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Pages recently put under extended confirmed protection (40 out of 8837 total) () WATCH Page Protected Expiry Type Summary Admin Ireland–Zambia relations 2024-11-10 14:04 indefinite edit,move Persistent disruptive editing: per Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ireland–Zambia relations (3rd nomination) OwenX Jennette McCurdy 2024-11-10 00:03 indefinite edit,move Contentious topics enforcement for WP:CT/BLP; requested at WP:RfPP Daniel Quinlan User:MDanielsBot/AIVStop 2024-11-09 22:42 indefinite edit,move Prevent further disruptive editing; requested at WP:RfPP Daniel Quinlan Ọranyan 2024-11-09 21:19 2024-11-23 21:19 edit,move Persistent sockpuppetry: request at WP:RFPP Ymblanter Ada and Abere 2024-11-09 20:43 2024-12-09 20:43 edit,move Persistent sock puppetry; requested at WP:RfPP Fathoms Below Political positions of JD Vance 2024-11-09 20:38 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement CTOP AP Will log at AEL Ad Orientem Module:Arrowverse redirect category handler 2024-11-09 18:21 indefinite edit Pppery User talk:Qcne 2024-11-09 16:52 2024-11-16 16:52 edit,move Persistent vandalism Widr Template:TextLicenseFreeUse 2024-11-09 16:02 indefinite edit,move Reduce excessive protection Pppery Maccabi Tel Aviv F.C. 2024-11-09 09:06 2025-11-09 09:06 edit,move Contentious topic restriction: WP:ARBPIA Ymblanter Draft:Battle for B.F.D.I 2024-11-09 06:10 indefinite create Repeatedly recreated, WP:BFDI Queen of Hearts Michelle Steel 2024-11-09 04:06 2025-11-09 04:06 edit,move Contentious topics enforcement for WP:CT/AP; requested at WP:RfPP Daniel Quinlan ABBYY 2024-11-09 01:09 2025-02-09 01:09 edit,move WP:GS/RUSUKR ToBeFree Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium 2024-11-08 22:51 indefinite create Repeatedly recreated Anachronist Portal:Current events/2024 November 8 2024-11-08 19:48 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement Pickersgill-Cunliffe User:Cyberwolf 2024-11-08 19:17 indefinite edit,move User request to protect own user page Ivanvector Kachak Movement 2024-11-08 17:10 indefinite move Edit warring / content dispute; requested at WP:RfPP Ivanvector User talk:LauraHale 2024-11-08 11:06 indefinite create Repeatedly recreated BusterD Jewish pogrom in Amsterdam 2024-11-08 11:05 indefinite edit,move Arbitration enforcement Isabelle Belato November 2024 Amsterdam attacks 2024-11-08 06:54 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: per RFPP and ARBPIA Daniel Case JD Vance 2024-11-08 04:02 indefinite edit,move Restoring protection by Ad Orientem: Arbitration enforcement CTOP AP Protection Helper Bot Draft:Aaa 2024-11-07 22:46 indefinite create Repeatedly recreated; requested at WP:RfPP Ad Orientem Draft:Escape the zombie obby 2024-11-07 22:45 indefinite create Repeatedly recreated; requested at WP:RfPP Ad Orientem KC Santosh 2024-11-07 19:28 2024-11-10 19:28 create Repeatedly recreated Liz Talk:H:LINK 2024-11-07 18:09 indefinite create Repeatedly recreated SuperMarioMan Template:MedalComp 2024-11-07 18:00 indefinite edit,move High-risk template or module: 2517 transclusions (more info) MusikBot II Puneet Issar 2024-11-07 15:06 2024-11-10 15:06 edit,move Persistent disruptive editing from (auto)confirmed accounts; requested at WP:RfPP Daniel Quinlan Travis Head 2024-11-07 14:55 2024-11-11 14:55 edit,move Persistent violations of the biographies of living persons policy from (auto)confirmed accounts; requested at WP:RfPP Daniel Quinlan User talk:Quebecney 2024-11-07 12:59 indefinite create Repeatedly recreated Ivanvector Akoko Edo 2024-11-07 12:15 2024-11-14 12:15 edit,move Persistent disruptive editing from (auto)confirmed accounts; requested at WP:RfPP: requested at WP:RfPP Isabelle Belato Joseph Williams (music publisher) 2024-11-07 02:21 indefinite edit Persistent sockpuppetry Liz William Joseph Williams (singer) 2024-11-07 02:13 indefinite create Repeatedly recreated: Repeatedly created by sockpuppets Liz JSW 2024-11-07 02:09 indefinite edit,move Persistent sockpuppetry Liz Joseph Williams (composer) 2024-11-07 02:08 2025-07-11 18:51 edit,move Stronger protection is warranted as last sockpuppet was autoconfirmed Liz Bhardwaj 2024-11-07 01:26 2026-11-07 01:26 edit Addition of unsourced or poorly sourced content: Perennial problem Yamaguchi先生 Second impeachment of Donald Trump 2024-11-06 22:40 indefinite edit,move Contentious topic restriction: American politics Ymblanter Draft:Paris Innovation 2024-11-06 21:40 2025-01-06 21:40 edit,move Persistent sock puppetry; requested at WP:RfPP Daniel Quinlan User talk:Quebecneee 2024-11-06 21:00 indefinite create Repeatedly recreated Ivanvector Battle of Kurakhove 2024-11-06 20:23 indefinite edit,move Community sanctions enforcement: WP:GS/RUSUKR SilverLocust User talk:Maximalistic Editor 2024-11-06 20:16 2025-05-06 20:16 edit,move Persistent disruptive editing Yamla

Theresa Greenfield

• Draft:Theresa Greenfield
• Theresa Greenfield
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Theresa Greenfield - redirected to 2020 United States Senate election in Iowa
• Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2020 June 4#Theresa Greenfield - endorsed
• Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2020 June 15#Theresa Greenfield - no consensus to overturn
• Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2020 July 11#Theresa Greenfield - no consensus to overturn

This article has had a rough history. It was nominated for deletion and redirected back in May this year, citing notability concerns. The deletion result was challenged at deletion review three times, as noted above. Meanwhile the article was recreated in place (in good faith) by several editors before the redirect was protected by Muboshgu in June. It was then created as a draft in July, which was submitted to AfC and has been declined three times by two reviewers (Robert McClenon and Bkissin). The draft was significantly reworked since the last decline in August and a third reviewer (UnitedStatesian) decided to accept the draft and made a request at RFPP to unprotect the redirect, which is how I came across the situation.

I declined to unprotect yesterday, suggesting that the draft should pass review first and not realizing that UnitedStatesian's request was an attempt to do so, and because they had already asked Muboshgu and they declined, so I said it should be reviewed one more time. In the midst of that one of the draft's editors pinged Robert McClenon, who again said that he would not accept. While discussing that on the draft's talk page and still not realizing that UnitedStatesian was an AfC reviewer trying to accept, I suggested someone else should review (since Robert McClenon had reviewed twice, or three times if you count the comment today, and was clearly becoming frustrated). Two things happened then more or less simultaneously: UnitedStatesian made a new unprotection request at RFPP explicitly stating they were accepting the draft, and Bkissin chimed in on the talk page that they also would not accept. It's currently marked as "under review".

So basically I've dug this hole as deep as I'd like it to go, and would like someone who hasn't already been involved in this to go get a ladder. Everyone's actions here have been in good faith, but we're clearly stuck. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 19:29, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

I am uninvolved, and I do not see any issue. If the article is significantly different from the deleted version (which I have not checked yet) it must be restored (unprotected and moved from the draft); if there are users who doubt notability they can nominate it for AfD. This is how consensus is supposed to work.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:44, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Ymblanter, it's in the AFC process, and has been declined a few times. It's under review again now. If it's approved, then you are indeed correct. But what if the draft is declined? Should we move it to mainspace regardless of the AFC review? – Muboshgu (talk) 20:42, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

I am the reviewer, and I have made the third WP:RPP request, at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection#Theresa Greenfield, precisely so I can accept the draft. UnitedStatesian (talk) 20:44, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

UnitedStatesian, is this a good idea? You've been quite vocal about wanting this to be published. I would hope the AFC review was done by someone uninvolved in this process. – Muboshgu (talk) 20:58, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

My only involvement has been in the review: only edit to the draft was adding {{draft article}} to it, no participation in the AfD or DRVs. Of course, the review has required discussion on lots of different pages, as is occasionally the case, so I guess that makes me vocal. That said, as in all cases, if my review is stopped by community consensus that continued page protection is warranted, there are plenty of other drafts that need reviewing and I will of course move on to them. UnitedStatesian (talk)

I know that in a situation like this, some editors will say that the answer is clear. I think I see at least two questions where policies and guidelines are not clear, and where perhaps they should be clarified.

The first question is the role of Deletion Review. The redirect has been salted to enforce a Deletion-like decision. The question is: Should it simply be unsalted in response to a request at Requests for Page Unprotection, or should there be a (fourth) appeal to Deletion Review. The instructions for Deletion Review say that it considers situations where the circumstances have changed since the deletion; but some of the DRV regulars get annoyed at such requests and say just to go through AFC without going to DRV.

The second question has to do with the interaction between political notability and general notability. It is usually the rule, including at AFD, that political candidates who do not meet political notability are also not considered to meet general notability solely on the basis of their campaign. This is such a case. Greenfield was not generally notable before she began running for the US Senate. So is this an exceptional case where she is generally notable based solely on her campaign? Questions of general notability are decided at AFD. Since this draft is currently in AFC, the instructions for the AFC reviewers are that a draft should be accepted if it is thought that there is a better than 50% chance of surviving AFD.

A third question, which is not one of unclear policies and guidelines, is whether the reviewer is neutral.

Those, in my opinion, are three questions that are applicable. I am finished reviewing, but I am not finished expressing an opinion. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:07, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

The notability question can be decided only by community discussion, and the only applicable mechanism we currently have is AfD. The article has failed AfD and DRs, and therefore should not be reinstated - unless there are significant changes which can make it notable, or unless it has been significantly changes with new sources added so that notability can be reasonably considered on basis of these sources, which have not been presented to AfD. Therefore, as far as I am concerned, the only relevant question is whether significant enough sources have been added as compared with the AfD. If yes, the article should be accepted, and a new AfD can be opened. If not, AfD should not be accepted (with the understanding that if she makes it to the Senate in a month, the draft immediately gets moved to the main space - but this is irrelevant for the current discussion).--Ymblanter (talk) 21:16, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Since the old version was redirected, not deleted, the history is visible, and any editor, not just an administrator, can see the version at the time the AfD closed: it is here, with 5 references. UnitedStatesian (talk) 21:47, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Ymblanter, I see what you're saying, but I find it kind of ridiculously bureaucratic to accept the article just to nominate it for deletion again. At the same time I imagine the best we'd get from another deletion review is relisting the original AfD, which isn't much better neither in terms of bureaucracy nor in terms of moving forward. For what it's worth, this is the article prior to the deletion discussion, versus the current draft (diff, probably not terribly useful). You can see that the draft is expanded substantially from the deleted/redirected article, but does any of the added info address the notability concern? There was a strong sense in the AfD that US Senate candidates are not inherently notable, but do the 62 sources in the draft suggest she is an exception to that general rule? If the only way we can answer that is through a second AfD then I guess that's where we go from here. Can we simply create a new deletion discussion or relist the original and refer to the draft, rather than doing all the work of moving it around? Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 21:52, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes, indeed, my point is that some community discussion should happen somewhere at some point. It should not be happening here, here at AN at best we can have consensus of random admins whether it is time for that discussion to happen, but we can not seriously be discussing whether Theresa Greenfield is notable. We can only discuss whether enough sources have been added for the article to reasonably stand a chance at AfD. It superficially looks to me that we are ready for this community discussion, though at this point I do not see consensus. But it should not depend on a decision of one person who decides to remove or not to remove protection of a redirect. Administrators do not have any particular say in the content area, and the further process should not depend on whether a user accepting AfC is administrator or not. Concerning the process itself, a new AfD seems to me much better than MfD (for the reasons explained below) and reopening the May AfD (well, if the article is essentially the same, one AfD is enough, and if it is different the old arguments are not relevant anymore), but I am open to better solutions.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:27, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

For consistency, perhaps we should treat this the same as Draft:Rishi Kumar, another "local" candidate for a Federal office whose article name redirects to a similar place as Theresa Greenfield. The deletion discussion, as well as AFC comments, determined that the article should reside in draft space until after the election. The same should be applied here. ~Anachronist (talk) 22:57, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

The current draft for Greenfield's article lists significantly more coverage in both regional and national newspapers than Kumar's draft. To support analysis (because the current draft lists a somewhat daunting number of sources, some of which are fairly minor), I pulled out a list of ten example sources that contribute to notability at Draft talk:Theresa Greenfield#Greenfield draft status, and I added a couple more here: Draft talk:Theresa Greenfield#Two additional sources. To me, this kind of discussion supports Ymblanter and Ivanvector's points that we need to figure the right way to get to an AfD -- I believe that a better venue for a robust and organized discussion about notability thresholds would be AfD. I believe that even though it'd be a bit bureaucratic to create the article just for somebody to nominate it for AfD, it'd at least be a logical process. Dreamyshade (talk) 23:22, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

There's always Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion, which is where Draft:Rishi Kumar was discussed. I have doubts that this candidate was notable before becoming this candidate, and I am concerned that the existing coverage is nothing more than routine for any federal-office candidate. ~Anachronist (talk) 23:41, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

I don't see the relevance of MFD. I don't think anyone is suggesting that the draft should be deleted. Draftifying the article until after the election is a possible outcome of an AFD. I don't see the relevance of MFD. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:05, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

FWIW, if I saw this Draft article in mainspace I would AfD it. Lots and lots of sources, but zero coverage of her outside of her political candidacy. Obviously, should she win the election... Black Kite (talk) 23:43, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I just took a brief foray into the draft and right off the bat removed some citations that seemed to have no point other than to make the reflist look impressive. Such articles, if they appear in mainspace, tend to get moved immediately to draft space. There it should stay until the reflist is cleaned up. ~Anachronist (talk) 00:09, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

I am involved in the sense that my wife and I have donated to Greenfield's Senate campaign (and about a dozen similar campaigns) recently. But I do not support accepting this draft before the election. We have quite a few years of precedent that we do not accept biographies of otherwise non-notable unelected political candidates, but instead cover these people in neutral articles about the election campaign. In this case, the redirect to 2020 United States Senate election in Iowa is correct. I think that the description of Greenfield in that article could be expanded in the interim. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 23:55, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

I'll add, as an administrator, that I am not comfortable unprotecting the main space title so the draft can be moved there. I am not getting the sense that the other three admins in this discussion (User:Ivanvector, User:Muboshgu, and User:Cullen) are comfortable with that either. ~Anachronist (talk) 01:55, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

What about User:Ymblanter? UnitedStatesian (talk) 02:26, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

collapse tangential thread

@Cullen328: I think you'll find, as I have, that the precedent you cite is beginning to change: certainly Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Marquita Bradshaw and Cori Bush (both of whom, editors asserted, essentially, were "notable because they weren't previously notable," which doesn't make a lot of sense if you think about it) are signs of that. Both show that, instead, Wikipedia is going more consistently wherever reliable sources' significant coverage takes us. Which is a good thing. UnitedStatesian (talk) 02:08, 30 September 2020 (UTC) Marquita Bradshaw was a mistake to not delete, but thank you for reminding me that the closing admin recommended we discuss a merge. I'll get on that shortly. That article has the same reference puffery as Anachronist was finding here. Winning the primary election in Cori Bush's district is tantamount to election. WP:OTHERSTUFF existing doesn't mean that Theresa Greenfield should exist. – Muboshgu (talk) 02:32, 30 September 2020 (UTC) Just make sure if Marquita Bradshaw is merged, this time you ask a different admin. to protect the resulting redirect. Because you know, WP:INVOLVED. UnitedStatesian (talk) 04:20, 30 September 2020 (UTC) My take on Marquita Blackshaw was that the claim of being the first black woman to win a major party primary in the state of Tennessee was enough to convince enough editors to express keeping the article. Thus, the argument was framed in a way that may pass WP:NPOL as expressed in WP:POLOUTCOMES. --Enos733 (talk) 05:15, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

• This is not nearly as complicated as you are making it out to be. You come across an unprotection request, you check whether you would WP:G4 the draft if it were in mainspace. If you would, you decline to unprotect. If you would not, you unprotect. If you don't know, leave the request alone. If everyone leaves it alone, the filer will start a discussion somewhere to achieve a consensus that admins will be comfortable acting on. It is irrelevant how many admins would AFD it or !vote delete. There is no set>=n, where n is the number of admins that can dictate without a need for community consensus whether or not a topic deserves an article. Best, Usedtobecool ☎️ 03:40, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

• Let me emphasise: if you would not G4 the draft as soon as it got to mainspace but would require an AFD, you have no authority to stop an editor who has the ability to accept drafts from doing so. G4 is more or less an objective measure. You just have to read the AFD and compare the two articles. Everything else is irrelevant. Usedtobecool ☎️ 03:45, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

This is related to a concern I've expressed earlier in this process: WP:PROTECT describes protection as being appropriate when there is "a specifically identified likelihood of damage resulting if editing is left open". I haven't seen any threat of edit warring or other damage here -- everyone involved in this discussion has been acting in good faith, being civil, and making efforts to interpret WP:GNG and WP:NPOL in constructive ways for an encyclopedia. The draft article can definitely be improved further, but we don't have a requirement for articles to be excellent before they get created. I don't see a policy basis for using full protection in this way. Dreamyshade (talk) 04:02, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

The redirect was repeatedly expanded into full article contra AFD consensus between the AFD and the full protection. So, that's the threat. WP:SALT, which is policy, says in its first sentence, that admins can prevent creation of pages. That is what this full protection does. It keeps the redirect (which doesn't have consensus to delete, and also doesn't need to be edited anyway) and stops the full article from being created. Usedtobecool ☎️ 04:47, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

• I don't see how one AfC reviewer gets to overrule the numerous prior discussions on this. The consensus in the AfD was that the subject isn't independently notable as an unelected candidate for office and should be covered in the article about the election. This is a very common outcome. The issue was taken to DRV three times, each time by someone who had found more news sources which cover her in the context of the election, and each time the discussion declined to reinstate the article. The draft which we now have still doesn't attempt to address this fundamental problem. Yes, there are plenty of news articles, but that's because competitive senate elections always generate news coverage. Essentially all the sources cited still cover her in the context of the election. I suggest we wait until the election, which is just over a month away. If she wins then she will be unambiguously notable, if she loses then I suspect the fuss will die down. Hut 8.5 07:25, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

  This is probably the best outcome we can now come up with.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:02, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

  I don't see "competitive senate elections always generate news coverage" as a counter-argument by itself for WP:GNG - a campaign like this generates significant news coverage because it's "worthy of notice" to a lot of people, because it's important and of interest to a lot of people. I believe a person primarily covered in the context of an election can still meet the notability standards, especially if there's a lot of national reporting and in-depth reporting over a couple years or more. The question to me is whether the current draft Greenfield is there, and AN still doesn't seem to be the right venue for that -- there are a lot of comments here that are essentially AfD-style comments, without being at AfD (including mine). Dreamyshade (talk) 22:53, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

• One key point I feel that I should note is that AfC reviewers don't (and aren't supposed to) act off a "guaranteed to be notable" standard. Instead, if something is likely to pass, we should accept it, and then let the Community review it. Likewise, unprotection requests should work off that basis. Now whether people think it should wait until after the election, I discourage that, but it's viable as a second choice. Nosebagbear (talk) 08:40, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

• I will restate a few policy and procedure issues that I think are touched on by this case:

Here are three issues that are involved in the question about Theresa Greenfield:

• Should candidates for politically notable offices be considered to meet general notability on the basis of significant coverage of the campaign, if the candidate was not previously considered notable? It has in general been the practice of Wikipedia that candidates are not considered to satisfy general notability on the basis of election coverage, and therefore do not qualify for articles before the election if they did not have them before the campaign. This question arises frequently, and it would be a good idea either to address it on a general basis or to decide that it is always addressed on a case-by-case basis.

• When should a single AFC reviewer be allowed to accept a draft if the same title was previously deleted by AFD? When should Deletion Review be required? The instructions for DRV say that DRV can review deletions when the circumstances have changed, such as new sources or new activities. However, the DRV regulars normally tell applicants not to go to DRV but simply to submit the new draft for review.

• When should a single AFC reviewer be allowed to request that a title be unsalted if the same title was previously create-protected? This question is related to the above, but is not the same.

Robert McClenon (talk) 23:31, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

• *Gets up on soapbox* I think Wikipedia is grossly irresponsible in our election coverage for the role we play in promoting incumbents over challengers. We should have some level of information about candidates for people seeking information about an election. This doesn't need to be done through a full article but could happen through reasonable coverage in an election article. The incumbent will still get a full article as opposed to say a paragraph (or two, maybe three) but our readers deserve to know more about Greenfield than Theresa Greenfield, businesswoman, candidate for Iowa's 3rd congressional district in 2018 which is what we're saying now.*Gets off soapbox*
  Why do we create protect articles (SALT)? Because repeated discussions are a drain on the community's time and attention. DRV has said three times that this isn't ready for mainspace. Robert is right that DRV also frequently says "don't bother us go to AfC or just recreate it" but that's after substantially new information or reasonable time has passed. Neither is true in this case. I am all for consensus changing but repeating the same discussion regularly is a form of disruption. This salting should hold. I am thankful that I got the chance to levy one of my biggest systemic criticism of our content in a public forum but other than that don't think repeated discussions are helpful. Waiting until after the election is not so cop-out or thwarting of our process. It is being respectful of the time, energy, thought, and collaboration that has already occurred about this topic. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:44, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
• The rule should be that challengers who receive significant national or international coverage (that is, non-local coverage, or coverage outside of the area where they are running) are notable enough for a page. Greenfield would meet that test (most general election US Senate candidates would), but not every candidate for every office would. Lev!vich 01:57, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
• I have some thoughts about this. If we were looking at an open seat, with both candidates not previously having held elected office, we would not advantage any incumbent. Furthermore, the idea that we are giving an advantage to the incumbent because they have an article disregards to an extent the possibility that their article itself may prove less-than-flattering (as people with opposing views often try to insert as much negativity as they can, while those with supporting views try to keep that sort of thing out). We have articles for all U.S. Senators because that is a reasonable barometer of notability, given the power and influence they wield. This includes articles for senators who or elected for a single term and did not run for re-election, so incumbency over an opponent was never an issue at all. We can't treat articles on U.S. senators any differently based on their possibly being challenged by somebody who does not fall into any other bucket for notability. That said, I do think there is inherent notability in a major party nominee for a U.S. Senate seat garnering national attention due to their perceived possibility of winning that seat (or, sometimes, due to other behaviour in the course of the campaign). This, of course, raises a question that has not yet been addressed, which is whether we should then create articles generally on historical losing major-party U.S. Senate candidates who garnered such attention during their candidacy. This is a discussion perhaps best left until the current silly season passes. If we do enact such a standard in the future, than Theresa Greenfield will merit an article at that point even if she has lost her Senate bid. BD2412 T 03:23, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

A problem with this suggestion is the phrase "major party candidate," which inserts a bit of political favoritism into which candidates may receive articles, and does not account for the fact that the relative strength of a party (or its nominee) varies from state to State. Even if we defer to the political jurisdictions themselves of who is a major party nominee, the Legal Marijuana Now Party is a major party in the State of Minnesota and I don't think that its nominee is notable. --Enos733 (talk) 04:23, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Major party candidate here is basically shorthand for someone coming from a political party that is able to provide the resources to make a U.S. Senate race competitive, which is what leads to the national press coverage of the subject. BD2412 T 15:57, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

• Let me throw these two things into the existing discussion. A 2019 Centralized Discussion on candidate notability was closed with No Consensus, so this is an issue that we have been contending with for years now. Additionally, a candidate not having an article is not shutting out that candidate. In the United States context, we have articles for each state's congressional and state elections. Information about the candidate can easily be added there without creating a separate article. In Parliamentary contexts (Canada more specifically), we have created list articles with basic information about a party's candidates. How many of these losing candidates pass the ten year test in terms of their long-term relevance? Bkissin (talk) 17:48, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
• This is trivial. Does the topic meet the GNG? Yes? Have article. We don't expect coverage of baseball players outside of baseball, why does anyone expect coverage of a politician outside of politics? Hobit (talk) 01:11, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
  • What he said. The existing policy to routinely reject articles on as-yet unelected politicians seems absurd to me. If a person gets coverage, I don't care who they friggin' are, or what the context is, if they get stuff like national coverage, then my God shouldn't we have an article on them? Why do politicians get assigned a different standard than other people? You pass GNG, you get an article. End of discussion. You don't pass GNG but you do pass a subject-specific guideline, boom, you get an article. That's how it works for everything else on Wikipedia. That is exactly how it should work for politicians. Anything else is following a rule because it's a rule. WP:IAR is a POLICY! A loose necktie (talk) 02:45, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
    • Just to respond to the above comment from an WP:AFC perspective (and not as a response to this particular draft), we tend to view such things like "running for a political office" as akin to WP:BLP1E; i.e. if the only coverage of a person is because they ran/are running for office, then they could have dozens of references but it's all about the same event (and is somewhat reflected in WP:NPOL). A notable example I can think of is from earlier this year, where there was a trans politician who (if they won) would have been the first trans politician from somewhere like Maine (or the USA, can't honestly remember); they didn't even make it past the primaries, so despite the relatively large body of coverage the article was deleted ("they ran for office that one time" isn't something that makes notability). You might think we hold this ridiculous standard for aspiring politicians, but we have tons of special exemptions (going in both directions) to either raise up "hidden" groups like educators or keep the veritable flood of bit-playing actors or potential-politicians who never get elected from having one-paragraph permastubs. Primefac (talk) 09:55, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
    • I would agree in the case of a candidate who runs once, but after the first time there is a point when they become a perennial candidate, maybe hoping to eventually reach Lyndon LaRouche-level. 2020 is this candidate's second campaign (as is referenced in the draft via significant coverage in reliable sources). Separately, the reference above to the WP:10Y test above is interesting, since there was a Senate election in this same state exactly 10 years ago, and guess what, we have an article on the losing candidate. UnitedStatesian (talk) 16:51, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
      • • UnitedStatesian, the two cases are not comparable. Roxanne Conlin was a U.S. Attorney confirmed by the Senate, and was also the first woman president of the American Trial Lawyers Association. She is notable for those reasons. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 18:39, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
          • Of those two reasons, neither has an inline cite to an independent source. UnitedStatesian (talk) 18:45, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
      • And how many articles do we have on football players, who all qualify for standalone permastub articles based on subject specific guidelines and whose articles will never, ever be expanded in 10 or even 100 years but also never, ever be deleted, while wringing our hands over allowing people to create articles on as-yet unelected political candidates with ample national coverage and lots of published information, whom we disqualify from having articles because "we just don't do that"? If we cared about permastubs, we'd address it in other contexts. We don't. And we could all stop caring about the politicians if we just followed our own policies regarding what makes a subject notable, and stop applying different rulers to different topics as a means to delete or remove articles on those subjects— I'm all for using them to include, since that is how they were meant to be used. Think of the headaches that wouldn't have to happen! Of the discussions we wouldn't have to waste time on! Like this one! Yay! A loose necktie (talk) 17:34, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
        • And how many articles do we have on football players Usually best not to compare the sphere of interest here to one of the known problem children of the notability guidelines. --Izno (talk) 18:11, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
  • "We don't expect coverage of baseball players outside of baseball, why does anyone expect coverage of a politician outside of politics?" Unless and until she is elected she hasn't done anything in politics. She's basically stood up and said "please, please, please let me do something in politics, I would really appreciate it, I have such great ideas", but she's done zip. Giving her an article is not the same as giving a baseball player an article for playing baseball, it's the equivalent of giving anybody who ever wanted to be a baseball player an article. --Khajidha (talk) 17:57, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Notified: Draft talk:Theresa Greenfield. I dream of horses (Contribs) Please notify me after replying off my talk page. Thank you. 18:53, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

• This is a good discussion, and I have to get up on my own soapbox here and echo Barkeep49's grand concern above that we're generally irresponsible in our election coverage, but for me it's in the opposite direction of Barkeep's argument. We cover elections in far too much detail. We're supposed to be an encyclopedia, not a newspaper: we're supposed to write basically academic summaries of things that already exist or have already happened, after all the discussion is had (so we're not the ones having it; WP:OR, WP:NOTESSAY) and when things aren't constantly changing, based on reliable sources that review those subjects in retrospect, not as they happen. We're incredibly poor at providing balanced coverage of anything that is ongoing because we're not set up to be objective to current events. We should not write about elections at all until the ballots are counted, in my ideal world, and certainly not while the propaganda machines are in full swing. Maybe this gripe is neither here nor there with respect to this discussion, but since it was brought up now you all get to enjoy my opinion. (/soapbox) There are a lot of quality arguments here on what our guidelines should be, and those are good discussions to have, but there's pretty clearly not a consensus here to restore the article or to do anything with the protection. I think Cullen328's advice to expand her content in the Senate election article is the way forward. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 19:02, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

