision." Shortly after that, "You give equal weight to a pure WP:JDLI argument based entirely on personal preference as you do to one solidly steeped in policy, guidelines and convention." After that, you have "By the way, if you're making your decisions solely on LOCALCONSENSUS interpretations of policy and guidelines, that explains much." That easily passes the questioning line into badgering, and that's not even counting the discussion on the actual talk page. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:34, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  Okay, that helps. But I was very frustrated, and it's unclear what an editor is supposed to do in this situation. While you believe this constitutes badgering, and I'll admit it's getting close to the line, others say this about it: "He may well have acted differently elsewhere, but this subsection seems to be about a particular RM that, even if he had been abrasive, in my view (and others) he'd certainly been correct."[46] I mean, it's not like I do this in any situation where I happen to disagree... in the vast majority of such cases I accept the decision and move on. This is an exceptional case, and I'm not the only one who thinks so. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:56, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  Problem is, you do so many RM discussions that your exceptional cases show up more often than most peoples' routine cases. :-) --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:33, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  That may be part of the reason it came to a requested ban yes. But I think the major reason its here is the part that talks about you obsessing about another requested move. Most of the comments in the discussion are talking about your actions in the move discussions themselves. Secondly there is a huge difference between asking once nicely for some clarification and then continually asking them for another explanation when you don't like the one they gave. A admin only needs to give you an explanation once, whether you like the explanation or not is not their problem. -DJSasso (talk) 20:15, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  Okay. Is there any room for a compromise here? Like my agreeing to only questioning admins once? And maybe limiting my participation in any RM discussion to, say, five comments (which might seem like a lot, but it's not for me, which is probably the main problem - so this could solve it). --Born2cycle (talk) 20:27, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  I'd say there's definite room for compromise, but not in the direction you're going. Until you drop the "I'm doing what policy says, and none of the rest of you know what you're talking about" attitude, you're going to keep having trouble. Restricting the number of comments is not the point here.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:37, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  Well then what do you suggest? I also think you misunderstand me. When I quote policy in defending my behavior, I'm trying to explain why I believe my behavior is consistent with community expectations. That doesn't mean I'm right or that I'm not missing something; I'm just trying to explain my point of view. Above you said it comes down to REHASH, but your example of four statements were all parts of separate arguments to 3 different people. I'm not saying there isn't a problem, I'm just saying that that particular example is not a violation of REHASH, and not any characteristic of TE, as far as I can tell. I've suggested that it's simply too many posts/comments that's the problem, but you've just rejected that. Okay, then what is it? --Born2cycle (talk) 20:49, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  I didn't say it came down to REHASH, I said that was a good example of your tendentiousness. Another good example, as shown here and elsewhere in the thread, is you reading statements too narrowly, to the point of inaccuracy.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:43, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  My mistake. I'm sorry. You did not say it came down to REHASH. I said you did because that's how I understood the essence of what you were saying. I asked which criteria of WP:TE applied, and REHASH was the only one you mentioned. So in my mind you were implying that it came down to that. I'm sure I'm not the only who misreads on occasion. Again, my apologies. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:11, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  My mistake, I read it as a ban from challenging RMs. In this case my rationale is that the proposed topic area ban is far too broad and the evidence too narrow to justify a ban of this scope. Why would we ban him from 'all RMs' when the problem area is exclusively described as 'challenging RMs'? That's excessive. Deal with the issue at the individual level first, THEN try a topic ban on challenging RMs, and only THEN try a topic ban on participating in RMs altogether. Jumping to the last step is inappropriate. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 20:13, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  The proposer has been criticized by B2C in the past for unwillingness to explain an RM close, and from the way this proposal is worded it seems like it is that aspect in particular driving this ban proposal, which is bothering me, too. If I wasn't willing to have this on my talk page I wouldn't close RMs. Or be an admin. Admins do arbitrary, bizarre things, and to ban people when they question them is really disturbing. I think if this ban goes through, it needs to be made really clear that despite the proposal's wording, it is ok to question admin actions. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 20:20, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. There is nothing wrong with bringing solid and well-substantiated reasoning to the RM process the way B2C does it. If anything, RMs could use more folks like him. If someone is getting a headache reading his replies, fixing it is as easy as clicking away from the page and contributing to something unrelated. That said, apart from providing the titling insight, B2C himself could try contributing more to other areas every now and then. We are creating an encyclopedia, after all, not an Ultimate Guide to Titling Everything the Right Way.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 19, 2012; 20:51 (UTC)

Question. I'm currently involved in a couple of ongoing WP:RM discussions, including Talk:Fixed-wing_aircraft#Clarification_of_article_scope.2Frequested_move and Talk:Taiwan_(disambiguation)#Move_request. Does anyone think my behavior there is problematic?

I believe I have the most contribute to WP in the area of RM discussions, because that's where my interests and expertise lie. But because these discussion are often contentious, by arguing strongly one way or the other I seem to sometimes engender animosity in others. Over the years, their numbers grow. Let's just say most of the names involved here are familiar... Is that a reason to justify banning me from these discussions? I repeat Eraserhead1's question from below: "Is there any solid evidence of misbehaviour from Born2Cycle that stands up to scrutiny or do some people just not like him? " Thanks. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:44, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I do think you fall for the trap of saying rather too much, and replying to people too quickly, allowing discussions to take place at a slower pace is probably more sensible. If you're replying within a couple of days that should be fast enough - and not so fast that people think you're obsessed. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 20:58, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)It's starting to head in the wrong direction. "The current title, Fixed-wing aircraft, is an exception/compromise for no good reason", assuming bad faith from the people who made the original decision, and everyone who's !voted to keep it for that reason since then. "the only objective/non-JDLI way to decide this" - iow "I understand policy perfectly, so the rest of you just shut up". --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:11, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, I see now how you might interpret it that way, but that's certainly not how I meant it. What I meant was that everyone agrees if it wasn't for the inability to pick either "Airplane" or "Aeroplane", the title wouldn't be "Fixed-wing aircraft". In retrospect, I realize I might be wrong about that (we might need both articles), but that's beside the point, which is that I meant no disrespect to anyone. I agree I should be more careful how I word things so that they won't be misinterpreted like this. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:25, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• Neutral - a topic ban here would be an effective ban altogether. Moves is, after all, what Born2Cycle does. A RFC/U however, would perhaps have merit, although that too may end up being wikilawyered into stalemate. pablo 21:00, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Is there anything to justify an RFC/U? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:03, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
    • Take a look and decide for yourself. I can't do everything around here. pablo 21:52, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
      • We shouldn't be taking an editor to RFC/U unless diffs are easy to find showing actual bad behaviour - you don't necessarily have to do it, but someone should. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:46, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
        • You are correct in that diffs would be required for a RFC/U. pablo 09:48, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment Eraserhead has hit the nail on the head. Editors should question an admin's actions when it needs clarification but it's B2C's lamprey like approach that is causing any number of people to grind their teeth in frustration. I've had a read through the yogurt RM discussion and B2C, your responses there verge on histrionics and dramatic arm waving, to describe in less than flattering terms. Even after the participants repeatedly ask you to drop it, you just went on and on and on. I've also read GTBacchus's talk page, which sparked this whole discussion as well as yours,and GregL's. The one thing that leaps out at me the most is your near-obsessive need to have the last word. That I believe is why this topic ban has been proposed. Blackmane (talk) 21:08, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

That's why I suggested a compromise of limiting me to how many comments I make per RM discussion, but Sarek said that wasn't the problem --Born2cycle (talk) 21:25, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't think that's the issue really. Lets take a look at Catholic Memorial School. From my reading of the discussion you look to have presented a strong case. However that's kinda beside the point. Its not a WP:VITAL article, nor is it a particularly well read article, like say iPad (getting about 400k hits a month), only getting about 1000 views a month.

In an ideal world the admin would have changed their mind when you questioned the move. However they didn't, maybe they don't agree, or maybe they felt they will lose face if they change their mind. Given its a minor article of little importance when they didn't change their mind you should have stopped and moved on to discuss something else. The project isn't damaged if a 1000 views a month article is at the wrong title.

If you really think the article is at the wrong title the right way to go about it is to do another move request in 6 months and get that discussion closed by someone else, then the original closing admin doesn't have to lose face and so there is much less WP:DRAMA. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:49, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, yeah, except my concern was not so much that title per se, but that title being used as a precedent for more "unnecessary disambiguation" on similar even-longstanding-redirect-does-not-establish-primary-topic reasoning. Still, what I'm hearing is that even poor justifications for bad decisions should be accepted for the sake of harmony, because harmony is more important than any title. Or something like that, yes? --Born2cycle (talk) 23:05, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I think that's life.

It took until September 2011 for us to use the common name for the world's largest country. America still isn't a redirect to United States, even though I've never heard anyone use it to refer to the Americas.

I think harmony is more important than such a move request, yes. People make bad decisions sometimes <shrug>. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:21, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• Support - B2C has been disruptive regarding page moves for years now, it's well past the time that it was stopped for good. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:13, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
• Support. Born2cycle's manner of arguing over article naming has a negative effect on other editors. I personally found it so grating that I took a month-long break from editing and a more patient editor than I, GTBacchus, is abandoning his admin bit in frustration. I'm sure we aren't the only ones who've been moved to avoid discussions over article titles due to Bon2cycle's participation.   Will Beback  talk  23:31, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Based on Born2cycle's statement below, I am hopeful that this problem can be solved without a formal topic ban and am striking out my support for it.   Will Beback  talk  01:41, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Is there any evidence of poor behaviour that shows these issues? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:36, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  I don't want to put words in GTBacchus' mouth, but I think his frustration is not just due to B2C's manner. It's also frustration with the idea that policies and guidelines are prescriptive, or sometimes it seems like it is even frustration with the fact that anyone even has that opinion. Obviously B2C is a posterboy for this movement; that combined with the fact that both parties are more than willing to "debate at length", there you go. The talk pages of the relevant guidelines/policies are littered with many exchanges between these two, often quite nasty on both sides. See this reply for an interesting example. Quite a bit of talking past each other. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:33, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

If policy isn't prescriptive how on earth do you propose to resolve any matter that isn't trivial? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 00:15, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Since Bacchus took my name in vain earlier, I think it's worth pointing out that he appears to lack the proper temperament to be an admin. I recall a couple of years ago when he unleashed the most obscene, vile diatribe against me that anyone ever has - and that includes socks, trolls, and other malcontents. I started to wonder about his mental state, frankly. And this recent situation reinforces my theory that he's got bigger problems than wikipedia. He needs to get away from here for awhile and focus on what's important. No matter who gets banned, there will always be contentious editors. Maybe wikipedia doesn't do a good enough job of screening or testing of potential admins. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:14, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment. You've gotten my attention. I promise to change in the following ways: 1) Comment less and less often on RM discussions in which I'm involved (I presume the number of RM discussions in which I'm involved is not the problem), especially when engaged in a dispute. 2) I will be more agreeable and less disagreeable. 3) If I must disagree, I'll try to find something positive to say first, or at least be apologetic about disagreeing. 4) I'll be more careful how I word things to make it less likely for me to be misinterpreted, which I know occurs often. For example, when I refer to policy I'll be more careful about presenting it in a way that is conveyed as being positive and productive rather than combative. 5) I'll look for signs from others, especially those who have taken the time to commented here, to let me know how I'm doing. 6) I will continue to welcome, and will encourage even more, specific suggestions on what I could do to improve my disposition in all discussions in which I'm involved. 7) I will not think, believe, convey or say that just because I'm not violating the letter of any policy or guideline does not mean there is no problem to address. Thank you. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:22, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

• Sounds like a plan. Switched to oppose. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 02:10, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. B2c's post above, showing that he gets it, is commendable. Great if other editors whose tendentiousness discourage participation in articles and talk pages where they operate could learn from this example. Writegeist (talk) 02:24, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Recommendation: When arguing a position, take your time and formulate the best possible reasoning in your first post. Where applicable, prefer diffs over rhetoric, and the shorter and tighter you can make your writing the better. Do this well, when other editors post opinions, you won't have any need to reply because you've already anticipated and addressed their points. If they simply disagree, don't respond unless you have good reason to believe to you can change their minds (part of AGF is assuming they read and understood what you wrote in the first place). Wikipedia policies/guidelines/essays are numerous, vague, and contradictory, editors are going to end up disagreeing what to do in particular circumstances. Despite what the idealism of consensus says, sometimes it just comes down to numbers; win some, lose some. The confident editor is willing to let the other party have the last word because they know their argument is better.

