Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 12:52, 23 April 2007

• WP:ANI
• WP:AN/I

This page is for urgent incidents or chronic, intractable behavioral problems.

• Before posting:
  • Read these tips for dealing with incivility
  • If the issue concerns a specific user, try discussing it with them on their talk page
  • Try dispute resolution
  • Just want an admin? Contact a recently active admin directly.
• Be brief and include diffs demonstrating the problem
• Do not report breaches of personal information on this highly visible page – instead go to Requests for oversight.

When starting a discussion about an editor, you must leave a notice on their talk page; pinging is not enough.
You may use {{subst:ANI-notice}} ~~~~ to do so.

Closed discussions are usually not archived for at least 24 hours. Routine matters might be archived more quickly; complex or controversial matters should remain longer. Sections inactive for 72 hours are archived automatically by Lowercase sigmabot III. Editors unable to edit here are sent to the /Non-autoconfirmed posts subpage. (archives, search)

• A request for adminship is open for discussion.
• Voluntary RfAs after resignation
• Allowing page movers to enable two-factor authentication
• Rewriting the guideline Misplaced Pages:Please do not bite the newcomers
• Should comments made using LLMs or chatbots be discounted or even removed?

Spam war

This needs administrator attention:

• User:AlexRadyushin, User:EarthManik123, User:Voyages, User:Tuddy and others (see User:SpamAssasin/Voyages)
• User:Jokum, User:SpamAssasin, User:Beostarling, User:Beostaerling etc.

Userpages Vs WP:NOT#SOAP and WP:POINT again and again

I hope this would be the last time i'd deal w/ these childish stupidities. My stance on the matter of pointy and provocative userpages has been cristal clear. My question to the disruptors is Are you here to imporve Misplaced Pages?

Yes absolutely → Then you are more than welcome and many thanks. Your efforts are so appreciated.

Yes absolutely but it is my userpage and please don't censor it → then you move your ass and look for a web space provider.

The issue has been involving, for a relatively long time now, a few editors. I am talking here about User:Embargo and User:Matt57.

• User:Matt57's case: Level-headed editor Proabivouac had already spoken to him about the matter here after removing a quote of Hadith from his userpage before he reverted back under the pretext that not responsible for actions of other users.
• User:Embargo's case: I had already blocked him for a 24h period on December 11, 2006 because of provocative userpage after warnings. You can refer to his talkpage and userpage history for further info. Now and after the involvment of many admins, he is still posting a Sanhedrin (Talmud) tractate in response to Matt57's case (according to him).

So, what is the problem w/ both userpages? Well, Matt57 wants to make a pointy argument about the treatment of women in Islam by using such hadith. Embargo, on the other hand wants to make a similar point about pedastry in Judaism.

Please note that i've interacted w/ both users in the past w/ a relatively both positive and negative outcomes. My patience as an admin is almost gone (i hope not) and i think my n-time involvment on this matter would make things worse (i.e. harsh blocks). Therefore i hope some admin(s) can deal w/ this matter once for all.

P.S. I am not sure if there are more similar cases as i am not a policeman but please let me know if there are any. We are still dealing w/ This guy has racist stuff on his userpage!'s case above. -- FayssalF - 15:07, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I've deleted both as violations of WP:USER. -- Avi 15:34, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Avi. Appreciated. -- FayssalF - 15:58, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

rv VANDALISM - take it to arbitration committee. Is there an arbcom ruling on this, or is it obvious from WP:USER? -- Avi 16:39, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I have removed the quote from the Talmud, even though user:Prester John still keeps his Hadith quote. I intend to keep my userbox supporting Hezbollah, if you have heard of the debate (scroll down), and to which user:Ryan Postlethwaite seems to ideologically object. Emбargo 17:08, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

User:Prester John's case is dealt w/. -- FayssalF - 17:17, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Avi and Faysal, let me clear this with you - Do you agree with me that ALL religious quotes should be deleted from user pages? See user Itaqallah's page. I'm not trying to be disruptive or proving a point or whatever - the issue is simple. Either religious quotes should be allowed on user pages, or they should not. Please also remove the religious verse on Itaqallah's page. It is unfair and discriminatory to say that one user can have a religious quote to express their approval of a religion, while another cannot have a quote to express their disapproval of the religion. The policies in Misplaced Pages must be applied uniformly. Besides this user, there are many user pages where religious quotes are displayed. They should ALL be taken down, irrespective of the language, context or nature of the quotation. --Matt57 17:37, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

That has nothing to do w/ your cases Matt. We are dealing w/ WP:POINT here. You can quote whatever you want as long as it is not provacative and polemical or a campaign for or against anything or anyone. Read the quote below. I hope it is cristal clear.

• Polemical statements:

- Jimbo Wales, Misplaced Pages co-founder

If you can prove to us that you were not making a point then that would be another matter. If you can prove to us that Itaqallah is making a point then that would be another matter as well. -- FayssalF - 17:54, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with Matt57 - no religion prostelyzing or bashing. Misplaced Pages is not the Free speech corner in Hyde Park where everyone gets to take the megaphone and shout to the whole wide world their beliefs, problems, dreams, nightmares or I don't know what. Use Youtube people, it is much more fun and less stressful for that sort of stuff. Or MySpace or whatever.Baristarim 17:54, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Could you please provide me w/ facts (policies and guidelines) re this? Also, where's the youtube stuff at Itaqallah's page? Did anyone ask you Baristarim to remove the atheist userbox at your userpage or the Ataturk's Peace at home, peace in the world. stuf? No. Why? Do i have to repeat it again and again? Because they are just NOT PROVOCATIVE! Did anyone ask you Baristarim to remove "This user supports the independence of Cascadia" which you were arguing against on another thread? No. So where is the problem? -- FayssalF - 18:00, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

The Cascadia box is just for kicks :) Anyways, I will join in the conversation later. Baristarim 18:08, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

That is reasonable. Itaqallah's slogan is borderline. Arrow740 18:05, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Borderline or not. The issue is simple: Having religious polemical statements on userpages is not allowed. I can translate my statement into French or Arabic too and could defend doing that but I wont. The simple and correct way is to agree to remove all religious content from user pages and stick to the policies and apply them uniformly. --Matt57 18:31, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Faysal, it is irrelevant whether I'm trying to make a point. If I saw a user with a userbox which I also wanted to copy on my page, does it mean I'm trying to make a point? No. I liked that verse on my userpage. It expressed my disapproval of a religion, just like another verse expressed approval of the religion on another user's page. I'm prepared to take this debate to any length so we can be fair to everyone. The quote you mentioned also said "campaign for or against anything ". Having religious quotes on userpages to express the approval of the user's religion means campaigning for the certain religion. Having my quote was campaigning against the religion, obviously. We must remove all religious quotations - that includes Itaqallah's arabic verse on his userpage. I agree to comply with Misplaced Pages's policies but they should be applied uniformly. Misplaced Pages's policy states that campaigning FOR is also not allowed on a user's page. Itaqallah's verse must be go as well. I find Itaqallah's verse provocative, because I dont approve at all of the religion he is trying to promote on his user's page. Policies must be applied fairly so please, remove Itaqallah's religious quotation also on his user page.--Matt57 18:08, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I have removed ItaqAllah's polemical statement from his user page. Do we all agree on this? thanks. --Matt57 18:13, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, I don't have a strong opinion on which interpretation to favor, but it appears that by FayssaIF's standard, Surah 3 verse 102 is polemical. — coelacan — 20:56, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

User Netscott reverted my removal of Itaqallah's polemical statement on his user page. I want to hear administrator's confirmation (particularly Faysal's) that, all religious polemical text (irrespective of language, text or nature) should be removed from a user's page. As I said, I'm prepared to participate in any amount of debate to make sure that policies are applied uniformly to all users. --Matt57 21:23, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Surprisingly, not all religious texts are polemical. Professing a belief is typically less provoking than attacking another belief. Distinction is possible and discression required. "Make a narrow rule, so that I can (barely) honour the word, but ignore the spirit" is not the way Misplaced Pages works.--Stephan Schulz 23:16, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Having a religious quotation from your holy book is campaigning for that religion. Campaigning is not allowed on user pages: "campaign for or against anything or anyone is a bad idea", said Jimbo Wales. --Matt57 23:57, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Your premise is wrong. Having a quotation from a holy book is not necessarily campaigning. It can be, but it can just as well be a simple profession of faith, or just showcasing a profound thought or beautiful literature. Like a lot of things, it depends on the details and context. --Stephan Schulz 00:07, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

