Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard

Welcome — post issues of interest to administrators.

For urgent incidents and chronic, intractable behavioral problems, use Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. If you are new, try the Wikipedia:Teahouse instead. Do not report breaches of personal information on this highly visible page – instead use Wikipedia:Requests for oversight. For administrative backlogs add {{Admin backlog}} to the backlogged page; post here only if urgent. Do not post requests for page protection, deletion requests, or block requests here. Just want an admin? Contact a recently active admin directly. If opening a close appeal, use {{RfC closure review}} When you start a discussion about an editor, you must leave a notice on their talk page. Pinging is not enough. You may use {{subst:AN-notice}} ~~~~ to do so. Sections inactive for over seven days are archived by Lowercase sigmabot III.(archives, search) Start a new discussion

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion

Can everyone please try and remember that AfD's are supposed to stay open for 5 days? Recently I've seen many discussions close after 3 days - it's great that we no longer have the closing backlogs, but people shouldn't be racing to close them like this because we miss a number of days of discussion. If you take a look at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2009 January 25, disregarding the speedy closures, you'll see many disucssions were closed on the 28th and 29th, 2 and 1 days respectively before they should have. Some were even closed as no consensus with just a couple of comments - they should be relisted after the full 5 days. Ryan Postlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 13:29, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Many by admins and non-admins alike. There's no hurry to close these, especially the no consensus ones. If people are looking for something to do, Category:Articles lacking sources is fairly full and is more important. Majorly talk 13:34, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

If you take a look at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2009 January 26, you'll see quite a few have been closed within 2 days - that's simply unacceptable in my opinion. Ryan Postlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 13:47, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Some of those were ok "early" closes. I see several that were clearly CSD material, plus one jiffy merged. Any non-admin early close should results in a little talk-page chat with the party in question, however. - brenneman 14:04, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree. If interested in AfD why not rather weigh in on some that have little participation, or require research. Or drop by at WP:CSD, currently at 130 pages, images excluded.--Tikiwont (talk) 14:02, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I think you should warn any admin/user who makes such a mistake clearly and openly on their talk pages because it is breaking policy, if they make incorrect closes. Maybe that way they will notice it if they don't read AN (and not everyone does). Regards SoWhy 14:13, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

The AfDs I've recently closed were mostly CSD material or WP:SNOW cases for either delete or keep. It is important to wait for a whole debate in case there are different opinions. Maybe we are a bit too generous with applying WP:SNOW when it looks obvious where the AfD debate is heading. The problem as I see is that some nominations don't get a proper attention at all so at the end there are only 1-2 comments. Seems most of the AfD patrollers focus on most recent days. An option would be to add some details to the closing policy, like that unless it is a clear speedy whatever, the debate should stay at least 3 or 4 days before early closure. At least informally. --Tone 15:13, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

FWIW, the times I do an non-admin close of an AfD it is only when the article has been speedy deleted or merged with another article. I won't do a WP:SNOW closure, I would only do the non-admin closes when it's needed. Wildthing61476 (talk) 15:16, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually this is covered formally at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion where it says that articles are debated five days and in Wikipedia:Deletion process which basically suggests only to work on the 'Old' section' that is where "the day page (i.e. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/Year Month Day) that is more than five days old should be moved here. The decision to keep or delete a page is to be implemented only after this move has been performed." If respected, this process would ensure that even the youngest debate on the log file itself is at least five days old. --Tikiwont (talk) 15:39, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. (I've brought this concern up at WT:AFD, but since this discussion is now taking place here...) This is part of a shift that has been happening at AfD over many months. At first it started to become routine to close AfDs a few hours early, then a half-day, and before long it was routine to close them once they were at least four days old rather than the five days that the policy asks. It is not surprising then that more and more discussions then start to be closed even earlier. As things stand now, it is rare (unless relisted) that a discussion lasts the full five days. Cautious admins who want to close AfDs only once the full 120 hours have elapsed do not get to, because all AfDs now are being closed by admins who have at least a mild willingness to disregard policy. This was addressed previously on this noticeboard, but things have not changed so far. Paul Erik ^{(talk)(contribs)} 15:59, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I have to agree with Ryan here (wtf, I know). AfD discussions should by and large run the full five days. The only early closures should be for ridiculously obvious SNOW closures - and even at that, I think people misinterpret SNOW to mean "snowball", or a runaway string of similar !votes. it means "not a snowball's chance in hell", which should be reserved for only the most "oh, HELL no" discussions. Tan | 39 16:03, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

That's the disadvantage of abbreviated guidelines and policies. They tend to cause misinterpretation... - Mgm|^(talk) 10:27, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. If we have a look at the January 24 and 25 log, almost all the discussions are closed already, and a great part of 26 as well. I support the suggestion that we should be more strict with not closing nominations too early. Meaning, not even starting to browse the log of a recent day with an intention to close AfD. And non admin closures should follow the same rules as well, except for obvious speedies. Reminding admins who close the debates too early is a good idea (worked with me, I rethought it all over again and realized that early closures are generally not the best thing to do). --Tone 16:36, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

so it seems that if we re-emphasize that in policy, as we should, we should not suggest 3 or 4 days. it should simply say 5 days unless speedy, and snow closes should go back to being IAR exceptions. DGG (talk) 17:19, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I completely agree with those above, AFDs should not be closed before five days are up in the large majority of cases. We should give people the full five days to give more chance for editors to find, for example, new sources to prove notability or find evidence to show an article is a hoax. Deletion Review sometimes get people coming with new sources after an AFD is closed and we should try and keep this to a minimum. Any admins (or non-admins) who are generally closing AFD before they go on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Old should be pointed towards the Wikipedia:Deletion policy which is clear that "The discussion lasts at least five days". Davewild (talk) 18:26, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

The 3 or so recent discussions I've read had editors consistently expressing their concerns that AfDs were frequently closed early. The next step is to identify questionable closures and contact the closers directly, pointing to these concerns. I expect that there will be push-back and more discussion. Flatscan (talk) 04:26, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Ugh. One reason I hate sending anything to AfD is that I know I make mistakes, & too few people bother to do more than glance at the name of the article & the rationale before voting to delete. As a result, I know of a lot of doggy articles in my corner of Wikipedia that should probably go -- but I'm not going to send them to that abattoir unless I'm 110% sure they should be deleted first. Were people willing to let discussions run a full 5 days, it would make deletions a far more reliable act. -- llywrch (talk) 23:46, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with that, despite WP:AGF; we still have WP:BURDEN. WP:AFD can have the effect of concentrating the minds of article creators, and indeed bring new editors into the arena. If nobody is that committed to at least minimally working on the article, there's a case to be made to delete it anyhow, and if anyone comes along later who is more committed, the article will be defensibly created. Five days seems to me to be a reasonable time to permit constructive criticism, and I've seen very few AfDs relisted for further input; most seem to me to achieve consensus within a day or so. --Rodhullandemu 23:57, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

This has now also been brought up at the village pump and Ive invited editors there as well to remind closers if necessary they do not have the right to unilaterally shorten debate times unless there are specific reasons such as speedy or snow closures which should be marked as such.--Tikiwont (talk) 11:00, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Cross-posted from WP:VPP These are some stats that I cooked up independently of this thread that you guys might be interested in:

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2009 January 25 (1 day before closures should occur), all of the 75 AfDs on that page have been closed (100%).
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2009 January 26 (2 days before closures should occur), 43 out of 117 AfDs on that page have been closed (36.7%).
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2009 January 27 (3 days before closures should occur), 33 out of 114 AfDs on that page have been closed (30%).
• From my test sample (January 25 - 27) the average AfD was only open for 3 days, at least two days short of required.

I also agree with the points brought up by Ryan. Lately, Mathbot goes to update the /Old page and it doesn't put any AfDs on the page, they've already been closed early. If anyone is interested in some more detailed stats over longer time periods, I have a script to analyse AfD pages, and if you ask nicely (;) ) I might get you your stats. Foxy Loxy ^Pounce! 11:12, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

How about an update to {{Afd2}} to clearly show the expected debate closure date ? - Peripitus (Talk) 11:22, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Ryan, as I wrote to Foxy Lady at village pump,

For another view on AfDs, see my reseach: User:Ikip/AfD_on_average_day, although I am still compiling the information, it shows clearly the majority of articles put up for deletion are created by new editors.

Also see my comments here: WT:Articles_for_deletion#How_to_create_real_change_at_Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion Most "elite" editors are going to be resitant to change. Editors who frequent Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard and Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion are elite editors (editors with 10,000 or more edits), so although there is consensus on those two pages against change, that does not mean that wikipedia as a whole would embrace such change. If you are willing to create a RfC in a week or so, keeping in mind my suggestions in my "How_to_create_real_change" posting, I would support it.

Administrators seem consistently resistant on any constrants on their administrative duties. Making 5 days mandantory will be difficult, unless a large majority of wikipedia is aware of the RfC. Ikip (talk) 16:06, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Currently five days are mandatory. So it might be useful to separate the question of reinforcing this, which is the topic of this thread, from any proposed changes to or comments on existing policy regarding AfD. I think and hope for the first we can make progress without an RfC which would not be about 'real change' in your sense in any case.--Tikiwont (talk) 16:41, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

• IMO, if there is a clear consensus, there shouldn't be a limit as to how long the discussion needs to stay open. –Juliancolton ^{Tropical Cyclone} 21:50, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. We still have WP:COMMON. — Aitias // discussion 21:55, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

We do, sure. However, it occasionally happens that the article that would otherwise be deleted gets expanded ir otherwise improved so that deletion is not that obvious anymore. If the debate is closed in 2-3 days, users may not have enough time to do that. Still, most cases where a consensus is obvious are either inappropriate nominations (if keep) of something from the CSD list anyway. If speedy, ok. If not, where's the harm in having the debate open for 5 days? --Tone 22:09, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Also bear in mind that many editors do not visit wikipedia every day and keeping AFDs open for five days gives us a better chance that the creator or editors with knowledge of a particular topic will come forward and produce new evidence or rewrite articles to change the course of an AFD. All prods take five days and they are meant for uncontroversial deletions, surely for AFDs we can at least give them the same time to try and make sure the result is correct. Davewild (talk) 23:01, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I quite agree. I've noticed the trend of early AfD closures too and I am glad that someone has taken the trouble to address this issue here. In the future, I'll be looking out for such closures and asking the closers to revert them if they are not SNOW cases; if the closers decline, I think that such closures should be overturned at WP:DRV.  Sandstein  22:02, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

• Just a note following Foxy Loxy's stats a few comments above; those for the 25th would appear to include AfD that have been up for discussion for up to 9 or 10 days (because they were relisted), before being closed, e.g. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Monumento a Giuseppe Garibaldi. In my view, relisted Afds can be closed at any time after 5 days so long as consensus has become clear and not go through a further mandatory 5 days of discussion. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 22:03, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Section break

It seems that we need to get the word out or something, because there were 30+ discussions open on January 26, but now that the page has finally gotten to /Old, there are only 7 open, so a bunch of discussions are still being closed early. Foxy Loxy ^Pounce! 00:04, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I try to follow AfD on the last day to get a sense of the community opinions and maybe will chime in on occasion to help build a consensus. Having most discussions closed when I get there is frustrating. Contrast what happens here with CfD or TfD. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:12, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to build a list of people who closed them early and let them know of this discussion. Foxy Loxy ^Pounce! 02:02, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Just a quick note, since this thread, the average close time for January 26 has jumped to 4.6 days open on average. The people who closed AfDs on the 26th are Bearian, David Eppstein, Synergy, Tone, Aitias, MacGyverMagic, Cirt, MBisanz, and Eluchil404. I will inform those users out of that list who have not posted on this page already of this discussion. Foxy Loxy ^Pounce! 02:14, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

The one I closed was a G4 speedy deletion. I think procedural closures of AfDs where the article has been deleted for some other reason than the consensus of the discussion, such as a valid speedy, are in a different category from early closure of normal AfDs, and are much less problematic. I wouldn't want it to be possible to set up an AfD as a way of delaying a valid speedy deletion. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:55, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry about that, I'm not accusing you, I just have a script that lists who closed debates. I also agree with you on that front. Foxy Loxy ^Pounce! 03:18, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks to User:Foxy Loxy for a pointer to this discussion. It is worth discussing where the cuttoff between WP:SNOW and standard closures should be set. I always felt that 120 hours (24*5)was plenty of time, since I never quite understood when the Old page gets updated. The change from continuously backlogged to completely done after 4 days largely happened while I was on a wikibreak so I assumed that it had a wider consensus than it clearly does. As an aside, I don't think either of my Jan 26th closures count as early by any standard but I would like to know what people think about Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Stone Hallquist since I don't consider it early but some of the discussion above implied that it would be seen as so. Eluchil404 (talk) 03:32, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I've closed several AFDs between the 96 hour and 120 hour cutoff on the fifth day. Generally I leave debates that have had a recent comment. I think there is a misconception that AFDs are commented on through the entire five days. Look for instance at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/BB_Tanks, I technically closed that 11 hours early. But it had not had a comment for 100 hours. Was there anything gained by leaving it open longer? What I would like to see is that it become permissible to relist debates that have comments, but are close, such as Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Daniel J. Piette. I think relisting at least one round on those would produce better results. MBisanz ^talk 04:48, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