The ideal way to contribute to a debate is one and done. Nobody Ent 03:16, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

That is more than a tad unrealistic. People don't anticipate everything everyone else says. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 08:30, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Support time-based topic-ban from RMs and WP:TITLE. The user in question has been disruptive and tendentious, and shown clear wp:ownship syndrome for a long time. A signal needs to be sent that this is unproductive, even destructive at times, as we've seen over the past few days. Tony (talk) 05:45, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Wheres the evidence? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 08:11, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose Not only on my usual pointing out the inefficacy of any Draconian topic bans, but on the basis that there is grossly insufficient argument in favour thereof in this case. Collect (talk) 12:39, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
• Opppose He understands titling issues in a way others don't. Saying less is often more, slowing down, not needing to answer every point - those are things he could learn but that doesn't support a ban. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)
• Comment User:Born2Cycle’s 01:22, 20 January 2012 (UTC) post does not come as a surprise; he obviously saw the writing on the wall and had only two options. The trouble is, he can logically *observe* that he has to change in order to not have privileges stripped from him, but he doesn’t internally *feel* the need. He’s merely following the path of least pain and is once again gaming everyone here. Now I see why User:GTBaccus—an admin—became so profoundly frustrated with B2C and decided to just quite Wikipedia altogether. The mentality underlying those who voted “Oppose” here exemplify why GTBaccus commented about how utterly broken Wikipedia is when dealing with tendentious editors. I’ve stated my intention, here on GTBaccus’s talk page to start an RFC/U over B2C. It is my intention that the remedy be an outright indefinite ban of B2C across all of Wikipedia. “Indefinite” doesn’t mean “forever” but it does mean he will not be playing everyone here like lab rats as he goes about his business on Wikipedia. The community has every right to protect itself from chronically disruptive editors. His lies and misdirection at justifying all that he did at the recent MfD over a dirt‑file page he created amply demonstrates his method of operation and how he thinks. Greg L (talk) 16:41, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
• Support. Born2cycle is too disruptive on a human level to be allowed to continue to work with human volunteers. This thread ought to be a formal RfC but short of that, I think B2C should be banned. I see from B2C's tendentiousness and IDHT behavior such as was shown at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User talk:Born2cycle/dicklyon. How many more good editors will B2C grind down? There should be a stop put to the damage. Binksternet (talk) 17:23, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
• Neutral at this point. I'm one of those who at one time was finding that B2C and I had the same position on many issues. Over time, that has changed and we now often disagree. If B2C is able to adhere to the limits above, then it may bypass the need for a community ban. My thinking before that was posted that I would support a ban that allowed B2C to only post once in each discussion with a support or oppose and the reasons. I felt that because despite all else, B2C does bring valid points to many discussions. On the down side, there is the frustration for administrators. While they need to justify their decisions, do they need to have a long drawn out disucssion when the decision is clear but not to the liking of someone. While B2C implies that he many be the most involved in RM discussions, that does not give any extra weight to his opinions. I could say that since I close a large number of the RM discussions I have a more knowledge and my option should have much more weight. But that would simply be a stupid assumption. It is all too often that you look at the listing for a proposal and say 'I know how that is going to play out'. Then you look at the discussion and surprise, you are wrong. No one is going to be right every time. And maybe that is part of the problem here. I don't believe that B2C accepts the fact that his opinion is not always going to be right or gain consensus. That's just the way it works. The bigger issue here is what, if any, damage B2C causes in discussions. I suspect that his appearance scares some participants away. I know that his participation scares away admins from closing many of the discussions that B2C participates in. So at what point does the damage outweigh the good? At this point, I'm willing to see if he can live with his suggested improvements. The problem is that they are all rather subjective. And he needs to add one - any violation of his terms results in a 3 month community ban from RM discussions - that will let him show the community that he understands the problems and they will really be fixed and we don't need another long discussion about this. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:09, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Should editors be discouraged from asking admins to justify their actions?

Yes, I challenged the closing of Talk:Catholic_Memorial_School_(West_Roxbury,_Massachusetts)#Requested_move at Talk:Catholic_Memorial_School_(West_Roxbury,_Massachusetts)#Close_challenged, and notified the closing admin, Aervanath (talk · contribs), at User_talk:Aervanath#does_local_consensus_trump_community_consensus accordingly. Others, including JHunterJ (talk · contribs), TechnoSymbiosis (talk · contribs), LtPowers (talk · contribs), and Bkonrad (talk · contribs), shared my concerns and puzzlement about the closing, even after Aervanath tried to explain further.

Aervanath also started a section about this at Wikipedia_talk:RM#Review_move_decision, where Mike Cline (talk · contribs) concurred with the decision, for an equally puzzling reason. Mike's reason was also questioned not only by me, but by JHunterJ (talk · contribs), Kotniski (talk · contribs) and Theoldsparkle (talk · contribs). Peterkingiron (talk · contribs) weighed in effectively favoring reversing Aervanath's decision. It was that discussion that GTB found so off-putting.

Yes, I question RM decisions once in a while. I question decisions not whenever I disagree, or "didn't get my way", as has been suggested elsewhere, but when I have a question about the decision. Most times when I disagree, I recognize that the other arguments are reasonable, and closing in their favor, or "no consensus", is also reasonable. But in a few cases, like this one, the closing decision seems to make no sense at all. In this case Aervanath's decision rested on the assertion that there was "no consensus" on the questions of ambiguity and primary topic, even though the term in question had been a redirect to the article for years, and that was not even challenged. Because of the lack of competing uses on WP for this name, this case is more definitive than even Paris, Michael Jackson and Harvard with respect to ambiguity and primary topic (because of Paris (disambiguation), Michael Jackson (disambiguation) and Harvard (disambiguation); there is no Catholic Memorial School (disambiguation)).

I think I've questioned perhaps a handful of RM decisions of the hundreds I've been involved in. Even if I'm off and it's as many ten, or twenty, I believe I violated no policy or guideline in doing so, and in fact was simply expecting admins to meet their responsibilities, especially WP:ADMINACCT which states:

"Subject only to the bounds of civility, avoiding personal attacks, and reasonable good faith, editors are free to question or to criticize administrator actions. Administrators are expected to respond promptly and civilly to queries about their Wikipedia-related conduct and administrator actions and to justify them when needed."

I'm getting the impression that some admins don't appreciate having to explain and justify their actions, and others don't like it when I try to get other admins to do so. I'm sorry having to justify decisions occasionally is not "fun"[47], but I suggest it's necessary (frankly, I think WP would improve with more of it).

GTB and others claim my behavior amounts to a violation of WP:TE - but I've reviewed it and I don't see which aspect applies here, and no one has explained that either. If I'm blocked for this, I will have been punished for trying to hold admins responsible for justifying their decisions when they make questionable ones (and questioned not only by me, but a number of other editors). I know WP cannot be improved by discouraging editors from asking admins to justify their questionable decisions. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:25, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

There are five Wikipedia pillars; three apply here. When a (1) consensus of editors is telling you that you're being (2) incivil, repetitive demanding of "policy" justifications for actions is (3) bureaucratic. Snippy comments like this [48] add up and using many words while saying little wears folks down after time. Nobody Ent 18:19, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Incivility aside, insisting on justifications is not bureaucratic. If a regular editor were to close a discussion without explanation it would be a simple matter for other regular editors in the discussion to simply revert his action. When an admin closes a discussion it's a different matter and when an admin leaves a weak or confusing justification behind it undermines the community's faith in that admin's ability to read consensus. As in the Catholic Memorial School RM mentioned above, other editors agreed that the close rationale was insufficient and I don't see any problematic behaviour from B2C in explaining his view and seeking clarification. He may well have acted differently elsewhere, but this subsection seems to be about a particular RM that, even if he had been abrasive, in my view (and others) he'd certainly been correct. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 20:08, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

It should be perfectly legitimate to ask an admin for an explanation.

With regards to the discussion as a whole is there really a justification for having it? Is there any solid evidence of misbehaviour from Born2Cycle that stands up to scrutiny or do some people just not like him? In the real world, and on Wikipedia there are certain people I don't like - its not worth wasting too much energy over, and trying to remove them from the project because you don't like them is something that just creates WP:DRAMA - which is obviously bad.

The big tip I have is to be prepared to admit when your wrong - it makes you a better person, and be prepared to agree to disagree with people, if people were happier to do that we'd all get along better. And remember - only one day until the weekend! -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 20:28, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Lack of evidence

I'm still waiting for diffs of this being more than a minor problem.

I'm appalled that you guys are sitting here slamming someone, in this case Born2Cycle, without really presenting any evidence of wrongdoing.

Just because you don't like him is not a good reason to remove him from the community. In the real world you have to work with people you dislike and remain professional, that's life. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 08:15, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Eraserhead, I may be prepared to provide a raft of diffed evidence in a few days' time—possibly Sunday UTC. I cannot manage to gather it over the next day, and it's really not a task I relish; I'm particularly upset at the departure of GTBacchus, which demonstrates that something needs to be done to protect the project. Admins, please do as you think best—close it or keep it open. I'm sorry to dangle something indecisive in this way, and I'll take your advice as to whether this timeframe is unsatisfactory for the noticeboard. Tony (talk) 15:19, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

• Yes. Plenty of evidence will be collected that demonstrates the following:

1. Born2Cycle has been chronically tendentious.
2. He has been told of this on at least several occasions
3. He denied it or otherwise exhibited an utter lack of being able to see this tendentiousness

It will also be clear that his manner and method of operation is to game and mislead. This isn’t about “slamming” someone we dislike. It is all about how tendentious editors are like a cancer: insidious, slow, agonizing, and seldom acute—like when someone writes Go to hell! in frustration and gets a 24-hour block.

Chronic tendentiousness is very deleterious to a collegial working relationship, which is essential to a collaborative writing environment. The simple fact is that WP:Tendentious editing is still Wikipedia:Disruptive editing and the community has every right in the world to protect itself from it.

But this isn’t the place for such evidence to be presented; it should be an an RFC/U on Born2Cycle. Greg L (talk) 17:07, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

With respect to diffs, it's hard when behavior is so diffuse and persistent, but not blatantly out of line in any given diff. A good example, though, is his long distractor post in the immediately preceding subsection above, titled "Should editors be discouraged from asking admins to justify their actions?" where he seeks to deflect criticism by focusing on a nearly irrelevant abstraction. He does this in discussions all the time, especially when people give him criticism or feedback on his tendentious behavior. As Greg says, however, this is probably not the time or place to try to make a case to do something about him. I'll volunteer to help dig up some diffs, such as times when I have attempted to tell him something about the problems he is causing and he has come back with nothing but denial and deflection. Dicklyon (talk) 21:19, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Greg, Tony and Dick. Is Noetica going to appear next as well? You guys always seem to like casting your votes in quick succession. If you aren't interested in providing evidence, don't post threatening that you will, because it comes across as casting accusations with the illusion of evidence. If you are interested in providing evidence, gather it first and then post. If you want to open an RFC/U, go for it. You should be prepared to accept that there will be opposition to it, but if you think it's the right next step, by all means. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 22:59, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Sure enough, it looks like I commented only 4 hours after Greg, and 6 hours after Tony. What are trying to say? Dicklyon (talk) 06:48, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

On the long-standing legal principle under common law of innocent until proven guilty until evidence is presented we must assume that Born2Cycle is innocent.

Of note I have great respect for GTBacchus, but that doesn't mean I am going to abandon all principles to target someone he dislikes.