  I agree we cover many ongoing events in more coverage than an encyclopedia strictly would. In an abstract sense the idea of saying "we're not going to cover something until X months/years after it happens" makes sense to me given NOTNEWS/the first pillar. However, that's only in the abstract sense; I can't imagine if we had only begun covering COVID or if we couldn't reference someone's death because not enough time had elapsed. If we're going to start drawing lines about where we need to be careful about covering ongoing events the idea that we're covering elections too much seems like a strange place to start drawing that line. Our articles on elections are poor and serve our readers poorly - they become lists of endorsements and other things that fit nicely in tables rather than prose. But the fact that we do a poor job of it now isn't to say we're over covering it; it's to say we should do a better job of covering them with-in our encyclopedic mission. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:31, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

• For most topics, a deletion review is final. On this particular matter, we've had several successive deletion reviews and now we've got an appeal to the administrator's noticeboard. As this is purely a content decision, it's simply not open to administrators to overrule DRV here. I suggest that this is closed without result and referred back to DRV.—S Marshall T/C 01:47, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
• I'll just say it again: there can be no dispute as to if this meets the GNG. And the SNG says: "People are presumed notable if they have received significant coverage in multiple published secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent of each other, and independent of the subject." We have a huge number of high-quality sources that cover her in massive detail. So from a guideline viewpoint, this is open-and-shut. The problem is that people are trying to create a new SNG and even though they have failed to do so, somehow we still pretend like that SNG exists and has consensus. It's a bit maddening frankly. Hobit (talk) 13:02, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

  You missed a bit: "Presumed" means that significant coverage in reliable sources creates an assumption, not a guarantee, that a subject merits its own article. A more in-depth discussion might conclude that the topic actually should not have a stand-alone article --Khajidha (talk) 15:14, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

  Certainly. And we'd done things like not have articles on things like "Donald Trump's hands" on that basis. But a person with this much coverage? I can't think of any such case. The GNG is a bit more clear "Wikipedia articles cover notable topics—those that have gained sufficiently significant attention by the world at large and over a period of time, and are not outside the scope of Wikipedia. We consider evidence from reliable and independent sources to gauge this attention. The notability guideline does not determine the content of articles, but only whether the topic should have its own article." This is clearly way over the bar of the GNG. And yes, we can merge articles still for organizational reasons. But AfD doesn't normally address *that*. The simple fact is, this person easily meets every relevant guideline we have for inclusion. Her case is not unusual. If we don't want articles like hers, there should be consensus that can be found for the general case. But no such consensus exists. Hobit (talk) 16:24, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

  Reading that draft, I don't see anything that I would call "significant". She exists. She has a family. She has run for office. But she hasn't really DONE anything, so there's nothing to say about her. --Khajidha (talk) 16:50, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

  Erb? First of all, that's not part of our inclusion guidelines. We have articles on people who are only famous for being famous. Secondly, she's done a ton. In the last hour there is reporting on an FEC filing against her [1]. In the last 12 hours there is a story on her leading in the polls against the incumbent [2]. She's been campaigning and the news folks think that is important enough to report on [3]. She was in a debate covered and broadcast by national news [4]. I doubt that 5% of our subjects have done as much. Probably not even done as much as she has in the last 7 days. Hobit (talk) 19:02, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

  Still nothing there besides "hey, this lady's running for election". --Khajidha (talk) 18:39, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

  A) Most soccer players are just "hey, this guy plays soccer". Most academics are "Hey this guy is an academic". And she has tons more coverage, include deep bios etc., than the vast majority of either of those. B) who cares? That isn't even vaguely part of our inclusion guidelines. She meets WP:N with more coverage than 90%+ of our bios. You are far into WP:IAR territory. Hobit (talk) 12:48, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

  The difference is the soccer player actually plays and the academic has earned a degree or published a work. Giving her an article is the equivalent of giving an article to anyone who walks into team tryouts or applies to a university for admission.--Khajidha (talk) 03:08, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

  I'm guessing you don't understand US senate elections? It takes a lot of work to become a senate candidate in a competitive race. To maintain the sports analogy, it means you've made it to the playoffs, but might not win the championship. We cover even athletes that have never won a championship. Now it *is* tricky because in some non-competitive races for lesser offices it is pretty much someone just applying. But that certainly isn't the case here. Hobit (talk) 16:57, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

  Oh, I understand them and I'm not saying that running an election campaign is easy. But the entire campaign is still just the equivalent of trying out for a team or applying for admission to a university. It's still just "I wanna do something" and not "I'm doing something". --Khajidha (talk) 18:30, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

  And that's not an inclusion criteria in any policy or guideline. Perfectly reasonable WP:IAR viewpoint, but not based in any of our rules. Hobit (talk) 12:07, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

  It's the perfectly obvious reading of the policy. 1) No source establishes notability outside of the election and 2) the coverage of her campaign is simply routine coverage of an election, not enough to establish her notability. --Khajidha (talk) 14:26, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

• My apologies for what I am sure are going to be some formatting errors, but I have not extensively used my Wikipedia editing permissions over the years. I was recently shocked to discover that Theresa Greenfield does not have a Wikipedia page; and not only that, but "Theresa Greenfield (American Politician)" is an article that's been created and deleted several times, and "Theresa Greenfield" redirects to a section of the article about the Iowan Senate Race (and that section isn't particularly about Greenfield), while her opponent has a very robust article. This back-and-forth appears to have been going on since this spring, and the election is just over two weeks away. I'm honestly surprised that this discussion largely seems to be circling around notability. Nearly all of the highest level legislative change or stability in the United States comes from the governing power of the US Senate. Having been controlled by one major political party for many years; but with numerous Congressional seats up for election, and many polls showing potential political shifts, there is a chance for another political party to take control of the Senate, with the implications of immense changes in US policy, both domestic and abroad. Only a very few number of US States have the chance to alter their representative political party in the Senate, and Greenfield is the incumbent's opponent in the "swing state" of Iowa. As a Greenfield victory could alter the political makeup of the US Senate, the leading legislative body of one of the most internationally-influential countries in the world, her political career is very notable. There are very, very many news sources - on the local, state, and national levels - citing her campaign; which, as an example, just raised a record amount of money for a Iowan running for US Congress. I've always thought of Wikipedia as a place for unbiased information - the Encyclopedia of the internet - and as authors, editors, & admins - it would seem that we have the opportunity to "balance out the objectivity" with her State's incumbent's article. I realize this is adding some real-world context to a platform that should be neutral of current events, but voters in Iowa started receiving their ballots last week, and the election closes in just over two weeks. They are trying to make their most critical political decision right now, and an objective, unbiased article on this candidate is an immensely important resource. If they currently search Wikipedia, and see the incumbent's robust article and no article for Theresa Greenfield, that is a potential strong influence on their decision-making. Please reconsider unlocking ("un-salting?") this article ASAP so that we can populate it with objective, practical, widely-covered information. Charlie918 (talk) 16:30, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

  "As a Greenfield victory could alter the political makeup of the US Senate, the leading legislative body of one of the most internationally-influential countries in the world, her political career is very notable. " Nope. Her career will only be notable if she wins. "If they currently search Wikipedia, and see the incumbent's robust article and no article for Theresa Greenfield, that is a potential strong influence on their decision-making. " Why would you go to an encyclopedia for this? This is something that newspapers and voter's organizations and such are much better designed for. --Khajidha (talk) 17:34, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

  Well I'm afraid there are Wikipedia precedents that are counter to your argument of not being noteworthy until being elected to office. Tommy Tuberville is the nominated Senate seat challenger in Alabama, and has never held public office. He has in fact been the head of several organizations, as has Greenfield. John E. James is the nominated Senate seat challenger in Michigan. He has never held public office, and therefore his only notable accomplishments on his Wikipedia page are that he served in the military and worked for a company. With the nearly daily news articles between city, state, and national news outlets about Theresa Greenfield for the past month, I can't see why these two yet-to-win political candidates are cleanly permitted to have Wikipedia articles, but one of the nominees in one of the most critical "swing states" - a multi-business owner and setting a political fundraising record for the state - would not be notable. This sincerely might just be my misunderstanding of what constitutes 'notability' on Wikipedia. Charlie918 (talk) 20:32, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

  Charlie918, Tommy Tuberville is notable for his college football career. James' article may not survive an AfD. WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is not a good argument to make. – Muboshgu (talk) 20:37, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

  Muboshgu, then this is most likely simply a teachable moment for me, and there's probably a well-written explanation somewhere that I just can't seem to locate. For a Wikipedia article about a person, what constitutes "notability?" If I do a Google search for "Theresa Greenfield," there are virtually limitless articles from various print, digital, and televised news outlets about her going back months, nearly daily since her televised debate, with her name in the headline. There are even more articles significantly about her where her name isn't necessarily in the headline (e.g. "SCOTUS battle crashes into decisive Senate race in Iowa," Politico, James Arkin, September 30, 2020). Is the sheer volume of content created specifically about an individual by news outlets not a consideration in determining someone's notability? If not, what is? Honestly thank you for any insights, this is the first time I've been involved in a blocked article discussion. Charlie918 (talk) 03:15, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

  Charlie918, apologies if I assumed that you are better versed with Wiki policy than you are. The main notability guideline is WP:GNG, and the specific notability guideline for politicians is at WP:NPOL. The presence of citations alone is not enough as the context needs to be considered. – Muboshgu (talk) 17:07, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

  Muboshgu, many thanks for these links, this is precisely what I had been looking for. My next inquiry may require further source citation. Under the politician-specific guidelines you shared WP:NPOL, it reads, "Major local political figures who have received significant press coverage. Just being an elected local official, or an unelected candidate for political office, does not guarantee notability, although such people can still be notable if they meet the general notability guideline" WP:GNG. In that first page, it is my interpretation that as the final one of two candidates to represent the entire state of Iowa in the American senate, Greenfield passes the "Major local political figures," and while I've previously noted she has significant press coverage, "who have received significant press coverage." In looking at the General Guidelines you linked, there appear to be five qualifiers: (1) Significant Coverage - there are virtually countless articles, hours of taped interview footage, social media, and more that cover Greenfield's political campaign, personal life, and career. (2/3) Reliable Sources - there are many, many articles and news TV segments from city, state, and national outlets covering Theresa Greenfield, so my assumption is that these qualify as reliable sources. (4) Independent of the Subject - these news articles were not produced by Theresa Greenfield. (5) Presumed - this of course seems to imply that even if a subject meets all the criteria, a more in depth discussion may need to occur for the subject to receive an article. Reviewing most of the comments in here over the last five months, it would appear that the majority of these comments seem to support having the article. If the question remains about notability, I wonder if this context is appropriate to apply: The United States government is is one of the most internationally-influential governing bodies in modern times. Within that government, the United States Senate - made up of two representatives from each of the 50 States - is arguably the most powerful, able to enact laws, impeach a president, make treaties, and more. In America's two-party system, simple majority of the Senate means that party will be able to enact their agenda for 2-4 years, and block the agenda of the other party, and thus significantly determine the country's global and domestic policies. In America's current election, there is a chance for the Senate to change party power, with many Senate seats up for election. Based on the political affiliation of the various states' populations, most of these elections are insignificant - people will vote for their party, and their Senate representatives will remain of the same political party. However, there are just five state elections that are qualified as a "toss up," which means due to the near-balanced political affiliations of their residents, determined through a combination of the national census and polling, it cannot be confidently forecasted which political party will win the state. Theresa Greenfield is the Democratic candidate in one of those five states. If the American Democratic party does in fact take control of the Senate in this election, the international and domestic policy changes - including enacting impeachment proceedings for the current president if he remains in power - would be significant, affecting - in various ways and degrees - billions of people around the world. Given this context, and the objective criteria thresholds of Wikipedia, it is my belief that Theresa Greenfield is notable, and should be permitted to have her own Wikipedia page now, not after her potential electoral victory. Thank you for your discussion and patience. Charlie918 (talk) 17:40, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

  How much of that coverage is about her per se and how much is about the election? Consensus on Wikipedia has always been that people who are otherwise not notable do not gain notability just by running for office. That's why this article has been redirected to the election article and that outcome has been endorsed multiple times. Unless and until that consensus changes (and this is not the place to argue that, per User:Spartaz's post below), there is no point in continuing this argument here. --Khajidha (talk) 18:36, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

  Khajidha In preparing a draft article on my desktop before learning about the controversial history of this Wikipedia article, I have 21 articles saved in Word with Theresa Greenfield's name in the headline just from the last two weeks. The subject matter is a mixture of reviewing her professional career (as it relates to her qualifications for the role), her efforts and notable events of her campaign, and her personal background (education, family, organizational memberships, etc.). Several lines up, Muboshgu, who made the original redirect and lock - to my understanding - made the case that because Wikipedia articles currently exist about campaigning politicians who are otherwise non-notable is not a considerable precedent in determining if a page about Theresa Greenfield should be permitted; then your reverse argument, that "Wikipedia's consensus is that articles about political candidates who are otherwise not notable should not be published," would seem irrelevant. If a precedent is not to be considered, and only the objective notoriety rules of Wikipedia are to be weighed, then Theresa Greenfield would appear to qualify by those rules. Charlie918 (talk) 20:49, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

First of all, I have to cop to not having read all the links, so if this has been stated already, my apologies. While on the one hand it rankles that she doesn't have a page, on the other, I get the Notability issue, and I'm a believer in the policy. Still, I remember the AOC situation, and in retrospect, that was a blunder on our part. But if we obey N, where is the blunder? Well, either in the fact that "being a candidate doess not ipso facto make you notable" (for which this is not the right venue, WT:N is, so let's set that one aside right now) or else, we're not taking the right approach.

What about this? We have here, in my opinion, a WP:BIO1E event; Greenfield *is* notable (or rather, the one event is), but not before she was a candidate. Therefore, what? Same thing as for Sandra Bland ^[noredirect] ⟶ Death of Sandra Bland; so we create Senate candidacy of Theresa Greenfield. Anyone here want to declare that this is definitely not notable? I bet I could drown you in sources for that. Then, Theresa Greenfield gets pointed to that. If she loses, and never does another thing in her life, that will be her obituary. Am I missing something? Mathglot (talk) 02:46, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

2020 United States Senate election in Iowa is the article for the "one event" in question. --Khajidha (talk) 03:04, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

That's a related topic for sure, but not quite the identical topic, and not a BIO1E, but rather a recurring event whose article title could be generated by computer. If that article were entitled, 2020 Ernst-Greenfield Senate election you might have a point, but it still wouldn't be the same topic. Mathglot (talk) 04:44, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

This is an entirely pointless discussion because this is essentially a content dispute where the policy, precedent and weight of several discussions is not to have an article. This whole thread is simply extended special pleading and asking the other parent. If you think the page should exist then your quest starts at WT POLITICIAN and I wish you good luck with that. Spartaz ^Humbug! 05:14, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

I believe this is a quite productive discussion, because it points out that there is no clear and accepted community consensus or clear written guideline for the notability of prominent candidates for high-level office who receive substantial, reliable, independent coverage over time (including significant national coverage). There are a lot of experienced editors here with one interpretation of the guidelines, and a lot of experienced editors with a different interpretation. And this discussion is very diffuse, over several talk pages -- there's also more at Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)#Changing NPOL to include at least some more nominees. Dreamyshade (talk) 00:28, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

• The US election is in a couple weeks? She was deleted because she's only notable for being a candidate, right? Why can't we just keep this deleted, wait to see if she wins, and then have a new discussion after the election? This happens all the time, specifically with US elections, and then once the candidate has officially lost most or all resistance to keeping the article goes away, especially if you give it a couple years. SportingFlyer T·C 12:07, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

• If the person passes GNG and there is no WP:BIO1E issue as pointed out above (the article was deleted at AfD before she received in-depth coverage), there is no proper reason to ban this article no matter how close or far an election is. Oakshade (talk) 06:01, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

• Two points:
  1. Is there an article for every other currently running candidate in every election for US Senate/House seat that is up for grabs this election? (I am assuming we have articles on the incumbents office holders)? If we have them on nearly all of them and hers is an an exception, that's a problem that we should fix. If hers is but many that we do not have, then I fail to see where the problem is. The arguments that show her lack of notability (just running for election is not showing depth of coverage about her directly) have been well presented.
  2. If we move her article to mainspace, it cannot look like a political ad. The draft presently looks like this with the section on her platform. Her platform can be discussed but it needs to be presented far less as a political position and more neutrality along with any criticism of it. Ideally, the platform should be part of the election article, and only her key policies that she has stood being and discussed at length should be on her bio page. --Masem (t) 14:15, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Redirect

While this article is in limbo can we at least get the redirect pointed to 2020 United States Senate election in Iowa#Democratic primary so users can easily find the three paragraphs on the candidate there? There's no named section for her so at present it represents a navigational challenge. Artw (talk) 02:46, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Right now due to the confusion around this article there’s a half dozen venues I could make this request, if this isn’t the right one feel free to point me at the right one, but it seems like an easy move to make Wikipedia slightly less broken in this case rather than fully broken. Artw (talk) 18:46, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Artw, I've just made the change. – Muboshgu (talk) 21:16, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Cheers. Artw (talk) 04:31, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

IAR

Allow me to quote from black-letter written Wikipedia policy: "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it." WP:IAR.

In this case, we have this long tortured discussion about particular paths around purely procedural matters, which is preventing the movement of a perfectly valid draft (I'm not saying a perfect article by any means - a valid draft) about someone who is clearly notable as evidenced by literally thousands of high quality third party reliable sources. If a particular set of rules which work in ordinary circumstances have brought us to this absurd state of affairs, that's ok: one of the oldest and most important rules of Wikipedia exists to save us.

If Wikipedia, due to some procedural rules, doesn't have an article on the clear frontrunner in a US Senate race, then it is the rules that are preventing people from improving or maintaining Wikipedia. IAR tells us what to do: ignore those rules. This is policy.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 07:07, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Note that User:Francis Schonken made a NAC closure of this discussion[5] and moved the draft to Theresa Greenfield (politician), while Theresa Greenfield is a fully protected redirect. Apart from other considerations (e.g. that IAR doesn't trump consensus, and a close should judge the consensus here instead of misusing IAR as a supervote), this technical issue, forcing Francis Schonken to create a disambiguated page to circumvent the full protection shows wby this shouldn't have been closed and enacted by a non-admin. Fram (talk) 08:17, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

The "A" in IAR stands for "All" – so I wasn't too selective in which rules I was ignoring and which ones I wasn't (...but there certainly was more than one I was ignoring, although I certainly must have been still very far from ignoring each and every rule this namespace holds). For the record, I was in the midst of filing a WP:RM#Uncontroversial technical requests to get the content to the right place (didn't want to leave the article in a place with an unnecessary disambiguator in its title), but stopped typing that request now. I'd like to invite Fram, or whoever reads this, to do a better proposal for triggering prompt reaction to get this sorted in the shortest delay of time possible. Tx. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:28, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

An "uncontroversial technical request" to get a fully protected page unprotected so you can get a declined AfC submission, the topic of a lengthy discussion at WP:AN, at your preferred result? That would me a rather severe misuse of the term "uncontroversial"... The better way would be to propose a closure here, get a consensus for it, and then let people implement the close. If there is no consensus to be found, then we are stuck with the status quo. Fram (talk) 08:42, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

The "A" in the abbreviation of the name of the IAR policy still seems to trip you over. Yes, IAR would usually mean ignoring multiple rules. Anyhow, closure request logged at WP:ANRFC#Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Theresa Greenfield. Thanks for that suggestion. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:14, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Oh, I'm not claiming that you wouldn't be ignoring all rules when you would post a highly controversial move at the "uncontroversial moves" requests. I'm just pointing out that it would be a doomed effort which would only boomerang against you, as it would be very swiftly rejected and would reflect badly on you in discussions about your actions. WP:IAR doesn't, contrary to what you seem to imply, mean "edits used with this rationale can't be criticized or lead to admin actions against me". Fram (talk) 10:25, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

I understand that. Thanks for reminding. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:43, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

While I appreciate Jimbo's concerns, I feel I have to point out the last time an admin "took initiative" and IARed like this, they got desysopped. Specifically, I agree with his talk page comment "I would personally WP:IAR and move the draft into article space, but I believe doing so would simply generate unhelpful press coverage of an unfortunately disappointing failure of the slow grinding wheels of our policies." - or indeed, reams of pages on here and possibly Arbcom from everyone who disagrees. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:01, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm with Jimbo on this one. Let's not make the Donna Strickland and Clarice Phelps mistakes yet again. Lev!vich 14:34, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm with Ritchie on this one. It's all well and good for Jimbo to say "IAR!" from his high perch, but regular editors who use that as a reason to bypass a consensus discussion are going to face harsh criticism for their actions, if not winding up blocked. If Jimbo thinks this is good enough reason, let him do it & deal with the fallout. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 18:11, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

There was an overwhelming community consensus at wp:AN, and an obvious conclusion. She slam-dunk met WP:GNG many times over and per wp:notability that means we need look no further regarding wp:notability. Egalitarianism aside, something that comes from Jimbo has extra weight, and even that was just to expedite (and read the community consensus from a different place wp:AN) what was inevitable, and which had strong community consensus. North8000 (talk) 19:01, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Towards closure

For reference, the previous discussions: AfD from May, DRVs June 4 (endorse), June 15 ("There is substantial and well-argued support for the idea that we should have an article rather than a redirect here; but it falls short of a consensus to overturn"), and July 11 ("I don't see a consensus to overturn here"). Draft AfC rationales here.

Both sides have been thoroughly argued here and elsewhere. I note this to make clear that even though this particular section of the discussion has been open for less than a day, closing it at this time is justified. There is clearly a time sensitivity here, due to the widespread attention that this matter is receiving.

The key argument in support is that the subject is now notable, due to the press coverage received in the last several months. The key arguments in opposition are that the subject is not notable, either directly citing WP:NPOL or stating that she is "only running for office", and that WP:AN is not the correct venue to decide this matter.

The current draft lists 67 sources, the vast majority of which relate to the present election. Reading through this discussion and the discussion on the draft, the majority view is that they are sufficient to pass WP:GNG. I don't see a need to quote specific arguments here, they have been repeated many times below.

On WP:NPOL, it is undisputed that Greenfield fails to meet either of the presumed to be notable criteria. However, many users note that the same section continues: Just being...an unelected candidate for political office does not guarantee notability, although such people can still be notable if they meet the general notability guideline.

As to forum, it isn't clear what the correct venue would be. WP:DRV could be appropriate, but so is WP:AFC. A recent AfC reviewer noted that no AfC reviewer can accept this or any future version of this draft unless [an administrator unprotects Theresa Greenfield]. Since non-admin AfC reviewers are unable to accept this draft (even if they believe it should be accepted, as at least one previous reviewer has stated in this discussion), this requires administrative attention.

Consensus is that the subject does meet the GNG. NPOL defers to the GNG in the case of unelected candidates. Consensus can change, and clearly it has changed since the AfD nearly five months ago. The move protection should be lifted, and the draft version of Theresa Greenfield should be accepted. The administrator responsible for the original protection has offered to implement this, so I'll allow them to do so.

If users believe that the current version of the article is still unsuitable, then the normal process would be to nominate it at WP:AFD.

ST47 (talk) 21:52, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

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

---

Current state of play:

• The current article is at Draft:Theresa Greenfield (in the last few hours it was moved to Theresa Greenfield (politician) and then moved back).
• The AfD was closed as redirect to 2020 United States Senate election in Iowa#Democratic primary on 31 May 2020 (with three deletion reviews).
• Theresa Greenfield is the redirect per above, and was fully protected on 15 June 2020.

It seems Draft:Theresa Greenfield should be moved to Theresa Greenfield after unprotecting the latter. Let's come to a quick decision—I don't see any reason the unprotection and move should not happen now. Johnuniq (talk) 08:42, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

• Support Johnuniq's suggestion as to how to end this without further delay. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:14, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support Given the current state of the election race, the notability concerns from earlier this year are clearly obsolete. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:36, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support per the above and per this comment. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:39, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support per the above.--Kew Gardens 613 (talk) 10:41, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support and also encourage us to think this over afterwards to figure out how this slipped through the cracks to end in such an odd place.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:07, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
  • It's not slipped through the cracks. We have a number of editors who really really think that nominees for elected office, no matter how well covered, shouldn't have an article if that's the only reason they are covered. This has been a long (long) running debate. Hobit (talk) 19:30, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support per Jimbo. I always wanted to be able to write that. And per my previous contributions to this discussion. UnitedStatesian (talk) 12:35, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose The subject is non notable aside from running for office and even less notable than Kara Eastman.--MONGO (talk) 12:41, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support per the lengthy comments above. Johnbod (talk) 13:10, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose per User:MONGO. IAR would only apply if this actually improved Wikipedia. It does not. --Khajidha (talk) 13:21, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• (edit conflict) Oppose There is a process for determining the suitablility of articles. That process is not AN. That process has, multiple times, determined that Theresa Greenfield isn't notable, and should not have an article. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 13:22, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

"Theresa Greenfield isn't notable, and should not have an article\" - not exactly the most convincing argument in an AfD I've ever seen, is it? That's why I specifically quoted DGG, who is one of the more sensible admins at AfD, even if I don't always agree with him. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:28, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

That's because I'm not making an AfD argument, but instead stating the consensus of the previous AfDs and DRVs. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 13:30, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Noting that AN is one of the places that folks have proposed for DRV outcomes to be appealed ([6]). So this would appear to be as in-process as we get when appealing a DRV result. Hobit (talk) 20:08, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

• Support per above. This has gone on long enough. --Brad Patrick (talk) 13:41, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Comment. It seems that JW himself is not really sure of the chances of the challenger to be elected at the beginning of the next month. Moreover, it seems that some contributors think that being the focus of some buzz, here at en:wp, will help her winning the race. But, four years later, the pages buzz (part 1) and buzz (part 2) are rather appearing as a pitiful (and failed) attempt to twist the fate. And that, despite their resp. 778 and 2297 references. But, yes, if she is elected, I would probably try to locate Iowa on a map, at least more precisely than "somewhere between Canada and Mexico". Pldx1 (talk) 13:47, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose Consensus has been built previously in the year using long-standing guidelines around notability. Compromises have been attempted (redirect to the election page, incubate the page in draftspace, etc.) but have been largely ignored by a group of editors who have brought this topic up in a number of fora hoping to get the answer they want. I don't see why people can't wait two weeks before moving forward. Throwing out well-established guidelines because you don't like the outcome is sad. Bkissin (talk) 13:54, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Look at the dates on most of the refs, dude. This is a moving target. "I don't see why people can't wait two weeks before moving forward" - because it will expose WP to complaints about political bias, perhaps? Possibly these will be justified. Johnbod (talk) 14:03, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

It's a moving target that will settle down on 4 Nov. Cabayi (talk) 14:27, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

LOL, Wikipedia is always facing allegations of political bias by people who don't like what they read or don't get their way. Look at the current issues surrounding the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict! To be fair (and insulate ourselves from further claims of bias, we have ruled the same thing in AfD regardless of the candidate or party. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sean Parnell (Pennsylvania politician), Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Daniel T. Lewis, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Quinn Nystrom, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mark Ronchetti and several others from this campaign season alone! But hey, until we determine a new policy on the topic (which given the last attempt, doesn't seem to be able to reach consensus) then I look forward to discussing this with you all in 2024. Bkissin (talk) 15:48, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

People also scream political bias at the DM/Fox/NYP reliability RfC results. Didn't stop anyone then (not that I disagree with the results, but point remains). "Complaints of political bias" should never be an argument. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:31, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

• Support I think back in May and June this article was debatable in terms of notability, but in the last month has received far and above sufficient media attention, not just to the race but to the individual to warrant the article. If that somehow changes, opponents can always bring it back to AfD.-- Patrick, _oѺ^∞ 14:11, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support Yes, there were previous versions of this article that were reasonable to delete a few months ago, but Greenfield's coverage has massively increased and is sufficient to pass WP:GNG, and this draft is sufficient for mainspace. Dreamyshade (talk) 14:21, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose - I agree with Pppery that this isn't the forum for this decision. It's a decision for the community, not for admins.

That said, on the basis of WP:NPOL and WP:NOHURRY, Theresa Greenfield (& all other unelected candidates whose notability was first noted after nomination) should remain redirected to 2020 United States Senate election in Iowa (& their respective election articles) until after the election. Doing otherwise dips into WP:ADVOCACY & WP:PROMO and there's nothing in WP:POLOUTCOMES to suggest any other action. Let's see if Greenfield is still notable on 4 Nov.