The problem with that is you don't know if someone will comment in the last 11 hours, and you can't know unless you leave it open, like a user above said (quote) I try to follow AfD on the last day to get a sense of the community opinions and maybe will chime in on occasion to help build a consensus. Having most discussions closed when I get there is frustrating. (end quote) it appears that there are users to wait till the end to vote, and not knowing if the debate is going to be open or closed the next time you check is both irritating to the user, and shows that perhaps we are not getting a clear perception of the consensus if we are closing debates early. Additionally, I don't understand why it is a race to close the AfDs first, just wait till they get to /Old, if everyone does that then there will be a ton of AfDs to close when mathbot updates the page. Foxy Loxy ^Pounce! 06:15, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

• I agree that care should be taken with SNOW closures. If these are closed early, people can push their opinion by finding a couple of like-minded editors and swamp the debate with a flurry of similar comments. Debates should especially stay open when the topic is obviously contentious or otherwise controversial. The few discussions I remember closing soon were either relists, proven hoaxes or discussions where commenters unanimously agreed the nomination was deliberately flurious (sp?). If I have made a mistake, I'm always open to discussion on my talk page. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:14, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
• While I have already commented briefly above, I think it's appropriate to leave a longer comment — after having been asked by User:Foxy Loxy at my talk page. Yes, I have closed numerous deletion debates, that had not been opened for at least 5 days; and I will continue doing so. Though, I deem it necessary that the deletion debate in question has to meet some particular criteria so that it can be closed early:
  • (1) Still, it should have been opened for about 4 days.
  • (2) In this time there was significant participation. 4 people (including the nominator) agreeing unanimously that the article should be deleted constitute a minimum threshold.
  • (3) As already mentioned, the result must be blatantly clear/unanimous.
• If the deletion debate in question does meet these criteria there is usually no harm in closing it early. Of course there are exceptions and this is the reason why the closing administrator should decide on a case-by-case basis whether it's appropriate and reasonable to close the deletion debate early. I honestly believe that there's no need for a strict limit: As I've written already above, we have WP:COMMON. Using that every administrator should be able to decide whether an early close is appropriate in the particular case. Doing so the prementioned criteria will represent a good guideline, I think.
• Let's not eliminate the administrative discretion entirely, fellows. Sapere aude, please! — Aitias // discussion 19:03, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
• Mea culpa - I sometimes close discussions that are speedy keep per WP:HEY, perhaps once a month. However, I take each and every deletion that I do very seriously, and keep track of them. My most recent list of delete closures are at User:Bearian/Deletions#January_2009, which include only two from WP:AFD. As may be seen, over the past year and longer, I have been closer fewer per month, and waiting longer to do so, as I get more experience. While I understand how a nominator takes a lot of time and effort to nominate articles for deletion, I also hold WP:IAR dearly when it comes to keeping improved articles and deleting articles that, while technically not speedy, violate some policy or other. Bearian (talk) 19:28, 2 February 2009 (UTC) An analysis may help the discussion: I closed Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alexander v. State of Alaska, et al. with three related stubs, after about 4 days and 8 hours on the list, and when another editor invoked the snowball clause.[1] I closed Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tim Kohler after listing of 4 days, 7 hours, with no serious objections. I am not against a general rule of 7 days on the XfD list, but there are times then WP:BLP and common sense dictate an early closure. Bearian (talk) 19:39, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Early deletes

I think this is a bit absurd. If you cross check the amount of keeps vs. deletes you'll see that more are closed early as delete, than keep. If we're going to hold a discussion that effects early closure, we had better involve the other half. Deletes should wait as well. Synergy 02:56, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

• I'm all for holding all discussions that aren't SKs, SNOWs, and SDs for the full 5 days. Foxy Loxy ^Pounce! 03:22, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
  • agreed -- that was what I at least always thought was really intended. We could reduce the number of obvious delete AfDs that we now tend to close quickly in two ways: First, checking for obvious copyvios, especially for anything that seem written professionally in a spammy fashion, in which case AfD is unnecessary. Second, using Prod more--of course, if people are stubborn enough to remove a prod without reason, we'd still gett hem, but at least trying could get maybe 20 or so a day out of AfD. DGG (talk) 03:54, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

The whole point of PROD is that they should be uncontroversial. In my personal opinion it's already overused. I've seen several articles prodded with comments by the nominator that wouldn't get anything near a deletion outcome in AFD (which is essentially what prod candidates are supposed to do). I think that the PROD template should clearly state that removal without a reason will be ignored. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:19, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

• Discussions that are closed early as delete should only be closed if either (a) a speedy deletion criterion applies, or (b) the discussion doesn't stand "a snowball's chance in hell" of having a non-delete outcome and leaving the discussion open would be unnecessarily disruptive.

  Note the addendum there. There's no reason that we cannot wait the full period in discussions where disruption isn't occurring. Oftentimes such an early closure is actually the cause of disruption, because it stifles discussion and gives editors the impression their arguments being steamrollered over and ignored. Indeed, there have been many thousands of AFD discussions over the years where participation has been high and consensus has been unanimous, and we have allowed discussions to run for the full period with no ill effect whatsoever.

  Also note, as observed above, the correct meaning of a "snow" closure. It does not mean obeying the whim of a rapidly formed group of pile-on editors. Indeed, the very rapidity of such a pile-on makes it suspect, as it means that editors aren't performing the independent double-checking of one another's conclusions that they are supposed to be doing, and that makes AFD work. Observe that in the past we've had several huge pile-ons, that have switched completely around after one editor found sources or performed a rescue. It's not safe to rush AFD. Uncle G (talk) 06:58, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

• Do bear in mind that a lot of listings on any given AFD day are relists, and they may be closed before a further full five-day period has elapsed. Stifle (talk) 17:17, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Discussion period extension to seven days

One of the interesting ideas brought up at Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion#Proposal to discourage early "delete" closes is the idea of extending the AFD discussion period to seven days. Including the input of editors who are (for example) only able to participate at weekends seems like a good idea. Please join in that discussion if you are interested. Uncle G (talk) 06:58, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Ongoing DRVs

I've listed nine bad premature closures from January 29 at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2009 February 1 after the closing administrator in question declined to relist them.  Sandstein  09:48, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Thoughts?

Any thoughts on this one? A non-admin closure within ten minutes of being listed? --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 23:43, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Unless the nominator had a history of disruption – which I'm not seeing – no way was that close legitimate, even though it's fairly obvious to me which way the AFD would go. – iridescent 23:47, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

See User talk:South Bay#Geico. The nominator had a couple of articles deleted and was making a series of pointy AfD nominations in response. Speedy closing of those AfDs looks good to me. Deor (talk) 23:52, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

It was a nomination that – bad faith or not – was obviously very poorly judged. The company (from the infobox present on the article) has nearly seventy thousand employees and hundreds of millions of dollars in assets. As Deor notes, the user made a similarly POINTy nomination of another major insurance company. When it's that obvious which way the AfD will go, an immediate close is entirely appropriate. While premature closes by non-admins may be an issue at AfD, this instance wasn't a problem; it was a good application of WP:IAR to avoid wasting a lot of people's time. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 00:09, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, now I see the context, it was a good close. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 00:43, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

User:Santi6666

Santi6666 have several times added pictures on Klaas-Jan Huntelaar in Real Madrid ‎to Wikipedia, claiming them as his own creations, however some of them appear on other internet sites, including Fifa. com [2] and on Realmadrid.com [3], some pictures dont appear on this pages but appears to be out of the same picture serie. Santi6666 have been told that he is posting unfree images as hes own, but keeps on creating new ones once the earlier have been deleted. Wonder if their is a way for Wikipedia admin to prevent this? --> Halmstad, Charla to moi 16:11, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Note: unsure if this is the right place to post this, but did not find anything on list above that redirected me to another page.

Malfunctioning adminbot

AntiAbuseBot (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) just indefinitely blocked my old account IsleofPlan (talk · contribs) [4] for a minor formatting error [5]. Hope this isn't block evasion in posting here. IsleofPlan2 (talk) 04:06, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Log back in to your now blocked account and request a unblock there on your talk page using {{unblock|your reason here}}. Tiptoety ^talk 04:12, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

He can't [6]. No warning, no block notice either. DuncanHill (talk) 04:15, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Unblocked. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:16, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

The bot operator has been made aware of this - it seems this was a one-time thing that has now been resolved. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 05:36, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Wait, what the heck? Am I the only one who thinks that a bot blocking users with "account creation blocked, e-mail blocked, cannot edit own talk page" is highly inappropriate? --Conti|✉ 12:24, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree, Conti. Such blocks shouldn't be made by a bot which, as seen here, can malfunction. SoWhy 12:32, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

So then why didn't you raise your concerns on the brfa? It was spammed on an and links were placed in the block summaries. I really hate the way the community just ignores bots until something goes wrong. I'm going to bed now but I'll be happy to talk about it in the morning --Chris 12:56, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I would have, if I would've noticed the brfa in time. Maybe there needs to be a list of current admin brfa's somewhere that we could watchlist? That'd hopefully solve that problem, at least. --Conti|✉ 13:05, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

 Done Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Adminbots --Chris 23:12, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

It wasn't made explicit on the BRFA that it would use these settings (sure you could've sussed it out by looking at the sample blocks, but...) –xeno (talk) 13:50, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I think the onus is on the bot owner to ensure that the bot is operating smoothly. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 21:09, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

The bot blocks like this because it was designed to primarily deal with Grawp who usually abuses talk page editing privileges and e-mail. (Or at least that's my limited understanding.) --MZMcBride (talk) 21:16, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I understand why the bot blocks with these options on, and that's of course perfectly fine for Grawp socks. The problem is that no bot is perfect, as we can see here, and a mistake means that an innocent user is blocked and unable to do anything at all about the block. There absolutely needs to be some human oversight here. --Conti|✉ 21:36, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) (unindent) I for one agree with SoWhy and Conti very strongly. A bot should never be allowed to use the “cannot edit own talk page” block option — Chris, please change that as soon as possible. — Aitias // discussion 21:19, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I disagree, look what happens when grawp socks are blocked without talkpage editing disabled:

• User talk:The Smell of Semen
• User talk:Twicestory
• User talk:The password is poop
• User talk:It's Solo! And he's shooting first! That's not fair!
• User talk:Tubebuilt

The same thing also happens when account creation isn't blocked, and when email isn't blocked. --Chris 23:43, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I understand why a bot might block aggressively under certain circumstances, but I have trouble understanding why one would respond to IsleofPlan's edit with a block at all. Dragons flight (talk) 23:59, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree that block should have never happened. It was a mistake on my behalf that has now been fixed. --Chris 00:47, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

block email, that's fine. What is the harm in not blocking talk pages? The person goes crazy on the talk page until what? until a human notices and locks the talk page? There isn't any great damage the project in that case.--Crossmr (talk) 09:35, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

clearly you've never seen a grawp unblock request then. He uses tables with coloured cells to somehow recreate a massive version of the goatse image, among other things, its several 100,000kb and even covers the tabs at the top, so it takes ages to load and its in the unblock cat so its a common occurrence if you're active there--Jac16888^Talk 15:26, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

is there no way to delete the page without actually loading it? Even still, if we're accidentally hamstringing legit users, he's already won.--Crossmr (talk) 15:56, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Probably, except that the only way to know if its been grawped is to see the page itself, or the history, there is no way to stop these as the minute, at least not until the abuse filter comes online, I seem to remember that this bot is only meant to be a stopgap till then, the filter should pretty much stop every single form of abuse they can come up with.--Jac16888^Talk 17:48, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Sure there is. If he's making pages that large just return the history of the talk page. You'll see the page size. If the bot locks down someone for everything but talk page and an unblock post is requested just return the page history. If its several times larger than any reasonable unblock request delete and salt the earth.--Crossmr (talk) 18:17, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I was thinking about this more and even if we can't delete a page without viewing it, we can rollback all the edits of a user without viewing each edit. So all you need to do is have the bot watch the page for the unblock request category. At that point have it return the page history and retrieve the page size. If it is above a threshold, rollback the users edit's and delete/lock the page. If its not, do nothing and let a human handle it.--Crossmr (talk) 23:57, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Might be a nice function. I think it doesn't come up nearly as often as it used to, in large part because we're now blocking pagemovers with these flags, but it's worth bearing in mind, especially if those flags change. – Luna Santin (talk) 11:41, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

If you use popups then when you put your cursor over the link it won't load the full page but will tell you the size of the page and give you a link to delete it without loading it. Hut 8.5 10:54, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I do agree this error was pretty bad -- fortunately, it's the only one of its kind I have yet seen, and it was reversed pretty quickly once it was brought up for admin attention. I do feel a need to say, though: if AntiAbuseBot can't block pagemove socks with the flags it currently uses, there is just about no point having it block at all, as every block it makes will need to be tweaked by hand. Given the low error rate and great amount of good this bot has done, I'd rather we didn't shoot ourselves in the foot like that without a pressing reason. Have we had any other unfortunate incidents like this one? – Luna Santin (talk) 00:13, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

We could otherwise leave the bot as it is, and ask for an admin review of the blocks (for example if the bot adds {{unblock|Please review this automatic block}} to the user's talk page? That way we are 100% sure all blocks are legitimate, while preventing disruption. -- lucasbfr ^talk 11:12, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Interesting idea. Any false positives with this setup are very bad. The extra work would be a minor hassle -- few accounts a day, maybe? -- but if the extra human review helps people feel more comfortable I wouldn't mind pitching in. Anyone else have an opinion on this one? – Luna Santin (talk) 11:41, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea. In fact, it should be standard for admin-bot-that-block. It could put it in a seperate category, i.e. "bot generated unblock review requests" or something. –xeno (talk) 14:31, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Is this ok?