With regards to evidence there's no rush - if it takes you another few weeks to gather so be it, but you shouldn't be commenting until you have that evidence. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 00:10, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh… please do desist with your posturing (and “common law” arguments) and save it for the RFC/U when, I expect, you’ll advance some sort of great theory for why the burden of proof for not allowing B2C to disrupt this place until editors are tearing their hair out of their heads and admins are quitting Wikipedia altogether should be the same burden of proof as required to execute someone in the U.S. As for the shortcomings of this ANI, I wasn’t an advocate of this ANI and my first posts here were to end it. Maybe you didn’t know that evidence is being prepared here on a sandbox. So if you didn’t know, you do now. You are welcome to add evidence there too. Arguing your case will have to wait for the RFC/U to start, so please use the sandbox for what it is intended for. If editors want to !vote in the RFC/U to allow B2C to be part of the community despite the evidence that will be presented, their arguments will be scrutinized to see if they are credible and make sense. Greg L (talk) 00:44, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

P.S. And with regard to noble-sounding notions like “innocent until proven guilty”, there is no such wording on Wikipedia. We AGF until “bad faith is evident”; until it is clear that a given editor is not interacting with others “in a respectful and civil manner” (which is a prerequisite of Wikipedia’s Five pillars to be able to participate here). If not, all manner of remedies are available to us. Now is the time to end this poorly prepared ANI while those who’ve had the pleasure of interacting with B2C prepare their evidence. Greg L (talk) 00:52, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Greg, if you bring some compelling evidence to the table I will change my mind. I don't view changing my mind as a big deal. Rather than complaining about my posts I don't see why you, or someone else, hasn't presented some diffs showing wrong-doing.

If there isn't anything compelling that he has done wrong then the case should be dropped as all it is doing is creating additional WP:DRAMA, which will drive more people away from the project.

The fundamental reality of this project is that it involves large numbers of people, so you aren't going to like everyone. Additionally you are also taking part in a project with large numbers of intelligent people, some of whom have a critical academic background. No-one here gets to be the cleverest person in the room, nor do they get to avoid having their positions challenged from time to time. Having your positions challenged and people presenting a strong case is a fundamental part of WP:CONSENSUS as that works on the strength of argument. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 10:12, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Taking a look at the sandbox with regards to this Born2Cycle's behaviour there seems less than ideal. Although he did in the end admit he was wrong for creating that page. Furthermore by going straight to MfD the user who did it didn't exactly go for the low drama route to solve it. The right answer would have been to ask nicely on his talk page first. Finally other involved editors had significantly subpar behaviour.

With this diff I'm not sure what anyone can point to that's bad about that.

With regards to Born2Cycle discussing things a lot, if he's the only one block him for WP:DEADHORSE. If he's not then follow through the WP:DR process rather than staying at the same level which is unlikely to succeed, you can't criticise him for doing that. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 10:51, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

B2C drove an admin away from Wikipedia out of shear frustration from his tendentiousness. This isn’t about me “liking” B2C or not; it’s about how someone has to step up to the plate and see to it that this sort of chronic disruptive editing stops. Not surprisingly, B2C has been chronically tendentious with other editors, who have told him that, but he’s only ignored them and stated that the problem lies with them. Furthermore, B2C was contradicting his own serial lies on the MfD. I don’t understand why you feel he is such a good fit for participating in a collaborative writing environment and should be allowed to continue to disrupt Wikipedia. I can guarantee you that there are many editors who don’t share your sentiments. Now…

You seem to be willing to argue in his defense before evidence is fully prepared on the sandbox—in fact, we only just got started. That suggests you will !vote on B2C’s side in the RFC/U; that is your right. But please note that not one bit of evidence of B2C’s chronic tendentiousness with GTBaccus is on the sandbox yet. There must be an ocean of that given GTB’s galactic frustration. But now that GTBaccus sang his his swan song this morning (he’s gone), someone else who is familiar with all those goings-on will have to step up to the plate and add it to the sandbox. One thing GTBaccus was exceedingly correct about is that Wikipedia is utterly broken in its ability to deal with tendentious editors.

It’s my intention to use the sandbox and the processes used in the upcoming RFC/U to serve as a paradigm for how we go about dealing with editors like B2C so Wikipedia no longer stays broken in this regard. Greg L (talk) 18:12, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

P.S. Let’s be exceedingly clear on something here, Eraserhead1: I didn’t start this ANI. I didn’t know about it until recently. And when I did weigh in, it was to say that it was going nowhere, I didn’t support it, and I motioned that it be closed. The material being gathered has only just started and there is far, far more to come. More to the point, the material being gathered is not for this ANI so you might as well not be so anxious to pronounce your displeasure with it here. When the evidence has been gathered together from the far reaches of Wikipedia, it will be used for an RFC/U, so please save your defense of B2C for there. I think I’m done here. This ANI should have been closed yesterday, IMHO. Happy editing. Greg L (talk) 18:34, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Motion to close

I motion that this entire thread and its sub-threads considering Band-Aid solutions be closed. The proper place to address true, chronic tendentiousness is elsewhere. Greg L (talk) 17:09, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Since the topic ban proposal has clearly failed, I don't see any further administrative action necessary here. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 23:01, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

I second that. I'd archive it myself, but have contributed, so won't, but it would be nice if someone uninvolved could. If a RFC/U is being prepared, there needs to be no further discussion here. pablo 18:35, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Arrogant User

User:137.120.238.48 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/137.120.238.48 I know this is probably in the wrong place, but I don't have the faintest idea where to report this guy or get administrator intervention. A quick look at his history [49], especially in the editing of Street Fighter X Tekken, reveals he simply doesn't understand the idea of WP:NOR or WP:V. He also comes across as extremely arrogant whenever I try to explain to him why what he is doing is wrong [50] [51] and he simply refuses to listen to advice from me. [52]. He only seems to post once a month, which I can understand would prevent him from getting banned, but if he's simply refusing to listen to me, then could I at least request that an admin speak to him, and try to get him down a peg or two? Or at the very least tell me which page I SHOULD be reporting this to? 88.109.28.100 (talk) 15:06, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Close this thread because it was also shotgunned at WP:ANI. For discussion, go to Arrogant User. Glrx (talk) 19:33, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

i world like to make the page called SO R@n:D0ᴟ!

Resolved

i world like to make the page called SO R@n:D0ᴟ! so i can make a reject <span style="color:red">user:jake.edu|jake.edu]]<span style="color:red"> (talk) 11:31, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

This is not a valid title by any definition of the phrase. Per all common sense and various guidelines, such a page would have to exist at "So Random!", which it already does.—Ryulong (竜龙) 11:50, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I believe you mean WP:Redirect. Making a redirect at SO R@n:D0ᴟ! would be a feasible request, even though it is not a proper page title or redirect choice. —Ryulong (竜龙) 11:52, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I think that's a very implausible misspelling, considering that neither "0" nor ᴟ"" exist in the show's logo. The former is actually a pair of parentheses "()" and the latter is a sideways "M". Honestly, I don't think that anyone would ever type that into Wikipedia's search box. This is just my opinion on the usefulness of filling out this request. -- Atama頭 19:23, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

On a second viewing, maybe that is a "0" done in a stenciled font, but I still find it extremely unlikely given that last character. -- Atama頭 19:24, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Checking the Disney website, I see it rendered more-or-less as above on the home page. It's a hard call between "O" and "0", though, and it only appears in graphic form that I could see, not in selectable text. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:36, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Disney? Is this the latest bambifan sock? - Burpelson AFB ✈ 15:41, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Unlikely. This User uses Talk pages. The Mark of the Beast (talk) 20:14, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Ah, hadn't noticed that! - Burpelson AFB ✈ 20:26, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree this is not needed: nobody is going to type ᴟ in a search box, and if by some miracle they do, they'll easily find what they're looking for anyway. 28bytes (talk) 20:36, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

see this File:So Random!.png the ᴟ is there Jacobsmithgatyahoodotcom (talk) 12:56, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

That's a capital M in there. The redirect is not going to be made, anyway.—Ryulong (竜龙) 10:18, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Move page over existing redirect page

Could an admin help moving Norweigan Police Security Service (notice the spelling error) to Norwegian Police Security Service? Thanks in advance! – Danmichaelo (talk) 09:21, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

 Done. Cheers. Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 10:23, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

For future reference, it's probably better to leave such requests at WP:RM#Technical requests. Jenks24 (talk) 11:15, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the move, and also for pointing me to WP:RM! – Danmichaelo (talk) 08:44, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Talk:List_of_Gibson_players#Copying_text_from_the_Gibson_EDS_page_for_possible_consideration_as_an_add_here

I don't know why but there are multiple problems with this section which include links to other pages and signatures not working. I am not sure if this is the place to post it but it needs to be fixed. --Jamcad01 (talk) 07:12, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Did that fix it? there was an unclosed "nowiki" tag, which can wreck all sorts of havoc. Qwyrxian (talk) 07:33, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Typicly, WP:VPT is a better place to get such input. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 08:59, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Ok Thank You. It's fixed now. --Jamcad01 (talk) 10:18, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

RfC closing at WT:INB

We had a discussion (which was RfC tagged) at Wikipedia talk:Noticeboard for India-related topics#Native languages in lead. However, before someone uninvolved could close the discussion and identify consensus, the bot had removed the RfC tag. Could someone head over and close the discussion and post what consensus is? It's not particularly controversial, but it'll be helpful for the many that work in that space to have a standard philosophy to follow. I've timestamped the discussion to prevent archiving for a few days. cheers. —SpacemanSpiff 07:23, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

I listed it above - Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Wikipedia_talk:INB.23Options - a while back. Hopefully someone picks up one or the other of our requests. - Sitush (talk) 07:33, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Why did the bot remove it? Are the tags supposed to be removed after a month? Nyttend (talk) 13:49, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Per Wikipedia:Requests for comment#Ending RfCs: RfCs that are listed by the RfC bot are also automatically de-listed by the RfC bot after 30 days (calculated from the first timestamp after the RfC template). [ . . . ] If further time is wanted, editors can change the first timestamp to a more recent date, which will prevent the bot from removing the listing. Yeah Bots! --64.85.221.215 (talk) 15:34, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Quick note - backlog at Category:Candidates for speedy deletion

Since a backlog at CSD is usually uncommon, I felt like it would be important to mention it here. Feel free to delete this notice once the backlog is cleared. elektrikSHOOS (talk) 06:13, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Reduced. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:47, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Request reopening/relisting of two NACs

Would an admin please re-open and relist Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Myth of Islamic Tolerance (2nd nomination) and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Onward Muslim Soldiers (2nd nomination)? With 3 keeps and 3 delete/redirects each, a non-admin closed them because he felt that the sources presented were reliable and significant while other users disagreed. I thought it would be improper to re-open them myself, but consensus has clearly not yet been reached, certainly not to the point where a NAC would be appropriate, and the closer's rationale takes a position on the notability of the subjects rather than on the strength of the arguments, making it a vote rather than a neutral close. (And please let me know if DRV is the better venue for this - I'm not sure how it works with NACs.) –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 22:34, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

The above would be a waste of everyone's time. They were never going to be deleted. Tigerboy1966 (talk) 22:38, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

That's not for a non-admin with an opinion on the subject's notability to decide. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 22:55, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Could you at least stop removing referenced content as you did here.[53] Tigerboy1966 (talk) 22:57, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

WP's policy on reliable sources is not suspended during an AfD, so no. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 00:27, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

By the way, Armbrust has been asked on at least 1 occasion to stop performing NAC's on non-obvious AFD's. I know that before I was an admin, I got my wrist slapped for the same thing and stopped (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 18:48, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