So whats the limit to what we can and cannot quote from religious texts on our user pages? Can I quote anything from the Quran? This would not be a big problem if people said NO to all reliogious quotes on user pages. If a Muslim has a quote from the Quran on their user page, then I should also be able to have a quote from the Quran on my user page. Thats all I'm saying. If somoene can express approval of the faith they belong to, then for fairness, I should be able to express my disapproval of the religion. Why is that a big issue? And if you see below, people are voicing their disapproval for having any religious texts on user pages and this is what should be done, for fairness. Either allow all quotes or dont allow them, but DONT be selective about what can be quoted and what not. --Matt57 00:50, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Why don'y you suggest it on Misplaced Pages talk:User page and see how it goes.--Sefringle 01:10, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I aready did that on that page last month, and it petered out after a few replies. Tarc 13:07, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

(dedent)Either allow all quotes or don't allow them, - I guess your world is very black and white. The argument is nonsensical. "Either kill all life on Earth, or don't kill at all." "Either eat all the chocolate in the supermarket, or none at all". "Either allow people to own all kinds of weapons, or no weapons at all." "Either allow driving at any speed, or at no speed at all."...and the list goes on. This world has more shades of gray (and don't let me start about various colours!) than you seem to be aware of. --Stephan Schulz 17:31, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

An excellent religious quotation comes to mind. It appears in several versions.

1. ""What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man." Hillel the Elder
2. "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them...." Matthew 7:12, King James Bible
3. "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you...." Matthew 7:12, New International Bible
4. "Don't be a dick." Misplaced Pages

That is all. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 01:12, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Arbitration Committee rulings from five days ago:

While not explicitly stated on Misplaced Pages:User page, it is implicit there that users should refrain from creating user pages likely to bring the project into disrepute. Passed 8-0 at 21:06, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Editors are generally permitted to include in their userspace a limited amount of non-inflammatory personal expression not directly related to encyclopedic collaboration, including moderate declarations of POV. Passed 8-0 at 21:06, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

From Billy Ego-Sandstein. Take that as you please. Daniel Bryant 01:46, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Embargo (talk · contribs)

Embargo insists on re-adding an inflammatory userbox on his userpage, despite numerous complaints over the past few months on his talk page. This is the current userbox which I have removed, it reads This user supports islamic resistance wikilinking to Hezbollah, now I'm no islamic expert, but I know that in many countries, Hezbollah is very controversial political party (I think the USA still class them as a terrorist organisation). The statement is clearly polemical, as all the similar userboxes have been which embargo has been putting up. Please could an uninvolved admin have a look at the userbox that I removed? Ryan Postlethwaite 16:38, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

• Also, the continued replacement of a quote from the Talmud as a WP:POINT against Matt56 hadith quote (which was removed) shoudl also be reviewed. See rv VANDALISM - take it to arbitration committee. -- Avi 16:40, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
• I've reverted back to the non-offensive version. This is getting to be an extreme exercise in WP:POINT -M 16:45, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
  • (Into the hot water) As much as I despise Hezbollah's acts of terrorism (I cannot call actions which intetionally kill innocent civilians anything else) I do not think that the formulation This user supports islamic resistance (wikilinking to Hezbollah) is per-se so inflammatory that it is not allowed on userpages. Go to arbitration if you must, but I feel repeated editon of another user's userpage in such a controversial case is not "good"; also, what would you do if the text in question was not placed inside of a userbox but *gasp* plaintext on his userpage. Would you still remove it then? Or would you allow it to stand? Where does the right to show bias end? People supporting Israel's retributive actions against Paleastinian acts of violence (and vice versa) would have to remove that information too. And people supporting the Iraq war (or opposing it). And people following radical muslim faith. And radical Christians (time of troubles in Northern Ireland, anyone). And Muslems and Christians and Atheists in general. etc. etc. etc. And then were are left with "This is an userpage" (End of File) CharonX/talk 17:31, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
    • However, it's clearly a polemical statement, which are against WP:USER, it's not even margianlly an infringement, it's perfectly clear cut. I'm sure Israeili people will be clearly offended by this statement, I think that says it all Ryan Postlethwaite 17:34, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
      • I went and blocked him for 3RR for a couple days until this clears up. I don't know whether or not it's a problem, if this must be taken to arbcom then do so. They may accept it, they may not.--Wizardman 17:44, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

• Technically, you can't really 3RR in your own userspace, but this delightful bit of trolling probably justifies your block anyway.--Isotope23 17:51, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

This is something that has been discussed before . The behavior of this user has been discussed numerous times as well . Embargo knows what he is doing. He is intentionally being disruptive. IrishGuy 17:51, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

...which is why I support the block. I know this is getting lumped in with the Matt issue from the other ANI post above, but these are slightly different situations. Neither really should be posting polemic statements on their userpages, but Embargo in particular seems to have a history of trolling.--Isotope23 17:57, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Just before his block he created a redirect for Islamic resistance to hezbollah. Would anyone support a longer block due to the amount of trolling that he's done in the past? I'm kinda involved so maybe I'm not the best person to suggest this, but I propose moving it upto 10 days. Ryan Postlethwaite 18:01, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

............And block evasion??? Ryan Postlethwaite 18:04, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I blocked the IP. If someone wants to extend the account block I'd leave it to their discretion.--Isotope23 18:22, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

And 'round and 'round this goes again. As I've said before, Embargo isn't exactly an agreeable person (in a wikipedia editing sense), but can you see where the uneven treatment can make him get a bit steamed? If there's really going to be "no polemical statements" allowed on user pages, then it must be enforced uniformly and this back-and-forth "some admins delete UserBoxA, but a similar UserBoxB is allowed to stay" stuff has got to come to an end. User:Matt57's (not 56 as noted above) quote is at this moment deleted, but when Embargo brought it to Viridae's attention, Viridae responded with "I can't see anything offensive about at all" ? Also note the previous time where Twas_Now was the one who suggested that either "This user supports armed resistance" or "This user supports resistance to hostility" (both with wikilinks to Hezbollah, note) would be, quote, "good for you" to use.

This is really what needs to be addressed; the need fora uniform policy for ALL user pages that will be upheld by ALL admins. Tarc 19:46, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Many, many things that may be offensive aren't, this is. Use WP:UCS when evaluating these and all is well. Life is unfair sometimes, it's true, and the onesthat can really be offensive can go, but most aren't offensive, just irksome. -M 20:58, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

That is exactly the kind of BS hypocrisy that has gotten this user into trouble in the first place. Tarc 22:12, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

No, this user got in trouble for spearheading WP:POINT, which is what most people who do these sorts of userboxes end up doing. Also the people who go around removing every piece of religious text end up getting into as well. Common sense, its a wonderful thing, any one who doesn't use it often should try it. -M 22:52, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Arabic, Itaqallah, and Matt (arbitrary section break)

I have agreed to the removal of religious text from my page, as long as the policy is applied to ALL, as user Tarc pointed out above. This user Itaqallah also has religious text (it doesnt matter if its in Arabic. It must go as well). I had removed it but was reverted and threatened by a block from Netscott for removing it. Can someone please remove this so it is clear the policy is applied to all uniformly? We're also discussing this 2 sections above this one. --Matt57 22:19, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Removed. This should be discussed with the other pages. -- Avi 01:14, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I must say I am not in agreeance with the removal of User:Itaqallah's Qur'anic quote for the following reasons: (1) It's in Arabic and (2) it is addressed to "those who believe" and (3) the primary reason that its removal has come about is User:Matt57's pointed addition of a "hadith" (I still am very doubtful as to the nature of Matt57's quote due to the fact that I could only find it mentioned on anti-Islam punditry sites). If the quote on Itaqallah's page was addressed to those who didn't "believe" as though they'd be subject to eternal damnation or some other such nonsense then I'd understand the removal but I don't see what User:Matt57 or (User:Embargo for that matter ) was doing as equivalent to Itaqallah's display. (→Netscott) 05:15, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