Hi, I hope I'm in the right place, I have a sort of question so I didn't think ANI was appropriate. Basically I'm not happy with a comment one user made to another here, but I read CIVIL NPA & BLOCK and couldn't find anything specifically "outlawing" it. Is what Ryūlóng said ok?

Also I should just add that I don't know either of these 2 users and just stumbled upon the AFD in the sorting section, so I may not be away of any relevant history. Thanks for taking the time to read this. Ryan4314 (talk) 12:03, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Considering User:Mythdon's last AFD was speedy deleted by Ryulong that does seem a little strange. M♠ssing Ace 12:05, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

It does seem odd given the circumstances pointed out by User:Missing Ace above. Obviously, threatening to block someone or to have someone else block them just because you disagree with them in an AFD discussion is pretty out of line, so no, it's not okay. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 13:47, 30 January 2009 (UTC).

As a courtesy, I have advised both Ryulong and Mythdon of this thread. Pedro :  Chat  13:53, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I read Ryoulong as warning the user against (further) disruption. Which would be acceptable if A)Phrased politely and B)Previous disruption had occured. Looking back, though, I'm not seeing landslide of similar nominations by this user. These two do have a history, per Mythdon's talk, but in the end R isn't saying that he will block him, just that he'll seek to have him blocked. So, all in all probably file under "irked but harmless." - brenneman 14:00, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Ah yes, I also see from there that this is not the first time Ryulong has threatened to try and get others blocked, he also threatened another user here.

What can I, a lone humble editor, do to get this sort of threat specifically barred, in either CIVIL, NPA or BLOCK? Do you have to request the policy change at ARBCOM? Or is it just as simple as requesting it on the relevant policy's talk page. I'd hate to think anyone takes these sorts of threats seriously and stops making legitimate edits. Ryan4314 (talk) 14:18, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Nothing. I think there is no chance of getting this kind of "threat" barred in general, because it's so hard to define, and so hard to distinguish from a warning. I am very much puzzled by Ryūlóng's reasoning – I have never heard of this character, not even of this Power Ranger (whatever that is) universe that it seems to come from. On the other hand, Mythdon has a userbox identifying themselves as a Power Ranger fan. But generally speaking, if an admin considers asking for me to be blocked if I do something, I prefer to know about it before it happens. One of the advantages is that I can try to convince the admin it would be a mistake before I have something on my block log. --Hans Adler (talk) 14:36, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Hang on, is Ryulong an admin or not? I was under the assumption he was an ordinary user who had made a non-admin closure of the earlier mentioned AFD. I have been speaking as though he was not an admin, I have no problem with admins threatening to block users and wouldn't want that to change. Although in regards to my first post (if Ryulong is an admin) I think he may have over-stepped the mark. Ryan4314 (talk) 14:59, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Whoops, I can now see that Ryulong is an admin, I retract all the stuff I said about policy changes. Although this does now bring up the issue that he threatened to block an editor over a content dispute. Ryan4314 (talk) 15:02, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

No matter the issue here, I think the above diffs and links paint a pretty disturbing picture of an admin threatening to block users over content disputes where he himself is involved in. I'd really like his statement about that but if it is true, we cannot tolerate such behavior. I do hope it's all a big misunderstanding though... SoWhy 15:00, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I just read that comment and I'm really not comfortable with Ryulong being an administator. I just don't trust him. How was that AfD disruptive? He's the only one who said keep, the rest said delete and redirect to power ranges, so it's obviously not a disruptive nom. I would like to see him apologise to Mythodon.--Patton^t/c 17:45, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

First off to answer the original question: No, this is not okay. Administrators should not be threatening blocks to users whom they are having a disagreement with. Second, unfortunately this type of questionable behavior has been going on for a little while now with multiple unsuccessful attempts to get Ryulong to stop, and I am afraid it never will. Not more than a few months ago, I left Ryulong a note about improper user of rollback, to which clearly had no effect 'cause when approached about a similar misuse, he replies with "bugger off", how becoming of a administrator. As for the blocking issues, here is another example of a block (that was later reduced) placed on a editor by Ryulong whom he was involved in a dispute with, and even after he was confronted about it he never admitted he was wrong. Finaly, I am still scratching my head as to why a IP deserves a one month block with talk page editing disabled for not signing their talk page posts, I am really hoping Ryulong can shed some light on that for us. Tiptoety ^talk 18:17, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Ryulong is blocking editors for not signing their posts? Okay, instead of blocking the editor, he could have used the {{unsigned}} template to sign his posts for him. That's what I did on User talk:SSRanger and Ryulong told me that he doesn't have to sign his posts and here is the edit war concerning that [7] [8] [9] [10]. Here is that discussion for my talk page. And about the "bugger off" response, he could have discussed the rollbacks or even just left the warning there. If I found that my rollback was unjust, I would undo it. Why can't Ryulong use rollback properly? I'd really like to know. The rollback policy directly says use to revert vandalism and abuse of it allows any admin to revoke it. —Mythdon (talk • contribs) 18:48, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Also, to prevent bias, here is the discussion concerning the AfD. —Mythdon (talk • contribs) 19:30, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I've unblocked the IP address -- Samir 05:19, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I would like to point out this concerning the IP address not signing posts. If you take a look at his talk page, my final warning was plenty of warning.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 07:04, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

While I personally prefer all talk page posts to be signed and timestamped and do make use of the {{unsigned}} template when I find unsigned posts, I do not think that not signing is disruptive in a blockable sense. DuncanHill (talk) 07:41, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Summary

Just a quick summary for the benefit of any newcomers to this thread: Ryulong has been threatening users he disagrees with with blocks [11] [12], rollbacking good faith edits [13] [14] [15] [16], and telling those who complained about his rollbacks to "bugger off" [17]. He even blocked an ip editor and protected his talk page for forgetting to sign posts [18].--Patton^t/c 19:01, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Ryulong's reply to the "summary" diffs.

About this: Mythdon has generally been annoying towards myself and several other users since he started editing. In the past couple of months, he has been putting various articles up for AFD in the subject area which have no pressing need to be deleted in any way. I've advised Mythdon to change his editing habits in sending items to AFD on the talk page of the WikiProject I started up to deal with articles in the Power Rangers, etc. subject area. This thread is seen here where I elaborate upon my comments to Mythdon at the AFD. About this: Fractyl has been a user I've had issues with that I've brought up on this board (or ANI) in the past. Generally, he adds unverified information to articles, and after doing so I warned him that if he continued to add unverified information to articles he would get blocked. This is, as far as I know, normal practice. In both of these cases, I did not say I was going to block the user in question, as it was stated above. I simply said that I would seek a block, which in my case would be seeking another administrator to look into the situation and trust in their judgement.

I know I have a history in dealing with Mythdon and Fractyl, and my language towards them has gotten less kind as my patience with the two of them has dropped. I once asked for another administrator to look into an issue that Mythdon became a part of, and he soon lost his patience with the editor as well. I am trying to get Fractyl to abide to policy more and more and Mythdon to take less of a strict reading of various policies, as he seems to be taking guidelines as the final solution to various things that could be solved (in my opinion) outside of AFD.

Now onto other things brought up: Mythdon was repeatedly adding fact tags to things which, not being a BLP, do not need to be verified to where every sentence/paragraph needs a citation. This is a long term problem on this page/style issues with that template. Removing trivia. Also done here.

Now about that IP address, This user did not forget to sign his comments. He purposefully added "Intentionally unsigned" at the end of them, wherever he went. This is a disruptive practice, and I warned him for it (being uninvolved with the IP to begin with) and then he replied with the same commentary. To prevent further disruption, he was blocked and not allowed to edit his talk page. There was a posting on this board (or ANI, I cannot remember) that alerted me to the situation and I acted accordingly, as he had been previously "warned" by the bot messages on his page. I gave him a final warning, and he went against the warning.

I hope that this answers everyone's questions.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 20:02, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Also, for that AFD that was mentioned above as one Mythdon started and I speedy deleted the article, if you read the comments at the AFD (and if administrators look at the deleted article) what I did was perfectly fine within policy.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 20:12, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Trivia is no excuse for abuse of rollback. If you think that rollback is just like any other "undo". Wrong, it is a circumstantial feature that shall be used to extreme caution. Your rollback rationals do not indicate reason or excuse to rollback. Doing so is abuse of privileges and I brought this up to you twice now. Now is the point where there is enough evidence to question your status as an administartor, given the evidence provided by other users who cited what you have been doing that is abuse. By the way, use the tools more justified and less abusive. Okay?. —Mythdon (talk • contribs) 20:43, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

My use of rollback (something all administrators and even some users have) is not an issue of great merit here. Although I will attempt to use "Undo" more often (rollback tends to be easier when I see one user has made mutliple nonconstructive edits).—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 20:53, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Not commenting on the other issues at the moment, but re: the AFD I linked above. At what point exactly did anyone say you did not delete it in line with policy? No doubt you will provide me with a diff. I cited it because it did not marry (on first inspection) with your comments at the susbsequent AFD, from where this complaint has stemed from i.e. the last AFD you had interacted on you both agreed. Your overly defensive attitude in your last remark is concerning to say the least. M♠ssing Ace 20:45, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

It just seems that it was brought up in the rest of the discussion as some sort of action I may have taken against Mythdon and I wanted to clarify what I did. And the previous AFDs are brought up in more detail in my discussion with Mythdon (somewhat in private) throughout WT:TOKU.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 20:53, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, as you have no doubt seen, it wasn't :) It was a genuine edit to note that on the surface it seemed odd when you had been in prior "agreement". No big deal, I just wanted to clarify that I was not using that as some kind of argument of mis-action or whatever. M♠ssing Ace 20:57, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Er...last I heard WP:V didn't apply only to BLP articles. He's pefectly entitled to place a tag after an nreferenced sentence. Also thoat article is going to be deleted.--Patton^t/c 22:33, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

The tagging itself was done disruptively after a certain point which is spelled out clearly at User talk:Mythdon#.7B.7Bfact.7D.7D tagging.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 00:19, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Having had a look at the diffs you provided, none of those tags are disruptive or unnecessary. They are uncited sentences that are not so blatantly obvious that they do not require a cite. That aside, you do realise that it's completely inappropriate to say something like "If you add anything like that again to the article before Saturday evening, you will be blocked", in response to good faith edits, no matter how poor you think they are, don't you? And blocking an IP editor and stopping them posting on their own talk page for not signing their posts was just completely beyond the pale. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 02:29, 31 January 2009 (UTC).