As Jimbo said, we need to consider how we ended in such an odd place - a rethink of WP:NPOL in respect of candidates would resolve that, but it's probably best to wait til the Supreme Court has decided the election before getting into that. (Note:I fell down this rabbit hole with Kevin Stitt in 2018 with this AFD. It would be good to see some clear resolution to the questions this time round.) Cabayi (talk) 14:23, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

I think you are touching on the right thing. In the U.S., a major party candidate for the U.S. Senate is not the same as a non-partisan local dog catcher. Sufficient reliable sources and media coverage of a party candidate (post-primary, at that) is significant. The candidacy within the context of the article on the election itself is one thing; now that WP is considered a relevant source for information about the election by millions, it should not get wrapped up in this on a repeated basis. It is a clear statement of notability, in this context, that a person is a major party candidate running for one of 100 of the most powerful elected positions in the United States. This should, by definition, satisfy notability requirements. The additional sauce in this instance is that she's _very_ competitive. [7] --Brad Patrick (talk) 14:37, 21 October 2020 (UTC)\

now that WP is considered a relevant source for information about the election by millions Just because people think they can get election information here does not make it our purpose to do that. It is absolutely the wrong place for WP to be serving as an election hub for any country. We'll happily report the results of an election as encyclopedic topic information, but we're not in any type of position to be able to talk about fair coverage of all political candidates and issues on a global basis to make it appropriate to work coverage of political candidates from that angle. It is extremely appropriate to judge any political candidate's article through the eyes of an advocacy concern and make sure that the article is more than just a soapbox for the candidate, which appears to be part of the problem with how Greenfield's article has been presented through its iterations. --Masem (t) 16:56, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

• Support - it's not throwing out any rules. The topic meets all the policies and the guideline WP:N. In my view the argument that such a candidate should not have her own page is farcical, particularly when compared to the other things we give a page to. This website, this community, has a rule that all schools are notable, all train stations are notable, we have articles about bagel shops and pro wrestlers and porn stars and pizzerias, but not a major US senate candidate? Come on. Don't forget our mission is to share knowledge. Let's not pretend this isn't a topic many people are interested in or that we can't write a policy-compliant article about it. Lev!vich 14:41, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

But we don't generally have articles about PROPOSED schools or train stations. Or PLANNED bagel shops and pizzerias. Or pro-wrestling TRAINEES. Or people who AUDITION for porn movies. Those are the counterparts to election candidates.--Khajidha (talk) 14:48, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

TG, a "proposed" Senator, is still more important/notable/worthy of a standalone page/whatever formulation we want to use, than like any high school ever built, or even the most famous porn star. More humans are interested in, and need, knowledge about TG than about any high school or porn star or Pokémon, and all but the most famous train stations. If we're not writing about topics like TG, then what the hell are we doing here? We have an article about every damn road in England. Lev!vich 14:59, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

"We have an article about every damn road in England" - No we don't, I keep finding new ones to write all the time. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:01, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, sure, and when you run out, you're going to clear new roads and write articles about them! I look forward to reading about Ritchie Boulevard and Ritchie Lane... I hope you name at least one of them Levivich Way. Lev!vich 15:09, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Things that "are" are more encyclopedic than anything that "may be". In the only sense in which TG could be encyclopedic, she is just a "may be". --Khajidha (talk) 15:30, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Thats where I disagree. Open a newspaper. She's not a maybe. She's already notable, win or lose. We have more secondary source material to summarize about TG than I dare say 90% of the pages we have on Wikipedia. It's only through contortions (here, the contortion of WP:NPOL) that one can claim she is not worth including in the encyclopedia unless she wins. There is no logic or data that leads to that conclusion. Lev!vich 15:34, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

She's a "may be" in the sense that she may be elected. --Khajidha (talk) 15:36, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm saying she is notable even if she may be elected. Her notability does not depend on her getting elected. The secondary source material won't disappear if she loses. If our job is to summarize the world's knowledge, we're not doing our job if we don't summarize the knowledge about TG. It's a hole in our coverage, regardless of the outcome of the election. Lev!vich 15:41, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

I guess we have different ideas about what secondary sources about her means. Because 57 different ways of saying "this lady is running for election" don't impress me as notability. --Khajidha (talk) 15:45, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

If all the secondary sources said was that she was running, I'd agree with you. But of course they say much more than that. Lev!vich 16:35, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

I've read the draft. Still looks like 57 ways of saying "she's running" to me. --Khajidha (talk) 16:45, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Well that's a mistake, judging the notability of a topic by the sources that are in the draft. WP:BEFORE and all that. Lev!vich 16:47, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Well then, what sources should I be looking at? What can you show me that is more than just either "she exists, she's been married twice, and she's a mom" and "she's running for office"? --Khajidha (talk) 17:12, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Wait, now you're moving the goalposts. Before you said 57 different ways of saying "this lady is running for election", now you're saying that and she's been married twice, and she's a mom, and that second part is more than just "this lady is running for election"; in fact, "married twice" and "mom" sound to me like the kind of biographical details that one would find in WP:SIGCOV of a WP:BLP. So I'll tell you what: you set forth the definitive criteria for a source that "counts", and I'll tell you if I have any examples that meet that criteria. Lev!vich 17:57, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Biographical details fill out articles, they do not establish notability. You can give me all the sources you want that she has been married twice and has kids, but that tells me nothing about her notability. And I don't see anything in that second section beyond "this lady is running for election". Unless there's something super outstanding about her campaign, like collusion with foreign powers, all campaign coverage is just "she's running for office". --Khajidha (talk) 18:04, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

If your definition of "notable" is "elected", then she is not notable. But my definition is the one in WP:N (at least two GNG-satisfying sources), and that criteria is met. Lev!vich 18:18, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

No, my definition of "notable" is not "elected". But my definition of notable says that people who simply want to have a job, as opposed to those who have that job, are not notable just because they want it. An applicant to a university is not notable. An academic is. A person who does a walk-on tryout for a sports team is not notable. An active member of that team is. A candidate for senate is not notable just because they are running for senate. A senator is. --Khajidha (talk) 18:24, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Now that's a red herring. Nobody is arguing that she is notable just because she is running for senate. She is notable because she meets the criteria set forth at WP:N. Lev!vich 18:36, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

How, then? How is she notable? There is no coverage of her separate from this election. She was not notable before the election and just running for office does not make her notable now, no matter how many sources say that she is running for office. --Khajidha (talk) 18:38, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

What part of, "She is notable because she meets the criteria set forth at WP:N" is unclear? Again, if you define "notable" as "subject to coverage separate from the election" or "notable before the election" (or "notable if elected"), then she is not notable. But if you define "notable" as "two GNG-satisfying sources" (which WP:N does), then she is notable. Lev!vich 18:45, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I define notability as "subject to coverage separate from the election". --Khajidha (talk) 18:53, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Which is a different definition than the one that has consensus (WP:N), and one that we don't apply anywhere else. We wouldn't, for example, say that a senator/athlete/scientist is only notable if they are subject to coverage outside of their being a senator/athlete/scientist. Lev!vich 19:07, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Did you not see my point above? Being a candidate is not parallel to being a scientist or an athlete. It is parallel to applying to a college or trying out for a team. --Khajidha (talk) 19:18, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

That's a view that does not have consensus. WP:GNG and WP:BASIC apply to everyone; there is no consensus to exclude political candidates from GNG. She might not be notable in your view, but under our general notability guideline, she is. Lev!vich 19:32, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose as too soon. As with Draft:Rishi Kumar, another candidate who isn't notable outside the context of WP:1EVENT (this election), Theresa Greenfeeld has nothing more than routine coverage for a person running for national office. Wait until after the election; if she doesn't win, she wouldn't qualify for an article here, although her campaign might. ~Anachronist (talk) 17:27, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
  • WP:1EVENT supports having this page. It says, If the event is highly significant, and the individual's role within it is a large one, a separate article is generally appropriate. Editors commonly cite 1EVENT to argue that people aren't notable for one event, but that's not what 1EVENT actually says; for significant persons in significant events, it says the very opposite. It's like making an argument based on the shortcut instead of the actual policy being linked to. We could call it argumentum ad shortcutae, perhaps? Lev!vich 17:57, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support I wanted to close this. Maybe I'm not brave enough, maybe I just thought it would help to strengthen consensus instead. This is mostly "per Jimbo". The idea that someone could be elected to the United States Senate and not have a Wikipedia article is deeply embarrassing to me, and would constitute a high-profile failure on our part. I'm certainly sympathetic to those calling for clearer guidance on notability standards in these cases—we probably don't need articles on otherwise non-notable people if they're, say, the Republican candidate in Rhode Island, or the Democrat in Idaho. Sure, there are major party candidates who everyone knows will just lose by huge margins and that's all we'll hear from them, but it's abundantly clear that that is not the case with Greenfield. The earlier AfD was fine, if a bit on the zealous side, but circumstances have very much changed since. --BDD (talk) 18:20, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

"The idea that someone could be elected to the United States Senate and not have a Wikipedia article is deeply embarrassing to me, and would constitute a high-profile failure on our part." Why? To me, that is far from a failure on our part, it is a SUCCESS on the part of democracy. --Khajidha (talk) 18:27, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

It looks reactive, like our measures of notability are off, which I suppose is the case. It's one thing if there's a freak electoral result—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was a list entry and only became a stub upon winning her primary—but a Greenfield win would not at all be a surprise. I'm not sure what you mean by such a case being a success for democracy. --BDD (talk) 18:36, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

The idea that someone who was not notable (and thus didn't have an article here) won, means that "nobodies" can win. And that's a good thing.--Khajidha (talk) 18:42, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

• Strong support per Levivich, Ritchie333, Future Perfect at Sunrise, BDD, Jimbo Wales, and others in previous discussions. We don't have a criteria that says someone must be notable outside of running for a political office, as Mongo and Khajidha are attempting to argue above. We do have WP:GNG, which supersedes WP:NPOL, and by that standard Greenfield overwhelmingly passes the bar for "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." (There's also been a persistent misapplication of WP:1EVENT, which Levivich insightfully demonstrates above). Greenfield and/or her campaign may not have been notable months ago; I don't have a time machine. But all of us as Wikipedia editors need to be willing to revisit our assessments and preconceived notions as new sources emerge, and unfortunately several of us have not been able to do that. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 18:39, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Strong support. The candidate meets the GNG handily. NPOL itself acknowledges that unelected candidates for political office can be notable per the GNG. While I do personally believe NPOL should be changed so that candidates running in major elections are considered inherently notable, such a change would not be needed for Greenfield's article to be created as the GNG criteria are already met. GorillaWarfare (talk) 18:42, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Strong support. Clearly way way way over the GNG. And WP:NPOL defers to the GNG. That said, the *venue* could be considered to be a problem. I'll leave notes at the DRV talk page. But yes, WP:AN has been one of the options when asking to overturn a DRV outcome (the other is DRV), so this isn't out of process per se. Hobit (talk) 19:21, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• I don't know. I guess Alvin Greene is some precedent but now that I actually read that article it feels like tabloid material and the thought occurs that we would be better off without it. Haukur (talk) 19:31, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support. It is absolutely absurd situation that byzantine procedural obfuscation prevent an article on a major party candidate in one of the most closely watched Senate contests. older ≠ wiser 19:45, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support per above. The draft certainly demonstrates significant coverage in reliable sources, exceeding WP:GNG by a mile. There has been so much poor judgment involving this article. -- Wikipedical (talk) 19:47, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support per Jimbo, who I'm glad to see has talked some sense into the discussion. Greenfield is clearly notable, and it's embarrassing that it has come this far for the error to be rectified. -- Tavix ^(talk) 19:48, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support. BIO1E: The general rule is to cover the event, not the person. However, if media coverage of both the event and the individual's role grow larger, separate articles may become justified. None of the invocations of PROMO make sense to me; it is clearly in the public interest to know about these candidates. We may need to revisit the relationship between the GNG and the SNGs after the dust has settled. Enterprisey (talk!) 20:12, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Question: What if she loses? The argument seems to be that people aren't notable for losing elections. So say we allow the article now, and she ends up losing the election. Is it then deleted all over again, orrr is it just edited to "Theresa Greenfield (born October 20, 1963) is a person who was the Democratic nominee for the 2020 United States Senate election in Iowa."? "Politician" would no longer really apply, and I don't know why the current lead says she's a businessperson at all, nevermind puts it first, she's not notable for it, and neither are the companies she serves as on the boards of, apparently. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:29, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
  • I don't see why it would matter. She meets the GNG by a mile. I think people ignore the fact that the GNG doesn't require you to be notable for anything in particular, just covered by reliable, independent, secondary sources. Hobit (talk) 21:08, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
  • If you are a political candidate, you are a politician whether you win or lose because you are "one engaged in politics"—you just aren't a "politician" by wikt:politician definition 2 (or what some would call a "career politician"). -- Tavix ^(talk) 21:26, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support and do it FAST IAR is not needed for the end result but use it if necessary just to speed up the procedures on this embarrassing situation. And it's no reflection on past actions on this article; everyone was just trying to handle it properly. North8000 (talk) 21:28, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Please do not make content decisions on the administrator's noticeboard: that's really inappropriate.—S Marshall T/C 21:43, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

---

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

• Oppose Wanted to sneak this in before closure. She can be adequately covered on the election page - if she loses, she won't have lasting notability, and content shouldn't be discussed here. SportingFlyer T·C 21:55, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

  Even if she loses the election, the notability will be lasting with GNG-passing coverage in abundance.Oakshade (talk) 16:31, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Related AfDs and articles

I think it would be helpful to list other AfDs (current or past) that may be impacted by whatever outcome the above discussion comes to.

• [[8]] Ran for office three times in Ireland (European Parliament, Parliament, and Senate) and failed to be elected all three times. However, in the news since elections for vocal criticism of the Green Party and for advocating that the Green Party not form a government. Article was AfD because she was not elected. Could this deletion be revisited in light of the discussion here? AugusteBlanqui (talk) 11:17, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
• Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/John E. James -- active AfD of a US senate candidate who has a meaningful chance of winning. Hobit (talk) 19:58, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. Mr. James is running for the US Senate in the state that ranks 10th in population, representing more than 10 million people. He will forever be either a US Senator or the guy who lost that Senate race. It's not reasonable to maintain a fiction that rules are more important than ground truth - these candidates are more than a line item on another page.--Brad Patrick (talk) 20:10, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

• Draft:Kara_Eastman -- US house candidate in 2018 and 2020. Much smaller race than most US Senate races, but still closely related though the coverage isn't quite as overwhelming. Hobit (talk) 20:29, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Draft:Al Gross (politician) -- Also a US Senate candidate in a competitive race with significant coverage available (not all of which is reflected in the current sourcing). Dreamyshade (talk) 21:14, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Daniel Gade, the 2020 Republican US Senate candidate in Virginia. -- Tavix ^(talk) 21:22, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

• I would argue that all of the articles that were mentioned are notable. In particular, now that Theresa Greenfield is on the mainspace, Dr. Al Gross is one of the only major party U.S. Senate candidates this cycle without an article, and there is a draft written available about him. This article should be moved to the mainspace, as should the draft about Kara Eastman. The articles about John James and Daniel Gade should stay up at least through November 3. I say this because the voters need to have information about the candidates on their ballots. Narayansg (talk) 22:33, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

  I say this because the voters need to have information about the candidates on their ballots. This isn't an effective argument for inclusion on Wikipedia. If they pass the general notability guideline or any other notability guideline, then they are eligible to have an article (and notability isn't temporary). If they are not notable, simply being a candidate does not make them so. But it's important not to assume the inverse: Simply being a candidate doesn't make them not notable, either. WP:NPOL defers to WP:GNG in the case of candidates. ST47 (talk) 22:49, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

  It also defers to several elements of WP:NOT: WP:NOTNEWS, WP:PROMO, WP:CRYSTAL, along with WP:BIO1E. It may seem oddly political to oppose these, but I would strongly prefer to not turn Wikipedia into a partisan US-orientated website, and instead allow for articles on people only if they are notable. (We can always cover the candidates on the election page, which will likely be watched by interested parties on both sides of the aisle.) SportingFlyer T·C 22:54, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

  For these draft articles, there's a problem related to the cycle that the draft Greenfield article got stuck in (resolved only with a vote here): there's no avenue for robust community discussion of notability for an AfC draft, because a single AfC reviewer can decline a submission and keep declining it. As a relevant example, I saw that for Gross, User:Narayansg moved the draft article to mainspace a few weeks ago, and another editor moved it back to draftspace as "Doesn't meet wp:npol yet" instead of following a documented community process for mainspace articles where you want to contest notability (like PROD or AfD). So, where to go to discuss whether a candidate like Gross or Eastman reaches the threshold of WP:GNG? I expect that few candidates do, but the exceptions (like Greenfield) are important. Dreamyshade (talk) 23:19, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

  Anyone can accept an AfC submission too. If you believe it's ready, you can move it to mainspace. See WP:DRAFTIFY, It is not intended as a backdoor route to deletion. and Other editors (including the author of the page) have a right to object to moving the page. If an editor raises an objection, move the page back to mainspace and if it is not notable list at AfD. If there is a dispute over whether something should be in draftspace or mainspace, the page should be moved back to mainspace and the dispute should be brought to WP:AFD. If you can't move it to mainspace due to protection, ask an admin. ST47 (talk) 23:48, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

  @ST47:, I actually tried to move the Kara Eastman draft and couldn't for the simple reason it already has a history. Is this a common problem? And could you treat this as an "ask an admin" request for the move (even though I don't believe it is a protection problem)? Hobit (talk) 13:20, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

  It's probably not particularly common, but yes, ask an admin, or ask at WP:RM/TR. That one hasn't had an AfD since 2018 and the current version is better-sourced. However, the principal author of Draft:Kara Eastman has requested (through a comment on that page) that it not be nominated again until after the election, I would respect that request unless there's broader support for her immediate notability. ST47 (talk) 15:57, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

• One guideline that doesn't appear to have been explicitly mentioned above is WP:NOPAGE (aka WP:PAGEDECIDE). If a political candidate is only noteworthy/covered within the context of political candidacy, it is not (erm...) incumbent upon us to have a separate page for that candidacy, given that the individual for-all-time notability of that candidate is marginal, even if coverage of the election itself including coverage of candidates is significant. ^~Hydronium^~Hydroxide^~(Talk)~ 03:40, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

GorillaWarfare's Research

• After reading/participating in the discussion around Greenfield, I found myself very curious about which other non-incumbent candidates in the various Senate races have articles. I put together User:GorillaWarfare/Senate races with my results, and figured I'd share it here in case anyone was interested as I was. Many of the candidates have previously held office and met NPOL as a result of their past positions, but I found eighteen biographies of non-incumbent candidates who were not previously elected for office (including Greenfield). Out of that eighteen, four were independently notable for reasons unrelated to their runs for office. Out of the remaining fourteen, there were 9 Democrats, 3 Republicans, and 1 Independent, plus Mr. Willie Wilson in the Willie Wilson Party. They are evenly split gender-wise, with 7 articles about women and seven about men. Edits welcome if I've made any errors. GorillaWarfare (talk) 23:17, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
• Here are the 14 articles listed on GW's page of non-incumbent 2020 US Senate candidates who are not notable outside politics, and how many page views each article received in the last 30 days. Why in the world would we not provide our readers with the verified, neutral summaries of these topics that they clearly are interested in reading?
  1. Al Gross, I-Alaska ♂, 13,661 pageviews
  2. Jon Ossoff, D-Georgia ♂, 135,335 pageviews
  3. Raphael Warnock, D-Georgia ♂, 76,410 pageviews
  4. Richard Dien Winfield, D-Georgia ♂, 3,000 pageviews
  5. Willie Wilson, Willie Wilson Party-Illinois ♂, 31,311 pageviews
  6. Theresa Greenfield, D-Iowa ♀, 17,114 pageviews
  7. Amy McGrath, D-Kentucky ♀, 155,241 pageviews
  8. John James, R-Michigan ♂, 88,815 pageviews
  9. Jo Rae Perkins, R-Oregon ♀, 15,166 pageviews
  10. Marquita Bradshaw, D-Tennessee ♀, 24,992 pageviews
  11. MJ Hegar, D-Texas ♀, 197,488 pageviews
  12. Daniel Gade, R-Virginia ♂, 36,133 pageviews
  13. Paula Jean Swearengin, D-West Virginia ♀, 24,214 pageviews
  14. Merav Ben-David, D-Wyoming ♀, 11,236 pageviews Lev!vich 16:52, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

  Because providing encyclopedic information is only one traditional function of encyclopedia. Another function is to select notable subjects (for which the information is provided). This is exactly why we reject, for example, purely local coverage or ONEEVENT (which both can generate a lot of interest as well). No opinion on specific individuals listed above.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:59, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

  Personally I believe NPOL should be changed to deem major candidates in Senate races such as Greenfield's inherently notable. I strongly agree with Barkeep49 who said above, I think Wikipedia is grossly irresponsible in our election coverage for the role we play in promoting incumbents over challengers. We should have some level of information about candidates for people seeking information about an election. This doesn't need to be done through a full article but could happen through reasonable coverage in an election article. The incumbent will still get a full article as opposed to say a paragraph (or two, maybe three) but our readers deserve to know more about Greenfield than "Theresa Greenfield, businesswoman, candidate for Iowa's 3rd congressional district in 2018" which is what we're saying now. GorillaWarfare (talk) 17:04, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

  GorillaWarfare, How is that an argument to change NPOL? Writing more about a candidate in the election article requires no change to NPOL. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:21, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

  Sorry, not super clear, those were supposed to be two separate statements. I think NPOL should be changed, and separately I agree with Barkeep's point. GorillaWarfare (talk) 18:02, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

  @GorillaWarfare: US Senate only or all upper house elections in all countries? If the latter, does that mean all unicameral legislature elections as well? "Senior national legislator candidates" in all countries? Lev!vich 18:37, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

  I was referring to US Senate. I admit I'm not very well-versed in other countries' political systems, but I would think any major candidates in elections that are somewhat equivalent in other countries ought to be considered notable as well. GorillaWarfare (talk) 18:46, 24 October 2020‎ (UTC)

  Any Republican/Democrat nominee for a Senate race will seemingly always meet GNG. So de facto "inherently notable" ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:49, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

  I feel like the discussions upon discussions about Greenfield have proven that's not agreed upon, not to mention the handful of AfDs, declined AfCs, and merged/redirected pages on R/D candidates recorded in my user subpage. GorillaWarfare (talk) 19:28, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

  Let's put it this way: we can argue "presumed notable" in the lead up to the election, but if the candidate loses and their only notability to that point was being the candidate, deletion or merging back to the election article would be reasonable after the election. There are some races where the incumbent has nearly no chance of losing, so the random challenger from the other party is just because they need to test the waters, and that may be a case that that person would readily meet BLP1E. --Masem (t) 19:36, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

  Yeah, that's why I specified "major candidates" in my original point about NPOL. I don't think candidates like the ones you mention, or the long list of candidates pulling in single-digit percentage points of support or less in some of the Senate elections should be deemed inherently notable. GorillaWarfare (talk) 20:03, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

  What we need to be careful though is that if we make these articles routinely, these cannot come off as supporting their platform, though obviously we do want to document major platform points that a candidate is notable for running for. (A full platform position would be more appropriate on the election page to compare candidates, or if the campaign election itself was notable) Greenfield's section on political positions is a bit too close to promotional but not at a point it needs to be flagged. I just feel that this will be the primary content people will add to these types of candidate articles rather than bio details. --Masem (t) 18:14, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

  This is why I support including all of the information on the election page, such as 2020 United States Senate election in Iowa. I think one of the biggest misconceptions people have about those of us who don't want to have articles-for-all-time on mere candidates is that we don't want the information to appear at all for non-incumbent candidates. For instance, we have no biographical information whatsoever on the minor party candidates for Iowa. The "after the election" really goes against WP:CRYSTAL and our "once you're notable, you're always notable" policies - why not just cover the candidates properly in the context of the election, and have that be the worldwide standard? SportingFlyer T·C 19:52, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

  This. Exactly this. One million times, this. --Khajidha (talk) 22:33, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

  Nobody has ever claimed automatic notability simply because they are a candidate, but that doesn't at all mean someone is automatically non-notable due to them being a candidate. Some people do in fact become notable due to their candidacy, like of Greenfield and Ossoff (the first special election). That was the problem with the Greenfield controversy back in June and July - In this case the person was clearly notable but some editors clung to the idea that nobody could become notable only due to a candidacy, not to mention feeling it was "too soon" since a previous discussion (I had warned back in July the Greenfield issue would come back again and again if we don't allow an article and it turned out I was correct). Oakshade (talk) 02:45, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

  That assumes Greenfield IS notable, which is still a question the community disagrees on. If she loses the election there's a very good chance the article could be deleted or merged. There's really two issues here: 1) not providing enough information on candidates on the election page, which there seems to be a hunger for along with general agreement to do so; and 2) at what point someone who is running for office but not otherwise notable becomes notable enough for a standalone article given the numerous issues with having these sorts of articles. SportingFlyer T·C 10:07, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

  If just being a candidate doesn't make you notable, then continuing routine coverage of your candidacy does not make you notable either. You can say "she's running for election" 1 time or 500 billion times, it doesn't change anything. --Khajidha (talk) 11:35, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

  Community consensus above shows that Greenfield does meet GNG. If she loses the election, an editor might bring up yet another AfD in some kind of WP:POINT exercise, but the GNG-passing train has long left the station and the community's patience will be beyond thin at that time. Oakshade (talk) 16:22, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

  So, let's look at hypotheticals. If this were an article being proposed about a candidate from the previous senate election in that state, with basically the same sources saying the same things, plus a source for their having lost the election, you would support its existence? Really? I saw lots of people above saying basically saying that we "need to serve the voters". That seems totally wrong to me. We aren't here to serve the voters of this year, we are here to cover this year's election for the people of next year. Or 5 years from now. Or 10. Or 100. If this last round had not resulted in the posting of this article, I doubt anyone would raise the issue 10 days from now if she loses the election. --Khajidha (talk) 17:01, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

  That's a straw man argument as I've never said anything like "to serve the voters" since coming across this issue back in June. Others might have. And to answer your question, yes of course we should have an article about a person who is notable and easily passes GNG as consensus has confirmed even if they lost an election they became notable for just we had the article of Jon Ossoff after he lost the 2017 Georgia's 6th congressional district special election. Oakshade (talk) 19:37, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

  Jon Ossoff was AfD'd in 2017, incorrectly closed as a keep (8:4 delete/redirect:keep ratio), and then a mess of a DRV which potentially identified 3 of the keep !voters as SPI but wasn't really close-able as anything other than no consensus. Ossoff is probably the worst possible example you could have given. SportingFlyer T·C 20:09, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

  If it really is a bad example then show us - If you truly feel Ossoff is not notable due to becoming notable only because of his 2017 candidacy that he lost and his current candidacy and, should he lose the upcoming Senatorial election like Greenfield might or might not, continues to be non-notable in your view, then you are always free to AfD the Ossoff article. But honestly that would also come across as a WP:POINT AfD. Oakshade (talk) 20:34, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

  The messy AfD and messier DRV were three years ago. I don't think an AfD would be WP:POINTy, but certainly at this point in the discussion it wouldn't help much, either. We need good guidelines for when candidates are considered all-time-notable. SportingFlyer T·C 20:56, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

• The MJ Hegar article can be summarized as: she is in the middle of a notable life, and additionally, she is a candidate. The Theresa Greenfield article can be summarized as: she is candidate and she is candidate. The only notable thing in her bio, seems to be Jimbo Wales campaigning for her article... but this is not yet covered by Reliable Sources: simply too soon. Pldx1 (talk) 15:02, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
• The bigger issue here is that arguing over Greenfield's notability (and the fact the community is split on the issue) doesn't get us any closer to actually solving this problem, which pops up every two years in the midst of US election season. We need to have this election resolve and then workshop what the actual rule is to avoid having this be a point of contention, the question being: when is a recent candidate notable? SportingFlyer T·C 17:02, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

  I think that's a great idea. Avoiding doing it just before the election is probably wise, and I don't think there's harm in waiting for election dust to settle to discuss it. GorillaWarfare (talk) 21:13, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

  I completely agree with waiting as it avoids any WP:CRYSTAL issues of "well they might be notable..." Considering the fact we typically lack consensus on what to do with these US candidates, maybe it would be better to frame the question as, how do we improve election coverage on Wikipedia? SportingFlyer T·C 21:23, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

  Yes, working on this after the election sounds good. I believe both of these questions are worth asking, because they both come up with deeply split answers (especially when working article-by-article): How do we decide when a candidate may have their own article under their name? And related, but broader: how do we set up our policies and guidelines so that elections can be covered in ways that fulfill the purpose of Wikipedia to the best of our capacity and ability as editors? Dreamyshade (talk) 23:03, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

• I know I'm coming late to this discussion, likely after it has become moot, but looking at the 14 biographies on GorillaWarfare's list, I was struck by the fact that most of these candidates should be notable because they were political activists. I don't know if that term means anything beyond the US, so I will define how I am using it: a political activist is someone who works, often as a volunteer, to effect a change in how government works, often by pushing thru a ballot initiative or class-action lawsuit -- although there may be other ways. And that means these are people who woke up one morning & decided to run for office & somehow garnered one party's nomination. There are exceptions to this. For example, Merav Ben-David strikes me as a notable academic (we need to know more about her publishing history, though); Richard Dien Winfield is another notable academic (his bio article barely mentions he ran for office twice). A possible one is Marquita Bradshaw, but she is notable as "the first African American woman to win a major political party nomination in any statewide race in Tennessee". Willie Wilson is one of those footnote people like Emperor Norton whom you can't exclude from a comprehensive encyclopedia. Jo Rae Perkins represents a movement Wikipedia probably has too little information about, the QAnon people. In all honestly, about the only one of these I might exclude would be Daniel Gade, because his biography makes it appear he did wake up one morning & decide just that, but further research about his work advocating for disabled veterans could show I am wrong about that. Far too often we look at articles on politicians & decide if they are notable only if they held public office, when there are many notable political activists (Martin Luther King comes to mind) who never held office. -- llywrch (talk) 23:34, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Now she lost