• (edit conflict × 2)Comment Neither of them look like good candidates for NAC also the closing looks a little like a !vote, see no harm in a re-list then an Admin close. Mtking ^(edits) 23:03, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
• Comment Roscelese clearly miss-presents the numbers in the AfD's. In the "The Myth of Islamic Tolerance" two of the three redirects are essentially just votes without any base in policy and the first says: redirect, because the article existed for sometimes and is very short, a very week argument. There were no delete !votes in this discussion. In the "Onward Muslim Soldiers" are only 1 redirect and 1 delete !votes. In both cases the users advocating the articles to be kept, bring multiple sources, and there is a consensus between them, that they are reliable. By the way I have absolutely no position on the notability of these books, I didn't read them and didn't even know they existed until closing their AfD's. Roscelese also accuses me of evaluating "the sources as reliable and significant", but for the record I didn't read any of them. Armbrust, B.Ed. ^{Let's talk}_{about my edits?} 23:17, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
• Comment. I'm involved (as is Ros -- whose nominations were rejected). That said, I agree with Tiger and Armbrust, for the reasons they state above. This AN seems a bit POINTy to me, but that is perhaps in keeping with much of the tone/actions at the AfDs. We all know that !votes are not simply counted, and a credible rationale for weighing the !votes here was presented.--Epeefleche (talk) 23:46, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
• Any NACs that have good faith objections should be overturned. Just glancing at them, Armbrust's closes seem reasonable to me, but the worst thing that can happen with an overturn is that they stay open slightly longer and are closed the same way by an admin. Jenks24 (talk) 07:56, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
• Armbrust realllllllyyyy has to stop NAC'ing AFD's that are not basically snowballs. When he's given a mop, and judged by the community to have what it takes to weigh consensus, then he can close all he wants. Until then, NAC's are supposed to be for obvious closes only (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 17:54, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
• Reopened both. Whatever the right close is, these are far from suitable NAC candidates. T. Canens (talk) 17:57, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

  @BWilkins: Interesting opinion. But how could other editors decide if on adminship candidate can read consensus, if they only have a large sample of obvious decisions? @T. Canens Found your decision a little bit WP:CREEPY, just because I'm not an admin. I mean if you said, there was no consensus for keeping these articles, than I would understand, why you reopened them. Armbrust, B.Ed. ^{Let's talk}_{about my edits?} 15:04, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Prize and Bid redirect

Really disappointed that Wikipedia permitted a redirect under the guise of a reward for participating in a wikipedia survey. I will no longer use this service. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.231.36.129 (talk) 16:49, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Can you please explain a bit what you mean? I'm not sure what survey you're talking about. I'm a bit concerned that you may been caught by a typosquatter; these are people who host material on URLs that are similar but not exactly the same as the website you're looking for. They may impersonate the actual website to try to get private information from you or other gain. If you can give more detail about the survey in question, we may be able to determine if that's what happened or, if not, to figure out what otherwise went wrong. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 17:27, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

There's a squatter on Wikkipedia.com, but you probably know about that. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:26, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't know if that one specifically is known, but unfortunately they are an issue. :/ I'll pass that one along to legal, just in case. Thanks! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:07, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Requesting another block for Wingard

Wingard (talk · contribs)

Said user was blocked for a week, and continually removed their block, and are now back, continuing their antics as prior before. I no longer wish to deal with said user, so I'm hoping for a longer than a week block, possibly a permanent one, as they continually cannot learn from their actions. They continually show signs of WP:OWN and show no remorse for their actions and wish to endure in an edit war. _{MusicFreak7676} ^TALK! 21:50, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Wingard was blocked twice for edit warring. He requested to be unblocked, saying he will no longer war, & again he wilfully continues to do so. Put the indefinite block into effect. He'll eventually continue edit warring once his block expires. Again, this needs to stop.  MegastarLV  (talk)

I'm not edit warring, I'm just stating a fact. B & B hasn't been uploaded on the CBS home page yet! When it is, feel free to change the airdate and episode count. OK? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wingard (talk • contribs)

Yes you are edit warring, despite your attempt to state a fact. We clearly see that you are edit warring, so don't lie.  MegastarLV  (talk)

Pretty much everyone who's posted to this thread so far was edit warring, but I've blocked Wingard indefinitely, because the previous 24 hour and 1 week blocks didn't seem to take. His replies make me think a block of finite duration would not be effective; I, for one, will need to see some evidence that he's going to stop doing it anymore. --Floquenbeam (talk) 22:35, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

• Support indefinite block per WP:COMPETENCE and WP:ROPE (as I mentioned last time when I made the last block); and I {{trout}} myself for not indefinitely blocking when I had the chance. When you see stuff like [54], [55], [56], [57], [58], and he repeatedly blanks his talk page and flat-out ignores every piece of advice and warning down the pike (including this one. He promised the last time (like this time and this time) to stop his edit warring and harassment, but he has clearly not. --MuZemike 00:46, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
• Question. What do you mean by "continually removed their block"? Nyttend (talk) 03:42, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

  Removed the block notice is probably what was meant. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 06:02, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Discussion of potential unblock conditions are on the go at their talkpage (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 15:43, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

• I've agreed to unblock in 1 week, per some conditions I've laid out on their talk page. If anyone has any input into: (a) other problematic editing patterns beyond edit warring that I am not aware of, and (b) some pointers on the problems with their file uploads that I thought I saw someone mention somewhere (can't find the comment right now), I'd prefer you brought them up on my talk page, rather than theirs.--Floquenbeam (talk) 16:20, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

  p.s. I'm starting to think I'm confused about the file upload issue, perhaps mixing up Wingard with someone else. It doesn't look like he's uploaded any files since 2008. --Floquenbeam (talk) 16:23, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Request for help with a page move

Resolved

 – This isn;t an administrator issue. I've created an RM discussion to handle it, see Talk:National Association of Probation Officers#Requested move. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 17:23, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

I am a representative of the organisation Napo.

The current wikipedia page for "National Association of Probation Officers" was not created by us, although it is about us.

We are known as Napo, and have been for many years and do not wish to be publicized by the old name.

I have tried moving the page but have been told it cannot be done.

Can you please advise what can be done or if you can do this for us.

Many thanks

Keith Waldron Napo_Admin Napo — Preceding unsigned comment added by Napo Admin (talk • contribs) 14:49, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Bit of a challenge - NAPO is a disambiguation page already (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 15:26, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm creating a move request at Talk:National Association of Probation Officers - we'll see how it goes. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 15:39, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

WP:SFD backlog

Can somew admins please come and help at WP:Stub types for deletion? It's becoming backlogged agfain, including 3 discussions here from early November. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 17:46, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Unblock request on User:125.7.71.6

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

On 3 January, an editor from this IP address (which I've been told is a public library terminal) made this edit to Ecosystem. This edit was probably vandalism, and was reverted User:Jojalozzo, and the editor was warned (level 1). Less than one hour later, with no intervening edits, User:Nightscream blocked the IP address for a month. On 20 January, an editor (almost certainly a different one than the one making the vandalizing edit, and almost certainly a non-new user) made an unblock request. I believe the account should be unblocked, so I asked Nightscream. We had a conversation on my talk page which User:Amalthea joined. Nightscream has declined to undo the block.

My rationale for accepting the unblock is that a month long block for an IP address from which was made a single disruptive edit in the past month, and also made constructive edits during the same time, (see all of the edits in the contribution log for December) should not be blocked for a whole month. The last block prior to this was 2 weeks in duration, from December 2010. Nightscream has argued (see User talk:Qwyrxian#Block of User:125.7.71.6) that the fact that the address has been blocked before, essentially we no longer owe the new people editing from that address any good faith, and thus are justified in escalating blocks on the IP address despite intervening good edits. As far as I can tell, Nightscream proposes that this particular IP address and other similar ones are now in a position where even a single piece of vandalism should result in an extended block, even if the address is used primarily for positive actions. Note that this is not an account with a specific "style" of vandalism (i.e., this isn't the Barney editor or a genre-warrior or someone who consistently makes the same type of vandalizing edits). Nor is this a school account, where the vast majority of edits are vandalism, and thus we slap down regular, increasing blocks. This is just a generic, unmonitored public terminal that demonstrates a mix of good and bad behavior. Nightscream's solution proposed solution is that if the editor really wants to make good faith contributions, well, xe should just register an account. Though I pointed out that this is in contradiction to both Wikipedia's principles and Foundation dictum, Nightscream still disagreed.

Thus, my only option is to bring the issue here to the noticeboard to 1) see if there is a consensus that this unblock was too lengthy and thus the account should be unblocked and 2) if I am correct, perhaps counsel Nightscream that this is not an appropriate way to handle IP address blocks with mixed editing history. Qwyrxian (talk) 02:08, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

For an IP address with no recent blocks, I think 1 month is excessively long. The previous block ended on December 31, 2010. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 09:02, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

After reading over the discussion, I agree that a month is excessive. I thought maybe there's something we didn't know, like a proxy issue, but Amalthea's comments suggest that this is not the case. Drmies (talk) 19:03, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

While the response hasn't been overwhelming, since so far everyone who has commented other than Nightscream feels that 1 month was too long, I'm going to unblock; it's already been about 3 weeks. Qwyrxian (talk) 23:22, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Criticism of Twelver Shi'ism

Maybe some of you can keep an eye on this article and its talk page. An edit war was happening and I have tried to mediate--I think unsuccessfully--on the talk page. Admins assume they have some kind of special power that allows them to establish right and wrong, and I guess that's what I did. Feel free to read over the discussion and weigh in.

More to the point of this board, I stopped short of protecting the article, and I hope there won't be a need to do that--but please have a look to see if the edit war starts again and act accordingly, with one exception: should Suehrname reinstate any of the Bahai criticism with a reliable source (not the one they originally had), then I suppose I gave them a fiat to do it, though I urged patience and caution. Both editors have been warned for 3R. Thank you in advance. Drmies (talk) 05:52, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Copying other user's sandboxes into main space...

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Articles properly moved to mainspace. Mais oui! is reminded that to move someone else's sandbox to mainspace is considered rude and that copy&paste moves violate Wikipedia's terms of licence. Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 12:23, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

---

Mais oui! (talk · contribs) has copied User:RichsLaw/Expert witnesses in English law to Expert witnesses in English law and User:RichsLaw/Redundancy in English law to Redundancy in English law. No credit has been given to RichsLaw (talk · contribs) which is probably a violation of GFDL and the the second has been identified as a potential copyright violation. Not sure whether these can be deleted or if AFD is required? Tim! (talk) 07:20, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Sounds like a Wikipedia:CUTANDPASTE problem. DMacks (talk) 08:07, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Just out of interest: why on earth would deletion be necessary? Is User:Tim! claiming that these topic are not worthy of encyclopaedic coverage? If he is, then an AFD is the honourable path to take, rather than Wikilawyering. Highly likely to fail, based on notability being established by multiple, reliable external, academic sources, but hey, it is a free world. Mais oui! (talk) 08:56, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, he mentioned that the second was identified as a potential copyvio. But also, fixing a cut and paste move requires deletion first, in order to move the page over using the move button, to preserve credit for GFDL licensing. Also, as a third possibility, maybe RichsLaw wasn't finished with the pages, in which case it might be good to hold off putting them in articlespace. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 09:03, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'm pretty sure it isn't the notability of the topic, but rather not attributing User:RichsLaw as the author of the material, which would go against the copyleft licenses Wikipedia uses. See Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia#Why attribution is required. — Moe ε 09:06, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) He is claiming (at least) and I agree that the way you relocated the content--cut&pasting his whole sandbox page to the article--may not have been appropriate. At the time, you had not made the null-edits to include his sandbox as the source in the new article's edit-history. There are several standard ways to move whole articles to new locations, and cut'n'paste is a fairly poor one (read the link I pasted above for explanation why and what the "right" way is). Without the GFDL, you would likely not have permission to edit anyone else's work here at all, so enforcing its minimal requirements does not seem like an abuse of process or wikilawyering. DMacks (talk) 09:13, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Terrible way to move information into mainspace, and also rather rude. pablo 09:28, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree that pasting another user's sandbox into an article is highly rude and should not be condoned. Delete the current article and let the author move it in when they are ready. As the author has not edited since last October, it might be appropriate to move their sandbox to create an article while preserving the history—however, at least a week should be allowed after placing a request at their talk page. In case anyone is wondering "where is the policy that requires all that?", the answer is that Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy—we try to do what is right. Johnuniq (talk) 09:39, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I would endorse any deletion here. Proper attribution is required not just a null edit in the article history. Technically It's only a small violation but this was morally repugnant. We allow users much leeway in there user space to get things how they want. They can claim a lot of ownership on essays for example. I cannot believe than an editor would move another editors contribution without even asking, taking credit himself! That would put many editors off editing, I am sure. (Can't delete myself because I'm on my phone) Worm^TT · (talk) 09:51, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I have deleted the "copy-and-paste" pages. If the original editor susbequently seeks to properly move his sandbox pages to the mainspace, then that should be his right, and should not be the decision of other editors. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:52, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

• RichsLaw has given his permission to move his sandbox articles into mainspace. Not that it applies here but I do believe that moving an editor's work with attribution would be proper when a Wikipedian has died.
  ⋙–Berean–Hunter—► 12:00, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Seriously guys... Just move the article and be done with it. I don't get why this needed a AN thread instead of a simple WP:CUTPASTE procedure... -- Luk ^talk 12:07, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Bungled

I need administrator assistance to remove an image I just uploaded. Someone else uploaded an image of the same name and my upload has replaced their image. The upload's |here. I won't re-upload until the correct image is undeleted. I appologize for the problem, it's not what I had in mind. @-Kosh► Talk to the Vorlons►Moon Base Alpha-@ 16:34, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

 Done. Cheers. Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 16:44, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

What is this?