Support for the notion that {fact} tags are useful and necessary in all types of articles, not just BLP! Some of the other WP languages don't much bother with references. That gets to be a bad habit. I'm glad that en: enforces a strict policy on sourcing. - Hordaland (talk) 03:34, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

A final warning that if a user continued to add unsourced information to articles is wrong considering how you are saying that my statement that the addition of {{fact}} tags got a bit disruptive was wrong?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 07:01, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Ok, well it seems I've stumbled upon an already on-going case. If Ryulong gets taken to RFCU or ARBCOM or anything like that would someone mind notifying me please, cheers. Ryan4314 (talk) 00:03, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I'd also like to point out that the user Mythdon has only started 9 AFDs in the past two months, 6 of which were deleted. In my opinion I do not believe this is excessive. Ryan4314 (talk) 00:38, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I think the block for not signing was uncalled for. DuncanHill (talk) 02:16, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

The block was not for not signing. The block for was intentionally not signing.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 06:59, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Intentionally not signing is not blockable, in my opinion. DuncanHill (talk) 07:42, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Leaving comments signed as "Intentionally unsigned" would be, particularly with the six threads on the IP's talk page, and his general disdain (it seems) on his former account (which he used to sign as) as well as apparently disrupting the talk discussions in general.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 08:10, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

So intentionally not signing but not saying that it was intentional isn't? And "general disdain"? When we start blocking people for "general disdain" then we really have gone to the dogs. DuncanHill (talk) 08:25, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

The user's activities beyond purposefully saying that he intentionally unsigned the comments was disruptive. That is what I am trying to explain.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 09:08, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

So you didn't block him for intentionally not signing but for other disruption? A very good contributor to the refdesks intentionally doesn't sign, and I'm worried that some over-zealous admin is going to block him if we accept the rationale you used here. And if "general disdain" is grounds for blocking you may as well indef me now. DuncanHill (talk) 09:53, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Why don't we just forget I used that phrasing then, seeing as you feel like picking apart things I say for the sole reason of trying to make something that I did wrong when it had consensus at the time that I did it?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 10:05, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I was trying to understand why you did what you did. I didn't find the block log convincing, and I don't find your attempts at explanation here convincing either. This may be because of some sort of linguistic or cultural misunderstanding. Still, this seems unproductive so I'm done with it. DuncanHill (talk) 10:13, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I warned the IP to stop and he replied by effectively saying "bring it on" and still using the "Intentionally unsigned" thing. Signing messages is part of the talk page guidelines, which are rarely given exceptions. I gave the user fair warning and his first edit upon returning to editing was to violate that warning. Seeing as I had never been involved with the user in the past and he had plenty of previous warnings (bot messages) I believe I acted accordingly. I am not going to block anyone for a similar action unless I actually find them doing it or it is brought up here (or ANI) as being done disruptively, as the IP clearly acted.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 10:32, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

And does this user you speak of sign his comments as "Intentionally unsigned" as the IP address did? Or does he simply never type ~~~~ after he posts? If either have been told to stop, and they continue to do so, it'd be disruptive and pointy as Crossmr states below.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 10:09, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

He signs as "Anonymous" and uses the !nosign! feature that all editors are allowed to use. There is nothing disruptive about his edits, and if you or anyone else goes and seeks him out to block him, then I would regard that as deliberately disruptive and pointy behaviour. DuncanHill (talk) 10:13, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I have no idea what this "!nosign!" feature is. And why would he bother signing as "Anonymous" if he has an account?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 10:32, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Who said he had an account? If you don't add ~~~~ and do put !nosign! in the edit summary, sinebot won't come along and sign for you. I take it you've heard of sinebot?

I know what Sinebot is. I just was not aware of it actually picking something like that up in the edit summary to not sign the comment.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 10:43, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I'd agree with this point. If an IP (or any user) is specifically signing their posts "intentionally unsigned" it is pointy and disruptive.--Crossmr (talk) 09:30, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. But does it justify a month long block with talk page editing disabled? Tiptoety ^talk 20:12, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) I find a month block for not signing your posts in a way that someone wants to be taking things completely out of proportion. WP:SIGN says that the purpose of signatures on Wikipedia are to identify you as a user, if a user is always ending their posts with Intentionally Unsigned then it is a signature, as it uniquely identifies that user (even if it is a bit WP:POINTY). I also suggest, firmly and adamantly, that talk page editing is turned back on, and at the very least, the block should be shortened to a week. Foxy Loxy ^Pounce! 06:41, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Remove Ruylong as a admin

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

---

1. support He is abusive 32.174.199.109 (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 02:13, 31 January 2009 (UTC).

   Premature. If these rather questionable administrative actions continue, an RFC or RFAr can be the next step though with a view to removing the admin flag from Ryulong's account. I hope it doesn't come to that. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 03:23, 31 January 2009 (UTC).

2. Comment Try. Requests. For. Arbitration. LessHeard vanU (talk) 02:24, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

A call to remove Ryulong as admin is exactly the kind of impetuous behavior he is being accused of. Ryulong should be advised to use blocking and the threat of blocking only as a last resort for users who engage in unambiguously bad-faith behavior for which the community has already established that blocking is an appropriate response. Likewise, his accusers should be advised to ask him about his rationales before jumping to conclusions, and follow normal process in having his case examined. This is the best way to seek an ideal outcome where Ryulong remains an effective admin while improving his relations to other editors. Dcoetzee 03:33, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

• Premature: I agree with Lankiveil and LessHeard, if you feel he should be desysopped, then take it to RFCu or RFAr. Ryan4314 (talk) 10:18, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
• Second chance If action is taken it should be here and not by ArbCom. The community needs an independent desyssoping process. I do not trust Ryulong as an administrator, however I think we should give him a second chance. If he does anything like this again I think it warrants his dessysoping.--Patton^t/c 13:33, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I have a question: why are we treating the suggestion of this IP address with only one edit being this very suggestion with any merit?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 21:11, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Probably because the suggestion has merit. If you're being overly aggressive in blocking people, you probably shouldn't be an admin. --Carnildo (talk) 22:53, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Clearly it does not because of the established users who disagree.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 23:02, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, because instead of allowing this subsection to become a hanging party or worse a flame war between the pro's and cons a couple of editors suggested that this was an inappropriate venue - but it was done with all due respect (not that I checked, but an ip's edit history is meaningless in many cases since it may well be someone with a history who happened upon this addy - for whatever reason) so there could be no accusation of having a concern buried by "der Kaburl". LessHeard vanU (talk) 23:36, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

(ec) As an established user who is completely opposed to the above voting: That's mostly because such out-of-process lynching attempts detract from the real issue, which I find somewhat alarming --Hans Adler (talk) 23:40, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Broadly - unless an admin fucks Jimbo's dog on his lawn and then throws it threw his window attached to a bag of steaming turds - they are untouchable - so let's close this as a waste of time it will just remain people of how unaccountable our admins are and this will depress them and make them less likely to edit - thus harming the project. --Cameron Scott (talk) 23:42, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Bad Cameron! No pet for you! -Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Dittobori)} 02:26, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Jimbo's got a dog? Ryan4314 (talk) 02:33, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Pssst: "...throws it threw through..." —Travis^talk 04:11, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

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

Worse comment in that discussion

A far more disturbing edit to that AfD is arguing to delete under the claim that "Anyone who thinks Power Rangers is notable needs to get a life" and when an admin cautioned this new user, the new user replied by mocking the admin's spelling. Telling editors to "get a life" and then dismissing an admin's caution also needs to be considered if anyone is taking issue with Ryulong's comment. Best, --A Nobody^{My talk} 00:49, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I guess the editor violated WP:CIVIL. But regardless, threatening to get an editor blocked for a simple AfD is far more disruptive and is a worse offense. —Mythdon (talk • contribs) 01:36, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I think Ryulong seriously believes that the nomination was not constructive. Most of the "votes" for deletion are of the WP:JNN and WP:ITSCRUFT vein or as in the example above outright insult editors. As far as I can tell, there is not a compelling case per WP:PRESERVE as to why this content must be deleted as it does not appear to be a hoax, concerns a character from a notable franchise that obviously some editors believe worthwhile to come here for, and appears to be merge or at least redirectable, but these are for talk page discussions and not AfD. With that said, I have seen you make reasonable arguments elsewhere, notably in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of tomboys in fiction and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mesogog and so I'm not sure if there's a pattern as Ryulong suggested, because again in these two examples, I thought your arguments were sound. Best, --A Nobody^{My talk} 01:42, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

My argument on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of tomboys in fiction was not a good argument, but I thought it was then. I now think different about that article and am now neutral. If you check here, you'll see which AfD's I've made and you'll see whether it's just Ryulong or if they are not constructive. —Mythdon (talk • contribs) 01:52, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Your argument was and still is good in that discussion, which is why it wasn't deleted at the time. I don't find the reasons for wanting to delete those various Power Rangers lists compelling; however, I am not sure they are such that would justify a block (the number of nominations you have is nowhere near the number that others have that I do find disruptive). They shouldn't be deleted and should as in the case of Sky Tate be either improved or merged or redirected with edit history intact, but not on par with some instances of spree nominations that perhaps are blockable. I do urge consideration for merges or for seeing lists as compromises, i.e. if you do not think we should have separate articles, perhaps consider at least boldly redirecting or merging to lists akin to the argument you made in Mesogg AfD. Best in any event, --A Nobody^{My talk} 02:10, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

The articles that I nominated for deletion needed to be deleted. Hopefully you've read every AfD. Lack of notability and/or verifiability are very valid reasons for deletion, but other reasons can be more valid. —Mythdon (talk • contribs) 02:21, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I do not find notability a valid reason for deletion, because it is subjective, but verifiability is compelling; however, some of those are verifiable, which is why not all were deleted and nor should they have been. Pretty much nothing "needs" to be deleted that isn't a hoax or personal attack or copyright violation. Everything beyond that just comes down to personal taste or vision of what Wikipedia should be. Best, --A Nobody^{My talk} 02:25, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

But Wikipedia is not the place for non-notable things. WP:NOTABLE is a reason for deletion, despite the fact that it is disputed as a reason. That is why we don't have articles on things made up one day.—Mythdon (talk • contribs) 02:36, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is the paperless encyclopedia that anybody can edit. What is and is not notable is debateable. In my opinion, as well as those who created, edit, and come here for those articles, characters from Power Rangers are notable, because they can be verified in sources and because they are from a mainstream franchise familiar to millions of people around the world that includes a variety of media. The user whom I quote above claiming that Powers Rangers is not notable is making an absurd statement, because even if you do not think we should cover all of its characters to suggest that even the show itself is not notable is just not accurate, but the fact that someone would use a notability argument to say that even the show itself is not notable reveals how problematic and subjective notability is as a concept. If we want to have some kind of inclusion criteria, okay, but we should call it that rather than come up with something called notability, which can and is interepreted subjectively by many, many editors, because in this one example, we run the gambit from someone arguing that the characters are so notable that nominating them for deletion is block worthy to someone arguing at least that the charcters aren't notable to even someone blanketing everything related to Power Rangers not being notable. Who knows which of these three stances is correct, if there is such a thing as even being "correct" when it comes to opinion and interpretation, but I would much rather err on the side of covering knowledge that is relevant to at least some people and that I am at least reasonably confident is not total nonsense than diminishing our overall usefulness to our readership and appeal to volunteers who are willing to work on this sort of material. Finally, I unquestionably don't think we should have articles on "things made up one day," which is why I have argued to delete over fifty articles; however, the article we're discussing was not "made up one day." The article contains some out of universe information (who played the character), indication of importance of the character (Power Rangers leader 2005 (2025)) and is verifiable as seen here from Google News. Per WP:BEFORE, I don't see why a merge and redirect would not have been attempted first or per WP:PRESERVE as an alternative to deletion. Best, --A Nobody^{My talk} 02:43, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Are you saying notability is a controversial issue? WP:NOTABLE is a powerful guideline and it is one of the more firm guidelines. In fact, it excludes sources affiliated with the subject, and per WP:RS, articles should rely on reliable secondary sources and not rely on primary sources. —Mythdon (talk • contribs) 03:08, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Indeed it is controversial, because it goes against encyclopedic tradition (look at the early Enlightenment encyclopedias or yearly update volumes of Britannica and you'll find many articles based on primary sources) and as argued by many editors, such as at User:Thanos6, Wikipedia:Notability/Arguments#Arguments_against_deleting_articles_for_non-notability, User:Ziggurat/Notability, for example, and by looking at the lack of agreement at Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(fiction)#Final_adoption_as_a_guideline, the community has yet to agree what is and is not notable concerning fictional elements such as characters with some, including myself, thinking that "notability" is anti-wikipedic/elitist and that Wikipedia_talk:Notability/Archive_27#Rename_proposal makes more sense. Best, --A Nobody^{My talk} 03:18, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

←Mythdon, I would suggest that this discussion will be fruitless and not lead to any sort of satisfactory resolution. Most editors think that notability is an important and necessary guideline, a small but very vocal minority including User:A Nobody do not and take every opportunity to inform everybody of this fact. You're not the first person to have this debate with him, and I doubt you'll be the last. Getting back on topic, yes, the edit by that user was not constructive, and I have warned them on their talk page. I can't see any further action that needs to be taken. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 08:50, 2 February 2009 (UTC)>

Most editors do not think notability is an important and necessary guideline as far more editors create, work on, and read articles that some deem non-notable that participate in AfD and guideline talk page (when a half dozen editors vote to delete in a five-day AfD for an article with hundreds of edits by unique editors and tens of thousands of page views, it's apparent who the vocal minority is). Only a vocal minority try to push these guidelines through, although they do not reflect the reality of article creation and readership, but in any event, I am glad you warned the user and agree that this thread is about the incivility in that AfD and not the larger issue of notability. Best, --A Nobody^{My talk} 18:01, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Just saw this, it's obvious that the "get a life" guy is nothing to do with the rest of the delete !voters, no one supported him and I personally quite agree with what DGG said. Just because one person "doesn't like it" doesn't mean the rest of us think that, in fact I believe Mythdon regularly edits Power Ranger related articles. Ryan4314 (talk) 23:54, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I do not think the rest of the editors necessarily believe what User:K;;m5m k;;m5m wrote, which is why I am not convinced Mythdon should be blocked and why I noted above that I have agreed with some of his arguments in AfDs elsewhere (I said that statement to show that I have not identified a pattern of frivolous nominations that justify a block); however, at the same time, I just wanted to be sure that in the uproar over Ryulong's comment, the other editor's incivility wouldn't be lost, especially as the AfD does have that other comment about editors needing to "get a life", not to mention some textbook WP:JNN/WP:ITSCRUFT and even a delete "vote" that focuses on an editor rather than the article. By the way, you ask what makes the subject nominated so special, if you look at the bottom of the article, you will see the character was the leader of the group, which makes him more notable than one off characters. Moreover, doing a quick search, I found that there are reviews that discussed the character. Surely, at least that kind of out of universe information can be merged and redirected at worst per WP:PRESERVE. Best, --A Nobody^{My talk} 01:48, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

What do you think about Ryulong at this point?. —Mythdon (talk • contribs) 01:54, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

A Nobody, if you want to start a discussion on the perceived evils of deletionism, might I suggest that you start a discussion of your own, rather than hijacking this one and taking it way, way off topic? Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 11:00, 3 February 2009 (UTC).