It may well be that when all is said and done that such quotes would be allowed for the reasons you mention. However, as it is a point of discussion now, I felt it better to simultaneously discuss it here and try and prevent any appearances of impartiality. I would say, that being that this is English wiki, it would be a prudent idea to, at the very least, have an accurate translation of foreign sayings on user pages to help forestall any misconceptions. -- Avi 05:20, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Embargo wasn't the only one violating WP:POINT. as i explained to Avi, Matt57 put up that particular extract on his page in order to be provocative, and in particular, bait a response from me , despite him believing that scriptural extracts weren't allowed on user pages. ITAQALLAH 15:03, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Netscott, the language, nature or context of the Quranic verse should not matter. Either all users should be allowed to have quotes from Islamic sources on user pages, or they should not. If I'm not allowed to have an Islamic source on my userpage, then it would be wrong for anyone else to be allowed to have a quotation. My question will then be: Whats the limit to what I can quote and not? I find ItaqAllah's Quranic verse "No one should die except in the state of Islam" as offensive. Please read my arguments above. If someone is allowed to express their approval of Islam, then others should be allowed to express their disapproval of the same. If you apply Misplaced Pages policies, you will arrive at the right decision which is, to not allow campaigning for or against anything. Having this Quranic verse qualifies as campaining for Islam and is thus wrong. I agreed to have my quotation removed and I expect that for fairness, everyone else including Itaqallah should accept the same judgements for their user pages. --Matt57 15:16, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Matt, my actions should not indicate that I agree that no religious quotations per se exist, but there should definitely be no statements that lead to project disruption. Pointed comments about stoning women, pedastery, killing infidels, ritual murder, theft, superiority of any one religion, race, or creed versus others (to name some hypothetial examples) are forbidden under WP:USER. Things like love your fellow man, live in peace and harmony, likely help the project.

In this situation, I felt that possibly disruptive comments should be removed, especially in a foreign language where the intent of the statement is unknown to 99% of project members. This issue needs to be hashed out and a consensus reached. My own personal opinion (FWIW) is that positive comments, even if religious in origin, are likely not disruptions, and should be permitted, but anything that can be considered disruptive should be removed, religious or non-religious. I removed the arabic comment because I could not be sure as to its meaning, and it was brought into a conversation about disruption, and the fairest result in my mind was to remove it for the time being, and reinstate it if it can be shown to be acceptable. It is not a comment as to the nature of the statement, as of now, since I am not certain as to the exact meaning just yet. -- Avi 15:21, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you. "superiority of any one religion", thats what Itaqallah's verse said: "die not except in a state of Islam.". So not only is this a violation, it is also in Arabic as you pointed out. --Matt57 15:37, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

"I find ItaqAllah's Quranic verse "No one should die except in the state of Islam" as offensive"- it doesn't say that at all. you are misquoting a religious text, and this is not the first incidence of such. ITAQALLAH 15:28, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Itaqallah, please dont falsely accuse me of misquoting. The verse says what I said it says: "die not except in a state of Islam." --Matt57 15:37, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

you've changed your attribution. it's still a misquote though, as per your partial quoting. you strip it of context to forward your own point. ITAQALLAH 15:47, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

In that case, Itaqallah, in your opinion based on context, what does it mean and what is its purpose on your talk page? -- Avi 15:54, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

it means that Muslims should a) have taqwa (the actual word used in the verse) and; b) die as Muslims. it's on my page as i find it an inspiration, and is one of the most well-known verses of the Qur'an, and it has never seemed inappropriate to quote from religious texts, as a large part of the Misplaced Pages community currently does. it's in Arabic because, as Pickthall and others opine, no translation can fully encapsulate the meaning of the Arabic itself. ITAQALLAH 16:15, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Itaqallah, why did you not quote the full verse? It says in addition: "Do not die except in a state of Islam". This means that Islam is a superior religion. I should then be allowed to say "Dont die in the state of Islam", so again - where does it end? --Matt57 16:18, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

... please read my comment again. ITAQALLAH 16:20, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Saying that "one should die in a state of Islam" means campaining for Islam. This is not allowed on Misplaced Pages according to Jimbo Wales. --Matt57 16:31, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

(outdent)Any other admin's care to weigh in? -- Avi 18:59, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

meh, its a non-polemic statement of faith. If it said 'I wish non-muslims would die' or 'I wont work with jews' or 'I worship the grand wizard' or something, thats polemic. A non-offensive statement of faith is fine. Even embargo up there, I believe, would've been fine if he had just had a ubx that said 'I oppose the continued military prescence in the occupied territories'. No, he said he believes in islamic resistence and linked to hezbollah. Just think about these things people. "Will people go apeshit if I do this?" isnt that hard a question to ask yourself. -M 01:29, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

The verse can only be taken as campaigning. If the word Mu'minun (the object of address) is taken to be "believer" (though I recently read a paper of Stillman who essentially disproves this), then the verse can be saying that all people who believe in God shouldn't die except in a state of Islam. That's proselytizing. Even if it means only Muslims shouldn't die except in a state of Islam, that's telling Muslims "don't leave Islam." It's campaigning no matter how you interpret it, and the presentation of this message in a foreign language is discomfiting. Arrow740 06:47, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Arrow, it doesn't matter what you think the verse means; all that matters is what Itaqallah thinks the verse means. And the way he interprets the verse, there is no campaigning. --Kirby♥time 06:54, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

What? Is he the only one seeing it? Further, as he interprets it, it means, excluding the "taqwa" issue that may be addressed in another place, "Muslims, die as Muslims." So, "Muslims, don't leave Islam." That is certainly campaigning. Arrow740 07:01, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Wrong. If a Userpage has a swastika, it is not provocative if the swastika in question is being used in the context of a Hindu religious symbol. If someone else interprets it to be a Nazi swastika, that sucks for them.--Kirby♥time 07:06, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

First I should say that not all swastikas should be acceptable. Second, you didn't bother to address the point I will now make for a third time, that itaqallah is at best telling Muslims "stay Muslim." That is campaiging. Arrow740 07:11, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

That's not campaigning, that's Preaching to the choir. Campaigning means to go after people with uncertain convictions, while a "Muslim", by its very definition, has a certain conviction. I see his message as harmless as a Christian saying "Christians, believe in Jesus".--Kirby♥time 07:43, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

As a "former Muslim" you must have once been a Muslim with uncertain convictions. The message is (in his interpretation) directing Muslims to not change their religion before they die. It is more strident than your example. Arrow740 07:50, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Comment on the content, not the contributor. And I fail to see how being a bit more "strident" makes it unacceptable.--Kirby♥time 08:14, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

It's unfortunate that this issue even exists.

There is no question that Matt57's addition runs afoul of WP:POINT, though I doubt it was intended to disrupt thee encyclopedia. Matt57's quote, designed as it is to cast Islam in a negative light, is somewhat inflammatory, and should certainly stay removed. I take him at his word that he strongly feels that if positive representations of Islam are allowed, so should negative ones. There is a certain logic to this, but let's use common sense: someone saying their religion is right is not quite as inflammatory as saying your religion is wrong, even though the second is logically entailed by the first, because the second is overtly confrontational. I doubt that Matt57 meant to troll per se, but it has a similar effect.

User:Embargo is in an entirely different league; besides his overt antisemitism and paranoia, he is routinely uncivil and appears to be here mainly or only to troll; a Community Ban might be considered.

Now for the borderline case, Itaqallah's quote. The recent ArbCom ruling, "Editors are generally permitted to include in their userspace a limited amount of non-inflammatory personal expression not directly related to encyclopedic collaboration, including moderate declarations of POV." I belive this strongly disallows Embargo's behavior, weakly disallows Matt57's and allows Itaqallah's. This ruling appears to have been based upon WP:USER, which disallows "extensive personal opinions on matters unrelated to Misplaced Pages," as well as "polemical statements." However, there is a difference between "inflammatory" and "polemic." Polemic's Greek root means essentially "belligerent," but nowadays means argumentative, particularly about controversial topics; ArbCom's wording could have (and should have) been stronger. Still stronger is Jimbo's quote, "using userpages to...campaign for or against anything or anyone is a bad idea," but of course that only says it is a bad idea, not that it is disallowed. Itaqallah's quote is not inflammatory, might be construed as borderline polemical, and probably amounts to "campaigning for...anything." It is not disallowed, but it is a bad idea.

Like politics, religion is famously controversial, as it was when Itaqallah's quote was written, and remains so today. Banning all religious and political statements from userpages would discourage factionalization, protect users from being typecast and help us all get along. However, the community is not there yet; too many editors are invested in the notion of userpage as a platform for self-expression, and too many others fail to appreciate the degree to which this contributes to factionalization and battlegroundish behavior on talk space and in mainspace. Even when one edits fairly neutrally, declarations of partiality towards a subject one frequently edits creates the appearance of bias. Conversely, when people are asked to pretend that they are neutral, they will often wind up thinking more neutrally as a result.