Now she lost, and her article still does not contain anything significant which could not be in the article on the Iowa senate elections. Shoud it go to AfD again, or can we just move it back to draft?--Ymblanter (talk) 07:43, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

Neither, as it is quite hard to judge a candidate's post-election notability on election night. Lev!vich 07:55, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

As per Levivich. Waiting at least 48 hours (if not a week) to consider another merge/delete proposal is certainly called for. power~enwiki (π, ν) 07:57, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

We can wait for a couple of days, no problem, but if there is no consensus here to revert the move from the draft she will go to AfD again.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:58, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

I agree there will be another discussion; it just won't be a useful one until the presidential election is called. power~enwiki (π, ν) 08:01, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

Her article might go to AFD, but she probably won't. :-) Lev!vich 08:03, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

Like any mainspace article that has had a decent amount of effort put into it, if an editor believes that the subject may not be notable and can't find sources indicating sufficient notability, that editor would need to nominate it for deletion. WP:DRAFTIFY isn't appropriate for mature articles that have had a bunch of editors and edits over time. I agree with waiting at least a couple days or a week to consider an AfD nomination, especially because coverage of the race isn't over - this article came out a couple hours ago, for example. We'll be able to have a better picture of longer-term notability after journalists have a chance to write up analysis, etc. Dreamyshade (talk) 01:47, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Honestly, take the advice as WP:BATTLEGROUND and wait at least a year to reassess notability. There's no chance it can be meaningfully re-assessed in the near term, and there'd be no reason to re-nominate now, in a day, or a week, except to try to win a battle. WilyD 06:18, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

It should have not moved out of the draft after three failed DRVs to start with. The argument was mainly that if she wins election (which she was expected to) than everybody knows that Wikipedia failed to create an article on a notable person (who is accidentally also a woman etc). This argument is obsolete for the time being. I also do not see how my behavior is WP:BATTLEGROUND. I do not think I was in any way previously involved with this article except for a pair of procedural comments on the top of this thread. I am just absolutely sure that if she were not an American democrat Senate candidate but a candidate to the parliament of Peru with similar credentials, nothing like this would ever happen--Ymblanter (talk) 07:46, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

The argument was mainly that she met WP:GNG. The closing statement a couple sub threads up was "Consensus is that the subject does meet the GNG." Lev!vich 07:53, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

WP:ONEEVENT perfectly describes the sittation, but I do not think we shoule be discussing this here. I said very early in this topic that AN is not a good instrument to look for consensus in these issues.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:04, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

I agree ONEEVENT perfectly describes the situation: However, if media coverage of both the event and the individual's role grow larger, separate articles may become justified. If the event is highly significant, and the individual's role within it is a large one, a separate article is generally appropriate. I'm not sure why you expect an AFD would end up with a different result than the we had here at AN. Do you expect editors will have changed their mind? Or do you expect a different group of editors will arrive at a different result? I expect the same editors will come to the same result. Lev!vich 15:33, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I think it will be a different group of people. After all, it has already been to AfD and three times to DRV with the decision delete / not undelete.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:03, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

She was at AFD in May where there was no consensus that she met GNG at that time, and the three DRVs were in June and July, and found no reason to overturn the May AFD as of that time. Then, in late October, consensus was reached that she met GNG as of that time. Now it's early November. If she met GNG in late October, she still meets GNG in early November. A merge proposal might have some support, but an AFD would be a disruptive waste of time (as would draftification). No matter what happens, we will have a page on Wikipedia called "Theresa Greenfield". The only question is whether that page will be an article or a redirect. AFD is not the place to answer that question. It's still called Articles for deletion, not Articles for discussion. Lev!vich 16:34, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

This also serves to remind us that GNG reiterates BLP1E - we are looking for enduring coverage of a topic, not a blip of news coverage, and that even a prolonged election period run should not be considered "enduring" for our purposes (that is, what is enduring depends on the nature of the topic). Clearly this was being misread if editors took her to be notable by the GNG while as a candidate (there are other routes to presume notability) --Masem (t) 16:46, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

WP:BLP1E doesn't apply here either, because she does not meet the third requirement: If the event is not significant or the individual's role was either not substantial or not well documented. Neither BLP1E nor ONEEVENT apply to US Senate candidates. Each US Senate race is a significant event, and every general election candidate has a significant role in that event. It was not a mistake that editors (like me) !voted based on her meeting GNG. She meets GNG. There are no "but she's only a political candidate!" exceptions to GNG. There is no "enduring" requirement to GNG. (WP:LASTING is part of WP:NEVENT, not WP:NBIO or GNG.) Maybe there should be, maybe GNG should be changed, but any person can read WP:GNG, as written now, and there really is no argument that she does not meet the requirements as written now. Lev!vich 17:01, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Notability requires WP:SUSTAINED coverage (part of WP:N) which ties right back to BLP1E and NEVENT. That's the enduring requirement of notability. It's why a burst of news coverage is not sufficient for notability. --Masem (t) 17:11, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

True, but that brings us back to the main point here: it's really nonsensical to assess notability on October 21 and then re-assess it to judge SUSTAINED on November 6. If she met N (including SUSTAINED, as could be ascertained at that time) on October 21, 2020 based on coverage in 2020, then we are not going to have sufficient information to make a determination about SUSTAINED until, at least October 21, 2021. If she's been covered non-stop for a year, then we have to wait at least one year, and only then can we determine if it was a "brief blip" or "sustained" coverage. This is why I agree that the notion that we should do anything with this article this week is just BATTLEGROUND behavior. There is no logic to making any sort of decision this soon after the election; the only reason anyone could possibly want to change the status quo right now is to prove a point. And that point is: candidates who don't win shouldn't have a page. Everyone needs to let go, in the drop-the-stick sense, of the notion that a person's notability is linked to whether they win or lose an election, and also let go of the notion that the mere presence of an article about a candidate is somehow promotional.

By the way, Theresa Greenfield is still the subject of more coverage than Donna Strickland or Clarice Phelps. The problem in all three of these womens' biographies is that each woman was judged by editors according to their accomplishments in the eyes of those editors. So, editors say, "she's not notable until she wins the Nobel Prize", or "she's not notable unless she is a named author on the paper", or "she's not notable unless she wins the election". This approach is wrong, wrong, wrong, and it's not our way, and it's not how the guideline N works, nor how our core policies work. We follow sources. A person is notable if the sources say they are notable: whether we think their accomplishments are important doesn't matter at all. Yet some editors continuously try to add these extra requirements: whether it's "won an election" or "played in a professional league" or "published a paper", it's always just some editor's opinion about what makes someone important. But editors' opinions don't count; it's sources that count. This is misapplied in both directions: sometimes editors apply their idea of "importance" to !vote keep when the sources don't exist (football players, famously); other times editors apply their idea of "importance" to !vote delete even when the sources are plentiful (women, famously). Every time we stray from the path of "follow the sources", we should remind ourselves of what we're here for: to summarize secondary sources. Not to decide what's important. In this case, there is no lack of secondary sources about Greenfield for us to summarize. Lev!vich 17:29, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

First, I fully agree we don't need to decide today or next week even on its fate. Let's wait for the election results to finalize and see any fallout from that.

There is a huge difference with the Strickland case in that we didn't have ANY article for her - no attempt at draft or deletion. Take away the Nobel, she would still have met the NPROF allowances for an article, but no one wrote it, a discovery made when she got named for the Nobel. That's a problem with our volunteer system is that we write articles that really only interest us and not probably what we should write. It is a very different situation from Greenfield where people were making a draft and trying to include it but there were hard questions on notability.

And there are hard questions on notability when it comes to a candidate in an ongoing an election. WP is now seen as a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tool blatently used to build up a profile in search engines, and people and corps pay money to try to get editors to make pages to improve their hits. NCORP was recently reworked to try to stall as much of this from the corporate side by making it harder for random corps to get pages. We have to consider the same problems for a candidate in an election that has no other history of note. I mean, we initially have to assume good faith that editors that wanted an article on Greenfield were trying to do in with the intent for an encyclopedic topic, but in the middle of an election in a heated race, some questions have to be raised. (The same issue was at play at the early stages of Phelps article based on the early AFD discussions - lack of third-party sourcing points to more self-promotional concerns). But in the case of Phelps, when this was recognized by the media, they came to the "rescue" to provide addition third-party coverage and establish her as clearly notable for her whole career. Which is a perfectly acceptable route to assuring notability. (This also happened with Strickland too). WP is stuck that we have to be very careful of simply allowing every person that may be named-dropped in sources from having an article since this may be feeding into some system for promotion and marketing and thus must play cautiously.

That said, there is nothing requiring us to not cover candidates in election article with appropriate redirects to make them searchable topics, which should be the default situation for all major US congress races in the first place. Too many editors focus on wanting a separate standalone article for each topic but this is not a requirement; a topic of weak notability can be fairly covered in a larger topic with more affirmed notability and using redirects to get readers there, serving the same purpose without raising any questions of notability. --Masem (t) 18:32, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

• We need to have a serious discussion about this before doing anything. It should go to AfD, but I think a better result is a merge to the election article - there's no reason to get rid of good information. The real question: is she notable enough as a candidate or for any other reason for her own stand-alone article at this point? I don't think the answer to that is yes, but considering this is going to be a problem over and over again every two years, I don't see the rush to remove it. SportingFlyer T·C 13:00, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

  I agree that there is no rush and we should try to work on general principles. To some extent it may be easier to discuss old instances. For a ten year old candidacy where I think there is a reasonable case for merging a biography into an election article see Talk:Alvin_Greene#Merge_with_2010_United_States_Senate_election_in_South_Carolina? Haukur (talk) 14:22, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

  The merge to the election article is probably the smarter move, but I definitely would wait a few days to make sure the results are certified and no other options come up. This does not require a AFD (as no admin action is required for a merge, though to maintain it may require that). --Masem (t) 14:30, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

  If it is merged without reaching consensus first I am sure merge is going to be undone quickly. AfD is one of the instruments to achieve consensus, admittedly not the best one. RfC can be another one.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:04, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

  Except that AFD has been repeated denied as a venue to bring up non-deletion requests because the net result doesn't involve admin action. A merge discussion on the article's talk page is reasonable though. --Masem (t) 16:16, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Being blatantly endorsed by Wikipedia is not so helpful

This Encyclopedia is supposed to be neutral, or at least is supposed to appear as neutral. Seeing Jimbo Wales campaigning for this article was amusing. And what has been won, except a disgracious scar on our neutral face ? The article was only asserting, in Wikipedia's voice, that the candidate was notable for being candidate, and for being candidate, and maybe for nothing else that can be found. This doesn't appear as having helped her. But let us wait and see if reliable sources attribute any influence to any Wikipedia issued endorsement. Pldx1 (talk) 10:32, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

If having an article = endorsement, then we endorsed her opponent long ago. Lev!vich 15:28, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

An issue I pointed out is that we should be very careful of these bios looking like political ads. It is important that for a notable politician to identify key issues that they have been known to focus on, but we should not make their bios list out their entire political platform, otherwise you start approaching the endorsement or political ad issue. On the other hand, on election articles, outlining the key issues at play and where the candidate sit is fair game without making us endorse or promote any single one. --Masem (t) 15:41, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Pldx1, you sound like those folk I see on social media who claim that this or that news outlet is spreading propaganda because they're reporting the news. And after seeing this I'm wondering if you shouldn't be advised of discretionary sanctions in the AP2 subject matter. Drmies (talk) 16:05, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Dear User:Drmies. As it can be seen from my contributions, my focus is more about Korean Literature than about American Policy Too. But obvious is only obvious: there are well written stories, and there are poorly written ones. To remain credible, the selection criteria have to be applied evenly. As a side remark, the WIRED article I was referring to is amusingly praising over the hills the Professor in Wikipedia Studies they have recruited. Is smiling so diabolic ? Pldx1 (talk) 17:36, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

What you are saying here is neither relevant nor clear. I don't know what stories or criteria you are talking about, or what the Wired piece has to do with anything. I don't think you have retracted that odd comment on Jimbo's talk page, and I left you a template with some helpful links, on your talk page. Drmies (talk) 17:44, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

I have no opinion about whether we should have an article on this person, but I think the one takeaway that everyone can get from this is that having a Wikipedia article about a candidate makes only a minuscule, if any, difference either way to the vote that they get. I hope that supporters of particular candidates will learn that they should expend their campaigning energy on other things than getting a Wikipedia article, as if it is some sort of prize. A Wikipedia article is neither an endorsement of its subject nor of any opponents, and whether we have one or not should be decided by our policies and guidelines, not any other consideration. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:03, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Or, to put it more bluntly, WP:An article about yourself isn't necessarily a good thing. —A little blue Bori v^_^v ^{Takes a strong man to deny...} 18:12, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, it's interesting. AOC didn't have an article at the time of her election and won. Nobody reading Donald Trump would vote for the guy, yet look at the election results. I think Wikipedia's affect on elections is overrated. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:22, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

• I don't think this has been Wikipedia's finest hour. First off, a rather hasty discussion on the administrator's noticeboard has overruled deletion review, so now we haven't just got sysops making binding content decisions, we've got them making the decisions in a rush. Second off, we're now deciding that she isn't notable enough for an article because she lost --- even though notability isn't temporary. If we do now decide that she shouldn't have an article, then I think many outside observers would feel that her getting an article in the runup to an election was a political intervention by Wikipedian sysops, instigated by Jimbo. I think it's going to be hard for the community to pretend that it wasn't.
  I think the learning points from this mess are: (a) if it's urgently necessary for the community to overrule DRV because DRV is wrong, then that discussion should happen at the village pump rather than here, because sysops don't make binding content decisions; (b) post-1932 US politics is unbelievably toxic and it's important to follow the processes scrupulously when we're dealing with it, instead of making up new rules as we go along; and (c) we need a big, centralized RfC about whether candidates in a national election should get articles that reaches binding conclusions.—S Marshall T/C 23:13, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

  Is AN not the right place to appeal a page protection decision, a DRV decision, or a close? Lev!vich 00:12, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

  I think it's the right place to appeal a use of the tools, but I don't think sysops have any special authority to make binding content decisions.—S Marshall T/C 00:20, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

  But if a page is protected from recreation, the use of the tools is required to recreate it. (Indeed, if I'm reading right, a non-admin approved it on AfC but was unable to implement this because of the protection.) So ultimately administrator intervention was necessary. And more generally, deleted page protection is only intended to prevent G4-speedy recreations (or similar unambiguous issues like vandalism.) So technically what should have happened was that an administrator should have immediately unprotected it with no further discussion once the AfC was closed. No administrator was willing to do so (probably wisely given the controversial nature, even if it was technically the correct action to take provided the draft was not a G4 speedy), but the fact is that at that point it was already being decided by administrators. If you want to avoid that then there needs to be hard-and-fast rules when any editor can request that protection be removed from a page that has been protected from recreation - if I read WP:SALT correctly, any administrator can, on their own initiative, unsalt a page on request with no further discussion (DRV is also an option but I believe it's only for if you want to recreate the deleted page specifically.) --Aquillion (talk) 00:29, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

  Yes, the fact that the page was protected was the pretext that the closer gave for making a binding content decision.—S Marshall T/C 00:34, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

  The consensus in the AfDs and DRVs was pretty much against having an article until after the election was decided. So in your hypotheticals: if there's an explicit consensus against having an article until such time, nobody should be unprotecting it on their own initiative. It wasn't deleted for notability reasons in the sense that she didn't have enough media coverage, so the general condition for recreation (ie recreating with any number of extra sources, relating to her political run) wouldn't address that concern. The technical matter of unprotection may be an administrative issue, but whether to have an article is really a content one. One that's decided, the technical matter of unprotection is pretty uncontroversial; may as well be at WP:RFPP. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 00:36, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

  S Marshall, if someone is unhappy with a DRV close, the place to appeal that close is AN, is it not? Lev!vich 03:39, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

  I don't think it should be. Content decisions are a matter for community consensus, and administrators don't have any special authority over content, so the optics of making content decisions here are terrible.—S Marshall T/C 03:49, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

  Last time we discussed it, we more-or-less concluded (it was a sparse discussion) that DRV or AN were the two places to appeal a DRV close. Sorry, I'd have to hunt down the link again. I think I included it above somewhere. Hobit (talk) 05:25, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

  I guess what I'm not understanding is: you said this wasn't WP's finest hour. What is it you think went wrong here, and how would having this discussion on a different page (DRV again? VP:PROP?) have resulted in a better outcome? Lev!vich 06:15, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

I'm sorry, we're talking at cross-purposes and I think it's my fault. I agree that AN is where we currently review DRVs. In the light of this episode, I now think it shouldn't be.

I think the discussion since Greenfield's defeat demonstrates that she is not, in fact, notable enough for an article. DRV was right and the AN was wrong. DRV is where we have all the experience and practice at coming to the right choices in these things, whereas AN came to a rushed and expedient decision that, in the cold light of day, looks poor. Even worse, the AN doesn't have a fixed duration for discussions, so the closer could be accused of picking a strategic moment to close (note that I'm not saying that happened: I'm talking about the optics).

I do not think DRV is infallible. There must be a place to review DRVs. But I think that place should be ideally RFC, and if it's too urgent for that, a fixed-duration discussion on the Village Pump. Rushed, ad hoc decisions on the AN are suboptimal.—S Marshall T/C 12:17, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Philosophically I agree with S Marshall that AN making content decisions, and that is absolutely what happened here, makes me uneasy. Conduct forums, and that's definitely what ANI, while content forums do what they do best. The conventions are different at these types of places and for good reasons as the kind of processes that go into successfully handling one type are not the same as handling another. If someone thinks DRV got something wrong they can convince... DRV. DRV is already an appeal forum. Arguably if someone thinks an admin got a close wrong that could be appropriate for AN (since it is definitely the place to appeal closes) but that wasn't the claim that was made. AN falls into this muddle but this conversation, in my opinion, did not. And I say that as someone who thinks, before there was an article, we had been irresponsible in our coverage of her (and many other non-incumbents). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:26, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

I don't agree that content vs. conduct forum is an issue - the correct step after a DRV is DRV or AN and only one of them ensure a wider view on the article in question. Unstructured discussion is often more helpful than arbitrary bureaucratic structure we have made to keep a smoothly running system, it's quite obvious some articles won't fit properly into the standard processes but they have to dealt with in a manner specific to that article. Finally adding - that as long as appealing a DRV dicussion at AN does not become a norm, this particular discussion is absolutely fine (not a comment on the discussion itself but the fact of dealing with the appeal on AN). --qedk (t 愛 c) 12:32, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

I'm very disappointed that after numerous DRVs with weeks of discussion held that the article should not exist and the matter should be next reviewed after the election, that a contrary decision was reached with a 13-hour debate here. The US-centric, recentist arguments held up over rational, policy-based debate. And now she's lost the election – what next?

As for where one can "appeal" a DRV? One can't. There has to be a place at which a decision is final. Stifle (talk) 17:27, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

There is no place at which any decision is final. A decision at DRV can be appealed at DRV, but the appeal should be quickly shut down if no strong evidence is provided. I agree that decisions on content should not be made by administrators. Is there any case in which such lobbying of Jimmy Wales has resulted in an improvement to Wikipedia? And does anyone think that such a decision would have been reached in the case of a candidate in India or Germany, for example? Phil Bridger (talk) 18:38, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Because this is a project to build an encyclopaedia, there aren't any absolute rules, or final decisions, other than those required by law. The processes are standard ways of working things out, but exceptions can always be made when the processes aren't working, because the processes aren't the point. WilyD 08:07, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Negative contribution

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

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I noticed that this User:GorgeCustersSabre has issues with IP-users, as he always reverted their edits at once without even check them. For instance, in this article Razane Jammal, he reverted edits to keep imdb sources and others related to fixing the references. However, I would like to ask someone to take a look at the edits, and to write that user that his contribution here is only negative as he only reverts edits and does not write anything. 118.217.90.121 (talk) 09:31, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

I edit in good faith. Please assume the same. You make a generalisation on the basis of very few edits. Check my tens of thousands of edits. I edit pages by IP addresses and regular editors. Best regards, George Custer's Sabre (talk) 12:18, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

This is a LTA sock puppeteer. Let me know if more IP editors show up, and I'll block them. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 21:48, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

• Nothing further on the /20 --Deepfriedokra (talk) 08:48, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

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

2020 Arbitration Committee elections: self-nominations now open

Eligible editors are invited to nominate themselves as candidates in the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections. Self-nominations will close on 17 November 2020 at 23:59 (UTC). Mz7 (talk) 23:19, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Nobody's jumping to post their self-nominations. Perhaps they're all waiting for the last day. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:24, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, it seems pretty typical for candidacies to trickle in before a flurry in the last few days, last year being an exception to the recent trend (see User:SQL/AceStatsByDay) — Wug·a·po·des​ 05:56, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

As soon as I said something, someone dove in. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:56, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Still only one candidate, with only 2.5 days a week to go. It certainly makes the choice easier: thumbs up or thumbs down. Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:24, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

To encourage more editors to self-nominate, I offer to the next one to do so a slightly worn copy of Wrestlemania: The Art of Surviving Wikipedia. Beyond My Ken (talk) 19:17, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Primefac wins! Now all I have to do is write the book. Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:28, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Hah! I look forward to receiving it; I've been looking for something to level out my wobbly sofa. Primefac (talk) 02:52, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Well, if you're not going to actually read it, that'll make it much easier to write! Beyond My Ken (talk) 06:23, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Please, will people nominate themselves. If there aren't at least 7 (preferably more) candidates in this race, I'll feel obliged to run again, & I swore I would not be a perennial candidate. (I'd rather be writing articles. Seriously.) -- llywrch (talk) 23:50, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Given the way the question pages tend to run, it is strictly correct from a game-theoretical perspective to nominate oneself on the last day. Stifle (talk) 09:48, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Block review archived without closing

Block review : Linas was archived without closing and should be addressed. To review: indeff-blocked user Linas is evading that block and contributing as IP 67.198.37.16. Ritchie333 asked if the block should be considered lifted. There was some support on the basis that Linas edits in a technically complex area (mathematics) and makes good contributions but opposition due to it being a third-party block review and that the collaboration issues which triggered the original block have never been addressed. It appears that consensus on removing the block is less than clear so the discussion deserves a definitive close. There is also a question of whether to block the IP address if the block review is considered unsuccessful, so the close should be done by an administrator. Thanks in advance. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 19:08, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

There is also a question of whether to block the IP address if the block review is considered unsuccessful looking at the IP's contribs, that would be a completely braindead idea. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:00, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

• You could copy and paste it back here, but it seems obvious that there is no consensus to unblock. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 22:50, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

  There's no consensus to keep the eight-year-old block in place either. Any admin should feel free to unblock the account if s/he feels that the block has outlived its usefulness. Iaritmioawp (talk) 00:36, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

  That too, and personally I don't think there is no consensus to unblock. The opposition admits themselves that they are quite weak, much of it based on procedure, or preferring an explicit commitment from the editor @ AN. Yet, the support is strongly in favour of the unblock. Actions always speak louder than words, and the IP's actions and productive engagement is clear. And I think it's admirable, if anything, that the IP chooses to stay out of this namespace. The only question is whether editing on an IP is better for them than an account. And since they haven't explicitly pushed for an account unblock, perhaps they prefer the IP way of life. So w/e on the block/unblock, but blocking the IP would be total lunacy. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:39, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

  Repeated block evasion is a community ban that needs consensus to overturn. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:50, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

  There has been some mischaracterization of the prior discussion. Nobody admitted their position was "quite weak". There has never been and currently is not an under the radar loophole in WP:BLOCK and indefinite blocks do not expire. Claiming that there needs to be a new consensus to retain an existing block is not supported by any policy or procedure. Neither is this "just" a procedural issue. The issue with Linas is the issue that was part of a large and complex Arbcom RfC - that of unblockables. The classic unblockable is an editor who provides positive contributions of knowledge but negative interpersonal interactions and for other editors rush in to defend when that lack of civility is questioned. This is exactly the case with Linas but it is even more egregious because they are currently evading a block. The question becomes: Is Linas unblockable because they abandoned their account? Do their copious mathematical contributions excuse their block evasion? Are comments like this, this, this, this, etc. forgivable as long as they are contributing to math articles? Does anyone believe that multiple 'crats encouraged block evasion? This is bigger than just Linas. This is the first test I know of the RfC conclusion on unblockables. It deserves an explicit close and not to slink off into the archives without resolution. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 17:21, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

  There are smarter minds than me here, so I'll shut up for a while after this, but I just feel the need to stress that this isn't primarily an academic exercise - that's for WT:Blocking policy. This is about a single editor's case. I think too often (I am guilty of this myself) an error is made where people get so wound up in the philosophy they forget about what we're trying to do here. The editor in question has 6 years of history of articlespace contributions and talkspace discussions as an IP, yet the only problem diffs anyone seems to be able to find are the ones from their user talk, in response to the block, after the editor was blocked, aggravated and near-baited. Linas is far from an unblockable, imo - if they were, this convo wouldn't even be happening. They don't seem to fit any of the criteria in that RfC's discussion, eg premature AN/I closes, non-policy based calls for a boomerang and counter-pile-ons by friends who pop up every time the user is being discussed. Crucifying one editor for the sake of a principle that doesn't seem to even apply to them is silly imo. Admins aren't robots that need to mindlessly apply policy. Nobody needs to lift a finger here unless they think it's in the best interests of the wiki. And I seriously question that any admin can reach that conclusion with the evidence presented. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:29, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

  I think we can agree that, regardless of whether Linas is unjustly persecuted or a serial offender, leaving the issue twisting in the wind is unfair to them and to other editors. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 20:39, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

  @TonyBallioni: I just skimmed the link you sent, and the RfC leading up to it. It says:

To re-iterate two salient themes of the discussion:--

• The CU evidence must be publicly documented.
• Socks tagged solely on basis of behavioural evidence will not be considered under the purview of this upgradation.

This does not apply here, right? The SPI was on behavioural evidence, and not a CU action, seemingly? Indeed, I think it's a violation of the local CU policy to link an IP to a user? Plus, seems like the "master" is not tagged & no notice was left at AN per the second paragraph, dunno if that's still required. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:13, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

I mean, yes, when I wrote the policy proposal it was phrased that way to prevent people who obsess over SPIs and see socks everywhere from declaring people banned based on a hunch. Logged out socking is a bit different since CUs can’t confirm or deny either way. All of our policies are first and foremost based on practice and document what we do. The principle there is that repeated block evasion requires affirmative consensus to unblock. No one is really denying that this is the same person and there’s next to no doubt. If we’re taking a principles based approach rather than a lawyerly approach you’d expect affirmative consensus to unblock. I don’t think when drafting the policy we ever really considered the eventuality of an individual who evades his block long-term on a static IP where no one denies it is him. TonyBallioni (talk) 13:28, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

In other words, you wrote the proposal the way you did to prevent others from doing the exact thing you are doing right now. Nice. Is there any CU evidence? No? Then there's no automatic community ban because the prerequisites ("CheckUser findings must be documented on Wikipedia before a user is considered banned") simply aren't met. Your "there's next to no doubt" is not good enough, period. The practical purpose of 3X was to save us time we'd otherwise have to waste rubber-stamping uncontroversial ban proposals; invoking it in any other context is unhelpful. The discussion here and in the previous thread clearly shows that there would be no consensus to ban Linas from Wikipedia if such a proposal was put on the table—true or false? Iaritmioawp (talk) 05:07, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

@Beeblebrox:, since this is your block from 2012, has anyone pinged you? I don't think so, but there's a lot to read on several pages and I might have missed it, so I apologize if you've already commented somewhere. Anyway, assuming Beeb is willing to let me give it a try, is there any reason I can't just unblock the User:Linas account with the rationale "7 years time served", and then they aren't using an IP to evade a block anymore? Beeb could just as easily have blocked for 1 year, no one would have thought it lenient, and then we wouldn't be having this problem. I'm not saying Linas did everything right here, it's just that this seems excessive and kind of broken and circular. If future problems re-occur, we deal with it. If they don't, yay. Can we cut the knot and try it this way? --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:19, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Is it time served if they have been editing as an IP to evade the block? PackMecEng (talk) 21:41, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Sort of, sort of not. Just trying to show some grace and simplify a complicated problem. --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:44, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

On the one hand, I think it's worth a shot. On the other, it may wind up causing more drama given the lack of a clear consensus. I was content to just ignore the whole thing like we'd been doing for the past few years, but here we are again. — Wug·a·po·des​ 23:58, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

• Thanks for the ping, I was not aware of this. Being so long ago I only vaguely remember this username, so it may take me a moment to get back up to speed and review the current situation. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:07, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

• Now that I've looked into this I will say from the start that I stand behind the original block. I stepped in as an uninvolved admin and warned them to stop making personal attacks, It's arguable that a warning was not necessary at all as they'd already been blocked for that same reason three times previously. Their reaction to that warning (which, to the best of my knowledge was the first time I had ever interacted with them in any capacity) was "Why don't you just fucking stop attacking me, you asshole? " which was enough for me to issue a block, and since previous timed blocks had clearly failed to get the point across, an indef block was the correct choice as far as I'm concerned. All Linas had to do to get unblocked right away was calm down and make a reasonable pledge to stop attacking others. Instead he swung hard in the opposite direction, trying to make it about me, saying I was violent, out of control, drunk on power, and clearly conspiring with some other admin (although he declined to say who, so I actually never did know what that was about.)
• So, that brings us to now. I don't care for the block evasion, but I am willing to make exceptions when the evasion has been more or less entirely positive and the user seems to have managed to fly under the radar by not repeating the mistakes of the past. That shows the ability to learn and to be willing to collaborate with others, and that goes a long way as far as I am concerned.
• What I'd hoped to see, given the number of people who seem to want to help him find a path back to being in good standing, was some indication that they had realized the error of their ways. As far as I can tell, the issue has never been their actual edits, which, even if sometimes in dispute, were made in good faith. The issue has always been their attitude when faced with the slightest criticism. I think the attitude could be summed up as "It's not me, it's you and Wikipedia's toxic culture, and since it is so corrupt and broken there is no need for me to even try to learn the actual rules." And... I'm sorry to say that doesn't look like it's changed.