In response to A Nobody, I know there were a couple of silly !votes from both sides in that AFD, but they'll just be ignored by the closing admin. Unfortunately I must agree you are taking this thread a bit off topic (when compared to the first post), I think you should discuss the article in question on the AFD itself and you should discuss the notability policy at WP:N etc. Ryan4314 (talk) 12:09, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

User:Thevandaminator Urgent action requested!

User:Thevandaminator is repeatedly removing SPAM tags from his article Showtime All-star Wrestling, despite repeated user warnings. Wuhwuzdat (talk) 16:56, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Looks like a SPA to me. My suggestion would be blocking him and deleting the Showtime All-star Wrestling and Sigmon articles which look both to be like a walled garden. D.M.N. (talk) 17:01, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

per these diffs,[[19]] [[20]] [[21]] this SPA users beligerant behavior continues. Wuhwuzdat (talk) 20:16, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm done with this problem user, I have most probably violated 3RR by my repeated undos of his removal of the speedy tags, and do not wish to be blocked. My apologies for the rules violation, I hope you can see past it. The suggestions issued above are not available to me, as I am NOT an Admin. Wuhwuzdat (talk) 20:51, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

In addition based on the logs it's been deleted twice, and was recreated as soon as it's salting expired. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 00:34, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Deleted and salted; I will leave a message for its creator as to how to proceed. --Rodhullandemu 00:42, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

 Done The ball is in his court. --Rodhullandemu 01:19, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Catullus 16

I say that including the text of this very short Public domain poem is necessary if we're going to do detailed textual analysis of it, which we do. Others claim that understanding can be, I don't know, pulled out of thin air, and no copy of the poem is necessary. Can someone analyse the policy in this case, and come to a sane decision?

Also, is it just me who can't believe he's managed to fall into an article about a filthy Latin pom, simply because he was linked to it from an off-site article, found the text o f the poem had been deleted, and thus the article was nonsense, restored it and watchlisted it, and now has people claiming grandly that there is no need to see a single line of a poem being extensively discussed? Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 19:08, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

• Back with more in a bit, but try WP:PROFANITY for now. Protonk (talk) 19:14, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
• Ok. Not really an admin issue, but here's my read. From an editorial standpoint, some version of the text should stay. It is short, it was probably written to shock originally, and it allows us to talk about the poem clearly. This isn't a poem that just happens to say "fuck", which could be the takeaway from a reader if we eschew posting the whole test and refer to it only through a ~ two paragraph anaylsis. I would suggest either changing the "rough translation" to latin or removing it (as it is superfluous to the table directly beneath it). Other than that I don't see a pressing need to remove it. Protonk (talk) 19:21, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

This issue has been coming up with this poem for literally hundreds of years. The fact is there are many ways to translate it, and there's no particular reason to use the word "fuck." I wrote another translation a few years ago for Libel (poetry). Chick Bowen 19:26, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Is there any reason not to use the word "fuck"? DuncanHill (talk) 19:30, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

The "Notes and technical terms" section at Catullus 16 gives a pretty good understanding of what pedicabo and irrumabo mean. Obviously no translation is entirely precise, and the choice of one over another is a subjective one. Chick Bowen 20:32, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Basically, I found this article in a state where it was pretty useless - it discussed the text, referencing specific lines but contained only the Latin. I checked, found a translation had been deleted (!), so restored it, and watchlisted it. I just want an article with suffcient information that it doesn't require finding a translation... somewhere else in order to make any sense of the discussion contained therein. An imperfect translation is still infinitely better than no translation at all. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 20:59, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

• Problem with this is that "we" shouldn't be doing any translations at all; because that is original research, and the whole unsourced section on "rough translation" appears to breach that policy. Whereas a literatim translation may be a defensible starting point, it's unhelpful because of the issues of interpretation that constitute the major rationale for discussing the topic. To my mind, what would be more valuable in encyclopedic terms are (a) a discussion of the censorship issues (which is already there) and (b) a comparative exercise illustrating how translators have done so in the context of their cultural situations. --Rodhullandemu 01:33, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Even if that were generally true, because of the censorship, there are no public domain translations. In order to discuss the censorship, we need to see what's being censored, and the solution is not to completely censor the poem for our article. Even if translation-as-original-research were a general rule - I'm not convinced it is, as we regularly accept foreign sources in articles - this would be as clear-cut an application of Ignore all Rules ordering us to supply a translation anyway, because it's impossible for anyone who doesn't speak Latin to understand the discussion and why it was censored without a translation. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 04:17, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Whereas that may be so, I find it hard to believe that any translation of such a text cannot be public domain as a derived work; equally, such a translation could not not possibly (without unreasonably stretching the "sweat of the brow" doctrine) be regarded as a breach of copyright. The original text is presumably reliably sourced; all that remains should be its interpretation, and that, as far as we are concerned, is a matter of reliable secondary sources; that those sources may differ is surely up to us to point that out, or reliable tertiary sources (i.e. those that have comparatively and authoritatively analysed the secondary sources) should preferably do that for us. Meanwhile, the purported translation seems to be unsourced; a better starting point would seem that of a creditable Latin scholar, and that should be used as the basis for discussion. --Rodhullandemu 04:34, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

You prudes. As long as the translation is not, word for word, a duplicate of something that is not in the public domain I see no reason why we should not include it. I myself, for reasons I don't want to discuss, went looking for dirty Latin phrases recently and was irritated that the article on Catullus 16 was bowdlerized. Applying WP:NOR to an accurate translation is really a stretch of policy. People translate non-english sources all the time here. Maybe we should eviscerate the "literal translation" of Frere Jacques to be consistent. Skinwalker (talk) 04:42, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it makes sense to consider a translation as original research. Doing so would prevent us from quoting at all in articles dependent on non-English-language sources, of which we have a great many and which have always been acceptable. In direct response to Rodhullandemu: a translation is never unsourced; its source is the original. Though translation can be subject to interpretation, that doesn't make it the same thing as interpretation. Giving an acceptable rough translation does not require a scholar. Chick Bowen 04:46, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually, if we need to do OR to do an accurate article, I think we simply need to do it. We do what we need to have a clear article. We have two choices--to find some excuse for not calling it OR, or to admit that there is no sharp boundary between what is and is not Original Research. All summarizing, all selection, all choice, all description, is actually to some degree original research--even wikisource is, because the process of choosing what text to transcribe and how to transcribe it is research. Even plagiarism--you have to decide what to copy. DGG (talk) 06:53, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Just as a technical point, the fact that a work is itself in the public domain does not mean translations of it fall into the public domain. A translation is a new expression and therefore gains a copyright of its own. Looie496 (talk) 21:09, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what the central issue is here -- except that it really doesn't require Administrator attention. But SMH has a point: a plausible argument can be made to include a translation of the poem to help the reader to understand the discussion. Even if a translation somehow falls under original research, ignore all rules gives permission to create & add a translation to this article. BTW, as long as the translation doesn't present an unusual or novel interpretation of the original, how can it be considered original research? -- llywrch (talk) 20:41, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Naming conventions policy change proposal

What is the correct location to post a proposal about a major change in Wikipedia policy/conventions? I am suggesting that all organism articles be titled with their scientific names according to nomenclatural codes. Where would I appropriately post an announcement of this discussion so that the most of concerned Wikipedians interested could comment or assist in drafting a usable convention? I've posted Wikipedia projects tree of life, birds, plants, animals, and alerted interested editors who have posted about plant articles. Where is a good centralized location? Could someone post a response on my talk page? Thanks.[22] --KP Botany (talk) 20:03, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

A notice at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) is a good place for a general notice on a policy/guideline issue. For tailored locations, Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions, Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (fauna), Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (flora) and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of life all come to mind. There's Also {{Announcements/Community bulletin board}} and {{Cent}}. I am not suggesting you post to all of these places; I am just answering the question your post starts with.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:32, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I did post to the various naming conventions pages, and the discussion is at the primary one. I will post to Village pump (policy), also, then. What I wanted is the centralized location for editors concerned with policy that is not limited to those editors interested in naming conventions alone, pretty much the only part of policy I monitor. --KP Botany (talk) 21:07, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Disruption by YesOn8

YesOn8 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)'s username seems to demonstrate support for California Proposition 8 (2008), which banned gay marriage. Since registering an account, his major contributions have been to add irrelevant images of BDSM activities to Violence against women. Considering the political position expressed in his username, the images appear intended for maximum shock value. Everyone else editing the article disagrees with him, but he won't stop. Erik9 (talk) 05:03, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

YesOn8 has been blocked for 3RR, and his unblock messages use a tone that seems unlikely to win friends or influence people. EdJohnston (talk) 18:45, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I have username blocked the editor. The editor was also under a new 48h block for disruptive unblock requests. I'm going to have to manually allow account creation after the first block expires, right (due to software limitations?)-Andrew c ^[talk] 23:34, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Looks like we've seen some socking, since then. I've checkusered the account and posted some findings at User talk:YesOn8. Since then, a few more apparent socks have turned up at Violence against women, editing from other IPs (possibly proxies) but pretty obviously related in some way or another. – Luna Santin (talk) 10:45, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

User:Thesamami

The user Thesamami's account is used primarily to add links to promote the news aggregation site Wopular. Hes been warned in the past by two separate people (comments below), all he did was remove those warnings from his talk page and continued to add more links to Wopular. I added more warnings today for his most recent edits. Something might need done with this account and/or allowing links to wopular.com in general. I pulled the conversation from the old admin notice archive(two comments below) and added my own. — raeky ^{(talk | edits)} 05:27, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Thesamami (talk · contribs) seems to be an account devoted to promoting the news aggregration site Wopular. The contributions consist only of adding links to Wopular, sometimes replacing links to normal new sources with links to Wopular, and including links to pages that aren't about a specific article but are effectively search results that change over time (a violation of WP:LINKSTOAVOID). I posted on the user's talk page about it, and my post was removed. Should anything be done? —KCinDC (talk) 18:48, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Removal of your warning isn't a problem; as far as we're concerned, we know they saw it. Since the posting of links continued, I've left another warning. Let's see if they want to read (and follow) the guidelines. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 19:18, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Hes also removed your warning without comment and added the link to 4 pages since. I warned up to warning level 4 today for his most recent edits and made sure they all was removed. It's pretty clear his account is primarily used to add those links. — raeky ^{(talk | edits)} 05:23, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

This user account User:Yodalee might be the same person, has the same pattern of adding links for Wopular and removing the warnings promptly from his user page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Raeky (talk • contribs) 13:41, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Feb 09

Resolved

 – We're not going to out administrators, or even speculate on their ages, thanks. — neuro^(talk) 09:09, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I was wondering if you could tell me the average age of these administrators??? Please let me know??? South Bay (talk) 06:41, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Users, including administrators, usually won't reveal private information such as name, age and similar information. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:51, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

No shit sherlock!! South Bay (talk) 08:10, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

• The average age of this administrator is 45. I can't speak for the average age of any other group of "these" administrators, but I know severa who are older and some who are younger. And the relevance is? Guy (Help!) 08:59, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
  • If that were an average over someone's lifetime, it would make xyr current age 90 — presuming that one meant arithmetic mean by average, of course. ☺

    Pick the mode. You'll have an average age of 21 for most of your lifetime. ☺ Uncle G (talk) 13:56, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I think most admins are between 21 and 25.--Patton^t/c 17:47, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Intelligence quotient? RMHED (talk) 19:12, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

49/144. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:33, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

• At least 100 years old. Protonk (talk) 23:27, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Get off of my lawn you damn kids! -- Earle Martin [^t/_c] 01:20, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

On the subject of baiting

I'd like to start a discussion on how we, as administrators, should respond to suspected or obvious baiting of restricted editors. (Please, no specific examples) Generally speaking, editing restrictions are in place after a long and torturous series of bad interactions and failed administrator interactions with one or more editors entrenched in a battleground mentality. Often, these people have legitimate on wiki-enemies who are perfectly willing to make them miserable

My position has always been to enforce the editing restrictions, but also swiftly and harshly come down on those baiting the restricted. Then again, that is difficult to prove, so it holds more weight in theory than in practice. I do know that restricted editors with rare exceptions, are not second class wikipedians - they deserve the respect, dignity, and process that anyone else deserves (whatever you think of those things, it should be applied equally).