To return to my original point, it's unfortunate that this issue even exists. It would be far simpler, and take so much less time for us all to parse, to simply ban all irrelevant opinions from userspace, for it shall be far easier for us to decide which viewpoints are irrelevant than which are unacceptable. I suppose I agree with Matt57 that clear and relatively objective rules are warranted. Barring that, we are doomed by our own hand to repeat these discussions again and again, arguing about what is or is not inflammatory, polemic, extensive, etc.Proabivouac 07:11, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree w/ Proabivouac on many points → (Itaqallah's quote is not inflammatory, might be construed as borderline polemical, and probably amounts to "campaigning for...anything." It is not disallowed, but it is a bad idea.) It is all about common sense. I must remind everyone that it was me who started this thread(s) and it was mainly because Embargo and Matt57 were making a point and provoking the community. Why? Embargo seems to be a Muslim having a Talmudic quote about pedastry in Judaism while Matt57, while being an atheist (as it is stated on his userpage) was quoting a hadith about the treatment of women in Islam.

Many users use the {{Torah_portion}} on their userpages. Is that inflammatory or provocative? NO! Why? Because they are Jewish and do not intend in any way to provoke anyone. So arguing about Itaqallah's Quranic verse is clearly a pointy argument. -- FayssalF - 11:36, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

As Prov said, the simplest and best solution for this to have consistent and easy to follow rules: You either disallow everyone to have religious quotes, or allow them. Allowing them causes factionalization as Prov said - thats why Jimbo Wales said its a bad idea (becuase its campaining for Islam). If someone is going to praise Islam on their home page, that is inflammotory to me because Islam says I'll burn in Hell. I should have the freedom to say whatever I want to say about Islam too, if others are allowed. That verse was offensive to me because it said everyone should die in the state of Islam. If thats true, I should be allowed to say everyone should not die in the state of Islam. Both are equivalent statements; niether is more inflammotory than the other - thats the main point here. The only solution is to keep religious quotes and these kinds of separations out, otherwise the question will always be: What is allowed? And as Jimbo said and he was right: campaining is a bad idea. --Matt57 11:54, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Personally speaking, i'll be supporting the idea. However, you fail to understand Matt that your and Embargo's quotes were an intent to provoke others. As for Itaqallah's verse, as he explained, it was his inspiration as it is the case for many Jewish and Christian and other religious users as well as atheists. What i fail to understand is that why are you insisting on Islam while avoiding talking about how Judaism and Christianity view and consider atheists. Why Itaqallah in particular?! Isn't it your own POINT which i've been refering to since my first post above? -- FayssalF - 12:51, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

What the verse essentially says is that anyone that doesn't die as a Muslim will be punished and burn in hell. That anyone should see something like that as "inspirational" is pretty much beyond my comprehension, but of course anyone is free to choose. Anyway, what matters here is that I believe that users should be able to visit each others user space without having to be confronted with such unpleasant threats, and the problem is not only with Itaqallahs user page. BrandonYusufToropov's user page also "welcome" non-Muslim visitors with a threat about hellfire, and on his page it is written in plain English. I have no idea what his intention was when he added it, and perhaps it has indeed been very much inspirational to him, but I still believe that is more important that users can visit each others pages without being exposed to any such threats. -- Karl Meier 21:12, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I strongly support Karl Meier's removal of this material from User:BrandonYusufToropov's user page. According to current policy, material which is religious in nature is neither specially forbidden nor specially protected; the relevant questions are whether the material is inflammatory, polemic, extensive or campaigning. This presence of this quote is naturally interpreted as promising other editors - and perhaps also wishing upon them - eternal torment, and is plainly (and literally) inflammatory and divisive. "Go to Hell" is an uncivil insult in any spirit; how much more so when it is said in all seriousness.Proabivouac 07:09, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

"What the verse essentially says is that anyone that doesn't die as a Muslim will be punished and burn in hell"- the problem with Karl's point here is that the verse doesn't say that at all, and so i call into question whether or not Karl is aware of precisely what verse is under discussion. ITAQALLAH 08:14, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

This was another divisive and campaining verse, a stronger one. We must remove all religious quotes. Faysal, my intent wasnt to provoke. Its simple: either everyone should be allowed to have verses or not. The intent is irrelevant. If Itaqallah and BYT wants to educate the public about some aspect of the Quran they want to show to everyone, I did exactly the same. We can end this matter by deciding to remove religious quotes from userpages like Itaqallah's and BYT, because again, that is campaining for an issue, in this case, Islam. --Matt57 14:52, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I too would simply like to see a uniform policy in regards to this situation. I got dragged into all of this because of Embargo's case, where he worked out a compromise with one admin, only to have another admin revoke that, as well as decline to apply the same standard to other users. Whether the ultimate decision is "no polemicals" or "some polemicals" or whatever, I just want to see something that is applied across the board. Tarc 13:46, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I think it is time to take this to Misplaced Pages talk:User page and discuss it. I believe that we've achieved somehow what this thread has requested. Now, we need to move forward and archiev this. -- FayssalF - 13:58, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Another userpage has been introduced to the discussion, so archiving is premature.Proabivouac 07:44, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Somebody please fill me in. The reason no one could ask whether I would mind removing this material from my userpage is that . . .. ? BYT 10:07, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

We should also be removing this userbox from userpages as it faces the same problem:

This Muslim user strongly condemns any terrorist attacks and would like to point out Sura 4:29 of the Quran that says,"And do not kill yourselves (nor kill one another). Surely, Allah is Most Merciful to you."

--Sefringle 20:54, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Whoa that was a huge userbox that messed up my page. Cutting size by half. If it looks weird, my maths are wrong. As for the issue at hand, the statement on itaqallah's page is from one of the most widely distributed religious texts in the world, and is a non-polemic. It is no different than a userbox saying "Jesus christ is my lord and savior" or "Shma yisrael adonai eloheinu adonai echad", or "Hail Mary..." or "Our father...." etc. It's not divisive, it's not polemic, it's not aggressive and offensive and harmful. It's a nonissue. ⇒ SWATJester 10:16, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Robdurbar

The user account of Robdurbar has gone crazy. Deleted the main page, blocking everyone in sight. His admin powers need to be taken away quickly. — Lost 10:15, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I was just looking where the stewards are. Agathoclea 10:16, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Desysopped. – Riana 10:19, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

And thanks for unblocking me. Agathoclea 10:20, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Sorry about any rude unblocking summaries I may have left. – Riana 10:23, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

What the fuck happened there? Was that someone saying goodbye in spectacular fashion, or did a vandal hack the account? Moreschi 10:25, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I highly doubt it was a vandal; that user left several weeks ago. A vandal would probably choose someone who is at their peak of activity. — Deckiller 10:28, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

The block of Jeff makes it quite clear that this wasn't a comprimised account, for me anyways. Daniel Bryant 10:35, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I wonder how much this will shake up the RfA reform debates. — Deckiller 10:37, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Let's go and see... Carcharoth 10:42, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Merged from separate thread directly above.

What's going on? --Dweller 10:07, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Emergency desysopping of USer:Robdurbar??? The accounts either compromised, or he's taking the **** Ryan Postlethwaite 10:13, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Desysop please ASAP. He is unblocking himself, blocking other users (just got me), and creating havoc. Anyone on IRC? – Riana 10:15, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Desysopped by Jhs. MaxSem 10:16, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I reverted all his blocks, hope that's OK. – Riana 10:19, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

You're too fast. A pity, I had hoped I'd get an opportunity of unblocking Jimbo once in my life. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:23, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Fast? Tabbed browsing, my friend ^^ – Riana 10:33, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Cheese needs to be undeleted. MaxSem 10:21, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Good going Riana!--cj | talk 10:23, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

What now then? Leave him desysopped and blocked, or take it to arbcom to make it official? Ryan Postlethwaite 10:27, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

No formalities needed. He'll just remain blocked until he comes back with a plausible explanation how this was not him. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:29, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I think we'll need a rather good explanation... no vandal goes and blocks a bunch of established users, not to mention a user the admin has blocked previously. – Riana 10:33, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Continue :) Daniel Bryant 10:39, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Wow. Should this be documented somewhere? Has this ever happened before? An admin goes rogue and got in three edits before being blocked, got in 25 blocking, unblocking, unprotecting, and deleting actions. Can someone confirm all the mess has been tidied up? Carcharoth 10:41, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