Given all of the above I'm afraid I do not support unblocking at this time, the standard offer is about as far as I'd be willing to go, and even in that case I'd expect to see a compelling unblock request from Linas, that showed some insight into their own culpability in getting blocked to begin with. From what I've seen in the last hour or so of reviewing all this that doesn't seem very likely. Beeblebrox (talk) 03:05, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

OK, thanks for taking time to review. As a drive-by admin with little time to spend these days, I'm not going to argue, or do anything unilaterally against the desire of the blocking admin. Personally, I think the account should be unblocked, in case someone wants to try to review all these discussions and see if there is consensus for that. If not, I think the fact that they're editing via IP should be ignored. I'm not sure there are any good solutions. --Floquenbeam (talk) 13:52, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

So, the general consensus seems to be that Linas remains indefinitely blocked but the IP address they are editing through is unblocked as long as no admin feels they are disruptive? Sort of double secret indefinite semi-probation? It would be an IAR middle ground, I guess. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 20:04, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Block evasion is block evasion. If this editor wants to contribute, they should post an unblock request from their main account, rather than trying to skirt around it as an IP. If they will not do that, the IP should remain blocked. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 20:52, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

• There was no consensus to unblock in the previous discussion, and given the IP's complete unwillingness to meet anyone even vaguely halfway (they won't even admit they have socked, let alone post an unblock request), Linas should remain blocked. P-K3 (talk) 21:37, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Persistent/Inappropriate use of protection templates by a non-admin user - Temp or perm block of editing privileges

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

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• User:WikiBoyLove - Persistent misuse of protection template(s) for an unprotected page, including disruptive and unsourced edit(s) of living person.
• Incidents - [9], [10], [11], [12] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pseud 14 (talk • contribs) 15:30, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
  •  Not done, this has not been discussed with the editor, they only added it to one article the three times; they very well could be trying to ask for protection and/or not understand how the protection templates work. They have not been approached about this issue (just a generic "don't disrupt" message) so we're nowhere near the amount necessary for any sanctions. Primefac (talk) 15:38, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

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

The editor was a sockpuppet and is now blocked. Doug Weller talk 11:34, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

I was shocked when I saw this that he wasn't immediately blocked for the pro-pedophilia username. So I did. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 03:43, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

discussion archived unclosed

An admin experienced, well-intentioned editor comes in with a valid issue about a chronic behavior problem that she can't deal with herself, showing plenty of diffs PLUS evidence she has tried over the past few months three times to deal with the problem without bringing it to ANI, and because she doesn't keep bumping the discussion, it's now archived. I don't understand why no one helped with this. —valereee (talk) 17:47, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

User:Valereee, Consider bringing back your request from the archive. If you do so, you might suggest an admin action to take. If the case is about tendentious editing and assumptions of bad faith a one-month block seems possible. The editor does not seem to accept any feedback so others would have to decide what to do. There is unlikely to be any negotiated solution. EdJohnston (talk) 18:43, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Ed that you consider unarchiving the discussion and create subsection where you propose a sanction. If there is support then it can be implemented. I have not dived into all the diffs there but I will admit that if both El C and Cullen have declined to block I would be hesitant to do so absent some kind of community consensus (I think no action is as worthy of respect as action). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:34, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

EdJohnston, Barkeep49, thank you, I've reopened and added a section. —valereee (talk) 19:41, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Barkeep49, EI_C has blocked. Cullen has warned and suggested increasing blocks. Girth Summit has warned and suggested increasing gblocks. UTBC has tried their best to explain, as have all three admins. I've tried to explain on multiple occasions. EI_C and GS have gotten busy IRL, and I think Cullen after the wall of text on his page and responding at Girth Summit's has given up. Honestly, look into the diffs. I've not brought anything to ANI in five years as far as I can recall. —valereee (talk) 20:10, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Since you've pinged me, a couple more thoughts. El C blocked once and then seem to have accidentally blocked a second time. But none of this was in your ANI report. With respect, your lack of ANI filing experience is showing; what you wrote makes for better ArbCom than ANI reading. Like I did at my first ANI report, you've included too much detail, making it a little imposing for someone to dive in, and didn't include important facts (like the block). That is, on a meta level, an answer you originally not understanding why no one has helped you. Even "Admin action requested" is not going to be effective as "Block proposed", then proposing a 1 month block, and supporting it as the proposer. I wouldn't encourage anyone to get more ANI experience per se but Wikipedia:ANI advice is useful for any first time or periodic ANI filers. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:34, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Barkeep49, I'm sure you're right. I don't know how to fix that, but advice is much appreciated. What should I do? Should I change the subsection head? Should I add a diff for the block? The discussions at Girth Summit's and Cullen's and EI_C's talk, in addition to the one at UTBC's? I'm open to any help. I'm at the point I'm ready to walk away from this and let someone else discover it later. —valereee (talk) 22:50, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

No one has replied to so I don't see an issue with you changing the section name. And, as I know you know from past experience, sometimes waiting (and sometimes walking away) is all you can do. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:54, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. :D —valereee (talk) 11:57, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Others have already given good advice but I'll add another point. Admins should not expect special treatment at the boards. Plenty of editors open threads which don't result in any action, not even editors saying there's no need for action. There are even threads where there's some minor support for action but not many comments and the thread is archived without action. It's fine for editors to unarchive those threads if they think they were archived prematurely and are hoping something will happen, but all editors including admin need to accept that for a variety of reasons, opening a thread which you feel has enough evidence for action doesn't mean action will result. Nil Einne (talk) 14:24, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Nil Einne, wow, I'm sorry. It didn't occur to me that I was sounding like I was requesting special treatment, but now that you've pointed it out, that's exactly what it sounded like. My apologies; that wasn't actually my intention, but you're right. Thank you for the advice. —valereee (talk) 14:46, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Valereee, I apologize for not commenting sooner, but I have now supported a block and an editing restriction at ANI. Barkeep49, it is not that I "declined" to block or support a block, but rather that I am sometimes slow to decide and I have had a lot on my plate in recent weeks. I encourage participation by others in the ANI discussion. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 19:43, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Cullen328, seriously no apology necessary. I appreciate someone who is slow to decide. I think we all should be slow to decide. I think as this was basically my first 'real' ANI, I just didn't really understand how best to approach it. I've become (slightly) more educated. :) —valereee (talk) 19:46, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

• The thread was unarchived to Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Pasdecomplot in case anyone is looking for it. — Wug·a·po·des​ 03:31, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Global ban proposal for Kubura

Hello. This is to notify the community that there is an ongoing global ban proposal for User:Kubura who has been active on this wiki. You are invited to participate at m:Request for comment/Global ban for Kubura. Thank you. Blablubbs ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:29, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Wow. That is an astonishing case, especially the socking evidence presented by Lasta. —valereee (talk) 10:50, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Indeed. But even apart from the brazen socking affecting stewards elections, the evidence presented in the RfC is pretty shocking, as are the events that already transpired during the RfC itself. There was another attack of the clones/socks (some of them blocked now), and an unhinged nationalistic rant by one of Kubura's supporters that would have earned a quick WP:NOTHERE indef block had it occurred here. But apparently on Meta this kind of thing is considered OK. Another Kubura's supporter from hr.wiki and an active participant in a prior Meta RfC about hr.wiki made a bunch of posts there that look to me like pretty straightforward Holocaust denial, including this post about Jasenovac concentration camp. It's bad enough that WMF allows this stuff to go on at some of the smaller wikis, but I really don't understand why they let this continue at the Meta site itself. Nsk92 (talk) 01:21, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Nsk92, I don't know if you noticed the reaction to MJL's move of extended comment to the talk page? Apparently on meta that's something only admins can do, per recent policy intended to prevent RfCs from going off topic. But the admins seem reluctant to actually do that. —valereee (talk) 14:51, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I did notice this point raised at the RfC talk page. It amazes me that Meta has these kind of policies in place and yet they apparently have few safeguards against blatant nationalistic soapboxing and actual hate speech. It's unclear to me why they allow IPs to vote in those meta RfCs either since in practice this only seems to encourage sock-puppetry and block evasion there. They must not have heard about the paradox of tolerance. Nsk92 (talk) 02:15, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Request for an uninvolved admin to keep tabs on contentious Israel-Palestine AfD

Hello, I recently stated an AfD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/West Bank bantustans. This is obviously a hot topic and I'm neither a regular AfD participant nor an especially frequent editor within the Israel-Palestine conflict area. The new article in question came to my attention via an RfC at Israel. I'm confident that the concerns I've raised warrant an AfD discussion and I'd like to be able to step back from the AfD as far as possible so that this can now happen.

I've been accused of canvassing by a number of editors in favour of retaining the article; this is not the reason that I'm bringing this issue here (I'm quite happy to address the issue directly with the editors in question on my talk page). The problem is that the discussion has been brought to the AfD and I'm concerned that it may negatively effect it, with some of the editors writing at the AfD that a consensus reached there will not be a fair outcome. Some outside guidance, and a pair or two of neutral eyes to moderate the AfD, would be appreciated. Many thanks, Jr8825 • Talk 12:36, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

I've replied to the canvassing claim, I think they may have been confused, but that clearly isn't canvassing. I don't mind keeping an eye on the discussion, but so far it isn't a heated discussion, so probably a bit early to bring to AN. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 12:46, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Apologies if this was premature, I was mostly hoping to have an admin keep tabs on it going forward as it's one of those topic areas where emotions are often running high, and I appreciate you doing so. Thanks again, Jr8825 • Talk 13:01, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

@Jr8825: what should help is that I've added ECP to it as new editors aren't allowed to contribute to AfDs, RfCs, noticeboard discussions, etc. Doug Weller talk 14:07, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Doug Weller - is that a new finding? I thought any user acting in good faith could respond in any such discussion. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:37, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Lee Vilenski Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Palestine-Israel articles 4 which was passed Dec 27 last year. The bit discussing the exception that allows new users to uses talk pages says " This exception does not apply to other internal project discussions such as AfDs, WikiProjects, RfCs, noticeboard discussions, etc." In other words, they can't even edit such discussions here. Doug Weller talk 16:45, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Aye, thanks for that. I found it shortly after the ling (sorry). Presumably the bit about posting talk page messages is exempt on the AfD as well then, as we aren't talking about content? Thanks for clarifying. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:48, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

@Lee Vilenski: I'm not sure what you mean about posting talk page messages - for article (except for an RfC) and personal talk pages yes, but for an AfD talk page, no. Doug Weller talk 19:33, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Request for restore articles titls

This user Jaffer Awan many times warned by other users and blocked by an administrators for 3 hours for moving pages after unblocked they again start moving pages, please stop him and restore all pages back to there old title thanks. Ytpks896 (talk) 19:52, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Ytpks896, I guess General Notability should've blocked this user for a week at least. I have reverted a number of the moves which can be seen here. Many more are left, and it is a difficult to revert these much moves quickly. I'm doing still. Thank you. ─ The Aafī (^talk) 20:18, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

I think he should be blocked for at least one month, He is a new user and He needs to read wikipedia guidelines, Thanks for your help TheAafi. Ytpks896 (talk) 20:32, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

The user has not edited after the expiration of the block. At this point, I see no merit in this request.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:07, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Agreed, the block was intentionally short - just enough to stop the (apparently undiscussed) mass page moves. There is no need for a longer block unless they resume the moves without discussion. GeneralNotability (talk) 21:58, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes. Once the block was done, it should not be lengthened and the user should not be blocked again after the expiry, unless either some other problem is noticed/discovered (e.g sockpuppetry) or the user's behavior after the block was made justifies it. 147.161.13.57 (talk) 01:08, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Are there three trusted admins who can close a contentious dispute?

There's an RFC on WP:RSN about deprecating the Mail on Sunday, the Sunday edition of the Daily Mail. This was raised at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Requests_for_closure#Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#RfC:_Mail_on_Sunday two months ago, but it seems to be regarded as a hot potato nobody wants to risk touching - particularly as it's the sort of question where three admins would be a good idea, not one.

So I wouldn't normally ping AN, but in this case I suspect it needs it. Are there three experienced and uninvolved admins who can take on this one? thanks - David Gerard (talk) 23:08, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

• Having no particular impression of the source one way or the other, and no involvement in the discussion, I'll volunteer for a panel. BD2412 T 23:27, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

  BD2412, unless my quick skim is wrong, this won't require a panel close, just do it. I'll co-sign if necessary. Primefac (talk) 00:00, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

  I'm fine with that. I'll get started. This may take a while. BD2412 T 00:08, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

   Done @Primefac: if you are comfortable co-signing, I would appreciate that. BD2412 T 01:55, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

  I'd say your close is more than sufficient. Primefac (talk) 02:20, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

  Thanks to BD2412 for the close and to Primefac for noting it might not have to be a panel close. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:24, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Independent review

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

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I request an independent review for Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#User:Mirhasanov and User talk:Mirhasanov#November 2020.

The ANI issued by users without providing proper evidences and supported by admin in an organized way following my ban from the topic. I tried my best to justify but, the ban imposed without my participation. I do think that the imposed ban is not fair. Moreover, admin didn't explain me what tban means and he waited me to make a mistake in order to document them and justify his decision. I believe admins must guide users not trick them. Considering all unfair action conducted by admin, I am asking an independent person who can help sort the dispute.Mirhasanov (talk) 23:28, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

This is the person who thinks that the Armenian genocide hasn't been proven. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:59, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

• Not seeing anything that shows TBAN inappropriate. Of course, the inability to see the reasonableness of the TBAN might argue in favor of the TBAN. Would welcome more eyes in case I missed something as I haven't the time to look more closely. there s a tl;dr aspect. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 05:13, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
• @Rosguill: I too have only looked quickly, but where was this editor notified of the tban? I've skimmed through your contribs around the date and don't see any relevant edits around the time you edited Wikipedia:Arbitration enforcement log/2020, nor any notification at user's talk of the tban itself? I may just be being very blind here... ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 05:34, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
  • To add, I see only one edit on said user's talk (and that was the block for Special:Diff/988886310, not the tban itself). The editor should probably have been notified on their talk, per Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Discretionary_sanctions#sanctions.notice. No comment on the merits of the ban, may well be appropriate. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 05:41, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
    • This is why I don't do DS. Too complicated. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 05:55, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

      To be fair, I think the notification is fairly important, along with info on the appeal process (The enforcing administrator must provide a notice on the sanctioned editor’s talk page specifying the misconduct for which the sanction has been issued as well as the appeal process.) Merits of ban aside, a sanctioning admin cannot be frustrated when the editor comes to their talk after not being given information on how else they can appeal. Next concern is whether the ban meets the uninvolved requirement, per activity + talk activity in the specific page, plus statement in Special:Diff/988089090, indicates a discretionary sanction may not be appropriate here. One cannot simultaneously do the content and the admining. Even if the decision is correct, it removes the appearance of impartiality and fairness. I assume, and expect, I'm missing some context here though. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 06:07, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

      My bad on not placing a formal notification. By the time I realized that it was required, Mirhasanov had already directly addressed the ban so I figured that it would only be condescending to place it. As for involvement, I've essentially been keeping the peace at 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war and consider my role there to be primarily as an admin. I have given my opinion when asked for it in order to guide editors toward constructive solutions, and have no personal stake in the subject matter. The amount of content that I have actually added to the page (not including content added as the result of a consensus among other editors and answered edit requests) is minimal.

      The ban itself was following the ANI discussion, where I offered my opinion that Mirhasanov was a net negative at 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, suggested a tban, and was going to leave it at that. Nobody else ended up speaking in Mirhasanov's defense, and the thread ended up archived automatically without resolution. Following the thread's archiving and prompting by the editor that had opened the thread, I figured that between the discussion at ANI and standard DS measures, blocking was the correct decision. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 06:35, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

• Just a reminder to all that WP:BURO exists, and that it's more important that the right result be reached than that everything is neatly filled out in triplicate and filed with the home office in Watsessing. The TB and block seem to me to be the right result, and I endorse both. Beyond My Ken (talk) 06:41, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

  Well, it's not about buro; seemingly the editor still, currently, understands neither why they were sanctioned, or their options to appeal. I don't know anything about this complex topic to recognise POV, though, so if Rosguill feels they are sufficiently uninvolved and the ban is necessary, and so do multiple editors in the topic area, that's good enough for me. To resolve the first concern at least, am I correct in thinking the TLDR for the ban is: too much talk page drama and POV, with minimal contribution to prose? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 07:14, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

  ProcrastinatingReader, am I correct in thinking the TLDR for the ban is: too much talk page drama and POV, with minimal contribution to prose?, yes, with the clear intent to POVPUSH being the more relevant concern than the drama. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 08:18, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

• The OP posted this to the AN/I thread. I'm moving it here. Beyond My Ken (talk) 09:00, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Dears, Deepfriedokra, Beyond My Ken, ProcrastinatingReader, First of all thank you very much for reviewing my case. I was not able to post it in Incident board for some reason, therefore I am posting it here. With your permission I would like again start my defence against Rosguill's ban decision. His justification to consider me net negative are based on below points:

1. Comments regarding the inclusion of content about ethnic violence the Background section here [13]

I informed the user Armatura, who is initiator of my ban request by the way, not to include Genocide Watch statements as the source is unproven and issued bias report. This was eventually proved as Genocide Watch removed these reports from their official site. The point is they were also trying to include Armenian Genocide topic and issue completely pro-Armenian information in the article. I reiterated the fact that we shouldn't use the word of "genocide" wherever we can and avoid such statements that accuses the other side in genocide or potential genocide. Moreover, I added that the Armenian Genocide is only recognized by 32 countries and denial of it still can't be accepted same as The Holocaust and justified that other side support killings of innocent people, as the authors try to draw this picture. However, I also see same sentiment here between some admins taking my comments as personal. I again would like ask those admins to drop review of my case if they think that my vision denial of Armenian genocide can be justified to ban me totally from the Nagorno-Karabakh war topic.

Conclusion of the point : Lately, Genocide Watch issued another statement for favour of Azerbaijan side, because of multiple protest email sent to them. In the end they decided to remove the both statement. I was right with my scepticism against Genocide Watch and they proved it with deletion of statements.

2. Offsite coordination with other pro-Azerbaijan editors

I don't refuse the fact that I have tried to contact with relevant pro-Azerbaijan editors but, it never happened. The only reason for this was dominant pro-Armenian content in the article which Rosguill him/herself confirmed it here and encouraged me to act bold and change it [14].

Conclusion of the point: Even the indentation to conducted a meeting can be considered negative, it didn't affect unbiased content of my suggestions. Following my conversations here , , , , , you can clearly see that I am following consensus process and actively contributing to the process.

By referring to these two points only, Rosguill decides that I must be banned from discussion in Talk page, while no single thing I have done breaks a red line rule, he had mentioned. If you would check article itself, all points I was sceptic about were deleted, even though I don't have any privilege to edit on this page, which means I was right with my challenges. Moreover, instead of informing me in a proper way and explain what Tban means, he proceed with this decision, banned me and then after my comments on the page he document them against me to completely block me from the page. I several time asked him proper justification of his decision because provided evidences doesn't show that I created destructive discussion. In the end again I would like to thank to all of you for your time. I know how time consuming is this process and I appreciate it. Sincerely, Mirhasanov (talk) 08:45, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

• @Mirhasanov: Did the Armenian genocide, as understood by the consensus of historians and described in our article, occur, yes or no? Beyond My Ken (talk) 09:05, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

• @Beyond My Ken: I didn't understand the context of your question. Could you please be more specific? Mirhasanov (talk) 09:11, 16 November 2020 (UTC

• No. My question was clear and concise, and your obfuscatory answer I take as being, essentially, a "No". Therefore, I stand by my endorsement of an AA2 topic ban, and the block that has been imposed on you, and would also support an indef block or a site ban. I don't think we need or want you here, you should be posting to some ultra-partisan anti-Armenian blog. Beyond My Ken (talk) 11:31, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

• As an editor also participating in this topic area, I thought I'd provide some context for admins reviewing this and voice my support for Rosguill's actions. While Mirhasanov makes a fair point that many (in fact most) other editors on the talk pages surrounding the conflict are emotionally connected/invested in the conflict, I agree with Rosguill that Mirhasanov contributions to discussions have been unfailingly partisan and don't indicate an ability (or willingness) to follow our NPOV policies on this subject. Rosguill explained their reasoning at AN/I extensively, twice, and Girth Summit pointed out during that discussion that a topic ban was justified by Mirhasanov's refusal to acknowledge or consider these comments. Mirhasanov's continued inability to see why a topic ban was suggested and implemented shows that they currently lack the required competence to edit in a such a contentious area.

A small number of uninvolved editors and a high number of new editors closely connected to the topic has meant that Armenia-Azerbaijan talk pages have been loosely policed. There have been some completely inappropriate comments on genocide denial and ethnic hatred at Talk:2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war; Rosguill has rather stoically been trying to keep the peace. The difference between Mirhasanov and other editors is that Mirhasanov hasn't shown any willingness to apologise or take back inappropriate comments, or constructively work with editors on the other side, or read up and learn more about the genocides they deny (which some other editors appear to have done). The fact Mirhasanov has ended up in this situation, when a number of editors engaged in borderline battleground behaviour have not, speaks volumes. And, additionally, my view is that editors who openly deny a genocide are inherently unsuitable to participate in topics closely related to it.

While Mirhasanov may not have been given the appropriate 'official' notification under DS, I'm highly sceptical that they were unaware of their tban, as the AN/I discussion mentioned a topic ban several times and Rosguill even put it in bold. Jr8825 • Talk 10:32, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

• I still don't understand: Where exactly was the topic ban imposed? Can someone provide a diff of an edit by Rosguill which imposed the topic ban? The discussion above leaves this question unclear. Nsk92 (talk) 11:56, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

  Here and here, I think? Actually I can see from the discussion that the topic ban was supposedly implemented before this. Jr8825 • Talk 12:35, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

  • Yes, I am still confused. There is a log entry at Wikipedia:Arbitration enforcement log#2020 which says: "Mirhasanov is topic banned indefinitely from AA2 per this discussion at ANI". But I can't find anything in the ANI thread which actually says that this AA2 topic ban is being imposed. Nsk92 (talk) 12:51, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
    • Rosguill: Could you please clarify in which specific edit you have imposed the AA2 topic ban on Mirhasanov? I am still unable to find it in the ANI thread. Thanks, Nsk92 (talk) 16:38, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

      Nsk92, my understanding at the time was that adding it to the log was imposing the ban. While I neglected to immediately leave a talk page template about it, Mirhasanov received a ping from the addition to the DS log and made comments objecting to the ban imposition at the ANI archive page where the discussion had been archived. Levivich then helpfully de-archived the discussion to ANI, at which point I responded to a few rounds of questions from Mirhasanov. Mirhasanov kept at it at ANI after I said that I was done asking questions, and eventually went back to editing Talk:2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. At that point, I partially blocked them from the page in question. While I could have done a better job notifying them up front, at this point they were clearly aware of the ban, and my partially blocking them was merely enforcing the terms of the ban with no punitive measures beyond what would be covered by a tban from AA2 (a punitive measure would have been fully blocking them, preventing them from editing pages outside of AA2 as well). _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:07, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Dears,

• Beyond My Ken Your provocative approach and response clearly shows your intention and doesn't help the process. I would give you a friendly advice to conduct more constructive approach instead of starting your judgement with accusations and aggression. This is admin page and I do expect all admins are chosen based on their merits to conduct constructive dialog and involvement without their emotions. Thanks in advance.

Jr8825 I am sorry but we are losing context here. You may think that it was genocide and this is your conclusion. I wouldn't argue with this at all, but my point about 1915 events being tragic event that not only happened to Armenians, also includes Kuds, Turks, Assyrians and other minorities, doesn't mean that I am wrong or hostile and it can't be basis to ban me. Again, I would like to reiterate that the terminology of "genocide" itself appeared after WWII.

Specifically for you I would like to give one more example that you are currently involved to find concensus under this topic where pro- Armenian users trying to show ethinc massacares conducted by both side but calling violances against Armenians as massacare, but pogroms conducted against Azeris, they wan use word of "violence".

You are currently discussing exactly same sentence that I was discussing under this link . Where I suggested to use the following sentence for more balanced description of background events:

Ethnic violence in the region began in the late 1980s, and the region descended into a war following the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. As a result both sides have conducted series crimes on an ethnic basis against each other, that eventually lead to pogroms and mass deportation of Armenians and Azerbaijanis from major cities.

However, my suggestion even was not discussed and without consensus the sentence was published in article by pro-Armenian users. That was the reason I thanked you, where you were underpinning their illegal action and reminding them that, "Removing links to our articles on two acts of violence against Azerbaijanis, leaving only links to attacks against Armenians and one mention of violence (when it was clearly widespread), would result in a skewed narrative".

My words and action under NK-2020 and here speaks about my good will. What I do care is a balanced article in wikipedia. I have seen many articles about Armenian-Azerbaijan topic that edited by pro-Armenian users, because they were good at complaining and using weak points in wikipedia rules. I was reported by Armatura, if you will check his activities under this page, you will be able to find more violence of wikipedia rules than under my comments or involvement. I am not going to report him anyway because I believe that Rosguill sooner or later will do it.

In the end I would like appreciate Rosguill for his time and efforts that he is using under NK-2020 topic in order to issue more balanced and unbiased article. He is in the middle of emotional writers, which reminds me my military service, where I tried protect jews from muslims and muslims from jews, because I belonged to both of them and didn't wanted anyone to get hurted because of aggressive individuals. I hope Rosguill will be able to keep same balance, will properly identify aggressive users and eliminate them in order protect other editors. I would like all other admins to support him in this effort. Having said that, I would like to conclude my defence.