What do you think?--Tznkai (talk) 14:54, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I think baiting tends to be relatively obvious, and I think the best way to stop it is with a short sharp slap upside the head, followed by increasingly large hits with a cluebat until the baiter stops. I have zero patience for someone poking an animal in a cage. //roux   17:29, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Deciding if something is baiting is highly subjective.

Baiting is one of several words on Wikipedia that can be used as name calling, attacking and a device to arrest discussion.

The mother policies/guidelines here are Civility and AGF. For example in discussion off Wiki with other adults, if someone disagrees or has some critical position of the topic, or of you, if you want the discussion to continue then one doesn't call out "baiting". One attempts to address the speaker (AGF) and the objections in a civil way or the discussion deteriorates. Of course even here if something is foul one walks away. Shouting matches, accusations and name calling seldom help anyone or anything, and baiting is used this way.

Some editors are intimidated from entering certain discussions, and may wait or watch to see if there is a point where they have something to contribute but which won't cause an attack on themselves. This isn't baiting although often called so ... Its fear. There is fear of, on and off Wiki retribution.

Off Wik and on Wiki there are situations in which so-called "gatekeepers" guard certain areas, fields of knowledge or environments. Knocking on the "gates" by someone not considered acceptable by those inside the "gates" may be called baiting, a way of effectively getting rid of that person.

Banning or blocking more subjective areas that require more subjective decision making requires greater care than obvious objective violations like 3RR.

The longer then ban or block the more detailed the research, and the more time and care needed... and possibly the more input from multiple admins. Its hard to back down from a shoot first and ask questions later decision.

My point I guess that baiting can be much less than obvious... care needed.

Just some thoughts (olive (talk) 17:44, 1 February 2009 (UTC))

• In some cases I would leave it to the restricted editor; if they choose not to interact on their talk page with someone then we should help them to make that work; if they ask for help because they are being baited then we definitely should pitch in. Guy (Help!) 20:32, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

How often does that happen in your opinion?--Tznkai (talk) 05:00, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Sometimes, for values of sometimes in the range always > sometimes > never. User talk pages are a favourite place for this kind of thing, and keeping the baiting off there can at least give the user some breathing room. Guy (Help!) 17:44, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

• The general accumulation of arbitration findings over the years has led to an increasing number of sanctioned editors whose unsanctioned antagonists feel that they have been proved right. There have been cases where baiting has been obvious and editors have been criticised for it, but there have been others where it has been borderline. I think there should be a word of guidance about it somewhere in policy, but the general principle should be that baiting a sanctioned editor is liable to lead to sanctions being extended to the baiter. Sam Blacketer (talk) 10:58, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Unless of course, the Arbcom imposed the sanction in order to have the sanctioned editor driven off by baiting. Which was entirely the point of a sanction passed agains me by the previous Arbcom. Giano (talk) 11:01, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh, if you only knew how much the Arbitration committee had protected you over the years. It is a thankless task sometimes. Sam Blacketer (talk) 11:16, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Protected me from what? Its own members and former members? The ones who always rushed with such obscene speed to accept any case that could possibly be turned and twisted to include me? The old Arbcom were a disgrace, and I for one, will not be forgetting that or those behind such actions and their reasons. Giano (talk) 13:58, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

...perhaps proving Sam's point. --Deskana (talk) 14:02, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, and I remember both of you voting for that ridiculous sanction, which proved not only to be a monumantal error, but also showing the old Arbcom up for exactly what it was, malicious and spiteful. Now, I have better tings to do than argue self-justifications with you two. Giano (talk) 14:05, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

All evidence to the contrary. Protonk (talk) 15:24, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Blah blah blah - if you can't remain on topic, comment somewhere else, please. If I want a Giano-Deskana-Sam Blacketer fight, I'll put your names in the title of the thread.--Tznkai (talk) 21:40, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I, an editor under a sanction placed by Blacketer and Deskana, happen to be happen to be being bated and trolled as we speak, but that is of no interest to you, all you want to do is talk about it - not actually do anything about the problem. So I deal with it myself - always the best way I have fond. Admins? God, all you can do is talk. Giano (talk) 21:47, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

You do realise you've only got a week of it left? Sam Blacketer (talk) 21:55, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Are you thinking mirrored sanctions? or something else? What do we count as biating anyway? General taunting? Unsubtle references to the editor in edit summaries?--Tznkai (talk) 20:48, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

It's a difficult issue precisely because it's so difficult to define and recognize objectively. Whatever heuristics we might devise, I have a feeling people will find some subtle way around them. It may get more obvious when the baiting involves a departure from the user's regular editing behavior, at least. Sometimes a gentle reminder is enough to get someone to stop (I've seen that work well enough, on blocked users' talk pages); when that fails, perhaps it's time to get more people involved? – Luna Santin (talk) 10:55, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I have definitely seen times when a user requested another user to leave their page, and the visitor kept coming back.Even if not meant such action would be baiting, I guess. At the same time I've seen admins and editors leave civil warnings on a page only to have the owner bite them. Perhaps baiting on a user page should be a little more serious as an offense since it means there could be some "following around" and deliberate intent. Leaving when someone asks you to leave unless you are an admin dealing with some business is only civil and respectful of another users space. As always care needs to be taken because these can subjective judgments much of the time. Possibly a user who feels they are being baited on their page should be aware that outside help is available as Guy suggests. Just making it clear that someone with teeth will be invited in may deter the baiter, and no further action would be necessary.(olive (talk) 16:56, 2 February 2009 (UTC))

Do you have any examples or situations in mind? In my experience most accusations of baiting boil down to a "devil made me do it" excuse. The claim is often made in bad faith by trolls or sockpuppets trying to muddy the water, meatpuppets to justify each other's bad behavior, or by fringe-y, paranoid, or just off base users who refuse to take responsibility for their own actions. They feel that everyone is against them, and blaming it on baiting rather than questioning why, is a way of avoiding responsibility. In similar fashion, problem users often accuse people of harassing or stalking them when they are merely responding to a series of abuses, or they are engaging in a legitimate review of an editor's recent edits. Usually the claim is an assumption of bad faith, made up without any evidence other than that someone does not want to deal with something. People do not own their talk page or their account - we are all here for the betterment of the encyclopedia. There is a dispute resolution process when someone is out of line, starting with a comment or courtesy notice on their talk page. It's fair to ask an editor for no unnecessary comments on their talk page, or to tell them you do not want to discuss a particular matter. But it is not legitimate to say that you do not want any notices at all on your talk page, or that you will not respond to conversation on article talk pages. True, some people do need understanding, encouragement, support, and a space to cool down. As a non-administrator, if your attempts to get someone to behave are not working you might just have to back down rather than issue warnings or revert or report bad edits. As an administrator, you sometimes have to either take action or stop complaining - scolding and warning have their limits. My concern is that setting up a formal baiting policy will only enable these people to game further, or feel more paranoid. The best way to handle people who are being to harsh or baiting a troll is a friendly word on their talk page. If they won't stop, we already have plenty of behavioral policies we can use if necessary. The only bad baiting behavior I common see is when people gang up on editors who have been blocked, to tell them off on their own talk page. Is there a similar problem with people harassing editors they know to be on some kind of probation? Wikidemon (talk) 21:36, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I could give examples/diffs but I am reluctant to do so as the time and place may not be appropriate to present anything that could be considered accusatory. I would tend to see this as more of a general discussion.(olive (talk) 00:09, 3 February 2009 (UTC))

(undent)I agree with Tznkai that we should "swiftly and harshly come down on those baiting the restricted." That especially applies to frivolous arbitration enforcement requests.Ferrylodge (talk) 22:02, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry but harsh is, well, pretty harsh...and encompasses within its definitions "cruel"..perhaps sternly is a word that would allow for less misuse.(olive (talk) 22:26, 2 February 2009 (UTC))

It's agreed then: stern.  :-)Ferrylodge (talk) 23:52, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Anyone speak Spanish?

I've run across a user with a lot of problematic image uploads that doesn't seem to be getting it. He's uploaded tonnes of photos of various Miss Dominican Republic photos sourced to various web pages and tagged them as released under free licenses, but provided no hint as to how and why this is so. I tagged a bunch of them as having unverified license, but so far all he's done is add another PD tag and remove the unverified tag from a couple of those images... Maybe he's trying to say he photographer (seems unlikely, but anything is possible), but that's far too much to assume based on the information he's provided so far.

I suspect maybe he just don't understand English though, maybe if someone could drop by User talk:MRDU08 and give a brief summary of the image copyright policies and such in Spanish it might help. --Sherool (talk) 18:50, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Spanish Translation of the Week/Translators. Cheers! Kingturtle (talk) 19:20, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

A good idea in theory, but after some quick spot checks a lot of users on that list seems to no longer be active. I'll give it a closer look when I have more time on my halds though. Just figured a fellow admin would be best suited to explain the problems to him if there where anyone around that happend to "hablan español". --Sherool (talk) 20:18, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Try giving what you want to say to him; I will translate it for him when I'm around later. Magog the Ogre (talk) 20:40, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, we have 4,202 users who identify as native speakers of español. Actual figures will be at least 2× I'd guess. — CharlotteWebb 21:47, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

In my broken Spanish, I left a message for him regarding the ongoing uploading of unsourced images. If there's a reply, I'll do a 'down and dirty' translation of the specific policies. Skier Dude (talk) 01:49, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

RevisionDelete

I started a thread at Wikipedia talk:Selective deletion#RevisionDelete regarding the formation of some sort of guideline about when it is and is not appropriate to hide log entries / page history entries. Please comment there. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:14, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Proposal to enable suppressredirect for admins

See WP:VPR#Proposal: Enable suppressredirect rights for sysops on the English Wikipedia. Prodego ^talk 01:35, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

 Done The right has been enabled on all wikis by Tim. Please keep in mind that you don't want to delete the redirect 95% of the time :) -- lucasbfr ^talk 10:10, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Editor mass-producing articles on minor bilateral national relationships

In the last few days Groubani (talk · contribs) has produced dozens of articles on obscure bilateral relationships between countries. These articles include: Argentina–Singapore relations, Argentina–Nigeria relations, Georgia–Thailand relations (which seem to be basically non-existent), Kenya–Romania relations, Morocco–Romania relations, Israel–Vietnam relations, Chile–Ukraine relations and many, many others - the editor's contribution history speaks for itself. I've checked a sample of these articles, and none of them have any third-party references which demonstrate that the relationship is significant or notable. Some of these articles have been nominated for deletion at: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Argentina–Singapore relations, but this may require a much larger clean-up operation. Nick-D (talk) 07:29, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I've just been looking through the editor's talk page history, and they were asked to stop producing these articles last year by several other editors: [23], [24], [25] and were blocked for continuing to do so: [26]. I think that another block would be justified, and would impose this myself if I hadn't voted in the AfD. Nick-D (talk) 07:42, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

That would explain the mess of non-removable images that ImageRemovalBot has been telling me about. --Carnildo (talk) 10:06, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Blocked for 48 hours. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 10:48, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. The AfD seems to be heading towards a snowball delete, which to my mind provides a precedent for mass deleting these articles under CSD A3 (none of them consist of more than a template and a bit of trivia about the countries, so they seem to fall within the scope of this criterion, especially as these articles always seem to be deleted when they're nominated). Nick-D (talk) 11:15, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

While I support deletion, I think that A3 is a bit stretching it, and that we should wait a day or 2 before declaring it SNOW. However, I believe that this AfD should apply to all of them, including the votes which were cast before they were listed there, provided all the information in these other pages in comparable. Additionally, it should include all images and templates on these pages, provided that they aren't used anywhere else. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 11:39, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

What? we're going to start deleting when we only need another 9,680,322,[...]000,000,000, or thereabouts, to round out these categories? Misarxist 12:06, 2 February 2009 (UTC)Hmm, epic fail on math, but I do win on exageration & unintented humor