It has. Good thing he wasn't pissed off enough to do something that's actually damaging. —Cryptic 10:44, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Shake up RFA? After this, we'll have people saying that the crats should be able to desysop...which will lead to even higher standards at RfB....arrrrrgggghhh....Moreschi 10:43, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm one who thinks the crats should be able to desysop...but then again, I also feel we shouldn't raise the standards either :) — Deckiller 10:45, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps we need more stewards who are highly active on WP? None of the stewards seem to be half as active as the folk you see on ANI everyday. Standards for stewards seem to be lower than for crats... who wants to have a go next year? :) – Riana 10:46, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Lower? As in, like, needing to speak ten languages, active participation on 50 WikiMedia projects, and accounts on more? Moreschi 10:48, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, the criteria are different; because of that, I think it might not be a bad idea to consider giving crats the right to desyssop. But I agree that we need more tools to fight hacked or crazy admins. — Deckiller 10:50, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Before we get too hung up on the idea that we need more stewarts or drastic measures to prevent a rare sysop rampage, remember that this mess started at 09:57 with the unprotection of "cheese" and was over by 10:14 when Robdurbar got desysopped. I'd say the stewarts (and JHS in particular) did a good job. As to bureaucrats getting the right or technical ability to desysop, I have no opinion.--Chaser - T 10:56, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah apparently they were alerted on IRC . Will (aka Wimt) 10:57, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

But is it good or bad that it took 17 minutes to deal with this? To be fair, the smoking gun of Main Page deletion (and edit summaries like "I wonder how long I can get away with this") didn't occur until about 13 minutes before he was desysopped. But is 13 minutes a good response time or a bad one? Carcharoth 11:16, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

He got in more than three edits. Some of them remained deleted when I restored only the revisions of the main page from before the incident began. —David Levy 11:34, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I've just submitted a patch that disables main page deletion, please vote/comment. MaxSem 10:50, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

WT:RFA thread is here. Carcharoth 10:52, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Wow... First case of rogue admin I've ever seen. Have to thank your for your quick actions Riana, before he deletes the whole Project... --Kz 10:57, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

RFCheckUser started at Misplaced Pages:Requests for checkuser/Case/Robdurbar _{Luc "Somethingorother" French} 10:58, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

A lot of the trouble couldhave been avoided if admins could not unblock themselves or .... there would be a 30 minutes delay in unblocking. Agathoclea 10:59, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Wow, I just said exactly the same thing at WT:RFA at exactly the same time! – B.hotep /_t• 11:01, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

BTW, his autoblocks should also be undone. MaxSem 11:13, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I think I just undid the autoblocks. Can someone check if I've done it correctly? – Riana 11:19, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

• Done. >Radiant< 11:21, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Gah! That's a mess. From 10:01 to 10:14 on 19 April 2007, in case it scrolls off the screen. Hang on, they are vanishing in front of my eyes. Weird. How does that list work? Carcharoth 11:23, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

You gotta show me how to do that sometime :) – Riana 11:24, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

• Tabbed browsing, of course :) Firefox FTW! >Radiant< 11:38, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

That was a rather freaky demonstration of aberrant behavior... (→Netscott) 11:27, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Checkuser results in - account seemingly not compromised. Moreschi 11:28, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, maybe Robdurbar had logged in with the "Remember me" option enabled, and someone got onto his computer? --Ixfd64 20:49, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

According to someone (I can't remember whom, I thought it was in one of the IRC channels, but I can't find anything there), people in #wikipedia were panicing for quite some time before someone knew whom to contact (e.g. stewards). What is needed for this kind of situation isn't more stewards or ability for bureaucrats to desysop; what's needed is for people to know where to go when something like this happened, which luckily Peter Isotalo did (and also five or six other people who came in too late). When (or, more optimistically, if) an admin goes on a havoc spree like this, you should go to #wikimedia-stewards and write !steward, and someone will usually respond within seconds (there are stewards from many different time zones). If there are none, developers (in #wikimedia-tech) will be able to do a desysopping. Jon Harald Søby 12:31, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

My problem was I couldn't remember the name of the stewards IRC channel: by the time I remembered it, he'd already been desysopped. Thanks for the reminder. Moreschi 12:36, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

The problem

Of course we did not follow proper process here, because Robdurbar should first have gotten a standardized warning template that deleting the main page is considered inappropriate, and that repeat actions may result in deopping. I have taken the liberty of designing this, Template:Uw-delmain1. >Radiant< 12:20, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Very well done, Radiant. I'm a bit puzzled regarding the "Welcome to Misplaced Pages" bit — admins are not new users as far as I'm concerned (unless the RfA reform goes a little too far, heh). Michaelas 12:33, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

ROFL :D. MaxSem 12:38, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I have to disagree with the assessment. By the time I blocked him he had already been vandalizing on top of deleting. Even though the main page was involved I did check if there was a particular issue that needed an emergency deletion. The subsequent re-creation of the page showed a vandalizing intend. I knew that he could unblock himself, but the block would stop further deletions to bridge the time until a steward could be alerted. Agathoclea 12:48, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, if this shows us anything it is that the whole emergency de-admining system works. _InBC 12:54, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, it's very encouraging. By the time I'd logged into the stewards IRC channel it'd already been done. – Steel 13:45, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I'd venture a guess that any admin that deletes Main page will be desysopped (probably emergency desysopped) whether the actions are repeated or not. I see no need for a warning for such actions. -- Renesis (talk) 13:05, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Let's not be overly dramatic. As the admin who recently deleted the mainpage said, "Indeed, it was my terrible mistake. Looked at the wrong page, pressed the wrong button. Restored immediately, so no damage was made." They weren't desysopped for it, and rightfully so. Zocky | picture popups 13:19, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Before today, main page deletions were entirely accidental and were reversed with no warnings. Bad-faith deletions of the main page require emergency de-sysopping. Period. // Sean William 13:29, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

To be clear, I was referring to bad-faith deletion, not accidental. And I agree with HighInBC below. -- Renesis (talk) 13:58, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I think we can all tell the difference between an emergency and something that can be discussed prior to desysoping, this would be the former. _InBC 13:54, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Hey, deletion of the Main Page is such a big deal that, even if it was accidental, it wouldn't kill the offending admin to be desysopped until such time as he explains that it was a mistake. If it appears to be an emergency, shoot first and ask questions later. The desysopping "bullet" does no permanent damage. --Richard 14:25, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Except, it leaves the "offending" admin with no way to correct his/her mistake. --Edokter (Talk) 14:42, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

There are a few hundred others willing to correct that mistake, though. – Riana 14:49, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Availability of stewards and emergency procedures

Jon Harald Søby indicated that there will probably be stewards available at any time, as they are in different time zones, but that seems a little bit like wishful thinking to me. There probably are quiet times when no stewards are available, but the only way we will find out, unless a system is set up, is when something like this happens and we find all the stewards are asleep/away/inactive, or whatever. Can we be sure that stewards or developers will always be available? The other point Jon Harald Søby raised was that the people active in #wikipedia at the time didn't seem to know they needed to find a steward. I'm sure a whole generation of Wikipedians will now have this fact burned into their psyche! :-) But seriously, what other enculturation problems might lie ahead? Is there something that you personally don't know how to handle, and who would you go running to if you encountered something big you couldn't handle? The obvious thing that springs to mind is the dark mutterings made by people who, always invoking WP:BEANS, say that there are really destructive things that a rogue admin can do. I have no interest in knowing what those things are (and please don't try and guess), but can I ask if the solution would be obvious if the unthinkable started to happen? Carcharoth 14:33, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

More Stewards are not necessarily the idea. After all, does it make sense for an incident on the English Misplaced Pages that lasted only a few minutes warrant more Stewards to cover all time zones? Short of designing a new protection policy where only Bureaucrats can edit a certain page so that people know what to do when an Administrator goes wild (ugh) or a Steward-power bot that desysops Administrators that unprotect the Main Page (ugh), the easiest solution is, of course, make sure it doesn't occur again. Either way, Stewards are a meta thing and whether or not more Stewards are needed will be a meta consideration. x42bn6 Talk 16:13, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Steward bot = bad idea. People mess up. Prodego 01:19, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I think I have an alternative idea that could get us along without stewards. What if we made it possible for someone to effectually block an admin (i.e. self-unblocking would be impossible), but only with the agreement of several other admins. The likelihood of more than one account being compromised at any one time would be rather low.--Pharos 00:43, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Self unblocking needs to be possible, lest someone manage to block all active admins. Which, by going backwards through the logs with a bot shouldn't be too hard. Having no admins and no Stewards would be pretty bad. Prodego 00:46, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, but the idea would be that it would take the agreement of multiple admins (possibly three) to make an effectual block. And then, to guard against the remote possibility of more than one rogue, we could also limit the number of such accounts that could be blocked in this way (also maybe three).--Pharos 01:02, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Going back to Carcharoth's question, I firmly believe that the solution to the really destructive thing we never state is not immediately obvious. How to describe the solution without describing the problem is an issue beyond my current leaps of intuition. GRBerry 00:57, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I can think of two really destructive things, but probably not what you are thinking. What are you thinking? Prodego 01:15, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