Since I can't tell what this is, I don't know if it requires any action, such as nominating for MfD. Could someone please take a look? Beyond My Ken (talk) 13:09, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Looking at the user's contributions, there's a bunch of other, similar pages in their userspace. User hasn't editied in 3 years. Beyond My Ken (talk) 13:13, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

These look like unattributed copies of web-pages. I would suggest that they either be MfD's en-bloc or speedied as copyvios, and a not left on the user's talk page. They can be undeleted in the unlikely event that they are needed. Rich Farmbrough, 13:42, 25 January 2012 (UTC).

Apart from possibly "hrunk". Rich Farmbrough, 13:43, 25 January 2012 (UTC).

Ah! That makes sense. I'm going to tag them for speedy deletion as copyvios. Beyond My Ken (talk) 19:32, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

OK, I've tagged them all as copyvios (inlcuding Hrunk, which comes from a user page on Wiktionary and is not attributed) and have left a note on the editor's talk page, with a pointer to this discussion. Beyond My Ken (talk) 19:55, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I deleted the pages in question as they were technically copyvios in userspace as the user didn't attribute the original author/website properly as noted on the websites. I even deleted Hrunk for the same reason. As Rich Farmbrough said, I can undelete them upon the request of the user if they attribute the original works properly etc. AngelOfSadness talk 20:25, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. For most of the pages, the amount of material copied was far too much to qualify under WP:NFCC, or even broader American fair-use standards, so even attribution wouldn't legitimatize those. For any of them which were taken from webpages which were not copyrighted, or were released under a copyleft standard, attribution would be sufficient. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:19, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Vandal help, I'm overwhelmed

This didn't seem right for AIV, so I'm hoping I can get help here. I've recently stumbled across a ton of IP's, all starting with 201.19, that have been vandalizing articles for the last few months. This is not obvious vandalism, and so a lot of it has gone unnoticed, making it all the more harmful. It's consisted of adding directors to movies they weren't a part of, adding songs to soundtracks, and a multitude of believable but harmful edits. At this point I've realized I'm not patient enough nor am I skilled enough to comb through all these edits. I'm going to a link to a bunch of the IP's below, but I'm pretty sure there's more (although I've cleared a bunch already) but any help with this (and ideally with blocking the range or something to prevent further damage) would be much appreciated.

• Special:Contributions/201.19.86.109
• Special:Contributions/201.19.164.8
• Special:Contributions/201.19.67.169
• Special:Contributions/201.19.84.216
• Special:Contributions/201.19.163.6
• Special:Contributions/201.19.168.162
• Special:Contributions/201.19.103.75

For a lot of these, going to the history of the vandalized articles turns up even more 201.19 IPs. Thanks for any help, and sorry if this is posted in the wrong place.--Yaksar (let's chat) 22:17, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

IP range is 201.19.0.0/16 (block range · block log (global) · WHOIS (partial)), which is pretty wide really... Spitfire^Tally-ho! 02:17, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

MfD a week past due for closing

If I can get another admin to review this MfD and then close it appropriately, I would appreciate it. Since I participated in the discussion, I can't close it myself, and it's been open for 14 days. Thanks! ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 06:12, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

 Done --Jayron32 19:58, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 08:22, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

India Education Program - Pune pilot report

This is to draw your attention towards a report published by independent consultant Tory Read for the Wikimedia Foundation on the lessons and learnings from the Pune pilot of the India Education Program. The links are available below:

• Wikipedia:India Education Program/Analysis/Independent Report from Tory Read (discussion)
• Wikipedia:India Education Program/Analysis/Quantitative Analysis (discussion)

See also: Wikipedia:India Education Program/Analysis (discussion).
Your comments are welcome. — Nearly Headless Nick {C} 07:45, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Action of 25 January 2012 back to January 2012 United States Navy SEAL Somali raid

Resolved

Can an administrator look at moving Action of 25 January 2012 back to January 2012 United States Navy SEAL Somali raid - it was moved without discussion. Mtking ^(edits) 02:18, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Note that the article is now at Action of 25 January 2012. I'm very much involved, but I really don't see why admin intervention is needed. Nick-D (talk) 06:57, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

That name doesn't even begin to meet the naming policies... the New York Times only recently published an article about it, so maybe we should wait a few days to see what name gets used in the press. But the current name is untenable. Shadowjams (talk) 07:34, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

An update: I don't think this subject has any business at AN... however, while we're here, perhaps we can move protect it, or at least have more eyes on the name issue. I'm of the opinion that we need to wait a few days until there's more coverage and then maybe we can deduce a good common name. In any case, there's a discussion started on the talk page. It's not contentious [from what I can tell], but it'd be nice to get it right. Shadowjams (talk) 07:41, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't think an admin should move this (and definitely not as a BRD move). Looking at the history, the article began at "Action of 25 January 2012", was boldly moved to "January 2012 United States Navy SEAL Somali raid" by Lihaas, and was then moved back to "Action of 25 January 2012" by XavierGreen. Looks to me like the B and R have happened, now we just need some D – my suggestion would be to start a requested move (and yes, the current title is dreadful). On a side note, I'm not sure why this is at AN when any autoconfirmed user could move the article "January 2012 United States Navy SEAL Somali raid" at the moment. Jenks24 (talk) 13:59, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

I've move protected the article, so any move will need to be done via WP:RM. "Action of (date)" is an established style of title for these sorts of articles, so the title is valid, if inelegant. Mjroots (talk) 16:22, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Fair enough. Inelegant is probably a better description than untenable. I'm gonna mark this resolved unless there are objections (if so just remove it). Shadowjams (talk) 00:38, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

inactive admin needs to deflag account

Since this really belongs at WP:BN, I've gone ahead and moved it. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 15:11, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Original description and source of File:Bonifas.jpg

Hi, File:Bonifas.jpg was transfered from en-wp to Commons in 2008. As it has currently been nominated for deletion it would be helpful if the original description could be made available as it is unclear whether the original uploader provided a source. Thanks, AFBorchert (talk) 20:40, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

No description or source was originally given. Danger ^{High voltage!} 22:16, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. --AFBorchert (talk) 23:31, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Huh? It had a claim of own work via a template. The uploader's userpage says that he was in the military in the 1970s, so a photo of a man who died in 1976 isn't impossible. Nyttend (talk) 13:24, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Rich Farmbrough

The acute situation of User:Rich Farmbroughs edits, discussed at WP:ANI#Rich Farmbrough violates editing restriction and creates errors, is gnoe now that he has (temporarily?) stopped his AWB runs. The chronic situation remains though, and AN is better suited for this than ANI.

The problem is that, for years and years, Rich Farmbrough has gone on editing sprees where a basically sound idea of intention gets a poorly thought out implementation, with many errors, often for little benefit. Furthermore, he uses these editing sprees to impose some of his preferred stylistic choices, like the capitalization of templates and parameters, against consensus and/or policy.

This has lead to two Wikipedia:Editing restrictions, a number of blocks, and many AN and ANI discussions, some of them accessible through Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Rich Farmbrough.

In his latest AWB runs (over thousands of articles), he has created many errors, mainly to do with incorrect sorting (a sample is checked here). Looking further back, it turns out that he stopped this Persondata run for a while to add a category to a group of pages. Sadly, again, in many cases that category was added incorrectly. He corrected his own error in some 125 cases[59] afterwards, but missed quite a few other ones; e.g. Netwitness, CSS Studios, Panorama9, CommunityOne Bank, and (most obviously) List of American exchange-traded funds are now incorrectly listed in Category:Companies listed on NASDAQ.

This raises the question: what, if anything, can be done?

• Let him continue editing in the same way, and remove the restrictions
• Keep and enforce the current restrictions
• Remove AWB access and ban from any use of tools
• Restrict editing speed
• Block
• Rewrite restrictions
• ArbCom
• Other... Fram (talk) 13:11, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

So why are we creating a separate discussion from the ANI one above? I really don't think we need to fragment the discussion so everyone has to run back and forth trying to keep up. --Kumioko (talk) 13:27, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Because sanctions (apart from immediate blocks to deal with an acute situation) are not handled on ANI, but on AN. Fram (talk) 13:28, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

At least one simple solution is possible: the community could forbid R.F. from running large-scale jobs of all sorts (including AWB) from his main account, and allow him to run bot jobs only when those jobs have proper bot approval first. The purpose of bot approval is to give people a chance to point out all these side cases, and to also work out exactly what other stylistic changes the bot is permitted to make. In other words the purpose of bot approval is exactly to avoid the problems that are caused by the ad hoc large-scale runs that R.F. has been making. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:00, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Just ban him from using any automated or semi-automated tools, widely construed. And also slap a hefty block on him for violating editing restrictions. He should know better by now. Let's not start another Betacommand-type circus with an automated tool user. Jtrainor (talk) 14:35, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

This. Enough is enough. Farmborough has shown he cannot use the toys responsibly, they must therefore be taken away from him unless and until he can. No access to automated tools, ban use of scripts, put a rate cap on his editing speed. → ROUX ₪ 17:28, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Ban him from making any side-effect changes on AWB - all options on the first tab (see here) other than that which is necessary for the task he's doing (if any). עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 17:20, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

One difficulty is that many of the changes are not built into AWB at all, he has gone out of his way to add them. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:06, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

And if you take my proposal, no one needs to go and check if specific changes made in his edit are standard AWB stock - he may not make any of those, either. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 04:17, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

• Ban from using any automated or semi-automated tools, widely construed, per Jtrainor. Rich has been given myriad chances to follow his looser restrictions, and hasn't managed to get the hang of that. It's time to just accept that automated editing and him don't work together. I don't see a need to block/ban him also, as long as we implement a "no automated or semi-automated editing" restriction, as that will prevent the problematic behavior. Obviously if the restriction is implemented and he violates it, then blocks would be on the table. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 18:16, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
• Not a ban on semi-automated but requirement that any non-incidental (more than a dozen?) automated/semi-automated changes go through bot approval. We have the bot approval group for exactly these kinds of tasks and a widely worded block would create doubt about him using that approved process and also prevent more mundane but necessary semi-automated tools that he hasn't abused, like twinkle or huggle. Moreover, the problem is the small esoteric changes on big runs, not stock use of AWB. And he already has sanctions in place for those criteria. Tacking on the bot approval group requirement, especially because that project is aware of Rich's history, good and bad, would allow some formal oversight. At the very least I'd suggest Rich explore this option voluntarily because while there's a lot of good, necessary work he's done that otherwise woudln't get done, it's too much trouble to double check these things and the potential for harm from a small mistake is large. Shadowjams (talk) 19:57, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Shadow although I think a dozen is a bit low. --Kumioko (talk) 20:09, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree with everyone! I'm gonna block that SoB right now!

Uh.. maybe first I'll just point out that all those articles were already in the category, and if people had only listened to their Uncle Rich, and forbidden content categories in templates completely, rather than just "recommending" against them, this would never have happened.

Foolishly (but forgivably) someone put the cat in {{NASDAQ}} - this not only meant the another template had to be created for articles where the cat wasn't wanted, but inevitably many articles got incorrectly classified. In particular some 125 that transcluded navboxen where the template had been used.

Thanks to my heroic efforts <hem> the category is more accurate by having 125+ incorrect entries removed. If someone is complaining that I didn't remove all the wrong entries form the category, then they simply don't get it.

Rich Farmbrough, 23:47, 24 January 2012 (UTC).