<unindent> I do think that one of them, Egypt–Israel relations, is notable. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 12:19, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, Argentina–Egypt relations seems to contain worthwhile encyclopaedic information too (date of establishing official relations, presence of embassies). What's going on here? A block also seems way out of line - the user's sole fault seems to be a poor grasp of English and a bad understanding of the need to cite sources - but it's all verifiable. Something is seriously wrong with the way this user's being treated. WilyD 13:57, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I think a willingness to communicate is necessary for any user here, especially those making large-scale uploads. Groubani doesn't appear to have reacted to any attempts to communicate with him. I'm not sure anything other than a block can force him to communicate (and I'm not sure that a block can, either). Kusma (talk) 14:28, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

This sounds like an annoying and disruptive anonymous editor from Simple Wikipedia. It's possible for IPs to create pages there, and this person has done, creating biased, badly formatted non-notable articles. We tend to block the IP on sight there... likewise, they haven't bothered to respond to many, many messages left for them. Majorly talk 14:41, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

This user is active on es, and is probably a native Spanish speaker. It's quite possible that if people investigated the situation, rather than simply looking for excuses to block the editor, they'd discover this. The articles being created are well formatted, unbiased and notable, they're merely spelt poorly and not explicitly referenced. WilyD 14:51, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

...Eh. I want to not be a luddite about this, but we are looking at something on the order of $2^{n}$ articles, without many references or connection to the importance of those bilateral links. Protonk (talk) 15:16, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

2to the Nth power? More like (N * (N-1)) / 2. 200 Countries would give some 20,000 articles. Quite a lot, and many of them about subjects with very little info about them from thrid-party sources, but we should not exaggerate the number. Fram (talk) 15:36, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, "on the order of" should have been "rises as" and lined to Big O notation. Protonk (talk) 15:40, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

(ec)Just ${\binom {n}{2}}=n(n-1)/2$, which is $O(n^{2})$, but that's still quite a lot. Most countries have diplomatic relations with most other countries. Usually, it shouldn't be too hard to find some references (at least in the local languages) but while there's nothing interesting to say about a diplomatic relation, a standalone stub is perhaps not the best way to present this data. It would be nice if we could get Groubani to make hundreds of lists (or whatever is most appropriate) instead of thousands of articles. But that would require communication... Kusma (talk) 15:42, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, there are ~40K bilateral pairings, which're at the stub level. But the vast majority of these are going to be notable per WP:N, if one bothers to look for sources. I might buy that the bilateral relation between Vanatu and Saint Kitts and Nevis doesn't exist and isn't notable, but between any pair of countries that bother to have embassies and whatnot with each other there'll be plenty of sources if one bothers to look. I picked one such article at random this morning, between two non anglophone countries (which makes sourcing much more difficult for a monoglot such as myself) and yet still easily established notability without breaking a sweat. None of these articles are contraversial or problematic - no one is seriously disputing anything, it's just deletion for it's own sake. WilyD 15:44, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

List are probably not viable because of the dual association - e. g. Argentina-Egypt relations would need to be on both Foreign relations of Egypt and Foreign relations of Argentina. This seems to be a very straightforward case of WP:NOT#PAPER - it's unclear why, though. WilyD 15:46, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Funny, the problem I see here is creation for its own sake. Kusma (talk) 15:57, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Strangely enough, some people are under the impression we're here to create an encyclopaedia, and creating that encyclopaedia and its articles for its own sake is enough. WilyD 16:11, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

We are here to create an encyclopedia. For this reason, we do not create independent articles on every tiny piece of knowledge, but try to present the knowledge in the most appropriate way. The user here added a little extra knowledge (dates that some countries resumed diplomatic relations) in a rather inefficient way that is hard to navigate and requires large templates containing all countries if completed. This leads to easy creation of many articles, but not to a creation of lots of encyclopedia. Kusma (talk) 16:30, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

This statement would be a lot easier to justify if you weren't arguing that the most appropriate way was not at all. Because Wikipedia is a work in progress, we have a lot of stubs. If stub was a deletion criterion, we'd rarely get any better articles, because they'd be deleted before much was written. The current format is the best format I can think of, and the best format going forward (since these're all expandable to much larger articles), and no one has even suggested a plausible alternative. WilyD 16:38, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

It is perfectly acceptable to create one of these stubs. Creating a few hundred is not acceptable at all. WP:POINT used to explain that at some point in the past (don't remember when). Kusma (talk) 16:57, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with creating large numbers of stubs. It is, historically, how we've done everything. This isn't nearly rambot territory. Creating large numbers of unproblematic, notable articles isn't a problem, it's part of the solution to our incomplete encyclopaedia. WilyD 17:12, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Even if it is rambot territory, I would guess that there is a general consensus today that Rambot was a good thing. Protonk (talk) 19:13, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

• (outdent) Echoes of User:rambot? I'm ambivalent. On the one hand, I prefer that articles be created by humans and with sources. On the other hand, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. We may be able to just chillax about the whole thing and wait and see. Protonk (talk) 16:03, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Also problems with re-creations of deleted articles. But re communication if Groubani is on es.wiki they should have some idea of what's expected of them, & obviously can understand at least some english to be able to put these stubs together. Misarxist 16:08, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I've deleted the AfD'd articles. dougweller (talk) 17:20, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

There is a person at the reins here, there's just some communication problem. WilyD 16:11, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

An editor who doesn't enter into conversation and ignores other editors' requests and blocks isn't much different from an unmonitored bot. Nick-D (talk) 07:23, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Since we don't allow anon article creation any more create such stubs is somewhat useful.Geni 01:24, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

What I find most annoying about these is not the existence of the stubs themselves, but the fact that some people have gone through and moved the whole lot, including well-established articles with actual content, to an utterly ungrammatical naming scheme, calling them all according to the bizarre pattern France–Germany relations (as opposed to the natural English French-German relations or the more fancy Franco-German relations, the way most of the real articles were named when they were originally created.) No doubt these same people will now cite the existence of the thousands of stubs as an argument allegedly necessitating the imposition of this kind of pseudo-uniformity of article names. I've moved a few back to their natural titles that were moved without consensus (some of the multiple times). Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:07, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Copyright review

I came upon an article tagged for investigation at Wikipedia:Copyright problems and found extensive violation. (Version has since been deleted; see it at [27], admins. Non-admins and admins alike can read some specifics at Talk:Hospice care in the United States. And I have to note here that I am terribly impressed with the efforts made by a new contributor to fill this gap.)

Looking at the contribution history of the contributor who first added the text (Mgreason (talk · contribs)), I have found other articles of concern. One has been listed at WP:CP. Others I've revised on the spot (such as Thomas H. Friedkin). One the contributor revised himself, though probably not enough. In addition to the large chunks of duplicated material from plainly copyrighted sources such as existed at Hospice care in the United States, I'm seeing quite a bit of piecemeal infringement, where the contributor scatters sentences copied from other sources throughout the article or revises text minimally, but not enough to escape infringement.

I'm not assuming bad faith here, particularly as this contributor usually does cite the source, even while infringing on it, but as this contributor was first advised of our copyright policies (that I've noted) in October 2007, here, well over a year before pasting (for example) all but the opening paragraph of this page onto Wikipedia, I think this scrutiny is required. At the very least, there is a profound misunderstanding of WP:C, and it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect that infringement may be extensive. (I've been engaging the contributor in conversation about this at his talk page, but response has been rather slight so far. I guess the only way to know if he or she understands better now will be to check back in the future.)

I'm very open to ideas for how to most efficiently and effectively address this matter. This kind of investigation is time consuming, and this contributor has been prolific: User:Mgreason/MyWikiPages. I suspect my usual approach to copyright problems is more thorough than efficient, and it is not best for these kinds of situations (since I do have some semblance of a "real life".) Ideas and/or assistance would be greatly appreciated. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 16:20, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

P.S. Just wanted to note since that contributor's page has a lot of recent material from me that I have notified him or her of this discussion, here. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 16:33, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Until the editor—of whose good faith there is, as you say, no doubt, and who is quite likely, having been apprised of why his edits are inconsistent with WP:C, to prove unproblematic in the future—demonstrates (or at least avers) that he understands the problem, we would do well not to DYK anything he/she creates without doing a quick copyvio check; that Brenton Butler case, which had a few attribution problems, as diligently outlined by Moon (and, really, enough POV and style issues that it should have been disqualified in any case) made the Main Page disquiets. 69.212.204.14 (talk) 21:08, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Looking at one at random, Basketball at Lake City Community College seems to be mostly a copy-paste of this article, with some superficial paraphrasing. Zagalejo^^^ 02:32, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much for pitching in. If anyone else is willing to help, I was considering that it might avoid duplication of efforts to put a note on an article's talkpage indicating that it has been checked. Is anybody else willing to help? Please? :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:22, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

←Help much needed. I have unilaterally decided that tracking this cleanup was an excellent idea and that maybe if I am proactive in implementing something, others will know how to contribute. :) I've duplicated this user's self-tracked major contributions at User:Moonriddengirl/sandbox and stricken the articles that have been checked so far either by me or somebody else, noting with a {{y}} where problems (even minor ones) have been detected and addressed, either by cleaning or listing at CP. Please, if you have time, grab one or two of these, check them out and strike them off. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 15:13, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I've looked at a handful, and I'll try check some more later today. Zagalejo^^^ 17:21, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Latin Europe again

They are again problems on the article Latin Europe. I was already discussed here but the vandal who edits from returned. Actually, the article is permanently disrupted by an ip-editor since 9 January 2009. Since I would break the 3rr if I would revert the article again, I ask an administrator to do this. I also would ask an administrator to protect the page. --Olahus (talk) 20:01, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

It's interesting to note that no one else has so far complained of my edits, yet User:SamEV and User:Dbachmann have both already stated explicitly that they view your edits on Latin Europe as POV-pushing. Drop it - you're digging yourself an even bigger hole. 84.13.166.159 (talk) 20:15, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

SamEv is an editor since 2 weeks and I don't exclude the possibility that he might be a sock - maybe. Dbachmann didn't answer to your request in his talk page though you asked him for it. Let him say personally what he has to say. --Olahus (talk) 20:20, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

What are you talking about? SamEV has been editing here for ages, both on Wikipedia and on the Latin Europe article. Let's see what he personally has to say? Yes indeed, let's: you seem to be some weird kind of Romanian patriot causing disruption at Latin Europe and elsewhere in the attempt to highlight your precious ethnicity. 84.13.166.159 (talk) 20:22, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

This is ridiculous. The IP is obviously Iamandrewrice (talk · contribs). I'm going to bug Alison about this because the cu who reviewed my request never completed the check. EconomicsGuy (talk) 20:24, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Note, a quick look at the user's contributions hightlights that he has been involved in many many Romanian related POV disputes. 84.13.166.159 (talk) 20:28, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Now a further two editors have just expressed disapproval of Olahus on the Latin Europe talk page. 84.13.166.159 (talk) 20:41, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Checkuser

Checkuser has confirmed that Iamandrewrice and the IP user are highly likely related (thanks Alison). Can an administrator please semi-protect the article and talk page now? EconomicsGuy (talk) 20:44, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Excuse me but the last time I read the rules, a positive result must be obtained from checkuse for such a conclusion - this has not been given. "Likely" is far from "positive" - regardless, the number of users now expressing their support on the talk page for my version renders me partially obselete here now anyway. 84.13.166.159 (talk) 20:47, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Highly likely is a positive result. Get real, please. --Deskana (talk) 20:49, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

"Likely" is just as apt to lead to blocks or semi's as "Confirmed"; stop lawyering. Semi-protected for two weeks apiece. -Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Dittobori)} 20:49, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

And IP blocked for a week, FWIW. Bencherlite^Talk 20:53, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

vandalism in Convert:Template (?)

There appears to be some kind of vandalism in the Convert Templates which are used to produce centimeters from inches, kilograms from pounds, etc. For example, Prairie dog is showing this type of vandalism. Some kind of 4chan meme ("herd you like mudkipz") has been inserted into the text somehow. I don't know enough about templates to figure out how to fix this type of vandalism, but it will probably appear widespread across the articles which are using the Convert templates. Teledildonix314 ^Talk ~ _{contributions} 21:43, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Fixed. All of these templates used to be semi-protected, but MZMcBride (talk · contribs) reversed that months ago. - auburnpilot talk 22:00, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you kindly. I've only been editing for a little while, i still haven't got the hang of the more complicated bits of coding. Teledildonix314 ^Talk ~ _{contributions} 22:09, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/PHG

The above-linked Arbitration case has been closed and the final decision published.

PHG's mentorship and sourcing arrangement is both revised and extended; the full list of new conditions are available by clicking this link. Furthermore, the original topic ban on editing articles related to medieval or ancient history has been rescinded. PHG is prohibited from editing articles relating to the Mongol Empire, the Crusades, intersections between Crusader states and the Mongol Empire, and Hellenistic India—all broadly defined. This topic ban will last for a period of one year. He is permitted to make suggestions on talk pages, provided that he interacts with other editors in a civil fashion.