E-mail, please, guys... :-) Anyway, I'd hope the developers are aware of any really big loopholes in security and/or vandal possibilities. I suspect some bot-operated thing is one of the big scary things (going backwards through the logs is a clever idea), but the specifics are beyond my intuition as well. Interesting Wiktionary story below, the idea of timing things for a quiet period like that is a good idea. Of course, some planes now allow internet access (I think), so that will soon no longer be a problem. Carcharoth 04:56, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Oh geez yeah. WP:BEANS and all that - Alison 04:59, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

This has happened before on Wiktionary

The same thing happened twice before on Wiktionary. wikt:Wonderfool (talk • contribs • page moves • block log) Local: User:Wonderfool on Wiktionary did the same thing twice, once using the sockpuppet wikt:Dangherous (talk • contribs • page moves • block log) Local: User:Dangherous because no one in their right mind would ever sysop Wonderfool after his first rampage. On the second time around, "Dangherous" blocked all of the other admins and deleted the main page. This vandal timed it just right so that all of the stewards were on airplanes coming home from WikiMania 2006, so a developer had to directly tweak the database to remove Dangherous's sysop bit. See wikt:Wiktionary:Administrators/Former#User:Dangherous for some of the details on the Dangherous case. Jesse Viviano 03:41, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Possible technical solutions

If anyone has any ideas on how to allow regular administrators or bureaucrats to solve this problem, please post them in this section.

I am proposing a somewhat technical solution to the administrator turned badministrator (yes, the pun is intentional) problem. If an administrator turns bad, we should have some measure to allow other administrators to temporarily take care of the problem. We should have a system that temporarily remove all rights beyond regular editor from someone for 24 hours if 24 different administrators, or two bureaucrats, give a strike to an administrator in the same minute. I feel that this will give us time to find a steward to fix this problem. I chose 24 because 16 different administrators in one minute will be too easy to overcome for things other than true emergencies, but 32 different administrators in one minute might be too hard to overcome in a true emergency. Jesse Viviano 22:24, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I have a simple idea, why not write a tool that blocks a user every 5 seconds untill a steward can desysop? I could whip one of these tools up in about 10 minutes. Betacommand 05:08, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

But can't an admin still block users while being blocked? (I don't think they can protect or delete when blocked). --TeckWiz is now R Contribs_@(Lets go Yankees!) 05:13, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I've never heard of an admin acting like this before.

This might take a bit of work, but what if there a way to flag how many times within, say, 5 minutes, a user was blocked, so that if (for example) 3 different administrators blocked a rogue admin within a 5 minute timespan, the rogue admin would be automatically desysopped for a period of time, and the actions of everyone involved could then be reviewed? --Kyoko 05:33, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I like this idea of auto-desysopping. I hope you mean a software feature though. (I don't think we want a steward bot going crazy. --TeckWiz is now R Contribs_@(Lets go Yankees!) 05:35, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I meant a software feature. I wouldn't want to see a malfunctioning steward bot desysopping people... or granting admin tools to everybody in sight, either. --Kyoko 05:38, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

The idea that an admin should not be able to unblock themself has been rejected because of the danger of all other admins being blocked, but a blocked admin could be able to unblock others, but not issue blocks or unblock themselves. It would then take two rogue admins to cause trouble once the first problem was noted, and this is much less likely than one.-gadfium 20:12, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't like the solution where an administrator can unblock others, but not unblock himself/herself if he or she is blocked. While it would work on Misplaced Pages due to its army of administrators, it could allow a rogue admin on a small wiki running MediaWiki with few administrators to take over it with no solution but to reformat and reinstall MediaWiki. Any technical solution must be able to apply to all installations of MediaWiki, no matter what size it is. Also, it makes it a pain to recover should an administrator accidentally block himself, or when the administrator intentionally blocks himself for testing purposes, and the test is finished and the administrator must recover from the test. Riana broke the never unblock onself rule when she unblocked herself in response to being blocked by Robdurbar for no valid reason at all, and therefore had a valid reason to unblock that was good enough that WP:IAR easily trumped that rule. I would prefer a solution where software determines that there is a consensus among administrators to temporarily desysop a rogue admin until a steward comes around and solves the situation, so that there is no possibility that a rogue administrator completely takes over a small wiki. Jesse Viviano 07:21, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Here is another possible solution that would work on big wikis like Misplaced Pages and Wiktionary: allow an administrator to sacrifice his or her sysop bit in order to remove the sysop bit from another administrator. This will then generate a message in a log for a steward or bureaucrat to sort out the mess this creates. In this wiki, such a sacrifice should cause someone to initiate a request for arbitration, because someone must investigate the situation and determine whose sysop bit should stay removed. If the sacrifice was done in a situation that warranted such a response, a bureaucrat can then repromote the person who sacrificed his sysop bit. If the situation did not warrant that, then the admin who did this would not get his sysop bit back, but the admin whose sysop bit was taken in this manner would get it back. Of course, this ability should not be allowed to be used against stewards and bureaucrats, because all MediaWiki wikis require them to grant and remove rights. Jesse Viviano 07:34, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Now this is an idea I have not seen before on Misplaced Pages. I think it could open the door to resolving wheel wars on Wikis. Very promising from a first glance. --HappyCamper 13:59, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Spontaneous block of DreamGuy by David Gerard, please review

On April 15, 216.165.158.7 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) was blocked for a month for POV-pushing by Theresa Knott, which I thought rather draconian, and reduced to one week. ANI discussion here. This is the IP of DreamGuy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), as he has amply acknowledged. It's not an abusive sock. My week's block was about to run out today, when David Gerard re-blocked for a month, giving the reason that the IP is "a sock of a banned user" (? no), and that it has been making ""Continuing personal attacks using talk page as platform". (I agree DreamGuy has been surly on the talkpage; blocked users tend to be.) David has also blanked and semiprotected the talkpage. So, a one-month block plus the talkpage gag? Was this guy making personal attacks to the extent that it disrupted the encyclopedia? On his own talkpage, that nobody has any need to go to and be disrupted by...? Well, I think that would be an overstatement, please check the History and see if you agree. Theresa, prompted by DreamGuy's old adversary Elonka, has subsequently blocked the DreamGuy account for a month also. The DreamGuy block actually seems merely redundant, as a comparison of the IP block periods with DreamGuy's contributions will show that DreamGuy is blocked when his IP is. But perhaps, if Theresa's double block hadn't been placed, he could have used User talk:DreamGuy to communicate, say post an unblock request? Not sure if that would have been technically possible. It's moot now, anyway.

David's block seems excessively spontaneous to me. I'm hoping he will reconsider it. A hurried proceeding is suggested by the way he placed it last thing before going offline, apparently — I have posted on his page without response, and his contributions list ends with the 216.165.158.7 semiprotection — and also without a block message and without any report here.

Please note that DreamGuy, while not our sweetest-tempered user, is a constructive editor and certainly no vandal. As I wrote in the original ANI thread a week ago, he has done good work for the encyclopedia for a long time, in staunchly resisting spam, nonsense, conspiracy theories, and pseudoscience. A silent phasing-out of this useful contributor by means of longer and longer blocks is quite wrong in my book. Take him to WP:RFAr if measures are needed. Or perhaps a mentor? Anyway, this is no way of doing it. That's what I think, what do you think? Please review. Bishonen | talk 00:19, 21 April 2007 (UTC).

You know, DreamGuy may have his share of positive contributions, but so do most people who get blocked. From what I've seen, DG is obsessive about Elonka and actively tries to remove each and every mention of Elonka and her works from Misplaced Pages, taking the opportunity to spread incivility and bad will. Besides, I've always heard that RfAr (and our dependence on it) indicates that we're unable to solve our own problems.