• Per Shadowjams, any set of 20 or more changes in an automated/semi-automated or rapid manner made by Rich Farmbrough needs prior approval by the bot approval group; unapproved "bot editing" prevented by escalating blocks starting at 2 weeks. The last block (which was lifted due to COI) to prevent the negative impact of this kind of behaviour was 2 weeks. Fifelfoo (talk) 00:13, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Sigh. Did you even read what I posted? Rich Farmbrough, 00:28, 25 January 2012 (UTC).
    
    • You appear to be unable to comprehend the community's issues with your editing. You have been afforded plenty of opportunity to change your conduct, and have not done so. Fifelfoo (talk) 00:29, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
      • Uh. Fram is complaining that I put articles in the wrong category. I did not. Rich Farmbrough, 01:42, 25 January 2012 (UTC).
        
        • What happened with these particular articles, where you added a category and then removed it? [60] [61] — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:54, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
          • They were already in the category' - that is rather the whole point. Rich Farmbrough, 01:06, 26 January 2012 (UTC).
            
            • This is one of the pages just before you edited it: [62]. By looking at the bottom of the page, I can see that it was not already in the category. Adding the category, and then removing it, certainly has the appearance of putting the article in a wrong category. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:53, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
              • • OK mate, look a little harder. Use your doubtless finely honed analytic skills. Rich Farmbrough, 10:17, 26 January 2012 (UTC).
                  
                • Less cryptically put, the page transcludes {{NASDAQ}}, which included the category before this edit. Jafeluv (talk) 10:41, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
                  • R.F. himself said above, about the NASDAQ template, "inevitably many articles got incorrectly classified". Given that he realized that, going through and re-adding the category to all the articles that transclude the template is clearly the wrong thing to do - first you have to make a list of the articles that should have the category, then you can fix them. Just adding the category to every article that transcludes NASDAQ is sloppy at best, and would not have made it through bot approval if it had been properly proposed. — Carl (CBM · talk) 10:54, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
                    • No, first you resolve the problem, then the symptom. Once I had made the transition no new instances of the problem would be created. Any naive user can then resolve the categorisation (although it is not as trivial as you like to make out, for example one of the article you complain about, while not technically being NASDAQ quoted is the substantial business owned by a holding company which is quoted, and about which we do not have an article). You may wish to read Polya: "How to Solve It". Rich Farmbrough, 19:19, 26 January 2012 (UTC).
                      
• Restrict from editing using semi-automated or automated tools (I don't think the word ban is appropriate in this context.) – If Rich finds editing using semi-automated or automated tools absolutely necessary, he should either seek approval for his use of such from the Bot Approvals Group or optimally, post a request on Wikipedia:Bot requests and just let another user take it from there; I haven't seen a shortage of bot operators recently.

This incident has demonstrated clearly that Rich's use of even semi-automated tools is in violation of the bot policy; each edit using such must be judged before confirmed. Moreover, any editor using [semi-]automated tools is expected to be more responsive to feedback than the average editor due to the increase in rate and scope of edits. In contrast, Rich's response to feedback is frequently either condescending or dismissive, and he does not consider halting his current task and re-gauging consensus, which is the appropriate action whenever there's evidence of controversy.

Unfortunately, I have no confidence that if there is consensus for this restriction, he will heed it, as he does not even acknowledge that he's currently under editing restrictions. Indeed, in his most recent request for approval, he stated "for the record I am not under an editing restriction" [63]. This concerns me. — madman 00:33, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Editing restrictions are imposed by the community. Not by one editor saying "I am being bold and creating an ER". However since that editor seemed sane I chose at the time to work with them which was very effective, except when Fram kept sticking his nose in. And I also use BRFAs as suggested by other contributors here, which can also be effective except when Fram and CBM come and sabotage the BRFAs, which, these days, is always. Fram says he is raising this "because he is not welcome at my talk page". His drama is not welcome wherever he takes it, but to suggest that it is less unwelcome on a noticeboard than my talk page is disingenuous at best. Rich Farmbrough, 01:42, 25 January 2012 (UTC).

Before he blocked himself today, R.F. made a series AWB of edits to change the sort order of biographies of people with Japanese names, and then reverted himself on all of them [64]. Based on his contribs he did all this after he commented here, but before he blocked himself. This seems to be another example of a task where, if he had sought bot approval first, the error might have been detected before all the articles were edited. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:12, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Although I wonder why he did it, this too is an example of how the AWB sort logic doesn't quite work right for certain things. Its a known issue and relatively minor issue that mostly occurs with non english names such as Middle eastern, diacratics and Japanese type characters. --Kumioko (talk) 03:21, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

This is true... and if he had been judging AWB's edits before confirming them, the error would have been detected before the first edit... — madman 04:51, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

May be my settings of course, but I don't believe blaming this, even in part, on AWB is correct here. When I run e.g. Kuniaki Koiso through AWB, with Autotag, Unicodify and Apply General Fixes enabled, no changes are suggested by AWB. It seems to me as if the reverted changes were not suggested by AWB at all, but were Rich Farmbrough's own idea. Either way, doing this during this discussion is making it quite obvious why some action is needed. Fram (talk) 08:10, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Since most of that was manual, your assumptions are flawed, your conclusions even more so. The fact that I decided to revert a substantial part of what I did last night, rather than chase through the items individually today was partially to avoid this type of stupid sniping -vain hope indeed. I am, it seems, being castigated by Fram for substantially improving a category, and by CBM for making minor improvements to a few articles. (CBM has said he doesn't follow my edits, it seems that he does.) Rich Farmbrough, 13:36, 25 January 2012 (UTC).

In what way does editing an article and then reverting that edit constitute an improvement to the article ([65]] → [66])? In what way does adding a category to an article and then removing it constitute "improve a category" ([67] → [68])? — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:46, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

(ec)It is not really clear to who or what you are responding here, and whose assumptions and conclusions you are criticizing. I don't think anyone is "sniping" or "castigating" you for reverting those edits; the question is why you made those 29 or so AWB edits in the first place, starting at Katsura Tarō and ending at Kuniaki Koiso, after you have just been criticized for adding incorrect defaultsorts to articles on Japanese people? Your reply here doesn't address this at all. Fram (talk) 13:50, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I think what Rich was trying to say is that he undid the helpful edit. Not that reverting his change was a helpful edit. In the case of these Person data name changes I would agree that the probably should not be using the Given name, Sir name format commonly used in English cultures but have the Sir name Given name formatting. I am not 100% of how that culture usually sorts the naming but I believe that they normally do it by Sir Name given name so it appears that the sorting that Rich was attempting was a benefit. --Kumioko (talk) 13:56, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

For Kuniaki Koiso, reading the article, the family name is Koiso and the given name is Kuniaki.The edit that R.F. made could only be correct if the family name was Kuniaki and the given name was Koiso [69] (look at the defaultsort). But that is not the case. There are other examples of this among the ones he reverted. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:15, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

(ec)If he truly believed that these edits were beneficial, and no one complained between the time he made the edits and the time he reverted them again, then why the reverts? Anyway, according to WP:NAMESORT, it doesn't matter how other cultures sort, the English Wikipedia sorts always by family name - given name order. And even if someone is correct in his edits: when they are questioned, and (like here) many people are questioning whether you should be making such AWB (or similar) edits at all or without prior approval, then making a type of edits that has just been questioned (but not answered), in a manner that has met with disapproval, only sends the message that you don't care about the community and will do whatever you like. Perhaps that's not the intended message, but it certainly is the impression it gives. Fram (talk) 14:22, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

You could be right on the name sorting thing. Like I said above I'm not quite sure on that one. To CBM, if he reverted it, for whatever reason then the problem is solved as far as I am concerned. He caught the error and fixed it. Thats all anyone could ask for. There are certianly other problems where this wasn't done but I don't think we need to dwell on this particular one. --Kumioko (talk) 18:28, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

One is not allowed to make a mistake and revert it? Some new rule perhaps? Seems like you are clutching at straws here. Rich Farmbrough, 01:06, 26 January 2012 (UTC).

When you already know that something is an error, and these kind of edits are under discussion, then making the same error on 8 pages using AWB, and then reverting it, is not helping anyone or anything. Then, after you have noticed that your AWB edits were wrong (else why did you revert them?), making the same error on 21 pages again, and reverting those as well, is just ridiculous. If you want to test something, do it in your userspace, use preview, or stop after one or two pages. Fram (talk) 08:18, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

That's not what happened there at all. First you misunderstand what happened. Then you impugn bad motives to me. Then you tell me what to do. Even if you were right about what happened, this is a clumsy way to interact with another human being. When you are wrong, and keep doing it, becomes even more annoying. Probably most annoying is when you are sometimes right and sometimes wrong, but never admit a mistake. Rich Farmbrough, 10:17, 26 January 2012 (UTC).

Then please enlighten us and do tell what happened there and perhaps why you did it as well. Fram (talk) 10:36, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

First off I did not make 8 edits and revert them. I made 8 edits then I reviewed them in detail, in some cases I undid some or most of what I had done, in some cases I made additional changes to infelicities of prose and other minor things, in some I may have done both. Then I made some more edits, but realised there were some complexities I had not forseen, that weren't apparent form the first 8, so I reverted most or all of the second batch and went over the first batch again, together with a few others. Net result, some improved articles, me better informed everything is good. Rich Farmbrough, 19:10, 26 January 2012 (UTC).

Then please tell us which of the changes you made in these 8 edits we are talking about[70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77] survived even in part? Half of this one[78], because you were lucky that it was half wrong before. Furthermore, your reply begs the question: why make 8 edits with AWB and only then review them? Why make 21 edits more, and again only then review them? Why don't you inform yourself before going on on short, long or endless runs of edits, instead of using the mainspace as your testing ground? Why do you think we have talk pages, projects, BRFA and so on? Just to prevent these kind of things. Why do you think you have editing restrictions? For exactly the same reason. If I wouldn't have checked your edits, despite your dislike of that, chances are that you wouldn't have noticed these problems at all, as evidenced by the remains of other errors in runs of years ago. Fram (talk) 08:57, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

This is why I was reluctant to "enlighten" you, I'm just feeding you. You don't read what I say, you just read what you think I am saying. If you restricted yourself to simply reporting problems in a polite thoughtful manner, instead of always behaving in an "I'm right you're wrong", process bound, confrontational, manner, you could actually be useful instead of a perpetual pain in the backside and waste of time. Now as well as damning everything I do that you can, you are trying to claim credit for the rest. Rich Farmbrough, 13:21, 27 January 2012 (UTC).

OK, I'm back from hiding. I'll just give my opinion on him. He should be banned from using any bots, period. I'm actually surprised he's still an administrator. He uses bots and violates restriction, yes we know that. I just want to know why he still gets to use bots anyway. Enough is enough. --Hinata talk 20:56, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Because the vast amount of stuff I do is not only beneficial to the project, but even in Fram and CBM's avid pursuit of witchcraft there is nothing that can be found to complain about. And when I do make an error I go to any lengths to resolve it. Those who have been working with me for years know this. When Fram tried to take me to Arbcom one arb commented. "The creation of the ISO templates, and edit to template:interwiki, is absolutely ridiculous to be brought up here. Rich did the right thing by creating those templates." Rich Farmbrough, 01:06, 26 January 2012 (UTC).