Sincerely,Mirhasanov (talk) 17:17, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

References

• The discretionary sanctions processes are bureaucratic for good reasons, largely because they're above and beyond the tools normally available for individual administrators to address problematic behaviour in the most controversial topics. Users are required to be given specific discretionary sanction alerts (Mirhasanov was, here), and administrators are required by the procedure to advise a user on their talk page when they are subject to discretionary sanction enforcement ({{AE sanction/topicban}} exists just for this) which Rosguill did not do before parblocking them under the auspices of arbitration enforcement. Telling them they're banned in an edit at ANI is not good enough for a DS ban to be enforceable, and the block is a bad one, purely procedurally. That being said I don't think this is good enough to overturn the sentiment of the ANI thread and nothing that's been written here convinces me that a topic ban is not a valid response; Mirhasanov should be banned properly, but we can't enforce a DS ban that was not properly executed, nor should we enforce any restrictions retroactively. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 18:09, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
  • I agree with Ivanvector that procedurally the topic ban was bungled and bungled rather badly, although on the merits it was certainly justified. In fact Rosguill's response to my inquiry above makes it clear that the procedure here was mishandled even more significantly than it first appears. Mirhasanov was not in fact told about his AA2 topic ban at the ANI thread. Instead Rosguill logged the AA2 topic ban in the DS sanctions log page and pinged Mirhasanov when doing that. That is not a sufficient way of notifying somebody about an AE topic ban, or any topic ban for that matter. You are supposed to tell the editor being sanctioned directly what kind of editing their are now prohibited from engaging in. In case of DS topic bans there are additional mandatory requirements, as explained in Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Discretionary_sanctions#sanctions.notice, including user talk page notification: "The enforcing administrator must provide a notice on the sanctioned editor’s talk page specifying the misconduct for which the sanction has been issued as well as the appeal process." It's one of the very few times where any rule on Wikipedia uses the word "must" instead of "should". In this case, this very thread exists largely because Mirhasanov was not explained the appeals processs. Otherwise the matter would have most likely went to WP:AE where it properly belongs. IMO, the original AA2 topic ban and the resulting page block should be vacated as improperly imposed. Then, indeally, a previously uninvolved admin should review the situation and re-impose those sanctions, with new start dates/times. Nsk92 (talk) 18:40, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
    • Or, rather, the AA2 topic ban should be re-imposed with a new start date/time. The page block for 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war should just be lifted. If Mirhasanov violates a properly reimposed topic ban by editing at that page, then a page editing block could be placed again. Nsk92 (talk) 18:55, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
      • Nsk92 (talk) I just couldn't grab the logic. Could you please help me to understand as I am not good with terminologies of wikipedia. Please note that I never had any privilege to edit anything in this topic. I only participated in Talk page. Is adding anything in talk page considered editing? If yes, what is the difference then lifting AA2 and not allowing me to participate in Talk page of 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war?Mirhasanov (talk) 19:05, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
        • Mirhasanov: Under an AA2 topic ban, assuming that it is imposed properly, you would not be allowed to make any edits to any articles covered by the topic ban as well as to the talk pages of those articles. That means, in particular, that you would not be allowed to edit the page 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war and the talk page of this article. An actual page editing block is a more drastic restriction which physically prevents you from saving any edits to those pages. (That's the restriction you currently have for 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war and its talk page.) But even without a page editing block, with an AA2 topic ban in place you are still not supposed to edit 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war or any other Armenia-Azerbaijan pages, talk pages, AfDs, project pages etc, or to discuss Armenia-Azerbaijan topics at any other pages, including user talk pages. See WP:TBAN for an explanation of how topic bans work. If you do violate a topic ban while you are subject to it, you may receive a more severe sanction, such as a WP:BLOCK. Note that if this current WP:AN thread does not result in a definitive conclusion, you still have the option of filing an appeal of the original topic ban, and the resulting 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war page block, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement. In fact, that was supposed to be your default destination for appealing arbitration enforcement actions, rather than coming to WP:ANI, WP:AN, WP:BN, etc. At WP:AE there is a specific well-defined process for considering all appeal requests that always results in a definitive conclusion (which is not the case at other venues). If you do file an appeal at WP:AE, you'll need to read the instructions at the top of that page carefully first, as the process is fairly complicated. Nsk92 (talk) 19:51, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

          I believe it is broader than just articles and their talk pages. It's all pages, including templates, portals, etc. Plus, adding/modifying any content related to the topic area in articles which are themselves not about the topic area. (see WP:TBAN) ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:11, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

          • Yes, of course, you are correct, it is all pages and all content related to the topic covered by the topic ban. My list was supposed to provide typical examples of what's covered. Mirhasanov seems to be a fairly inexperienced user and until his recent brush with various noticeboards, the only pages he edited seem to have been articles, article talk pages and user talk pages. Doesn't seem likely that he'll branch out to editing portals and templates soon. Nsk92 (talk) 20:28, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

    If nothing else, @Mirhasanov: since it appears even the diff that you were pinged to doesn't have the link and reading above it seems you may not be completely sure, a "topic ban" is explained at WP:TBAN. Ivanvector links the template above, but have a read of {{AE sanction/topicban}} for information on what this ban entails. The reason for the ban Rosguill gave in response to my question above. Piece everything together and you should be able to construct the standard set of information you would've received for a DS topic ban.

    As I say above, I agree the sanction itself perhaps doesn't need to be vacated, but Rosguill, especially given the editor did not have this information, and the last sentence of the template is You are free to contact me on my talk page if anything of the above is unclear to you., maybe when the editor does that the first response to them shouldn't contain and have nothing further to say to you. When one imposes a discretionary sanction, they have to endure some level of reasonable questioning about it. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 19:15, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

    ProcrastinatingReader, sure, that was a mistake. The disciplinary case as a whole skirted the line between "standard ANI complaint" and "DS case", and I messed up by invoking DS and then assuming that ANI norms would apply. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 19:22, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

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

WP:INVOLVED question

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

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I tried to inform User:Necrothesp on their user talk page that an action they took seemed to violate WP:INVOLVED, but they insist that they were not involved and that my claim is ludicrous. I am not asking for a reversal of any action or for any sanction, just for the informed opinions as to whethet their action fall under "Incolved" or not.

History:

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1989 Swiss Army order of battle (2nd nomination), Keep vote, 7 October 2020 (closed as delete)
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Structure of the Austrian Armed Forces in 1989, Keep vote, 19 October 2020 (closed as delete)

Ongoing:

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Territorial Army units (2012), Keep vote, 12 November 2020
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of British Regular Army regiments (1994), Keep vote, 12 November 2020
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of British Army Reserve Units (2020), Keep vote, 12 November 2020

Then the involved action, the restoration of the deleted List of British Army Regiments (2008), 12 November 2020: followed by Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of British Army Regiments (2008), Keep vote, 13 November 2020.

I tried to discuss this at User talk:Necrothesp#Involved, to no avail. Can someone please enlighten us whether this restoration is indeed an involved action or not? I wouldn't be here if the defense was "yes, I'm involved, but I consider it uncontroversial", but the claim of "no, I'm not involved" seems too farfetched, and worrying. Fram (talk) 13:37, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Prodding is for uncontroversial deletion only. This clearly was not uncontroversial. It had slipped under the radar and I restored it as I believed it should be taken to full discussion at AfD and not simply disappear into the aether. The fact I have an interest in this subject area or even that I do not believe these articles should be deleted is irrelevant. AfD is the appropriate place for discussing such deletions and it has now been taken there. I certainly do not see facilitating discussion as conflicting with my role as an admin. In fact, I see it as part of that role. The problem with prodding is that it allows no discussion. That's why it is explicity and clearly stated that it is only to be used for uncontroversial discussion, that any editor can remove a prod and that any admin can restore an article deleted after prodding. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:48, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

• Just to be clear, from a non-admin POV, Necrothesp did something above and beyond just removing the PROD tag, yes? SportingFlyer T·C 13:50, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
  • I restored an article that had been deprodded (and which I had never been involved with before), as WP:PROD specifically states I am entitled to do (An administrator may decide on their own to restore a page that has been deleted after a proposed deletion without having to make the request at Requests for undeletion.). I do not think that WP:INVOLVED is relevant to correcting an article inappropriately deleted without discussion. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:53, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
    • WP:INVOLVED is relevant for any admin action. Any admin is also allowed to close AfDs and delete the articles, unless you are involved. Any admin is allowed to act on AIV reports and block editors, unless you are involved. That's the golden rule of all admin work; only use it when you are not involved. Voting keep in 5 AfDs for clearly related articles, including 3 on the same day, makes you involved. Fram (talk) 14:01, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
      • I wouldn't dream of closing an AfD in which I'm involved. This is a completely different issue. It's merely facilitating discussion. Which is a good thing, surely. I question the logic of claiming that WP:INVOLVED simply covers an admin's area of interest or expertise. I comment on many AfDs relating to military articles. Does that mean I'm not allowed to act as an admin on any related articles, even when it's as obvious as restoring an incorrectly prodded article? That's taking WP:INVOLVED too far. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:04, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
        • You surely can see the difference between a broad subject as "the army", and 6 closely related articles on order of battles, and more directly 4 closely related articles on British army units in a given year, where you voted "keep" in 3 of them, restored the 4th one, and then voted "keep" in that fourth one the next day? "Facilitating discussion" is a good thing, but we have a method for this for the two groups of editors who don't get to restore prods: non-admins, and involved admins. I don't doubt your intentions here, but good intentions don't mean that you can just ignore wp:involved and/or claim that you aren't involved (your defense seem to switch between the two positions a lot). Fram (talk) 14:09, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
          • What you're saying seems to my mind to be rather contradicting WP:COMMONSENSE. If my intentions were good (which they clearly were), discussion is good (which it clearly is) and I wasn't abusing my position (which I clearly wasn't), then why are you insisting that some sort of rule applies that would make it far more complex to do what I did? -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:15, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
• I'm not sure it's actually written down anywhere, but to my mind WP:INVOLVED doesn't apply if the only action is to restore a page deleted via WP:PROD. Since we explicitly allow anyone to contest a proposed deletion nomination, I would say restoring the page is well within the intent of the authors of WP:PROD. Literally the point of that process is that if there's any opposition, the deletion doesn't go ahead and instead it goes for further discussion; in this case, the opposition has just come a little later than normal. (If we really need to do things by the book, then somebody re-delete the page in question, I'll undelete the page as someone who's undoubtedly unconnected to the topic and couldn't care in the slightest, and everyone's honor will have been served.) ‑ Iridescent 14:19, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
  • No, please don't redelete and restore it. The question is not what to do about this already restored one, but what to do when Necrothesp or others find themselves in the same position: claim "I'm not involved" (like Necrothesp does), claim "I'm involved, but this action is allowed anyway" (which seems to be your position), or claim "I'm involved, so I'll go to WP:REFUND instead". I don't care whether two or three is preferred (well, I would argue for 3, but no problem with 2 if that is the consensus), my issue is with the "well, it's a different article, so I'm not WP:Involved here", which seems false and which you don't really address. Fram (talk) 14:25, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
    • To confirm that of your options I think (2) is the one that applies here. Although restoring a page deleted via WP:PROD is technically an admin action in that it requires the admin toolset, it falls under routine maintenance (since it would have been performed without question had a request been submitted at WP:REFUND even if the undeleting admin personally felt it wouldn't have been kept), and as such it shouldn't be considered an admin action for WP:INVOLVED purposes, any more than fixing a broken link on a protected page would be. ‑ Iridescent 14:32, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
      • Thanks. Fram (talk) 14:37, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
• I agree with Iridescent; there's not really a question of administrator judgment when it comes to a PROD. They can be (and are) restored at any time, for almost any reason. Mackensen (talk) 14:52, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
• I understand Fram's objection; probably best practices would have been (3). But since it's just a hoop to jump through, I probably wouldn't quibble over (2) for future situations. —valereee (talk) 15:24, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
• If it is determined that someone undeleting the article in question is fine (i.e. there is no request for reversal here, and if someone else had done the undeletion there would be no objection), then functionally Necrothesp did nothing wrong or objectionable; 1 and 2 are functionally equivalent (using the numbers noted above), being "involved" means "I shouldn't have done this", and if there is no objection to the results, we should not worry too much about the action. I may decided differently on more contentious issues like closing a 50/50 discussion that could go either way, or blocking a user, but this is such a minor issue I don't understand why there's a hub-bub about it. It's making mountains out of molehills. --Jayron32 16:51, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
  • Would you also be fine with an admin closing an AfD and deleting an article if they had voted in the AfD, even if the AfD was unanimous? I thought that that was an uncontroversial rule, that admins should never do this, even though the end result is what would have happened anyway. Admins (or so I thought) were supposed to be neutral parties, and should avoid even the appearance of using tools in cases they are involved in. Furthermore, admins (or again, so I thought), should be able to judge conservatively when and where they are involved in, and avoid giving even the appearance of not caring about this. In this case, the admin flat out denies even being involved with the issue, making the question of whether an involved action was acceptable moot. Oh well, apparently the mores are less strict than I imagined or remembered. Fram (talk) 17:06, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

    That would be inappropriate, but I think the key difference here is that AfD involves determining consensus. An administrator can theoretically close against a unanimous !vote (it's been done, it's wild). There's no consensus-determining process in PROD, either with deletion or undeletion. That's the whole point. It can be reversed at any time. WP:INVOLVED requires a dispute, and there is no dispute. Mackensen (talk) 17:14, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

• I believe this specific situation was mooted when Iridescent said they would - essentially - take responsibility for the undelete, thereby taking Necrothesp off the hook. It looks like the above discussion seems to agree it was such a small violation of INVOLVED as to be nothing more than a technicality. I move that this be closed, but a meta-discussion should be opened on the appropriate WP-talk page, if one is so inclined. Rgrds. --Bison X (talk) 17:52, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
• This falls under the "any admin would do the same" exemption in WP:INVOLVED (paraphrasing from memory). Any good-faith WP:REFUND request to restore a PRODded article is automatically accepted; it's nonsense to force a user capable of performing the undeletion themselves to bother another administrator with an automatic-yes request. It's bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 18:17, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
• That "involved admin" section does not apply anyway, as it applies to disputes or controversial actions. And as others have stated reversing a PROD is not counted as a controversy, and is (almost) always allowed. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:23, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
• A question to which the answer is clearly "no". Administrators should not act in disputes in which they have been involved. Where was the dispute concerning the article that was restored? --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 01:13, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
  • A series of AfDs on very closely related articles, in which the admin has participated with a clear opinion (no problem there)? This looked like textbook involvedness to me, in which case even uncontroversial edits should be avoided. I get the answer from some people that yes, they were involved, but no, that's not a problem in this case. That's why I from the start didn't ask for a reversal or sanctions or anything, but for clarification. I don't get the "no, they weren't involved" answers though. If this doesn't count as being involved, then what does? Fram (talk) 08:21, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
    • What happened to: In straightforward cases (e.g., blatant vandalism), the community has historically endorsed the obvious action of any administrator – even if involved – on the basis that any reasonable administrator would have probably come to the same conclusion? Any administrator with any knowledge of the subject would indeed have come to the same conclusion - that this was not an uncontroversial deletion and therefore should not have been prodded in the first place. I do not consider that I was involved in this article in any way except in my knowledge of and interest in the subject area (commenting on similar AfDs is irrelevant to this article), but even if I had been, this surely covers my actions. -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:15, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
      • Nothing happened to that, that part has been covered already at this discussion. The problem is your claim that you are not involved because "(commenting on similar AfDs is irrelevant to this article)"; in that view, you could close any AfDs for these articles unless you had commented (or deprodded) on that specific article. It doesn't work that way, once you have shown a clear position in these AfDs, once you have indicated your opinion on the content, you should consider yourself involved. Your opinion is then clouded, and should not be trusted to use the admin tools neutrally. That you still consider yourself as uninvolved on this article is truly worrying, after having made comments like "Ah, the last desperate flounders of someone who really, really wants something to be deleted and knows it probably isn't going to be. "[15] (this was a response to my statement on your non-policy based keep, and the AfD closed as delete eventually).
      • "I do not consider that I was involved in this article in any way" is an extremely narrow reading of what makes someone involved. "In general, editors should not act as administrators in disputes in which they have been involved. This is because involved administrators may have, or may be seen as having, a conflict of interest in disputes they have been a party to or have strong feelings about. Involvement is generally construed very broadly by the community, to include current or past conflicts with an editor (or editors), and disputes on topics, regardless of the nature, age, or outcome of the dispute." (emphasis mine). If you have voted along the same lines in all recent discussions about similar articles, including 3 very closely related ones on the very same day, then you are involved with this topic in general, including the article you restored, no discussion. That you were allowed or correct to restore it despite your involvement is a defensible position, as I have repeatedly indicated above. That you still claim to be uninvolved is a serious problem though. Fram (talk) 10:05, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
        • That you still consider yourself as uninvolved on this article is truly worrying... Really? Odd, since most other commenters here seem to agree with me. In general, editors should not act as administrators in disputes in which they have been involved. Correct. But as other commenters have pointed out, where was the dispute? Deleting a prod or restoring an article deleted after a prod is not a dispute. It's merely pointing out that deletion is not uncontroversial and if the prodder still wants it deleted it should be taken to AfD for full discussion. There's no dispute involved. You are clearly misinterpreting WP:INVOLVED and expressing concern that I (and others, it would appear) don't agree with you. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:09, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
          • So a discussion about content isn't a dispute? AfDs are a dispute about what to do with article content, and you had clearly taken a side in that dispute. CLaiming that "there is no dispute" is simply strange. Fram (talk) 10:20, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
            • No, there was no dispute over the article prodded. I should also point out, for the record, that you have yourself voted delete on every one of the articles cited above except this particular one and have actually been the proposer of two of them for deletion. Your refusal to accept the legitimacy of my action, although it is accepted by other commenters here, is looking less than neutral. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:25, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
              • I never claimed to be neutral or uninvolved. I already indicated that I participated in these AfDs. I also from the start indicated that I didn't dispute that, even as an involved editor, you could restore it (though I disagree that it is a smart thing to do, and for appearances sake it is better left to others). And I notice that while some editors completely agree with you, some others here have agreed that while you were allowed to restore this even as an involved editor, you were nevertheless involved (e.g. Valereee and Iridescent). Just like I would be involved if I were an admin and e.g. had closed the AfD for this particular one as "delete", even though I had not been involved with this article or AfD. My participation in other, very similar discussions (and at the same time) would make me involved. Fram (talk) 11:07, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
• My two cents: I do not see that Necrothesp violated any policies or guidelines by undeleting the PRODded article. The first line in WP:INVOLVED states "In general, editors should not act as administrators in disputes in which they have been involved." It doesn't sound like there was any dispute here about that article, except that it was deleted under PROD (in which case, it would have to be restored in any case). WP:INVOVLED goes on to state: "In straightforward cases (e.g., blatant vandalism), the community has historically endorsed the obvious action of any administrator – even if involved – on the basis that any reasonable administrator would have probably come to the same conclusion." Restoring a PRODded article is straightforward, our guidelines are clear that a PRODded article can be undeleted at any time, for nearly any reason. I think you'd be hard pressed to find any administrator who wouldn't restore that article if requested to, as such whether or not Necrothesp is "involved" by expressing opinions in this specific topic area is frankly irrelevant. This all seems very clear to me...unless I'm missing something glaringly obvious? Waggie (talk) 02:28, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
• As mentioned...I'm not sure where the objection is coming from, since this is, as clearly stated above, explicitly allowed in the PROD rules. As such this really should be closed. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 00:01, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

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

Reversal of revdel

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

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I request restoration of the revisions of Abortion in Hong Kong from 09:45, 15 November 2020. They are copyvio free. It is wrong for User: Diannaa to claim that there was copyvio content from https://www.fhs.gov.hk because those identical words were lifted from the laws, NOT fhs's original content. Inclusion of a small portion of the exact legal text is necessary for this topic. It is also wrong to claim there was copyvio from the pubmed article because I had written my own passage based on the sources quoted. Data from https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/201706/28/P2017062800481.htm are not copyrightable either.--RZuo (talk) 16:29, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

For the record, Diannaa was never asked about this revdel nor was she informed of this discussion. I have taken care of the latter. Primefac (talk) 16:44, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

She was, since I hotlinked her username.--RZuo (talk) 16:48, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

There are two gigantic notices (one on the page itself, one as an edit notice) that say that's not sufficient. Primefac (talk) 16:49, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

This section is not about an editor, but about an action (revdel), in case you didnt realise.--RZuo (talk) 16:52, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

An action done by a user, who has the right to defend it. 109.186.211.111 (talk) 16:55, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Indeed. It was Diannaa's revdel, so she has every right to state her case. Otherwise, we'd be wheel warring. Primefac (talk) 16:56, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

The fhs content is under copyright, and pubmed has not published that piece, it's just hosting the abstract - copyright belongs to Data Asia. As near as I can tell no content was removed that was originally at info.gov.hk. Primefac (talk) 16:56, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

It has been made very clear at this section and at Talk:Abortion in Hong Kong that there was no more copyvio content from fhs starting from the revision at 09:45, 15 November 2020. The identical phrases in wiki and the fhs page are short segments of the legal text, inclusion of which is acceptable. There are countless examples of quoting such legal text even though crown copyright exists.--RZuo (talk) 17:10, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Quotations need quotation marks. Without them, it's a copypaste of copyright material and subject to removal under our copyright policy.— Diannaa (talk) 19:54, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Quotations need quotation marks. False. On this wikipedia alone there are numerous examples of quoting crown-copyrighted laws without quotation marks: all these articles in Template:English criminal law, for example Criminal damage in English law. On the other hand, it was abundantly clear that the segments were from the Ordinance even without using quotation marks.

I did not quote or copy from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12262369/ either. I rewrote the entire paragraph but now my work is destroyed. Your claim that I copied and violated copyright could not stand if every user can see my paragraph and compare.--RZuo (talk) 20:23, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

I will make you a side-by-side comparison when I get back from the grocery store.— Diannaa (talk) 20:36, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

RZuo, While you are technically correct that quotations do not always need quotation marks, I read that as casually indicating that quotations must be identified. One way is through quotation marks and another way is with a block quote. In either case, citations are necessary. You can read more here: Wikipedia:Quotations which is technically an essay but accepted by many editors as appropriate guidance. Here is the relevant section:

Quotations must always be clearly identified as such using double quotation marks ("quoted text") for quotations shorter than about 40 words. For quotations longer than 40 words, use the HTML tag

like this around quoted material

or the template {{Quote}}, which has optional parameters to include citations. Both of these methods set text apart from non-quoted material. You don't need to add quotation marks when using the <blockquote> tag or the template {{quote}}.

If I'm following (and I may not have caught everything), the material you added was copied from a copyrighted source, but the specific information you wanted to include was the exact legal text. It is true that the text of laws is usually an exception to the usual copyright restrictions, but if you include material from a law, the citation should be to the law not to a copyrighted article that incorporates wording from the law. As I mentioned I'm looking at this quickly and happy to be corrected if I've misunderstood. S Philbrick(Talk) 22:19, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Government works (including legislation) are copyright in many countries. Please see Commons:Copyright rules by territory/Hong Kong which says that government works in Hong Kong enjoy copyright protection for 125 years. Regardless, the source web pages are not legislation, they are informational pages put out by the Hong Kong government and a copyright journal article. The side-by-side comparison is now available at User talk:RZuo#Abortion in Hong Kong - side by side comparison. — Diannaa (talk) 22:41, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Truth is:

1. Some web pages quoted Cap. 212 Offences against the Person Ordinance.
2. I quoted Cap. 212 Offences against the Person Ordinance.
3. I put down those pages as sources.

this in no way means I violated copyright of those web pages, because I am quoting the exact legal text for this topic. Abortion is a contentious topic, so the exact wording of a country's law is quite essential for readers to understand. And the text quoted was only short segments of the 8-section 47A. Medical termination of pregnancy.

Up until now User:Diannaa cannot recognise the socalled copyvio were the precise definitions written in the law https://www.elegislation.gov.hk/hk/cap212?xpid=ID_1438402836264_002 .

What a joke it is to insist that I quoted from https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/201706/28/P2017062800481.htm . I copied the Chinese version of the table of stats from https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/201706/28/P2017062800464.htm but since this is English wikipedia I put down the English URL. I did not even bother read that page at all.

Abhorrent evidence fabrication to defend some haphazard sysop action.--RZuo (talk) 22:54, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

RZuo, quotations need quotation marks. There were no quotation marks. And as noted on your talk page, some of the material is a match for a copyright journal article and does not appear to be in the legislation.— Diannaa (talk) 23:05, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

RZuo, How is this fabricated in any way? Moneytrees🏝️^{Talk🌴Help out at CCI!} 23:36, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

RZuo, Please assume good faith. Surely you are aware that some websites copy from other websites, and often do so without providing proper attribution. We have a tool, The Copy Patrol tool, which looks at recent edits and checks to see if the text matches other documents on the Internet. Those reports, which I think you can see here more often than not identify more than one source. I think they stopped listing at three sources as a never seen more than three, but I assume there are many instances where there are more than three. It is quite common for someone to object, when being told that there edit matches site X, claiming that they had never seen site X before. That's commonly true, perhaps because site X and the editor got the material from site Y. However, it is really critical to determine whether the material came from site X or site Y; if it can be found in more than one place it probably isn't original to the editor. The exact source sometimes matters, because one site might claim full copyright while another might have an acceptable license. I try to take care not to specifically state that an editor copied from site X, but to say that the material in the edit matches material at site X. That almost invariably means there is a problem, even if the editor never saw site X before.

If you are including language that's an exact copy of material found elsewhere, even if it is text associated with legislation which is not restricted by copyright, you must clearly identify what has been quoted and where it can be found. As I noted above you can do that with quotation marks but there are other ways, and I didn't see that you did that, at least not in the first version of the article. S Philbrick(Talk) 23:52, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

RZuo, you brought this question here I assume to get clarification that your understanding of consensus on policy, which was different from that of Dianaa's, was correct. The fact you aren't getting the answer you expected is not evidence that others are fabricating evidence to protect the other editor. Even the most experienced editors here generally accept the idea that there may be policy they don't completely understand. —valereee (talk) 10:46, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Cases of quotations without quotation marks

Here I report some such cases for immediate sysop action.

Criminal damage in English law#Criminal Damage Act 1971 (Crown copyright persists for 50 years.) No quotation marks were used for the legal texts quoted in sections "Without lawful excuse", "Belonging to another", "Intent and recklessness", "Threats" and "Possession of items".

Laws regarding rape: sections "New Zealand (Consent)" and "Trinidad and Tobago".--RZuo (talk) 23:34, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

• As far as the first example is concerned, I was under the impression that UK legislation was covered by the Open Government License, which only requires attribution. Black Kite (talk) 01:30, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
  • Correct; the majority of the UK webpages and legislation are released under the OGL. I have added the required attribution for the Criminal Damage Act 1971. — Diannaa (talk) 02:26, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

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

User:koavf dispute regarding Season 24 of South Park and The Pandemic Special

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

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User:koavf has created the article South Park (season 24) in blatant disregard to a talk page discussion in the episode article The Pandemic Special. At root of the issue is the debate as to whether or not the episode in question was or was not the beginning of Season 24 of the series. As per the episode's talk page, there are at least 6 reliable sources, not the least of which is the actual press release on the subject from Comedy Central, that all state that the episode was a one-time special and not the beginning of the season. Koavf has stated on his season 24 talk page that he did read this discussion, and even with the subject being controversial at the least, he still created his article. He is using a video link and one other source to justify his stance, while I have shown him the 6 other reliable sources that disagree with his contention. His article is false and should be corrected as soon as possible. When I attempted to edit his article with these cites and sources which counter his statement, he reverted them on grounds of WP:POINT and WP:OR, neither of which are correct. There was no original research added, only factual citations which counter his statements of the article. In fact, when the article The Pandemic Special was originally created, it had to be page protected for some time as there was an ongoing edit war from other users on this subject. This subject is contentious at least, and a new article that contradicts another article already existing should not be published without at least discussing it first, especially considering that there has already been a talk page discussion on the subject matter, and even a 3RR dispute resolved on the matter where the opposing party admitted that he was wrong for attempting to change The Pandemic Special article from a special episode to a Season 24 premiere. - SanAnMan (talk) 19:23, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

• This board doesn't settle content disputes. You might want to try dispute resolution. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 19:50, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

SanAnMan, So there are two issues here which I'll try to disentangle. One is the content dispute which hinges around "Is this the premiere episode of season 24"? That is a pretty straightforward issue: I have multiple reliable sources saying yes and you can see South Park (season 24) for them. The second issue is SanAnMan's behavior. Nominating the article for deletion as a "hoax" is completely inappropriate and was immediately reverted. He also seems to misunderstand WP:CONSENSUS as a consensus of sources rather than a consensus of editors. If you look at Talk:The Pandemic Special#Season premiere or standalone special?, several editors chime in about whether or not they think this constitutes a season premiere. There is no consensus among the editors that it isn't. SanAnMan also shows poor judgement and a willful misreading of sources: e.g. with this press release, there is just an absence of evidence: it doesn't say this isn't part of season 24, it just doesn't mention season 24 at all. He also contradicts himself about what constitutes a reliable source because he cites Comedy Central in this instance and then also says that this same source is unreliable. Which one is it? Then today, he made this disruptive edit and proceeded to edit war about it in contravention of WP:POINT, WP:EDITWAR, and WP:BRD. Now, instead of posting to talk, he's running to AN. His judgement and understanding of norms here is flawed at best and several of the actions I linked are bad faith attempts. He is unwilling to collaborate and willfully flaunting the norms that we have here. (This is in addition to removing sourced information from The Pandemic Special and List of South Park episodes as well as contravening other norms like MOS:RETAIN and WP:CITEVAR: why he thinks he is exempt from those, I have no idea). ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:55, 16 November 2020 (UTC) (@Ivanvector: we overlapped one another. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:56, 16 November 2020 (UTC))

Koavf You don't have "multiple sources", you have two, I have six that counter your stand. Per Ivanvector this will be discussed in DR. As for your edits to List of South Park episodes, it seems I'm not the only editor who thinks your edits are wrong. - SanAnMan (talk) 20:30, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

SanAnMan, Again, you show poor judgement and a willful misunderstanding: first off, there are no less than four sources in that article (Comedy Central, Metacritic, NME, and UPI) that call this these season premiere of season 24, secondly, your sources don't all counter mine: the Comedy Central press release doesn't say this isn't the season 24 premiere (that would be countering). Please re-read my post above to show that you comprehend things like WP:OR, MOS:RETAIN, WP:POINT, etc. because you have consistently shown that you do not understand these. E.g. why do you think that you are exempt from MOS:RETAIN? As an aside, several other sources, such as the iTunes store, list this as the season 24 premiere. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:38, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Koavf taking this to DR and they can settle it there. - SanAnMan (talk) 20:50, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

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Category navigation is not working

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I am not sure if this is the right place to post this, but I need to post it somewhere. The system is not letting me go through categories in the normal way. When I open a category it has the first 200 articles. However when I click on next it goes straight to a page starting with the 200 articles beginning with the first one categorized under B. If I go back it gives me a page with the previous 200 articles, but will only allow me to go back 1 page. This means in some categories some articles in the category cannot be navigated from. This is a very frustrating situation.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:28, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Worth asking at WP:VPT? GiantSnowman 20:29, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Verified it's not working for me either. I tried with Category:Horticulture and gardening (the first category I came across with more than 200 pages). When I load the category it shows me the first 200 pages as normal, up to pages starting with "S" in that case. When I click next, it seems to be "rounding" to the next letter: the first page shown starts with "T". I don't think it's coincidence, since the first page has 200 pages and the second 33, in a category with 248 pages. When I click previous, the listing starts with letter "B", and now there are 200 pages again but more "S" pages are shown, and also I can click previous again to get the listing from the start, but with only 30 pages shown (up to the end of the "B"s I guess). Bizarre. I agree it's an issue for VPT, and feel free to copy my comment over there if you're going to report, I'm logging off for the night. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 01:09, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

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DL6443 topic ban review at content rating articles

I, DL6443, would like to appeal my topic ban at the following four articles:

• Motion picture content rating system
• Video game content rating system
• Television content rating system
• Mobile software content rating system

Back in 2016 (as SlitherioFan2016), I was blocked for persistently edit-warring and changing the colour scheme at the comparison tables of said articles, so that they did not meet the necessary accessibility threshold required for said tables and articles.