DG should have no problem posting to his talk page, blocks or no blocks. If he expresses a willingness to discontinue his problematic editing patterns, he should be unblocked and monitored. What *isn't* productive is shrugging off these problems as "not being our sweetest-tempered editor". Philwelch 01:13, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't mean to sound disrespectful, but you are being overly naive regarding this case, Bishonen. Both the anon and DreamGuy are not productive editors, and their negative impact far outweights the positive ones. The Misplaced Pages isn't in such desperate need of editors that we have to take whatever comes... we can easily let go of editors who, despite having some postive contributions, are both agressive and disruptive. Not to mention completely impolite and confrontational. I don't know about other admins, but I am perfectly willing to move forwards with a community block or other such radical measure in case Gerard's decision is overturned. --Sn0wflake 02:05, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

This is actually nonsense. The only negatives come from conflicts with people who are not following policies and then try to win through false accusations and character assasination. You, for instance, were quite aggressive and disruptive and, as your talk page states, have a policy of blocking first no questions asked. This kind of behavior goes against the policies of Misplaced Pages and, in fact, causes more problems than it solves. If anything your own responsibility in this matter, first in harassing me until I said something less than polite in response and then in presenting false information to the ANI page about my activities, which led to a block under false pretenses, should be examined. It's might outrageous for you to be making claims about my edit history when the dispute I had with you was because you insisted upon placing information on how to pirate software back into an article talk page after I had removed it because it was not what talk pages are for. 216.165.158.7 23:11, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I was preserving the Talk page. If the discussion in it unfolded for two years without being censored, then I don't really see for what reason you would be allowed to go into it and erase basically everything. Still, trying to reach a middle-ground, I archived t and started a fresh Talk. Then, on the main article, you insisted on putting information which belonged to the article on Abandonware. I reverted and told you those matters should be addressed in Abandonware. You disagreed, so you insisted on pushing your bias into the article of the website. Then hell broke loose and your other conflicts surfaced. And here we are. You have now accused me several times of abusing my sysop rights, called me a software pirate several times also (warez lubber, wasn't it? Way to go with encyclopedia language) and your list of Contributions should be a textbook case on how not to behave on a Wiki. Now there seem to be 3 admins volunteering to mentor you and somehow you have been unblocked, which I find downright ridiculous, but I digress. My part in this seems to be over for the moment. --Sn0wflake 23:31, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

First up, however long illegal an completely off topic information may have existed on a talk page without being removed it certainly doesn't justify putting it back and then making very aggressive, rude and threatening comments about it. "Pulling information that belonged in the article"? Sounds like you had an edit disagreement. Edit disagreements are not cause for you to bully others. You kept putting your bias back in. But, again, you are ignoring that your stated policy to block first and ask questions later, which you certainly did (not to mention the later false info you presented on ANI) is wholly against the rules here and highly uncivil. The fact of the matter is, you were out of line. I admit to being less than polite sometimes, but on the other hand it usually comes from people being off the scale uncivil to me and violating policy (or, in your case, also the law). Blocking people without justification and bragging about it on your talk page is way more uncivil than me calling you a warezlubber (or whatever) after you had already clearly demonstrated a pro-piracy POV. The abandonware article (and related article giving free advertising to specific sites that do this) and other similar articles very clearly need to have information there so as not to confuse people into thinking that softwarepiracy is legal, either on its own or simply by giving it a fancy new neologism to rationalize it away. My edits simply pointed out that it is illegal, which is not a POV, and tried to undo some of the blatant pro-piracy POV that had been there. DreamGuy 00:32, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Never denied having a strong approach, never will. However, this is exactly the kind of thing which didn't need to happen, if only you had used a different tone back in the first edits/messages. I reacted strongly to somebody who was making his point strongly? Of course. Against policy? That's stretching a bit, no? You were being disruptive in several oportunities (I'm not even talking about myself anymore), and you are bounf to have realized that after all that has ensued. Also, what you describe as violating the law is very questionable. No direct link was being provided to downloads, AFAIK. There were just people pointing out how to reach the website. The site is online, not on some Freenet, but on the actual WWW, so really, giving a link to the website which is readily avalible from Google and a thousand other places is hardly violating any law. More like censorship, which I am very strongly against. Rather, you choose to assume bad faith and automatically turn me into a "pro-piracy warez lubber". I strive to mantain neutrality and block attempts at censorship. But saying I'm breaking the law etc makes it easier, no... if you hope me to hand out candy to people who unilaterally make changes to articles with agressive edit summaries and come to my Talk page loaded with guns instead of simply asking me what was going on, then no... I'm not that kind of admin and I never will be — my politeness depends on yours, admin or not. Also, about warning people about the legal status of abandonware... it doesn't belong on the websites' article. And that's it. It doesn't matter how evil you think it is. It belongs to Abandonware. --Sn0wflake 02:33, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Unless I am missing something, the IP block for being a "sock of a banned user" appears to be based on a factual error, in that DreamGuy was not blocked or banned and no one else has been identified whom 216 could be a sock of. The necessity for the block and its length should be reassessed, after taking this correction into account, by the blocking administrator, whose attention should be drawn to this thread if it has not already been. I do not see that at this point, a case for a continued block, let alone a block of one month, has been made out. Note that I have not reviewed all the contributions and I am not opining that a further block could not be justified, simply that it has not been thus far. Having said that, enough concerns have been raised about the user's editing under both the DreamGuy and IP accounts that it would be good to see improvements in his approach whenever he resumes editing. Newyorkbrad 03:09, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Philwelch: "DG should have no problem posting to his talk page, blocks or no blocks"? I guess you didn't notice my several references to the IP talkpage being semiprotected by David Gerard (confusingly, another DG) ? Semiprotection means an IP can't edit the page. That's why I also refer to it as "the talkpage gag". Thanks for giving me an opportunity to explain this perhaps little-known facet of semiprotection. A combined block-plus-semiprotection-of-Talk is the strongest way we have of locking up and silencing an editor. It's rare, as it's only appropriate in very extreme cases. I wish somebody would unprotect the page right now. I have probably performed enough admin actions in this context, so I won't do it. I have appealed to David to undo his protection himself, but he's not here. I'm disappointed nobody has thought appropriate to do it yet. Brad? Bishonen | talk 03:48, 21 April 2007 (UTC).

He doesn't need the IP talkpage. He can log in as DreamGuy and post on his own talk page. Philwelch 04:39, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

David is probably asleep. I don't see any problem with a cautious unblock here. Certainly David wouldn't object, he's not a nitwit. --Tony Sidaway 03:54, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Tony, did you mean unprotect, instead of unblock? David Gerard appears to have blanked and semi-protected the page, because DreamGuy was using it as a platform to generate personal attacks. However, it's true that Gerard didn't issue any kind of, "This is your last warning" message. So, if DreamGuy would agree to be civil, I'd say to go ahead and unprotect the page, as long as he behaves himself. The block, however, should stay regardless, as it's for personal attacks, of which there were plenty. I'd be against removing the block, until/unless DreamGuy could prove that he was willing to participate in a cooperative and civil fashion with other editors. --Elonka 04:18, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually, what Elonka here is calling "personal attacks" is simply my poiting out that her and the other person falsely accusing others of using sockpuppets have a long history of harassing me -- and in fact is why I normally don;t sign onto accounts (it's not required by Misplaced Pages) as several admins suggested it might be a way to lessen their unnatural preoccupation with me -- and also of having sockpuppets on Elonka's Request for Admin vote, as proven by comments of several editors at the time. Elonka has a long history of branding things which are 100% accurate but which show her to be less than perfect person she wants the world to think she is as "personal attacks" and running around admin-shopping until she gets someone who will remove the posts. (Philwelch, above, being the perfect example, who in the past removed all documentation about Elonka's misbehavior that I had posted but insisted that Elonka's claims about me remain... 216.165.158.7 23:18, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I meant the block. It is the block that Bishonen has asked us to review. If this user after unblocking continues to be a pain in the wiki, he can be blocked again. --Tony Sidaway 04:20, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, unblock him.--MONGO 04:24, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I've undone both blocks because DreamGuy isn't a banned user. Actually I feel that my original 1 month block wasn't OTT at all. He was behaving awfully and needs to be told firmly that if he cannot edit cooperativly with others then he cannot edit at all. Anyway, that is done now, and we cannot block people as banned when they are not.Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 07:44, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

The talk page was being used as a platform for vicious personal attacks - see its history. That's why I semiprotected it, specifcially so the IP couldn't continue in this manner. Bishonen, I hope you're not yet again offering undue protection to someone who makes good content but is given to vicious personal attacks on the wiki - David Gerard 09:08, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually, that statement there is a vicious personal attack, both on myself and the actions of admins trying to act within the policies. 216.165.158.7 23:18, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi, David. That's rather disappointing as a thank-you note to me for sweeping up after your careless block late last night, when I would much rather have gone to bed. Please be more specific about my past and present undue actions, I'd like to know what they have been. Bishonen | talk 12:07, 21 April 2007 (UTC).