People can read all the replies to that ArbCom case here. "Nothing that can be found to complain about" is a bit strange when you consider all the errors I pointed out, some of which you have then corrected, some of which you haven't. It doesn't seem though as if you have made any effort to see if there are more articles you edited that have the same problems as the examples I pointed out (e.g. this or this). I would rather describe your actions as "doing a minimal effort to resolve some errors that are pointed out to me" than as going "to any lengths to resolve it", but that's a question of perspective and attitude. If you had went to any lengths, you would have noticed articles like this one or this one. I have to admit that I do love someone with defaultsort and name = Texas, George W. Bush As Governor of. Another example? In 2009, you change a correct defaultsort to an incorrect one (using, of course, AWB) here. And then this week you use that incorrect Defaultsort as the "name" of the person in the persondata[79] (somehow chaning one "Of" in "of", but leaving the other one alone). You may blame this problem on an earlier error, but since that one was also made by you, using AWB, I don't think it would help your case. Fram (talk) 08:18, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

• support no automated tools, no bots, no semi-automated tools and a very short leash.--Crossmr (talk) 23:06, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
• Let him continue editing in the same way, and remove the restrictions Perfection is not required, only good faith and reasonable competence. Thus far I've observed lots of rhetoric but little evidence of any actual harm to Wikipedia. Nobody Ent 02:08, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

  Good faith is not an unending well. One would reasonably question the good faith of an editor that continually ignores community input and continually plugs ahead making edits he knows have issues. This is a cycle he often repeats and if one were to assume good faith, we would assume he would try to improve his process which there doesn't seem to be any indication that he's done.--Crossmr (talk) 08:15, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

  The correct response to "Rich Farmborough not only refuses to follow his editing restrictions, he is claiming they don't exist, simultaneously claiming there is not any problem with his editing" is not to remove said restrictions, particularly when this is a problem that has been going on for years. → ROUX ₪ 13:30, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Formal proposal

Okay, let's clean this up, since support seems to be clear. Rich Farmbrough (talk · contribs) is:

• Prohibited from using AWB or any other script-assisted rapid editing tools, broadly construed including bots, at any time across enwiki unless previously approved by BAG
• Limited to a maximum of one edit per minute in mainspace
• Required to submit any batch editing jobs to BAG for approval. Asking for approval must include source code for any bot or scripting.
• Infractions to be met with the usual series of escalating blocks. Rich Farmborough may appeal to the community via AN for these conditions to be reviewed six months from implementation, or six months from the end of the most recent block, whichever is later.

Edited to add: Those who are claiming no detriment to enwiki might want to visit this page before saying so. Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Rich Farmbrough.

• Support - as proposer. → ROUX ₪ 13:30, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose no evidence of harm to Wikipedia by RF editing has been presented. Nobody Ent 13:34, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

  You may wish to acquaint yourself with Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Rich Farmbrough. → ROUX ₪ 15:52, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

  • What about articles which were sorted correctly before he edited them, but no longer after he edited them? Whether it does or doesn't merit (other) sanctions is open for debate, but it is clear that quite a few of his edits made Wikipedia worse. Fram (talk) 14:27, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

For me, evidence is diffs to article space. I do see that an RFC/U was suggested. Was one ever started? Nobody Ent 16:25, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Have you actually read the rest of this discussion? There are plenty of diffs there wher his edits made the article worse, not better. But if you want more examples, all of them not corrected at the time of speaking (despite his assurances of going to lengths to correct errors); incorrect defaultsorts are now added [80],[81],[82],[83], [84],[85] ... Obviously incorrect ones are the things like [86] and [87]. It doesn't take a long time to find these, and there are plenty, plenty more. Instead of checking his previous edits for errors himself though (apart from correcting some of those found by others), he has started on another tangentially related run of edits, without any interaction with people who know more about whatever he is trying to achieve to see whether he is correct in his changes. It's a pattern stretching back for years and over thousands of edits, many of which have been reverted, and many more which still are undetected. Fram (talk) 09:45, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

There is clearly an issue with defaultsort and {{Persondata}} name in (particularly) Japanese biography articles, which applies to many hundreds of articles - the vast majority not put there by me. The best resolution is to fix as many as possible, not merely those I have been involved in. According to you, however, if I get a persondata element wrong, or even use a style you don't like, I am on the verge of destroying the project, and probably most of the known universe. If someone else does it it, correcting it "is of no value for Wikipedia". Rich Farmbrough, 14:45, 27 January 2012 (UTC).

• Oppose I can see no editing offences meriting this action. Begoon ^talk 13:41, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

  You may wish to acquaint yourself with Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Rich Farmbrough. → ROUX ₪ 15:52, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

• [88] Begoon ^talk 16:15, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

• I wish to be clear: are you claiming that RF has not caused disruption, that he is not under editing restrictions which he has flouted (and has been under and done the same in the past), that there has not been a strong consensus that there are significant problems with his editing which he has categorically refused to address? → ROUX ₪ 16:40, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

• No, I haven't claimed anything I can see. I'm saying don't badger me. Begoon ^talk 16:46, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

• Providing you with information is not 'badgering.' Not wanting to be badgered doesn't mean you get to opine without being challenged. Since you are not providing any justification, and you are ignoring information, one can only assume your opinion will be utterly discounted. As it should be. → ROUX ₪ 16:50, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

• Ok, thanks. Begoon ^talk 16:53, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. Agree with Nobody Ent and Begoon. From what I see above RF seems to be copping flak for making a bunch of edits and when he realised they may be incorrect he reverted himself. That's the exact response you want from someone doing semi-automatic editing. Also, one edit per minute is ridiculous – it's incredibly easy to go over that threshold manually. Jenks24 (talk) 13:52, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

  You may wish to acquaint yourself with Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Rich Farmbrough. → ROUX ₪ 15:52, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

  • Um, no. He made thousands of edits wrt persondata and defaultsort, mixed with a few hundred for Nasdaq. He reverted 125 of the second group, which is a large part but far from all incorrect ones. But of the thousands of "persondata/defaultsort" related edits, he only reverted some of those that I pointed out as examples of errors, without looking for more similar errors (of which there are plenty). Furthermore, despite knowing of one particular group of errors in those, he made the same error in 8 more articles, reverted those, then made the same error again in 21 more articles, and reverted those as well. The reverting in itself is good, but why does he make these edits in the first place? There are plenty of errors from this recent edits remaining, and there are plenty of older AWB errors he created remaining as well (e.g. this example I pointed out above, where he changed a correct defaultsort to an incorrect one in 2009[89], but which he didn't correct when he corrected the persondata error today[90]. Fram (talk) 14:27, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
    • None of the NASDAQ edits were incorrect. And your other statements about he 8/21 edits are fallacious and misleading. Theodora is an empress, it's not clear that she should be sorted by her family name. Rich Farmbrough, 14:37, 27 January 2012 (UTC).
      
      • Having a reason to make some edits (like just putting them back in the categories they were in before, even the 100+ that were incorrect) doesn't mean that the edits weren't incorrect, only that they may have been somewhat more understandable than purely introducing new errors. I'll let you reiterate your defense of your 29 edits as often as you like, I don't think you will fool anyone with them who has looked at the diffs. And finally, if you believe that it is "unclear that she should be sorted by her family name", then you should have left it alone in the first place, instead of changing it around. (Semi-)automated edits aren't intended for "unclear" cases. At least the surname sorting is consistent with the other members of the Category:Kantakouzenos family. And including the "Wife Of Alexios 04 Of Trebizond" is just weird. Fram (talk) 14:56, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
        • • No it's not. There is more than one person of that name, one other is, IIRC, "Wife Of Alexios 03 Of Trebizond" so it's a perfectly sensible sort key. Your other points have reduced to nonsense and ad-hominem now, time for you to abandon those lines of argument. Rich Farmbrough, 15:59, 27 January 2012 (UTC).
            
            • Could you indicate whether "(Semi-)automated edits aren't intended for "unclear" cases." falls in the "nonsense" category or in the "ad hominem" one? Fram (talk) 16:10, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Support Let's head this nonsense off at the pass. Jtrainor (talk) 15:15, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose - I agree there has been some problems but I still haven't seen anything warranting this action. --Kumioko (talk) 15:20, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

  You may wish to acquaint yourself with Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Rich Farmbrough. → ROUX ₪ 15:52, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

  You may wish to quit badgering every person who says oppose. — Moe ε 16:09, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

  Informing people of information which may change their minds isn't 'badgering.' And you may wish to read the edit summary I used when posting, but asking Wikipedians to actually inform themselves before wading in would probably be asking way too much. → ROUX ₪ 16:25, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

  For what its worth I have read a lot of it and have been following it for some time. As I mentioned before I think there are some issues but by and large not worthy of a the proposal.--Kumioko (talk) 16:30, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

  I disagree, but unlike certain other people here at least you're doing better than claiming 'badgering' when someone calmly provides them with information. → ROUX ₪ 16:56, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

  Thanks for the personal attack, but when you leave a comment after every person who says oppose to your proposal, you can seem like you are badgering, regardless of how calmly you present your case. — Moe ε 16:59, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

• (ec x2) Oppose as written. One edit a minute is unnecessarily harsh. I may easily do 2.5x that with entirely manual editing; I'm guessing Rich is as technologically adept and as fast a typist. Also, I'm thinking about striking my suggestion above that BAG be used and just support BOTREQ. Upon reviewing the Betacommand 3 proposed decision (which I initially supported), then talking with my fellow admins and BAGgers, I don't think in principle the BAG should be used as a vehicle for arbitration or community ban enforcement. We should be used to handle any BRFAs necessary per BOTPOL (this is a superset of that), nothing more or less. I'd be happy to entertain opposing views, however. I'm also concerned about some of the discussion and bad faith assumed above but don't really want to go into it. — madman 17:00, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
• oppose escalation of conditions of editing? positive reinforcement is better than negative reinforcement. we need a standard offer for probational productive editors. Slowking4⇔ †@1₭ 18:14, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
• While Rich has made some mistakes, the percentage of incorrect edits is probably lower than that of the average editor. For example, if I have made a grand total of 100 mistaken edits (and I've probably made more!), it would be equivalent to almost 2400 mistaken edits by Rich. To be clear, I oppose this proposal, which I see as one of the many attempts to get bots kicked off Wikipedia. Reaper Eternal (talk) 19:49, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Um, as far as I can tell, the proposal is only supposed to affect unapproved bots. It explicitly says Rich can still run approved bots. Shouldn't we all be in favor of kicking unapproved bots off of Wikipedia? They are already prohibited by WP:BOTPOL ("Administrators blocking a user account suspected of operating an unapproved bot or an approved bot in unapproved ways should block indefinitely"), but nobody seems to enforce this. I'll leave it to others whether Rich needs yet another individualized restriction, but I do think BOTPOL should be enforced much more rigorously than it is, this incident being an example. 67.122.210.96 (talk) 23:22, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
    • I'm not sure what makes you say BOTPOL isn't being enforced rigorously; as far as I know, notwithstanding the above, no bots are being run without approval at this time. If you're aware of any, please contact me or any other member of the BAG either via our talk pages or Bot Owners' Noticeboard. Thanks, — madman 23:52, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
      • Can you point me at the approval for the bot operation that triggered this thread? Yes I know it's not running right now, and we're currently discussing possible after-the-fact sanctions against the operator. But I think not enough is being done to prevent this stuff from happening in the first place. Look at how long it took in the ANI thread to get the bot stopped, for example. 71.141.88.206 (talk) 02:11, 27 January 2012 (UTC) (new address)
        • You seem to misunderstand the bot policy. Semi-automated edits do not require approval because each edit should be confirmed before it's submitted. It's also worth noting that these edits were made by AWB and editing by AWB does require approval, though administrators are automatically approved. For more information, please see WP:MEATBOT and WP:BOTPOL#Assisted editing guidelines. — madman 05:16, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
          • It's pretty clear from earlier discussion that these edits were just about certainly fully automated (and therefore under BOTPOL) and not confirmed one by one. Have you looked at the ANI archive? If Rich actually did examine and confirm all those edits, then that's a pretty terrible problem in its own right. Anyway, per WP:MEATBOT, once the edits became disruptive, it doesn't matter whether they're fully automated, semi-automated, or speedy but manual. Btw, it's amusing what Soxred's edit counter tool says about Rich's edits. It says: "Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 67108864 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 58 bytes) in /home/soxred93/public_html/pcount/counter.php on line 198" but takes several minutes to reach that conclusion. Rich is a good and thoughtful editor in most regards so I don't understand why he keeps doing this ill-advised stuff with bots. 67.119.12.141 (talk) 07:48, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

• • According to Rich, yes, he actually did examine and confirm all those edits (AWB would have been prompting him to do so). I can't disagree with your conclusions, nor can I disagree that the edits should have ceased immediately once it became clear that they were disruptive. Finally, I don't disagree that he's a good and thoughtful editor in most regards. The only point I disagree on is that this was the fault of BOTPOL; it was the fault of the editor and it's being addressed by the community which is what needs to happen as this is essentially a conduct issue (and it regards an earlier editing restriction put in place by the community). — madman 18:13, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
    • Did Rich actually claim that? I didn't notice such a claim either here or in the ANI thread. I think it was established in earlier ANI's that he uses a modified AWB, so all bets are off about its behavior. But even if he's actually clicking "confirm" for each edit (indicating that he has way too much time on his hands), from the nature of the errors reported, it's obvious that he's not actually examining the edits in any meaningful way. So I would treat it as automated editing. Anyway, I've seen all this enough times from enough editors that I'm just tired of hearing wikilawyering over whether some edit rampage was automated, semi-automated, or whatever, since the issues end up being about the same regardless. So I think BOTPOL should be rewritten to cover all high-speed editing like MEATBOT, i.e. any editing at a rate above some threshold regardless of how it is done, and the edit rates for unflagged accounts should be enforced by the wiki software, so maybe we won't have to deal with this any more. 67.119.12.141 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 22:37, 27 January 2012 (UTC).