• Ban discussion in March 2017
• Unban discussion June 2019

It has now been more than a year since I was unblocked in June 2019, and while I still have an interest in the topic of content ratings, I am considerably more aware and responsible of my actions, particularly regarding accessibility. I am therefore appealing my topic ban as I have found errors in this field of articles that need to be corrected (e.g. typos, spelling and grammar errors) and that I would like to begin by correcting them, as well as expanding the content of those articles. I hope you will consider my appeal. --DL6443 01:27, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

• Support: FWIW, I took a glance through their contribs and user talk page history. It looks like they're working diligently to be constructive and have constructive discussions on talk pages when appropriate. They're also asking questions and clearly trying to learn more without being (IMO) burdensome. At this point, I don't see this TBAN being needed any more. DL6443, thanks for sticking it out. Best wishes, Waggie (talk) 03:57, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
• Point of order: I support in principle, but I can't see any evidence that you are topic-banned. You were banned from Motion picture rating system in October 2016 for one month (ANI discussion). There was an allegation that you used sockpuppets to violate the ban (here) but this was not proven and no additional sanction was imposed, so that ban is expired. There was a proposal a month later for a permanent ban from the four articles above (in this discussion) but this was archived without being enacted. Your siteban may have been related to your past behaviour on those articles but you successfully appealed it. As far as I can tell you have no active editing restrictions. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 18:00, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

@Ivanvector: My evidence that I am in fact tbanned is this discussion with Yamla and Sandstein on my user talk page. --DL6443 00:58, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Re-pinging Ivanvector, Sandstein and Yamla due to syntax error. --DL6443 00:58, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

In the discussion linked to above, I expressed the view that the lifting of DL6443's site ban did not affect any other existing restrictions. I did not know then, and do not know now, whether such other restrictions exist. Accordingly, I offer no opinion about whether they should be lifted if they do exist. Sandstein 07:53, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

• Support. I think the easiest path forward here is to take the position that they are indeed topic-banned, and support the removal of the topic ban. I concur with Waggie, above; they have been working hard to be constructive so I don't anticipate further problems here. --Yamla (talk) 11:10, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
• Support lifting all restrictions - I already kind of said so above, but there's confusion as to whether or not DL6443 is actually subject to this (or any other) sanction, so let's formally clean the slate. They've been editing quite constructively since being unblocked a little more than a year ago, and have even followed a topic ban which might not have been applicable. I'm pleased to see that my comment here turned out to be quite untrue. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 12:48, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

BAG nomination

Hi! This is a procedural notification that I've requested to join the Bot Approvals Group. Your comments would be appreciated at the nomination page. Thanks, ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 01:56, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Sports team season mass deletions, comment needed

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This issue needs urgent resolution; it has been needlessly contentious and hundreds of articles have been lost. I brought this to ANI last month, but uninvolved Admins were totally AWOL.

There is a major impasse in the soccer articles being created in good faith, and being deleted en masse. The ANI discussion and the deletion pages have been frustrating and unproductive, and marked by arrogance, bad faith or incivility (on both sides). Users have already made their points, repeatedly, here.

I ask uninvolved Admins to comment on at least one of the following:

a) Important: We need a working definition of notability for team seasons, especially for European soccer team articles of the type "2009–10 Real Madrid season", etc. Please use the guideline WP:NSEASONS to help. The guideline, which is brief and U.S.-centric, clearly allows such articles about U.S. college teams, i.e. amateur teams. Large numbers of Wikipedia sports articles concern amateur teams or semi-professional teams, and always have done. Many deletions have stated that eligible teams must be in fully professional leagues, but even a cursory reading of NSEASONS refutes it.
Would you agree in principle that a suitable definition for soccer could be, "Teams in national leagues"?
(It may not be AN's place to judge on content, but the current situation and rules are a mess, and nobody's helping.)

b) If you have time: Could any deletions below be in breach of Wikipedia policies or principles? Many were based only on a consensus of highly motivated users who supported many deletions with minimal justification. Those who disagreed were ignored (e.g. Békéscsaba, Doncaster), or were absent due to the sheer number of deletions. As I said in ANI, this was done not by consensus, but by attrition. Deletions of this type (and awful/nonexistent debates) help neither Wikipedia, nor the coverage of soccer on it, and hurt users' faith in it.

This was a snapshot of a single month; there have been many more.

More recently, articles have been edited with "WP:PROD" to try to bypass even a rudimentary debate. That is completely inappropriate. The ANI discussion showed widespread opposition to the nature of the past deletions, and that they were controversial. But the purpose of WP:PROD is "to suggest an article or file for uncontroversial deletion ... if no opposition to the deletion is expected". Do you believe that this behaviour should be deemed unacceptable in future?
Please help. Thanks. - Demokra (talk) 02:17, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

• (a) The appropriate place to discuss WP:NSEASONS is at Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports). (b) If you feel the articles listed were deleted out of process, discuss them (individually please, not en bloc!) at WP:DRV. (c) Anyone can PROD an article. If the proposed deletion is controversial, remove the PROD message. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 02:59, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
• Having opened 5 or 6 of the listed AfDs, I fail to see the issue. These were for the most part uncontroversial deletions, voted on by people whose names I recognise as belonging to editors who actually like football and have made thousands of articles relating to football. Your attempt to create a guideline which would specifically allow articles which routinely get deleted at AfD goes against anything such guidelines stand for. The intention is that they describe actual practice, that they describe groups of articles where 99% of the entries would survive AfD: a specific guideline should never be used to protect articles which don't meet the requirements. I can perfectly understand editors, after having nominated dozens of articles for AfD which ended all in "delete", who then move on to ProD; the previous deletions show that the proposed deletion is, on the whole, uncontroversial, even if occasionally someone objects (and many of the AfDs had no opposition at all). In any case, there is nothing here that requires admin attention, this is something for the village pump probably. Fram (talk) 08:32, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

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User: Armatura

I would like complain about this user as he broke several wikipedia rules in below links and sentences he made to district/provoke editors and blackmailing admins:

- I ask for support from senior editors, to make sure verified / reliable sources are kept, even if Azeri / Turkish editors do not like them.

- the GW paragraph has been reverted 4-5 times already, by two users interchangeably, despite asking politely. What is next?

- Feel free to go ahead and report. I have reasonable doubts about impartiality of a particular admin

- Attack to user and discussing users not focusing on the topic WP:CIVILITY, Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines, using statements such "Clearly pro-Turkish / pro-Azerbaijani editors cleaning the evidence of racial hatred by Turkish / Azerbaijani mob in the streets of Lyon may be seen as whitewashing of history". ,,

Thanks in advance for your time and investigation. Mirhasanov (talk) 08:07, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

This should be at WP:ANI not WP:AN, but given your topic ban I really do not think this is the right way to go about it, and this may well, technically, be a violation of your ban. Pretty much your only options here are to find another topic area to edit in, or appeal your topic ban. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 08:33, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

ProcrastinatingReader (talk) does my topic ban also implies that I can't report user that violates wikipedia rules? Mirhasanov (talk) 09:04, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

References

Mirhasanov, yes, the expectation is that you stop caring entirely about the topic from which you are banned. Evidence (like this discussion) that you are continuing to track what is ongoing in the banned topic is likely to cause you to be blocked from editing the project. As multiple editors have told you now, find something else to edit. --Izno (talk) 13:17, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

• I've warned @Mirhasanov: on their talk page. Of course, this does not preclude action by any admin that sees the necessity. Tiderolls 13:24, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
• OP is not hearing us. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 14:42, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

I asked an independent review thinking that other admins are more reasonable but what I saw is bunch of people thinking they are judge and trying to back other admin who clearly violated rules by imposing sanction to me. In normal life even person who kills someone has at least 1 person backing him in a review/ judge process. You all are only good and quick by imposing sanctions or notifications to new users. You just don't want spend time to understand the problem and back each other's decision, even thought you decide that the process was not right. This comment in above by so called "Admin" was clear provocation and attack to user, and no one cared because he is admin. Which wikipedia rules did admin Beyond My Ken followed with below comment?

No. My question was clear and concise, and your obfuscatory answer I take as being, essentially, a "No". Therefore, I stand by my endorsement of an AA2 topic ban, and the block that has been imposed on you, and would also support an indef block or a site ban. I don't think we need or want you here, you should be posting to some ultra-partisan anti-Armenian blog. Beyond My Ken (talk)

Even closure of the case didn't ask me a question whether I have any request or question. Your process is fully unfair. Hence, I need my account not blocked but Vanished as I don't want anymore contribute to corrupted wikipedia. Please Mirhasanov (talk) 17:06, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

• (1) I am not -- and never have been, and never will be -- an admin, nor did I do anything to give the impression that I am an admin.

(2) The potential of posts such as this is why I posted a thorough explanation of what their topic ban means on M's talk page.

(3) Considering "broadly construed", their post here is probably a violation of their topic ban.

(4) I agree that a warning is the appropriate action for an first instance of a violation, to be followed by quickly escalating blocks.

(5) I have concerns, considering their inability (or unwillingness) to understand Wikipedia's processes, that if M is allowed to vanish, they will return under another name and continue in the same manner. Because of that, I do not support allowing them to vanish.

Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:01, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Mirhasanov as someone who has recently received a topic ban, you aren't really eligible for courtesy vanishing. You can simply walk away from your account though, and never log back into it, if you don't want to edit any more. Best GirthSummit _(blether) 18:08, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

• Beyond My KenSo that means you were clear provocateur asking nonsense questions irrelevant to the topic. Not punishing you is another unfair face of admins. I don't care what you support or agree. I want my account vanished anyway. I just use this period talk about your unfair bureaucracy. Mirhasanov (talk) 18:05, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

• You're welcome to hold any opinion you wish to about the sun or the moon or the stars or me or anything else for that matter. You're not welcome to attempt to skew Wikipedia to match your ideological opinions. Personally, I think that your not editing here any more is a pretty good idea, but I don't think you're going to be allowed to courtesy vanish, as I explained on your talk page. My advice is to just walk away. Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:22, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

• Why do you want a courtesy vanishing? Mr rnddude (talk) 18:27, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

• This is definitely against the topic ban, but before this section poisons the well, I do think that there probably should be a review of Armatura's engagement with AA2 articles. Armatura (like others at the article) very clearly has a favored POV. The question to answer is whether their participation in discussions and edits have been sufficiently constructive to justify their continued ability to work on the article despite their POV. I don't have time right now to look into this thoroughly, and may not for at least a week (this has been the busiest month of my life in recent memory). Between Mirhasanov's topic ban and the fact that this is at the wrong noticeboard, this section should probably be closed, and a new discussion should be opened at the correct venue by an editor not currently topic banned from the AA2. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:29, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Beyond My Ken I still wondering why you are aggressive like this against me? if you are not an admin why you are keeping provoking me? Why don't you follow normal etiquette while discussing on admin board? What is your purpose?Mirhasanov (talk) 19:01, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Mirhasanov, I think maybe you don't understand how admin privileges work on Wikipedia. Administrators have been given a few extra tools they can use because they've gone through a process that asks the community to say whether they trust them with those tools. Many, many respected editors haven't gone through the process. Having admin tools doesn't give an editor authority to make decisions against policy. It only means they've successfully asked the community to weigh in on whether they won't do so. The fact BMK isn't an admin has nothing to do with whether or not the warnings they give are valid. It literally only means that someone else has to enforce those warnings. —valereee (talk) 19:13, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Valereee Thank you very much for detailed explanation dear. My understanding is that we are all belong to different nations, we are all have different opinion but, in wikipedia we must act constructive, friendly, intelligent that eventually leads to collaboration. BMKs sentiment and comments like "I don't think we need or want you here", "you should be posting to some ultra-partisan anti-Armenian blog" doesn't help the process. It creates provocative reaction on other side, eventually leads ignoring his warnings or anything he want to endorse from name of wikipedia administration, arbitration or community guidance. This is what I wanted to underpin. He went against wikipedia rule WP:CIVILITY with is comment above. Mirhasanov (talk) 19:24, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

•  Renamer note: As a renamer, I can state that Mirhasanov is not eligible for vanishing while under a sanction. There are millions of articles on Wikipedia outside their topic ban that need attention. I invite Mirhasanov to spend six months editing constructively and then requesting removal of the topic ban. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 19:20, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Deepfriedokra Agreed and I will follow. Who is going to take action on below request by Rosguill?

This is definitely against the topic ban, but before this section poisons the well, I do think that there probably should be a review of Armatura's engagement with AA2 articles. Armatura (like others at the article) very clearly has a favored POV. The question to answer is whether their participation in discussions and edits have been sufficiently constructive to justify their continued ability to work on the article despite their POV. I don't have time right now to look into this thoroughly, and may not for at least a week (this has been the busiest month of my life in recent memory). Between Mirhasanov's topic ban and the fact that this is at the wrong noticeboard, this section should probably be closed, and a new discussion should be opened at the correct venue by an editor not currently topic banned from the AA2. signed, Rosguill talk 18:29, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Mirhasanov (talk) 19:42, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

• @Mirhasanov: Thanks for notifying me about this discussion. Apologies if at any point my writings sounded sharper then expected to your and other pro-Azeribaijani / pro-Turkish editors. I honestly do not think you should have opened this discussion, though, as this isn't battleground and I am not your enemy to try to take a revenge from.
• In response for your concerns, Rosguill, I can only thank you for your constructive efforts on the article. Of course every editor has their point of view influenced by their nationality, culture, knowledge of history. Am I to be blamed for having more of it than others? I will leave this in the hands of uninvolved admins to judge. I have to state, though, that certain anxiety of pro-Armenian editors of 2020 NK war page was caused mostly by insufficient policing (paraphrasing one of the admins) of that extremely sensitive article amidst ongoing violent territorial, ethnic and religious conflict. There was active revert warring by a couple of pro-Azerbaijani / pro-Turkish editors with whom Mirhasanov was trying to coordinate his actions with via Skype (Solavirum who was temporarily blocked and CuriousGolden who chose temporary abstinence from editing as a preventive measure), and the talk page discussions frequently become simple voting in an attempt to prevail with vote numbers instead of trying to reach a consensus and editors openly denying widely accepted Armenian Genocide on the page of conflict that is perceived by Armenians as logical continuation of genocide, were not reprimanded by admins (because, "although it is abhorring, it is the predominant position in Azerbaijan and Turkey"). That article just needs more neutral peacekeepers to avoid the article/talk page becoming a battleground; I asked for it once on Administrators Noticeboard but did not get the necessary attention unfortunately. I think it may be a good idea for the editors to declare their conflict of interest before editing / admining sensitive articles like NK war, as real-life editors do when being published. And I think that it should be made clear in the pinned administrative reminders of the NK and Armenia related pages that denial of widely accepted Armenian Genocide is not welcome at least on those pages, if not in Wikipedia as a whole, to make the assumption of good faith more realistic. Best wishes, Armatura (talk) 22:54, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

• I agree with what Rosguill said. There probably should be a review of the said user's engagement with AA2 articles. Overall, the constant useless arguments about every little thing in the article prevented anyone to add anything helpful. And sometimes, you could even find yourself in a completely baseless report (which also reported the admin, Rosguill). This is largely one of the reasons I've chosen to avoid that article for good. The whole talk page is quite toxic, therefore a larger admin presence and a stricter imposition of rules against POV-pushers are necessary. — CuriousGolden (T·C) 04:52, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Armatura's behavior is tremendously worrying. I don't want me to continue writing WP:CIVIL as a warning to Armatura and see him don't give a single damn about it. "There was active revert warring by a couple of pro-Azerbaijani / pro-Turkish editors with whom Mirhasanov was trying to coordinate his actions with via Skype (Solavirum who was temporarily blocked and CuriousGolden who chose temporary abstinence from editing as a preventive measure)". Now we're talking about conspiracy theories against other users? And name-calling editors, like that should be allowed. Armatura have been violating the same guideline (and several others) for weeks now, with no change in his behavior. --► Sincerely: SolaVirum 09:59, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

This was not an attack page

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I am talking about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_conversion_to_Islam_in_Pakistan . This page is now deleted and it is even protected against re-creation.

I found its copy on the archive.org, here: https://web.archive.org/web/20200201000502/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_conversion_to_Islam_in_Pakistan

Your own rules, named "G10", [[16]] says this:

"An attack page is a page, in any namespace, that exists primarily to disparage or threaten its subject; or biographical material that is entirely negative in tone and unsourced or poorly sourced."

This page did not threat anybody. It might be threatening for the Christians in Pakistan, but they already know the local situation quite well. It was also very well sourced, not a biographical material and anyways, facts should never be censored.

I suggest to:

1. Recover the page and merge the new current draft into it (this can do also I).
2. Check the moderation activities of the relevant admins, particularly for religious/nationalist/sectarian power mis-uses.
3. Initiate the usual process for this induvidual case (if there is one).

80.81.2.8 (talk) 14:18, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

• Deletion upheld at DRV? --Deepfriedokra (talk) 14:21, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
  • Your reference states that the deletion happened because the author was in bad standing, but they also stated that the page can be recreated by the original content. There is now a draft existing. The most obvious difference between the draft and the deleted page is that it already does not contain the insulting facts. 80.81.2.8 (talk) 14:58, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
• There were also issues with WP:G12 and WP:G5 . --Deepfriedokra (talk) 14:24, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
  • G5 is about the page creation of a banned user. But I am not a banned user, so I can create the page - if it would not even be protected against creation. G12 is copyright infringement, but I have no way to know, from where. If I could know it, I could rewrite the content, using the original source as reference, but I do not know. Do you have access to the URL? 80.81.2.8 (talk) 14:44, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
• There is a draft at Draft:Forced conversion to Islam in Pakistan, which I've not compared to the G10 version. "Your own rules"? I guess that means you are not a member of our community? AN interloper? --Deepfriedokra (talk) 14:27, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
  • I don't know what do you want to say with this label ("interloper"), but I have no wiki account. After seeing this, unlikely that I will ever have one. 80.81.2.8 (talk) 14:44, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
• Interloper, you are required to notify the editors you are accusing. If someone could do that, I'm off to the pulmonologists. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 14:28, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
  • I think I will do that, and I think it won't have any effect. 80.81.2.8 (talk) 14:44, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

• The article was subject to a deletion review in June, 2020. The review also mentioned the G10 deletion issue, for which the deleting admin gave a rationale. In his close of the DRV, User:Sandstein, said:

Speedy deletion endorsed, but recreation permitted. Consensus is that the speedy deletion was correct on account of various severe content and socking problems, but that as per the AfD, a neutral article written by editors in good standing could be had under this title. I am therefore changing the page protection from full to semi to allow such editing to take place (e.g. based on the draft that is now available). If recreated, the article can still be made subject to a new AfD.

Since the person wanting to recreate the article is an IP, and the page is semiprotected, they won't be able to. But they can contribute to Draft:Forced conversion to Islam in Pakistan and at some point, agreement might be reached to restore the draft to mainspace. This would depend on whether the issues noted in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Forced conversion to Islam in Pakistan and in the DRV can be fixed. Since our deletion process was correctly followed, the IP's charges of abuse of power by admins (who they did not name) are unlikely to help their case: "Check the moderation activities of the relevant admins, particularly for religious/nationalist/sectarian power mis-uses." Previously there was a sock case at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Jishnusavith/Archive. EdJohnston (talk) 15:21, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

As an additional point, as I understand it the draft was created without relying on the older article in any way. If the OP does want to contribute to the draft, it would IMO be best if they likewise do not use the older article in any way. The community has already come to the conclusion via DRV that the old article is bad enough to warrant deletion, so it's unlikely there's any real usable content on it. Still if they really feel there is content they can take from the older article they shouldn't do so via the Internet Archive copy. Instead, it would be necessary to undelete the older article probably merging it with the draft, alternatively perhaps a subpage of the draft. (Technically we just copy the contributor list and they could copy from the Internet Archive, but this seems a bad idea.) I'm assuming there were no copyright problems with the older article since I didn't see any mentioned at the DRV. If there was, then it shouldn't be used at all. Nil Einne (talk) 17:12, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

• From Secial:undelete for the page, which not all can see (unfortuantely):

2020-06-05T22:42:39 Bishonen ... deleted page Forced conversion to Islam in Pakistan (G10: Attack page (TW)) )

2020-02-17T15:14:37 Diannaa ... changed visibility of 6 revisions on page Forced conversion to Islam in Pakistan: content hidden (RD1: Violations of copyright policy)

2020-02-15T12:37:59 Diannaa ...changed visibility of 10 revisions on page Forced conversion to Islam in Pakistan: content hidden (RD1: Violations of copyright policy)

2019-11-28T21:14:50 Maile66 ... deleted page Forced conversion to Islam in Pakistan (G5: Creation by a blocked or banned user in violation of block or ban) )

For whatever reason, the g12 revdel's do not show up in deletion log. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 17:41, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks.In that case, the IP should not copy any info from the deleted page. Especially since the major editor being a prolific sock who evidently copied from other deleted articles, can't be trusted to have not violated someone's copyright. WP:Copyvios are one area we have limited ability to WP:AGF anyway. The only thing which could potentially be useful from the original article is the references, the OP is welcome to check archive.org to see if there any useful references I guess but they should make sure they are only getting the references and not the content and would need to make sure the references are suitable reliable secondary sources. I don't see anything more to do here. The IP is free to improve the draft by their own work. If they improve it enough that it's a decent article, I'm sure someone will move it back to mainspace eventually. They can also use WP:AFC. Nil Einne (talk) 18:37, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

• Our rules require that posters notify the person or persons being posted about. If no one else does it, I guess I can later. Courtesy pings 'cause I'm lazy busy in real life. @Maile66, Diannaa, and Bishonen: (They can be the OP's rules too, if they wish to be a part of the Community of editors building the world's largest free content encyclopedia.) --Deepfriedokra (talk) 17:50, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

  Sorry when the OP said "I think I will do that" I just assumed they would actually notify and not just talk about it. I've notified Maile66 and Diannaa. Not Bishonen since EdJohnston already mentioned this thread. I also notified Sandstein since they were mentioned here as the closer of the DRV. Nil Einne (talk) 18:41, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ --Deepfriedokra (talk) 18:46, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the notification. But as far as what I can see in the record, my original deletion was a year ago, because it had been tagged as "G5 Creation by a blocked or banned user in violation of block or ban". Apparently, it was recreated several months later by a different editor, but I've had no part in what happened since I deleted it. Anything else, I don't know enough about it to add comment. — Maile (talk) 19:22, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

• Nil Einne, thanks for the notification. I have nothing to add to the DRV closure. Sandstein 13:25, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

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

BAG nomination

This is a procedural notification to note that I have requested to join the BAG. Your input is welcome at the the nomination page. – SD0001 (talk) 17:13, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

WP:RFPP backlog again

We seen to be seriously backlogged at WP:RFPP, with 30+ open requests and about 30h the longest delay.--Ymblanter (talk) 22:14, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Was just beginning a pass through it when I saw this on my watchlist :) GorillaWarfare (talk) 22:21, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Don't you just hate it when that happens? Primefac (talk) 22:25, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Mission Statement Critical Thinking Point

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

---

According to Wikipedia

Most criticism of Wikipedia has been directed towards its content, its community of established users, and its processes.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Wikipedia

According to Wikipedia

Wikipedia has been criticized for its uneven accuracy and exhibiting systemic and gender bias, where the majority of editors are male.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia Page protected

Which is correct?

I suggest an edit to the main wikipedia page away from a specific towards the overview. I would replace:

This

Wikipedia has been criticized for its uneven accuracy and exhibiting systemic and gender bias, where the majority of editors are male.

With

Most criticism of Wikipedia has been directed towards its content, its community of established users, and its processes. Gender bias has been mentioned as a currently relevant concern because the majority of editors are male.

Credibility

This change would improve credibility because it identifies and acknowledges the major criticism, rather than accentuating a secondary criticism. It also improves consistency between major wikipedia pages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.203.10.104 (talk) 02:23, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

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

Topic ban appeal II (re-restored from archive)

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

---

Back in December I requested a standard offer to be unblocked after not sock puppeting for a long time, which I was given, though my topic ban remained. After six months, I made a topic ban appeal which ended with no official consensus, but the reviewing admins agreed that I would need to edit more disputable areas and that I could appeal again in at least another three months. I had been focusing on volume of edits before, so this time I focused on editing in contentious subjects. It has now been over three months and I request that my topic ban be reviewed once again. --Steverci (talk) 19:45, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Pinging @Nosebagbear: who is the only user that partook in both of the discussions linked above --Steverci (talk) 19:45, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

• Support largely per this conversation on their talk page. They made a mistake, asked for clarification, and learned from it which is the exact kind of interaction I'd hope to see more of. Their edits since the block was lifted have largely been to talk pages which is good, because it shows productive discussion on controversial topics like Trump and racial tensions in the United States. Id' like to have seen more article edits, but everything I've seen so far makes me believe there's little risk in removing the topic ban even given the current Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. — Wug·a·po·des​ 23:00, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
• I suppose the ongoing issue is that since the last TBAN appeal, where more edits were specifically given as a need, there have only been 50 edits, most of them on Trump's talk page. The editor isn't behaving problematically, and they've clearly demonstrated some form of patience. It's already DS, but we could specifically authorise for the next 6 months the ability for any admin to reimplement the TBAN. Hmm. I'll have a think Nosebagbear (talk) 11:38, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I recalled the main need being to edit constructively outside the TBAN area. I had also asked you for some sort of quota of edits to ensure this wouldn't be a concern in the future, and received no reply. --Steverci (talk) 22:23, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

• Steverci: Could you please comment in more detail on your plans if the TBAN is lifted? Do you have specific plans to resume active editing in on the topics of Armenia/Azerbaijan more or less right away? Or are you just asking for the TBAN to be lifted in order to be able to edit on those topics if at some point later you do want to do that? Nsk92 (talk) 12:08, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I don't have any immediate plans for certain articles, but I would like to be able to edit Armenia-related articles again. I can assure you I don't intend to rekindle old edit wars within the hour of the ban being lifted. I'll be extremely cautious and use the talk page if I think my edit will cause a dispute, but I wouldn't be doing anything like that right away. I would probably start with making edits where I see they are needed, such as vandalism like this which no one else noticed for a month. --[[User:Steverci|Steverci’s] (talk) 22:23, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

OK, I see, thanks. Nsk92 (talk) 22:34, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

• Per a query by applicant, I've restored from the archive - I think that even if we don't grant it, they would appreciate some more specific guidance Nosebagbear (talk) 16:41, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
• @Steverci: - this is purely my own perception, but one reason why we can be reticent to just ask you for x number of worthwhile edits is that such things have a habit of being gamed. For example, let's say we told you to give us 150 beneficial edits elsewhere. 150 typo fixed are beneficial but don't tell us much about your ability to avoid, or, potentially even more useful, handle, conflict. Likewise, 150 edits in a one week burst might just indicate that you can keep calm for that long (though given your resilience through a fairly irksome appeal process, that might be the least of my concerns at this point). I think at this point, per WP:ROPE, I could be considered a weak support for a removal of the TBAN. Nosebagbear (talk) 16:41, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

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

And as it's atop'd, no one will look at it. So . . . --Deepfriedokra (talk) 08:34, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Re-opened topic ban appeal II from Steverci

• Please see above, It was previously archived without closure. @Steverci: Your request is live again. 08:34, 19 November 2020 (UTC) --Deepfriedokra (talk)

• @Deepfriedokra: I think there was a misunderstanding here. In retrospect, I realize the language I used in my closing statement could have been clearer. I copied over the discussion for context and then proceeded to close it (topic ban lifted). Please see here and here. Airplaneman (talk) ✈ 01:44, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

A question regarding possible good faith overprodding and over AFD related similar project articles over and over and how to improve them.