Any particular article may be added or removed from PHG's editing restriction at the discretion of his mentor; publicly logged to prevent confusion of the restriction's coverage. The mentor is encouraged to be responsive to feedback from editors in making and reconsidering such actions. Furthermore, the Committee noted that PHG has complied with the Committee's restrictions over the past ten months, and that PHG is encouraged to continue contributing to Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects. PHG should be permitted and encouraged by other editors to write well-sourced suggestions on talkpages, to contribute free-content images to Wikimedia Commons, and to build trust with the community.

For the Arbitration Committee,
Daniel (talk) 22:28, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Discuss this

Mimesis

I attempted to create μιμεîσθαι as a redirect to Mimesis because it is the Ancient Greek form, but I received a message stating that the title was on a blacklist. Would it be possible for an administrator to create it for me? Neelix (talk) 23:17, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

That's a poor redirect; μιμεîσθαι does not correspond to mimesis. Deor (talk) 23:29, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

The correct form, Μίμησις, already exists. There's no reason for the related Greek verb to redirect to the noun. Chick Bowen 23:32, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

CU and OS elections

The proposal at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/CheckUser and Oversight appointments has passed and been made a policy at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/CheckUser and Oversight elections. Consequently the first English Wikipedia CU and OS elections will begin this Friday. For details see: Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/CheckUser and Oversight elections/February 2009 For the arbitration committee, — Rlevse • Talk • 00:43, 3 February 2009 (UTC) (main post at WP:AC/N, cross posted here)

Discuss this

People can't oppose? That isn't going to give good results....YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 04:28, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I believe the concept is that the Committee (that's you, right?) agrees that all the candidates are qualified to be appointed, so the community is being asked only to decide which of the pre-approved candidates actually get named. This procedure may be worth a test, to avoid rampant nastiness of some other election-type processes, but it assumes that all possible negative information has already been considered by the Committee, which may not be true. I suspect negative information will still be posted in the comments section and the talk page (unless the clerks remove it). There should also be a clearly worded solicitation on the page that editors with negative information should email the Committee. Thatcher 12:05, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I have to say, I agree with YellowMonkey. With all due respect to Arbcom, there are some candidates there I wouldn't trust at all, regardless of whether Arbcom's vetted them. Approval voting only works if a large cross section of the community participates; this will just be a "who has the most buddies?" poll. – iridescent 12:14, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah but Thatcher, you're just guessing, and the ArbCom appears to be unwilling to respond to people about this issue. As it stands, the procedure without approval voting has a lot more support than the same procedure with approval voting. That's not how consensus works. What's the rush, why not discuss a bit? >Radiant< 17:35, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Worrisome

Guys, we need to open our eyes. The project is in jeopardy trouble. I think that, though RFA is an effective process, it needs to be revised so that people don't pass based just on popularity (not to say that relatively unknown users aren't passing, as long as they meet the criteria). But we really need to fully evaluate each candidate, not just pile on. Also, we've lost 21 admins since December. Sandy and the FAC crew are being slowed down by an overwhelming amount of FACs. We need to correct this significant, yet easy-to-fix issue. And soon. Ceran^→//forge 00:49, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

How many admins does English Wikipedia have? How many does it need to function? Ed Fitzgerald _{t / c} 01:50, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I believe the number of administrators is about 855. Waterjuice (talk) 04:41, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

If this is about changing RFA, the discussion belongs at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship. If it's about the FAC workload, I'm not sure how the number of administrators will affect that. Wouldn't just more eyes in general be the solution, with the mop or without? Or perhaps stricter requirement to entrance (perhaps requiring good-class rating for a certain period of time?) Either way, that belongs at Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. Besides, instead of looking at the ones who you know how left, I'm sure there are dozens who have quietly left without much impact on the project. I think one of the biggest problems we have is assuming anyone, any person, is so crucial that the project could not survive without them. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:33, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Decentralizing the Arbitration Committee

For anyone interested, I have proposed we decentralize the Arbitration Committee. Tim Q. Wells (talk) 01:23, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

lysdexia

Can I have someone look at this? User:lysdexia was blocked for sock puppetry, and I have reason to believe that she has returned using her anonymous account, User talk:69.108.164.45. ChyranandChloe (talk) 04:28, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

No, lysdexia was banned for disruption—by disruption, the admin means correction of his and the other users' mistakes they crave to keep. But lysdexia broke no explicit law—not 3RR. nor A?N, nor ArbCom, nor the mailing list for unblock requests. Each time the admin was the violator, and lysdexia their scapegoat. By the way, a sock puppet is a pretense, which a IP is not. -lysdexia 04:35, 3 February 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.108.164.45 (talk)

Request an unblock at User talk:lysdexia in a way that people will actually want to unblock you and stop going around the block. Edit again and you'll be blocked for block evasion. Warned on the talk page as well, but it's clear from the history at User talk:Lysdexia that rotating IP addresses seem to be a constant strategy. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:40, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Congrats

		The Cleanup Barnstar
		In appreciation of all you outstanding Administrators. Keep up the great work. Waterjuice (talk) 06:48, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Huge backlog at Category:Candidates for speedy deletion

Resolved

 – Backlog under control now.

Take up your magic wands, fellow admins, and help sorting through that 300+ pages backlog please :-) Regards SoWhy 09:35, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Working on it. WP:FORMER..... leaps to mind. Pedro :  Chat  09:38, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, there were some sad losses the last month(s), that's true. All the more reasons to recruit some new people to replace them... SoWhy 10:27, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Seems like a lot in December-January, very few before that... עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 11:19, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

December was indeed a record month of resignations, and January is no better. Non-admins can help in this area by removing obvious candidates that don't fit criteria for speedy deletion. Majorly talk 11:22, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

(EC x2) Yeah, sad thing though. Btw, thanks for the help everyone :-) SoWhy 11:24, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

It was only the wonted backlog, had some time, pitched in. Gwen Gale (talk) 11:23, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

And we're empty now. But there were an unusually high number of really bad A7 and G1 mistaggings, much higher than normal. Non-admins can help in cleaning the obvious cases like this one up; your help would be greatly appreciated from those of us with the bit! Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 12:10, 3 February 2009 (UTC).

And for those of us with the "bit": If you notice a particular user doing several incorrect taggings, you should leave them a note about it (I use {{User:SoWhy/wcsd}} for that). Who knows, maybe they learn from it? Although I admit I also encounter those who seem resistant to learning...but it's worth a try ;-) SoWhy 12:14, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Should article moves be prohibited during AfD?

I have twice recently encountered a situation where during an AfD the article was moved to a new title (for good-faith reasons like capitalisation) so that when the debate ended "delete" only the redirect left by the move was deleted, and the article under its new title lingered on, still displaying the AfD template. I suggest that the AfD template should be expanded to read "Feel free to edit the article, but the article must not be blanked or moved to a new title... " JohnCD (talk) 11:27, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I support this idea, but I believe that this isn't the place for such a discussion. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 12:02, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I did think of Template_talk:Afd but it's not very active - last post 4 months ago. JohnCD (talk) 12:09, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure I support this idea. Article improvement should always go on (except for incidents that necessitate article protection). Renaming the article can be an improvement, for the article's sake, and for the encyclopedia's sake. Sometimes an article survives because of improvements made during the AfD. If the community decides such an article should be deleted, that deletion should apply to the content that was moved, not just the original name of the article. Kingturtle (talk) 12:11, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

This situation (where renaming the page could make the difference) could be dealt with by voting "rename" in stead of "keep". Other improvements can't reasonably be summarized in the AfD discussion. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 12:14, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

(Outdent) I'm not sure I support either, for the same reasons as Kingturtle. Isn't this really just a problem when using the closing script? If we just get in the habit of bouncing over to the article after a close, or double-checking for a move prior to closing its no big deal right? Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 12:32, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't have a strong opinion, but will note:

• I have been involved in some AfDs where this has happened, and it can cause confusion among participants, not just closing admins.
• It has often been the case that participants have agreed on a more appropriate article name, should the article be kept. I've not seen a case where the change had to be made during the deletion process, nor can I think of circumstances that would be so pressing.

Anyway, that's it for me. IMHO this isn't a dreadfully inappropriate place for this discussion, but I think it would perhaps be better if moved to Wikipedia_talk:Deletion_policy (which is pretty active), with an "advert" left here and at the template talk. --Dweller (talk) 12:47, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't see many worries with re-naming articles in AfD. As with lots of stuff here, reading skills and heed may be called for. Gwen Gale (talk) 12:50, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

(ec)I've done a few moves during AfD, e.g. for caps but tried to leave a note at the AfD. It can be both beneficial and confusing but I would be against such a rule. Nevertheless, I remember that there was a word of caution regarding moves but cna't find it now. I also think that the redirect only indicates that they might not have looked at what they delete. Otherwise they would simply be redirected two hat they're supposed to delete. In that sense the outcome of the discussion applies to an article and not to particular spelling.

Actually I think an obviously wrong title should be corrected before AfD. If something is worth a five day community discussion, it surely is worth a correct title. Moreover, in case of articles that might be reposted having the discussion and deletion at a wrong title makes the identification of reposts more difficult. Most of this should be followed-up at WT:AfD. --Tikiwont (talk) 12:52, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I think we're all probably agreed that it'd be best if something obvious were fixed first! --Dweller (talk) 14:10, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Sure we do!--Tikiwont (talk) 15:28, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

If you move an article during AfD, you should also update the links and note that on the AfD itself. But an admin who closes an AFD as "delete" and only deletes the redirect isn't doing his job properly (you should always check the page history before deleting). Article improvement (like fixing the title, something that should be encouraged) should not be prohibited to make life easier for lazy admins. Kusma (talk) 15:37, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I see no reason to prohibit moves during AfD. I have seen confusion caused by moved, but I have also seen articles kept because of moves. As for correcting them prior to the AfD, we often find that a subject matter expert comes by during AfD and suggests a better title. Agree generally w/ Gwen above. Protonk (talk) 17:11, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Second opinion request

I indefblocked [[::User:Godvia|Godvia]] ([[::User talk:Godvia|talk]] · [[::Special:Contributions/Godvia|contribs]]) yesterday based on what looked to me like a clear pattern of disruption and harassment (with precisely zero mainspace contributions to potentially offset it). However, to judge by assorted comments on the talkpage assorted people are taking exception to the block; can someone uninvolved offer a second opinion and either endorse or overturn it as they see fit. (Ignore the torrent of abuse aimed at me and Chicken Wing after the block, which I'm willing to put down to frustration, and just judge by the edits prior to that.) – iridescent 13:16, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Seems clearishly-cut (I was ready to endorse the block only after reading the edit summaries, and looking at the actual edits did nothing to change my mind). I'd say unblock in the event of an unblock request that includes a credible commitment to be nice, but I can't imagine that such a thing is forthcoming. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 13:21, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

What's this? An admin with gasp! block remorse?  :) The only comment I see that opposes the block is from the blocked user themselves. You made a decision, that should be the end of it, just my nickel. ArcAngel (talk) 13:25, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Per Sarcasticidealist - indefinite does not mean infinite and, although I would have considered a week long block as a starter sanction, the editor can always avail themselves of the unblock request process and acknowledge past problems to get the block reversed. Their subsequent posts does not inspire confidence that they might take that route. LessHeard vanU (talk) 14:13, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Support block per my ANI comment. Since on his talk page, the editor objects to the 'vandalism' line in the block, you might consider changing the block reason to Disruptive Editing. EdJohnston (talk) 16:42, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Anon probs

Previously left on discussion page in error. Please help me with [28] and [29], they are the same person who is disruptive, I found with 2 anon IP's (they admitted on my talk page) is all over user talk pages giving their personal "knowledge" of drug effects and "highs", and please read the bizarre exchange at the bottom of my talk page. I don't usually get involved in these things but there is a problem here. Thanks. :Esp the statement: "What else can I do to remove drug-forum-like information from the article and discourage this kind of drug-abuse?". Mjpresson (talk) 16:05, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

3 Good 1 Comment (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)

[[::User:3 Good 1 Comment|3 Good 1 Comment]] ([[::User talk:3 Good 1 Comment|talk]] · [[::Special:Contributions/3 Good 1 Comment|contribs]]). Anyone want to hazard a guess who's behind this and what they're up to? At the very least someone needs to keep an eye on this one. – iridescent 16:57, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Just looks like a drama generator to me - nothing blockable yet, but this is way off. — neuro^(talk) 17:26, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Do we have a policy regarding so-called "test" or "experimental" accounts? Seems like we're attracting more of them. Hermione1980 17:28, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

User:JPG-GR

JPG-GR (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is completely ignoring my request that he undo some deletions. Is the next step DRV, or is there a less drastic way to settle this? --NE2 17:12, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

DRV is the appropriate venue. — neuro^(talk) 17:24, 3 February 2009 (UTC)