Support, with regret. Just make it stop. I'm bored. I'm bored of the diff-noise. The "for the record I am not under an editing restriction"^[91] is either delusion or dishonesty; Wikipedia:Editing restrictions#Rich Farmbrough clearly exists (twice), and has done for some time. My hunch is the one-edit-per-minute is the part that will actually make the difference. It will reduce the speed of run-away damage by 600-fold 27-fold,^[92] down to a level where it is actually possible for other editors to review and clean up (ie. even at the worst case: maximum of 1440 edits to review/revert per day). …And if you have to wait a whole minute before saving (instead of 0.1 seconds 2.3 seconds), you might as well hit Preview and check-over the page content. A bit like a normal editor tries to do. —Sladen (talk) 02:33, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Let us prevent another myth arising "Rich makes 10 edits a second" - plucked out of air, and just not the case, at that rate my entire editing history would have taken less than a day and a half. Rich Farmbrough, 13:42, 27 January 2012 (UTC).

My apologies. Now corrected;^[93] thanks for spotting that. —Sladen (talk) 16:34, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, the server generally takes longer than 2.3 seconds to display a diff from when the link is clicked, so that speed is still faster than anyone can actually look at the edits even if they take no time at all in actual evaluation. That still seems excessive when done over sustained periods. 67.119.12.141 (talk) 18:11, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I believe that is the point that other editors have made at various times too. My personal take is that further paper restrictions are going to be as fruitless and unproductive as the current paper ones (ie. ignored and denied). The social issue is, and will always still be there, and can't be gotten rid of. Blocking Rich completely isn't productive either, as once in a blue moon Rich actually does something excursively useful that contributes–that's not template case twiddling, or sorting screw-ups, or breaking the front page…^[94]

So a one-edit-per-minute technical measure should slow down the train-wrecks, without getting in the way of the real-genuinely beneficial editing. It's the only part of the proposal that I actually see as productive and whole-heartedly support. The rest I expect to be ineffective as the existing blocks, which are presently denied.^[95] If somebody ditches the rest of the proposal and just puts that forward and will get my Strong support because would achieve something useful without making things worse. —Sladen (talk) 15:09, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

• Let's take a look at his current edits. He is again running some script or tool to change the persondata parameter for Japanese people articles, which goes against his editing restriction, but seems to be basically correct. He also changes the defaultsort for a number of them, but it seems unclear to me whether this correct. Some discussion before going on with this would again have been beneficial. The problem is with "no" names, the Japanese equivalent of "Of", "Van" or "Von" in a name (see Japanese name#Historical names). Is the new defaultsort for these articles better or worse than the old one? I don't know, my gut feeling tells me that the old ones were better though.[96][97][98][99][100] ... He has again edited hundreds of pages, without any discussion about these edits, and has again seemingly made a number of them worse (for Wikipedia), while the improvement (the removal of a comma in the name parameter[101] to an invisible and mostly or totally unused metadata template) is of no value for Wikipedia and of rather hypothetical value to the rest of the world. Note how e.g. here[102] he corrects part of his earlier error, but doesn't correct the error he made in the previous edit[103] of removing a specific, separate correct sort to one category (changing Yoritomo to Category:Minamoto clan) Basically, the more you look in detail to these edits, the more errors you find in them...Fram (talk) 08:45, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

  Looking at a number of cases where the defaultsort had been set up manually, the comma placement after the "no" seemed to be the result of more thoughtful editing practices by experienced editors in the field. If you can find consensus for the other position, then I will gladly change - but something tells me you have already searched for it. Stop clutching at straws and start being constructive. Rich Farmbrough, 13:23, 27 January 2012 (UTC).
  

  Instead of guesswork, you could also take a disputed edit to places where more expertise may probably be found. I did this for you at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Japan#Defaultsort. I have no idea if your edits will turn out to be correct or not, but the normal, contructive way of doing these things is first to get some expert opinion if you aren't knowledgeable in the field yourself. We have the luxury here of having editors from many backgrounds, we don't need to make hundreds of edits based on guesswork, we can discuss it first. If nothing else, perhaps you can take this with you from the comments by many other editors here; before you make large-scale edits, make sure that what you are trying to do is correct and based on consensus, not just what you believe will be better. Fram (talk) 13:51, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

  A logical deduction from the data available is not guesswork. Rich Farmbrough, 16:02, 27 January 2012 (UTC).
  

• Oh, and congratulations on finding one error you made without anyone needing to point it out first, but could you please in the future, when correcting the minor error in the persondata, also correct the more major error in the defaultsort[104]? I've done it for you in this case, as that is the fastest method of getting this actually corrected. Fram (talk) 13:51, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Damming with faint praise? It's very 2007. Rich Farmbrough, 14:06, 27 January 2012 (UTC).

• Oppose per Reaper Eternal. Look, I won't pretend to understand bot editing of metadata, but it seems to me that Rich is giving reasonable answers here, and is neither trying to break Wikipedia, nor actually breaking it. --JN466 13:46, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
• comment I would support this but without the speed restriction. Instead I'd rather support no automated tools as above. If he can still edit too fast without automated or semiautomated tools to make mistakes then he's only hanging himself.--Crossmr (talk) 00:12, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Roux's account history?

This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
In light of the repetitive badgering above, and the fact that I see quite a lengthy block log for personal attacks and harassment, can someone (roux themself?) fill us in on their account history? I tried looking at his talkpage for some indicators, but he/she only has a black banner and no links to past archives. This request is made in good faith in light of the questionable edits above. Syrthiss (talk) 17:02, 26 January 2012 (UTC) This version of his talk page prior to the black banner being added shows some talk page archives if that is what you are looking for. — Moe ε 17:04, 26 January 2012 (UTC) (edit conflict)Archives are here: User_talk:Roux/Archives. Roux is an editor in good standing, and questioning their history isn't productive to this discussion. Yes, they're being ridiculous by copy pasting the same reply multiple times, but that's best just ignored. Nobody Ent 17:08, 26 January 2012 (UTC) And, yet again, the edit summary I left explained perfectly clearly exactly why I did so. I know it's asking way too much for people to actually pay attention to what I have said instead of what you have decided I have done, but do try, won't you? → ROUX ₪ 17:33, 26 January 2012 (UTC) It's a false assumption, lacking good faith, that editors disagreeing with you indicates they aren't paying attention. Nobody Ent 17:38, 26 January 2012 (UTC) It is an excellent assumption backed by four years of observation of discussions here. → ROUX ₪ 17:42, 26 January 2012 (UTC) As long as they hadn't been blocked previously for badgering discussions, I'm willing to let it lie. My unsolicited advice to Roux - cut it out. Your proposal will stand or fall on its own merits, and you should assume good faith that they have read the discussion prior to commenting. Syrthiss (talk) 17:15, 26 January 2012 (UTC) The history of discussions anywhere on enwiki suggests that such an assumption wouldn't so much be an assumption of good faith as it would be about as much use as assuming that fish are particularly fond of international air travel. Plus your ridiculous 'advice' about good faith is particularly sickening in light of the fact that this section wouldn't even exist if you had done any or all of 1) assuming good faith, 2) reading the edit summary I left, 3) asking me on my talk page. What's good for the goose... → ROUX ₪ 17:33, 26 January 2012 (UTC) I don't care if my advice is ridiculous or not as long as it is followed. Your edit summaries are not elucidating. Your black banner is not particularly inviting of comment so I didn't wish to disturb it (as much as I personally agree with its message). Syrthiss (talk) 17:48, 26 January 2012 (UTC) Your advice is ridiculous because you did not follow it yourself. As such, it's eminently ignorable. And "copypasta so this doesn't get buried" isn't clear? Really? The other one's got bells on, have a go. → ROUX ₪ 17:53, 26 January 2012 (UTC) Whilst I'm not thrilled about the "grey matter" personal attack on me also, it's not something I'm inclined to waste a lot of time worrying about. Begoon talk 17:16, 26 January 2012 (UTC) I'm familiar with Roux, in the past he got hot under the collar and attacked people (and was blocked for that) but I don't remember him having a habit of badgering people, exactly. I'd like to point out that none of his behavior in this discussion is anything like what he was blocked for years ago, not even close. -- Atama頭 17:40, 26 January 2012 (UTC) Yeah, as I say, great. It's water off a duck's back to someone as big and ugly as me, so if it's not a pattern or anything, this is even more time than I'm interested in spending on it. Begoon talk 17:44, 26 January 2012 (UTC) Another other duck! Cool. Nobody Ent 17:57, 26 January 2012 (UTC) I don't mind that at all, in fact I rather like it. I think we may have met or something for you, particularly via the superb Heinlein quote, to sum me up so aptly. Begoon talk 18:02, 26 January 2012 (UTC) (edit conflict) Ok, thanks. Syrthiss (talk) 17:48, 26 January 2012 (UTC) I have seen Roux around for years, and just thought of him as an "old hand" - worthy of some trust, he even made a helpful suggestion for my bot once - I was very surprised when he first commented on an AN/I, demanding blocks and bans. I was more surprised when he continued - I think it was maybe four or five times to do the same thing - and meant to ask him why it was that he always jumped in with these attacks - maybe I had disagreed with him over comma placement on MoS or taken a contrary side on and AfD? But I never before got around to checking his edit history - it seems that I became persona non grata round about here where he (incorrectly) asserts his WP:OWNership of his user talk page, while he was appealing a block for personal attacks. So the mystery of why he is angry with me is solved, although from his edit summaries he is angry with pretty much everyone. Rich Farmbrough, 18:56, 26 January 2012 (UTC). This is part and parcel of how you deal with any criticism of your editing practices: you pretend there isn't a problem, and then ascribe frankly disgusting and insulting motives to those of us who do see a problem. That is pathetic. → ROUX ₪ 19:19, 26 January 2012 (UTC) You have never made any constructive criticism to these debates, just called for blocks and bans. That is the kind of extraordinary behaviour that calls for extraordinary explanations. Maybe that's just the kind of person you are, maybe you don't need a reason, maybe you are a natural Disgusted, Tunbridge Wells, who has a very low opinion of everyone but himself "Course, the one thing Wikipedians hate is being informed before jumping in" - unless you include yourself in that remark? Rich Farmbrough, 19:31, 26 January 2012 (UTC). I refuse to contribute to this derail you are trying so very, very hard to keep alive in order to draw attention away from the continual disruption you bring to Wikipedia. → ROUX ₪ 19:39, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Eyes needed on an SPI case

Could someone who cares please figure out WTF is going on over at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Pickbothmanlol. This exact case was rev deleted over privacy concerns a few hours before it was reopened; I'm not entirely certain how to deal with it, but its getting rather TLDR, and if anyone has an inkling, feel free to deal with it. This is above my pay grade. --Jayron32 03:01, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh God, he's not really back again is he? Beeblebrox (talk) 03:54, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

AdminExperienced opinions needed

There are various issues around Talk:Campaign for "santorum" neologism concerning consensus and interpretation of policy that need more eyes. SchmuckyTheCat (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 02:43, 29 January 2012 (UTC).

Spam-blacklist

MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist has requests dating back to December, which I don't think have been actioned. Could someone please take a look. Cheers.  Chzz  ►  10:32, 29 January 2012 (UTC)