Sorry for the excessive title but as it implies I have a question if there is such a guideline for so many prodding and AFDing that is going on. There has been around four editors that I can think of that have been baiting comic book related fictional character articles that always vote delete and / or nominate them or prod the article almost all in one day. While there is nothing wrong with it I keep wanting to rescue these articles but it is in vain since they are picking them all in once. Again I assume good faith. Nothing to block someone over obviously. But at the same time I feel helpless on improving or helping Wikipedia. See here, here, here, here, here, here and here are just some of many examples. It’s been going on for a while now. Jhenderson ⁷⁷⁷ 15:25, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

I'm not seeing an issue with any of those; all the deletion nominations have explained what the issue is. Wikipedia isn't a directory of everything; for something to have a Wikipedia article, it needs to demonstrate significant coverage in multiple, independent, reliable sources and the onus is on the people who want to keep the article to provide that. It might be annoying to have multiple related articles nominated at once, but if they all share the same issue it's not unusual for them all to come to light at once. Provided you can demonstrate the significant coverage in reliable sources, there's nothing to worry about and they'll all be closed as keep; if you can't demonstrate it, then the editors are acting correctly in nominating them for deletion. ‑ Iridescent 15:32, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

I already said that. Though I feel that that there needs to be a guideline is to stop overnuking related articles on the same day if that makes sense. Definitely when they hop on the same bandwagon vote over and over. You know they are going to vote delete no matter if we add more sources etc that talk about it. Also how does one have time to improve more than one article anyway. Jhenderson ⁷⁷⁷ 16:58, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

• Comments- firstly, why weren't @Piotrus: and @Onel5969: informed of this discussion, which primarily concerns them? Secondly, it's interesting that people have infinite time to write unsourced crufty articles and regard sources as optional until someone raises an objection, but not too many objections because that's too much work. Reyk _YO! 19:41, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
• Jhenderson777 could really use a mentor-type situation to go over Wikipedia guidelines and policies because I believe they have a very fundamental misunderstanding on the scope of this site. This is not meant to be an insult, but they have a very Fandom-like mentality when it comes to these articles. Their anger seems to come from the idea that these are being unfairly deleted simply because they personally lack the manpower to save them rather than the simple fact that most do not actually reasonably pass WP:GNG. TTN (talk) 19:51, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
• Comment, first thanks for the ping Reyk. Second, I do a bit of work over at NPP, particularly at what we call "the back end of the queue". Many of those articles are redirects for months/years, and then someone turns them into an article. I'd say of the ones which are legitimate (not someone simply removing a redirect, or blanking a page, or putting ###### on the page) probably 60-75% of them get "reviewed" without problem. Another 10% or so get reverted, and then get improved, and restored. The rest are simply poorly cited articles which don't show the notability of the subject. These either get reverted, or sent to AfD for discussion if an editor simply continually reverts the redirect (or asks for an AfD discussion), without making any attempt to improve the sourcing to show notability. If a valid attempt is made, and I am unsure about the notability, I usually let another reviewer take a crack at it. If they're "nuked" on the same day, that's simply when they came up in the queue. I tend to think of WP as an encyclopedia, and not a fan magazine, but attempt to adhere strictly both WP:GNG and SN guidelines. Regardless, just thought I'd explain my process. Take care. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 20:25, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

@Reyk: To ping them was a ridiculous way to boil the pot and very unnecessary and I knew it would cause editors like User: TTN to say crap like this when this was just a civil question where I assumed good faith on and I didn’t say names in the first place. I guess @TTN: isn’t aware that I created at least four good articles and B-class articles or I am well aware of how the guidelines and essays are. What I see you are unaware of @TTN: is of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Comics and I see how you dislike their rules on its way of handling it. Instead of deleting articles maybe you can discuss the way comic book character articles are in that particular page. Since you are not liking the way they were written all the time. I thank One15969 for being civil after the ping but I don’t really have a beef with him compared to the three other editors. He handled it better and more civilly while I can’t say the same with TTN. Jhenderson ⁷⁷⁷ 22:47, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

First, I don't think TTN was pinged? Second, the Manual of Style deals with style, while this section, the AfDs, and TTNs comments deal with notability. It doesn't matter how well-written and well-structured an article is, when the subject isn't notable it still should be deleted or redirected. Fram (talk) 08:18, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Well, I for one have found the comments by Onel, TTN, and Piotrus in this section to be helpful and rationally thought out, and have added useful input into the discussion. Excluding them from a discussion started about their actions would have just been a one-sided airing of grievances. Reyk _YO! 11:57, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Jhenderson777, you know that enormous "When you start a discussion about an editor, you must notify them on their user talk page" banner you saw when you started this thread? It means what it says; Reyk is doing you a favour by correcting your negligence and notifying the editors involved. ‑ Iridescent 14:15, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Well thanks for him then. But I never complained in my first paragraph and I couldn’t remember names to ping at the time period. Also to mention I am busy in real life with things and I am on a mobile device editing which is tougher to edit on. Regarding the ping, I feel the topic is an irrelevant off topic banter and we should move on and move on from it. Jhenderson ⁷⁷⁷ 15:52, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

(Thanks for the ping). This boils down to the mostly understandable fact that one can get frustrated, not having enough time to research and rescue content they consider useful. Tough - but Wikipedia cannot wait for one person. At best, I can recommend that Jhenderson777 asks for userfication/draftication of the article they want to work on. And there is nothing stopping them from reaching out to members of WikiProject Comics and related, creating a list of such articles, and working on them collaboratively in the future. What is more problematic is when one loses one's cool and starts making personal attacks against those they disagree with: "stick a fork in it for once... You are getting on my nerves." - as far as I can tell, TTN is always polite, unlike Jh777, and it is ironic Jh777 starts to complain about this about this, while in the very same post they say "editors like User: TTN to say crap like this". Then there is the smaller issue of not following the best practices (from the same diff: "It has cultural impact. I promise you that. Regardless if I found it or not." - which goes against wP:THEREMUSTBESOURCES which Jhenderson777 is well familiar with). Additionally, while WP:DEPROD does allow one to deprod things based on the weakest or none rationale, it does suggest adding a good one is best practices, and "Stop prodding AND AFDing so many related content simultaneously. Nobody can improve content with this kind of persistence to delete everything" is not it. I strongly urge Jhenderson777 to respect WP:AGF, WP:CIV, WP:NPA and like, and not to let whatever frustration they feel affect their edits. The only constructive thing here is to issue a civility warning and move on. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:45, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

That was just one time where I got frustrated, Piotr, and I admit my wrongness and to cool off. Also I do recall User: TTN being ugly to someone who voted keep one time. I wish I could find where it was at. But I think you know and refuse to acknowledge it because you warned him about it. Jhenderson ⁷⁷⁷ 12:43, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

• The PROD process is not appropriate for the topics in question because it is only for "uncontroversial deletion" and "must only be used if no opposition to the deletion is expected" Such nominators clearly expect and get opposition but they persist regardless. Note that TTN's use of deletion processes was restricted by arbcom in a similar case. Andrew🐉(talk) 11:33, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
• What's the timeline here? Were the nominations made in one batch, or are they ongoing? Were PRODs continued after it became clear that at least one person (Jhenderson777) was likely to object to them, and therefore can't be considered uncontroversial? – Joe (talk) 12:34, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
  • I have a little too much stuff going on in real life (despite being a wikiholic sometimes) to go through all that. There shouldn’t be controversy anyway. Since I called it good faith it not really that controversial. Jhenderson ⁷⁷⁷ 12:53, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
    • I think these basic facts need to be established if you are expecting any administrator intervention as a result of this thread. If the nominations caused bad feelings but are finished, there's nothing to be done. If, as you claim in your original post, there was an overuse of PROD and/or AfD, we could address it – if it's continuing. Otherwise, what kind of resolution do you foresee? – Joe (talk) 13:11, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
      • There is just so many. I linked two articles that are prodded. Maybe someone like @Darkknight2149: can link all the prods and AFD going on. Apparently he reported this issue before. Jhenderson ⁷⁷⁷ 13:33, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
        • Here is every article currently proposed for deletion, and at a quick skim I'm not seeing anything comic book related in there. If you're going to raise a complaint, the onus is on you to provide some evidence for it, not just make an allegation and expect us to take your word for it. As Joe says, what administrative action are you actually asking for here? ‑ Iridescent 14:15, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
          • There are several comic book characters with prod tags currently. For example: Zeiss (comics), who is a Batman villain. There are obvious alternatives to deletion in such a case. Either the article might be improved by reference to its stated source of The Essential Batman Encyclopedia or other sources such as this. Failing that, it should be merged into a page like List of Batman family enemies, along with all the rest. Andrew🐉(talk) 15:00, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
            • @Joe, reading your comment, I just got an idea. How about I declare all articles to be important to me? Then we could scrap the entire PROD system, as every single PROD could then be established controversial.. Look, I've been reading about the PROD system and to me, it seems to be full of loopholes. "Likely to object"? That's purely random. If I love cats and object to prod on cats and then declare I consider all cats notable, so this reasoning line would make all articles on cats resistant to this deletion method. Am I getting it right? - GizzyCatBella🍁 05:01, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
  • This stuff has been going on for a long time. The arbcom case I linked to was in 2008. TTN has since been inactive on and off for years at a time but has been especially active in the last year. Piotrus has likewise been especially active in this field in the last year. For example, here's a complaint about their prodding in February:

    Just in the last six weeks, I've "rescued" Tom Hughes and Margo Montgomery, Teacup in a Storm, Bluntman and Chronic, Breathless Mahoney, Tara King, Mike Gambit, Captain Battle, Cathy Gale, Dharma Initiative, Fanny Zilch, Knock-off Nigel, Mother (the Avengers), Oceanic Airlines, Persephone (The Matrix), Ethan Hunt, Purdey (The New Avengers), Scott Robinson and Charlene Mitchell, Steve Andropoulos and Betsy Stewart, Teacup in a Storm, Newton T. Bass, Batarang, Power Sword, Day of the Figurines, Nibbles (Tom and Jerry), Royal Flush Gang, Spike and Tyke (characters), Steve Johnson and Kayla Brady, Stormbringer, Sumuru (character) and Terrible Trio. The only thing that I "rescued" them from was Piotrus' inability to use Google Books and Internet Archive. Piotrus: it is time to step away from Prod and AfD. You are not good at it.

In the following discussion, there was a telling response

... I don't mid deprods or people disagreeing with me at AfD. All I do is to raise possible issues with notability and such for review. Sometimes the review ends up with deletion of content, sometimes with merger, sometimes with retaining it. This is just routine version of WP:BRD. We are here to improve Wikipedia, which sometimes involves discussions about what may need to be deleted. That's all. Please keep up the good job of saving articles, and if I ever do not reply to a good keep argument at AfD or such, please don't hesitate to ping me to re-review the situation. A rescued article is always better than a deleted one. It is just that sometimes someone has to clean our wiki house a little bit.

This indicates that Piotrus uses PROD as a form of bold cleanup – that he will prod an article with some issues as a way of getting it fixed or deleted. It seems clear that he expects that there may be reviews, rescues and other alternatives to deletion. This is not uncontroversial deletion and so the prod process should not be used. Andrew🐉(talk) 14:36, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

I very rarely agree with Andrew about anything related to page deletion, and everyone knows I'm not a fan of having articles about things like minor comic book characters, but I really think Andrew hits the nail on the head here. PROD shouldn't be used as a way to test if someone opposes deletion. That's maybe what a {{notability}} tag should be used for. PROD is for when you are quite sure that no one will oppose the deletion.

That said, whether there is a problem or not seems susceptible to mathematics: what % of an editor's PRODs are deleted? If it's 50%, that's a problem. If it's 90%, it's not. Whether it's "overprodding" or not depends on the percentage. Lev¡vich 18:19, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

I could likewise post a list of many articles Andrew deprodded and that he never even bothered to vote on when they went to AfD and that were unanimous deletes. Also, some comic articles do get deleted through the PROD system. It is illogical to claim that because sometimes someone objects to deletion in topic area x, then PROD is no longer applicable. While there are obvious cases on the keep side, it is impossible to guess which article will get deprodded. I've seen Andrew deprod articles that had zero references, zero reception, and where nobody, including him, was able to find a shred of helpful sourcing. I have also seen similar articles, or ones that are "slightly" better, get successfully deleted through PROD. Unless we rule that comic-topics are immune to PRODs, arguing that someone is making errors proding because some of their prods get challenged is a joke. All prods can be challenged, and unless someone is prodding stuff that habitually is kept, this is pointless. All prods are ALWAYS A TEST, since you never know criteria the reviewer is using. Plus there is the issue that if the reviewer uses bad criteria (like believing everything in a given topic area is notable because they are fond of it), does it reflect bad on the prodder, deprodded or the prod procedure itself? Anyway, as I am pretty certain most of my prods are deleted one way or another, I don't feel I am doing anything wrong - but let's look at the statistics, given that Andrew's problematic deprods and copy-paste keep votes in AfDs have been discussed here and in similar foras much more often than my actions. While I don't think there is any good way to get prod statistics (since edit summary search tools don't deal well with deleted edit summaries, AFAIK) ere's some data from AfD stats: for me Number of AfD's where vote matched result 79.5%, and for Andrew, 53.0%. 53% - that's about as good of a ratio as flipping a coin! It's pure noise, from the information sciences perspective, no value added. So one person here is much more often in-line with the community view than the other. Andrew said just above: "Piotrus: it is time to step away from Prod and AfD. You are not good at it." Right, Andrew, right... WP:BOOMERANG, anyone? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:51, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I've suspected for a long time that the point is for deprods to reflect badly on the person who placed it, no matter how silly the deprod rationale. But as I keep saying, as long as it's possible to deprod for dumb reasons like disliking the PROdding editor, or disliking the PROD process, mere whimsy, or just to be annoying, it isn't possible to infer a "controversy" that the other person should have been able to predict beforehand. Reyk _YO! 11:57, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

• I'm no admin and a relatively new NPP editor but have to note firstly that User:onel5969 does exceptional work at what is ultimately a relatively mucky job. It's sometimes often hard to make the calls about what to keep, what to tag, what to delete. As a novice, I've found that process pretty difficult at times - and sometimes it involves terrible decisions (the autistic kid whose non-notable bio of himself you have to nix, dashing his clear hopes is one that I'll remember for a long time) and sometimes it's crystal clear. Most often, it's borderline and you have to take the call - and the opprobrium if you get it wrong. You also get the messages on your talk, the AfD arguments and all the rest. Do you deserve getting dragged to AN when the decisions regarding notability have clearly involved a number of editors and consensus? Not really. I'm not saying anyone's above scrutiny, but as far as I can see, the process has actually been working fine here. Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 16:07, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
  • I harbor no hard feelings for him compared to three other editors off the top of my head who like to do Order 66 with most articles. All I got to say He kind of says and does the same thing predictably and I got to work harder sometimes when I wasn’t even finished. For example: Scribbly the Boy Cartoonist had to be improved tremendously and he jumped the gun on redirecting the baby article because it wasn’t proven yet. Then I boldly merged it and it got improved more so I am no better sometimes. Jhenderson ⁷⁷⁷ 16:37, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
    • So work in draftspace. Works, no? Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 17:05, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
      • Alexandermcnabb: I have to disagree with your comments about User:Onel5969's track record. It is nice that he is putting time and energy into doing NPP work, so A for effort. But one look at feedback from other users towards Onel5969's NPP actions on their recent talk pages from the last 2 months might call your comments about his supposedly exceptional work in question. Haleth (talk) 15:13, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
        • He was voted as number four contributor to NPP [17], a vote that was endorsed roundly by other NPP reviewers. With over 17,000 reviews in the past year. From my own experience, that's going to throw up some negatives - and I have personally found getting it right is by no means a walk in the park. A little breakage is inevitable - and he has broken, proportionately, a great deal less than I have so far. Like I say, NPP is a mucky job... Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 15:55, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
          • That is not actually a vote, but a statistics tally of the quantity of reviews by each NPP member over the past year, not a vote of confidence on how consistently well each individual exercised their competence and judgment when reviewing flagged articles. Also, the endorsements I can see were for John B123 as reviewer of the year as put forward by the nominator. But I digress. Haleth (talk) 17:07, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
• If an editor regularly is working in comic books they should know that the deletion of comic book character articles is controversial and so PROD is inappropriate. I see no evidence that AfD is being used inappropriately in this area. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:16, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
  • I agree with assessments by Barkeep49 and Lev¡vich of the situation. I don't think the persistent, recurring use of PROD by Piotrus as an appropriate "test" of a subject article's notability because he is unable to discern the other user's rationale to be appropriate. Pretty sure that is what an AfD is for since we are all supposed to work by consensus. Haleth (talk) 15:13, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
• Here's a fresh example, from my daily patrol of today's AfD log. It's a character called Rocket. This was prodded by Piotrus in the usual drive-by way, with no discussion or specifics – just a generic, cookie-cutter nomination. The prod was declined by Iridescent, "I'm not comfortable considering uncontroversial the deletion of a page that's been live for 15 years and has that much of a history. ...". Piotrus then nominates the topic at AfD, where I find it.

I am not familiar with this character and so start searching. I immediately start finding hits: DC: 10 Things Fans Should Know About Rocket. This is a listicle but it's at CBR, which is usually accepted at AfD, and the fact they wrote solely about the character is a promising start. Focussing on Google Books, I immediately find some meat: The Blacker the Ink -- Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art where there's some detailed analysis of the controversy about the character's decision whether to have an abortion. This already seems adequate but I press on. I then immediately find another book: Black Superheroes, Milestone Comics, and Their Fans. This is from a university press and has plenty to say about the subject, as she was a breakout character in the series and effectively became its main protagonist.

I only searched for a minute or two, just looking at the first page of hits, and have stopped searching now as it is already apparent that the subject is quite notable. The character is not just a routine superhero, but is literally iconic in their representation of contemporary black culture. To nominate such a character for deletion in these times of BLM seems remarkably crass. To do so as "uncontroversial" using the PROD process demonstrates a considerable lack of competence and clue.

Andrew🐉(talk) 10:49, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

For the editor who keeps persisting I need to show a link. How about this?. Does this summarize enough regarding the AFD's. Again I assume good faith again...it’s just that I am one editor and can’t rescue so many articles at once if I tried and could. Jhenderson ⁷⁷⁷ 13:36, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

I just did a quick skim and I'm seeing pretty normal AfDs. I don't see any signs of disruptive behavior. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:56, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

I didn’t say anything about disruptive and (as I said before) I am assuming good faith on them. I just think they are too persistent if anything. Jhenderson ⁷⁷⁷ 17:33, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Closes need at WP:Move review

Any admins feel like closing some move reviews? Wikipedia:Move_review#Parasite_(film) has been open since September and has not gotten any comments in more than a month (it has been listed at WP:ANRFC for several weeks but remains unclosed). Several discussions at Wikipedia:Move_review#2020_October also need closing. -- Calidum 17:00, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

On the subject of page moves, please could someone look at closing some of the oldest ones at Wikipedia:Requested_moves#Backlog? I cleared a few down the other day, but some of the very old ones (going back to September) I'm involved in. A COVID-free elbow-bump for anyone picking up this thankless task. And thanks! Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 20:09, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Any takers? -- Calidum 16:41, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

I read it last night but didn't close because I was tired. Still tired, but at least I've slept on the close. Parasite MR will be done in a bit, but I don't have the energy to close RMs right now. — Wug·a·po·des​ 01:05, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

spam emails

I received an email from a user saying they were emailing editors who had participated at contentious articles and asking me to comment on a project they were starting at FactsNViews. Their talk shows at least one other editor got this email. If I block for NOTHERE, will that prevent them from continuing to spam other users, or does it require something else? (I'm not sure I should post the username; does that out them somehow/violate their privacy?) —valereee (talk) 16:57, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

• Just to note, I got this e-mail as well. I did not respond. Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:48, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

• You could block their ability to send emails only and reference this thread in the block log. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 17:00, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
• On the limited info available, that seems most reasonable. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 17:02, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Ha. I wondered what that was about. Good block. -Roxy the inedible dog . wooF 18:16, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

• I got an email, too. Could we do an indefinite partial block from a redlink that is never going to be created (say, WP:NoMoreEmailUntilYouRespondAtANI) instead of a 24 hour sitewide block. Otherwise, I'm not sure how we tell if they just wait out the block and begin spamming emails again. Otherwise, given how sparse their editing history is and how abundantly clear they've made it that they want to develop a different site instead of this one, I'm not sure what why we'd let them continue. Ian.thomson (talk) 22:10, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

• I also got such an email. I didn't go to the link because I'm suspicious of websites in unsolicited emails. I suggest others be similarly suspicious. Given the email text about building a different website and the editor's lack of participation in this project, I think an indef WP:NOTHERE block (with email access revoked) is reasonable. — Wug·a·po·des​ 00:24, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

• I agree, an indef NOTHERE block seems like a reasonable course of action. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:50, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

• Well then there is the issue of hacking and ransomware. I don't know if going to that website could introduce malware that could be used to hack Wikipedia or steal a user's login information. At my former job we were getting nearly hysterical emails from IT to not open strange emails. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 00:29, 20 November 2020 (UTC).
  • Exactly. I didn't want to go into it much more per WP:BEANS, but given the link, the site seems to run MediaWiki. Just like our MediaWiki instance, it could have CheckUsers, but unlike WMF Wikis they wouldn't be bound to our privacy policy. I leave the implications to everyone's imagination. That said, odds are good that this is just a good faith person trying to start a new venture, but unsolicited emails should always be treated with caution. Personally, I disable images and prefer plain-text rather than HTML in my incoming emails because it makes it harder to hide things, and on-wiki we have two-factor authentication. — Wug·a·po·des​ 00:49, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Interesting to look at the enormous ambitions of that new website although it seems like there is only one editor so far. It also floats the possibility of adding affiliate links to articles so you could read about a subject, then buy it and I assume the editor creating the page would make a little money. Yeah, I don't think it's going to work. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 02:41, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Oh, wow, they are going to charge a fee to editors who want help resolving a dispute. Why didn't Wikipedia think of this? We could bill editors for every RfC or ANI case closed. Paypal only, no cash. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 02:48, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

WP:PERENNIAL#Advertising. I'm pretty sure I've encountered this exact proposal before, to add affiliate links in articles so that a reader could click to buy a product after reading about it. That wouldn't be an incentive to spam Wikipedia at all, would it? Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 12:59, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Hi, all. Valareee notified me that my email was being classified as "spam" and that I was being blocked from emailing editors, and also notified me there was a discussion on this page. Let's discuss.

First, my request for feedback from editors is a legitimate query for feedback to an alternative that would address issues that Wikipedia editors have themselves discussed at great length. Whether or not individual editors like or dislike my proposed solution is (a) the point of a survey, and (b) not sufficient reason to block people from being asked for their opinions.

Second, I am not trying to sell anything to the Wikipedia editors I am contacting. So if one defines spam as unsolicited commercial messages, it is not "spam." Which raises the question, can you direct me to the Wikipedia policy that defines spam email and the grounds on which users will be banned from soliciting feedback from other Wikipedia editors? Would the same policy ban me from posting a request for feedback on an editor's talk page?

Third, I would point out that I have received 8 responses from Wikipedia editors and most have included at least some, if not several, positive support for some of the features I am proposing that make FactsnViews significantly different than Wikipedia. A ban on inviting feedback from editors would be a ban on those who want to give feedback from doing so. That doesn't seem fair, much less pro-intellectual.

Finally, what bothers me in the above discussion is that a lot of unground assumptions are being made without fairly considering what is actually being proposed. For example, Inanvector appears to be worrying that FactnViews.com would somehow contribute to affiliate links and spam on Wikipedia? How could that happen? They are separate sites. Moreover, if you are familiar with Everipedia, it began as a Wikipedia fork, and there is nothing wrong with that. Indeed, Wikipedia's creative commons licensing is designed precisely to encourage reuse on other platforms.

In any case, I welcome comments and criticisms -- especially if I'm given an opportunity to participate and respond in such a discussion. Shall we continue it here, or on my talk page? -- Bathis (talk) 20:58, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

You're really saying that your mass unsolicited emails promoting a site where you intend to make money aren't spam because they're not "commercial"? I'm sure the lurkers support you in email but that won't help you on a noticeboard. power~enwiki (π, ν) 21:03, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

I think it's probably better to keep discussion here in one place. —valereee (talk) 21:13, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

I'm saying (1) I did not send out "mass unsolicited emails." I've reached out to about 50 editors who were most active on several controversial pages. Typically, spam and "mass" emails refers to thousands of emails, not a several dozen. Of that 50, 8 have replied, indicating that at least 16% did not consider it spam. In fact, it may be worth noting that true spam email has a response rate of less than 0.001%. In short, my email is not something that all editors consider "spam." It addresses real concerns that many editors have about lack of sufficient inclusion for minority views, original research, and testing of ideas and rating of the quality of articles. -- Bathis (talk) 21:21, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

It's unwanted advertising that I did not request, that makes it spam, whether it's one e-mail or 50. Using Wikipedia's e-mail service as a means to drum up business is not a legitimate use, whether or not some of the people who received your spam are interested in your product or not. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:55, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Can I ask about the state of play at this moment? Has Bathis' ability to use Wikipedia e-mail been blocked already? If not, it should be, then we can discuss whether it should be unblocked or not. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:57, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

May I also point out that the Bathis account has been open for over twelve years, in which time they've made 17 edits. [18] Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:01, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

@Bathis: I suggest you read WP:NOTHERE and WP:NOTLAB. The two questions I need answered are (1) what are your immediate plans to improve this project and (2) will you stop using Special:EmailUser to send unsolicited emails about your commercial venture? — Wug·a·po·des​ 00:42, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Any reason why this editor hasn't been indef'd? The post-block response above is devoid of remorse and understanding that Wikipedia isn't a mailing list for advertising... -FASTILY 03:42, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Email and Pass

Hi, I'm Maudslayer and I removed my e-mail by mistake, but can't log in now. It was ([redacted]@[redacted]). [redacted] 17:21, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

@Maudslayer: passwords and emails are not able to be reset by wiki admins; as your account is relatively new your best option now is to create a new user account. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:28, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Block review request (3RRNO question)

• Murder of Samuel Paty (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• GPinkerton (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

This morning I applied a 24-hour block to GPinkerton for edit warring at Murder of Samuel Paty. The specific diffs I reviewed, which were all within a few hours of each other, were the following:

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4

I viewed this as a clear breach of 3RR, and since I have previously explained to GPinkerton what vandalism is and how it related to WP:3RRNO (lengthy talk page discussion here), I applied a 24-hour block. I have since had another lengthy talk page discussion with them (here), in which I have attempted to explain what he is describing as vandalism might be POV pushing, or the use of dubious sources, but it is not vandalism as the term is defined here and so is not covered by the 3RRNO exemptions. GPinkerton is refusing to accept that from me, so I am asking for community review. If I am out of line with the community then I will need to readjust my thinking; I hope that GPinkteron will be able to hear it from the community if it is there approach that needs to change. Thanks in advance. GirthSummit _(blether) 19:02, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

• I know this is a snarky thing to say, but by the time we're done hashing this out, the block will be over... Primefac (talk) 19:12, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

  I get that Primefac, but I'm hoping that there will be a learning outcome here - either for me of for GP. If I am wrong about how I interpret 3RRNO, I'll have some thinking to do, and will have to adjust my internal thresholds. If I'm not wrong, then I'm hoping that GPinkerton will be willing to hear from the community what they are refusing to hear from me, otherwise I expect they'll be back in this situation before too long. GirthSummit _(blether) 19:21, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

• Support block for EW. Reviewed the diffs and GP's explanation on their talk page; GP is mistaking a content dispute for vandalism. Schazjmd (talk) 19:24, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
• Support block The edits were clearly editwarring, clearly not vandalism and clearly not any other exemption listed at WP:EW. --Jayron32 19:30, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
• I haven't reviewed the article history in great detail but your interpretation of 3RRNO is exactly right. The exemption is for reverting obvious vandalism (bold in the policy), and there is a handy what is not vandalism section right in the policy which has "NPOV contraventions" as a dedicated sub-header. In addition to that, here are some more quotes directly from the policy of things that are not vandalism:
  • Reversion or removal of unencyclopedic material: "Even factually correct material may not belong on Wikipedia, and removing such content when it is inconsistent with Wikipedia's content policies is not vandalism."
  • NPOV contraventions: "Though the material added may be inappropriate, it is not vandalism in itself."
  • Disruptive editing or stubbornness: "Edit warring is not vandalism and should not be dealt with as such." Also: "Vandalism is disruptive but disruptive editing isn't vandalism."
  • Misinformation, accidental: "A user who, in good faith, adds content to an article that is factually inaccurate but in the belief that it is accurate is trying to contribute to and improve Wikipedia, not vandalize it."

I could go on, but let's just say I endorse this block, and if they carry on with this defense it should be made indefinite until they show they understand, or we'll just be back here in 48. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 19:40, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

• Support block. The edits GPinkerton reverted were not vandalism. I can understand their frustration but their action was against policy and convention. Tiderolls 20:12, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
• Good block, sadly. GPinkerton is generally reasonable, so I don't know what went wrong here. Guy (help! - typo?) 23:58, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
• Good block. Its not obvious vandalism, so not an exception. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 00:25, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
• Good block. Not obvious vandalism so not exempt per WP:3RRNO. Even if it were, you should claim exemption in the edit summary to bring more eyes, not claim exemption after being sanctioned. As JzG says, it's unfortunate but everyone has off days. — Wug·a·po·des​ 00:36, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
• Support block Those edits may have been poorly referenced and pushing a POV but they were not vandalism. I am concerned that such an experienced editor as GPinkerton is having difficulty understanding Wikipedia's definition of vandalism, and I truly hope that the editor will take to heart the feedback they are receiving here. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 03:47, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
• Good block, obviously. This is extremely basic policy enforcement, that is all spelled out. And GPinkerton is not a new user. The degree of bludgeoning on their talk page over a routine block is more of a competence issue than anything else. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 04:33, 21 November 2020 (UTC)