• I suppose the "someone" David Gerard is referring to above is me - though he is too timorous and polite to say it outright - or has he someone else in mind? - Whatever, perhaps we should be told - and more importantly how precisely Bishonen is "offering undue protection". If David Gerard does not want to put some diffs where his mouth is then he should shut up or cease his attacks - such as this one on Bishonen and her integrity. Giano 12:23, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

David Gerrard's actions were outside of policy, and, honestly, so were Theresa's. If a person is being hateful, etc., we still have AN and AN/I. We still have warnings. Even if the person in question is notorious, etc., we have the same requirements. It takes a minute to do things the non-controversial way. "Personal attacks" are indefinable and are especially indefinable when we get to user talk pages. Talk pages are not article pages, and blocking someone without warning and then blanking and protecting the talk page because of self-identified "personal attacks" is not proper. Doing so and then going deaf to the appeals is only slightly worse. Geogre 13:20, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

As a user who had to deal with both DreamGuy and 216.165.158.7, I must comment: I think that this user has been repeatedly warned and given chances to reform, if not by warning templates, manually - I do not contest the block(s) itself. I do agree, however, that no user deserves to be silenced as such, especially given DG/.7's claim that the IP shifts over time. Since the block is reasonably justified, can we leave it as that, a simple block, and unprotect applicable talk pages? Besides, DG is a good editor, if extremely uncivil. I'd recommend leaving this block stand, but a warning that future cases may lead to a WP:RFAr. Nihiltres 13:46, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Bishonen, Geogre: if you think DreamGuy's work is of value and are this keen to stand up for it, I hope you'll both go to extra-special effort to get him to stop being abusive to others and to attempt to mitigate what damage he causes. If he can't work well with others - and his behaviour so far indicates he has no interest in such - then he should be writing GFDL text all on his own, not attempting to work on a site that requires massive collaboration - David Gerard 14:06, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I remember DreamGuy from a year or so back. I concur with the view that he's a well meaning and useful editor who has problems staying civil. If this has become a problem to the point where we must consider showing him the door, this wasn't the way to try to do it. Perhaps a user conduct RFC or discussion at the community sanction noticeboard would be an appropriate next step? Friday (talk) 16:05, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

First RFC, Second RFC. The habit of personal attack is not the behaviour of an unknowing n00b, and he's not getting better. Again, I strongly urge those admins who wish to defend him to work hardest on reining in his noted obnoxious behaviour - David Gerard 16:56, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

So... are you then going to get a mentor to help you stay within Misplaced Pages policies when it comes to blocks and so forth...? Besides, if civility is the supposed issue, I think your comments (and the comments of many trying to portray me as some hopeless cause) are certainly just as bad. AGF and civility should apply to you folks as well. DreamGuy 00:37, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

If two admins insist that this is such a good user, then I would suggest that they mentor him and clean up his mess from now on. Seems fair, as the work will not be left to people like me, Theresa and Gerard. --Sn0wflake 16:59, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think anyone is insisting anything. I don't mind cleaning up after him, I am an admin, it's what I do, it's what we all do. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 19:25, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

• I sometimes wonder why some of you people are admins, admins are here to do what admins do - I rather think that involves mops and buckets; you have volunteered for the job, not been dragged kicking and screaming against your wills. I note David Gerard has neatly avoided my question above so I repeat it, this time more clearly - please explain the "yet again" in "I hope you're not yet again offering undue protection to someone who makes good content but is given to vicious personal attacks on the wiki" you made the attack on Bishonen's integrity - now support it with some diffs and facts! Giano 21:49, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

David Gerard attacked nobody, please do not bait him. Bastique. 22:09, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I believe I gave precisely those diffs, and why you were only Bishonen's word away from a ban for gross incivility, during the last Arbitration case you were involved in. It is saddening that what I said then about you being unable to comport yourself decently on policy pages still appears to hold - David Gerard 22:14, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

• You seem to have a highly inflated idea of your own importance on this site. Perhaps you should learn to review it, and stop baiting others with your comments which have no relevance to a situation. Giano 22:19, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I sincerely hope that some actually click at some of the "precisely those diffs" as David Gerard puts it and finds in them "vicious personal attacks" as he claims them to be. --Irpen 22:37, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

• I would not worry Irpen, David Gerard is just dredging up old "has been" events and diffs, all of which have been discussed "ad nauseum" to justify his attack on Bishonen's judgement. I had rather hoped he may have found something new but it seems he has just chosen to resurrect all the old animosity - and open old wounds to cause trouble, I wonder why? Some people never know when to leave a sleeping dog alone. Giano 22:50, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

David Gerrard: I ask you to please avoid casting aspersions on another editor's competence. This is especially true when you have just blocked someone out of process. I have no need to think Dream Guy is valuable, nor does anyone else. Our editors do not have to prove their worth to us: We have to prove their disruptiveness and destructiveness to reach for a block, and then we need to warn. Geogre 23:04, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and I will extend the same caution to Giano. It really isn't necessary or profitable to talk about anyone's character. I understand that you were reacting to an apparent slur from him and being dragged into a discussion of his irregular block as an apparent attempt at distraction, and I know that readers miss these things, so we can't rely upon them to see what's really going on, but it's still not necessary or profitable to talk about David's character. Geogre 02:03, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm having a little trouble parsing the above post, but I think this is the first time I have ever seen Geogre criticize anything done by Giano. My respect for Geogre just went up. --Ideogram 09:41, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

• It is a pity David Gerard decided to start making his veiled hints in the first place, and an even greater pity that to cover his behaviour he has to drag in completely uninvolved parties, such as myself. Claiming (above) I am unable to "comport" myself "decently on policy pages still appears to hold" when I merely express disquiet at being drageed in to his mess - says more about him than me. It seems to me to be about time some admins had their status reviewed, or at least were sent for re-training. Giano 09:08, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Juro (talk · contribs)

User continuously deletes my comments with accusatory, derogative comments ("liar") (all), based on that my IP is similar to a banned user's. I haven't run into autoblock, or whatsoever, but since mine, and banned user (User:VinceB) has the same internet provider, wich does not give fix IPs to it's users it might have happen that checkuser will find us the same. (What to do in this case?) I also got a checkuser request against me (), just because my IP is 195... and because if two individuals talk similar, then they are the same... Intresting logic, however it may happen, that VinceB used this IP before, as many other users may did it, but I repeat, I haven't run into autoblock, according to the block log of my recent IP , it was never blocked, and nor the "what links here" (to my IP userpage) gave any sign of that this IP was listed on a checkuser page (except the recent one, based on the logic described above), or banned before...

Despite my kind requests, attempts to start a conversation and warnings (npa) to Juro , , , User:Juro continued the personal attack, didn't replied to my questions, and responses, (see previous difflinks) instead initiated a revert war , and deleted them all, including my talkpage comments , .

Checking his block log , I found something... funny. Not the 3 blocks for personal attacks and 3 other blocks for breaking the 3RR (six total for the action he/she just repeated above), plus one for evasing ban, but the indefinite block, he got for being a puppetmaster, maintaning 10 sockpuppets (!), but that indef. ban was lifted (!!!)

Maybe I'm rude, but imho User:Juro intitiated a revert war, despite the fact, that I bolstered my version with the strongest online sources, Juro placed personal attacks in edit summaries against me ("liar") (but, reading his contrib list, it could be anybody, just look at his/her talkpage comments, for example from march or february) - two significant things, he got 3-3 bans - I think Juro just played that "one more chance", User:Bogdangiusca gave him/her. He was indef blocked, but paroled (why?). I think - from these logs and histories - that Juro is maintaining this behaviour at least since June 2006, and seemingly won't change, despite he got even an indefinite ban. Giving him mére chances won't lead to nowhere, imho. I ask for blocking him, this time, indefinietly indefinite. Thank you. --195.56.91.23 02:01, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

PS: And please, an administrator revert Juro's last 6 edits (wich are marked "top" - 22:53, 20 April 2007, and five above) to my versions. I do not want to escalate this, or push Juro into a 3RR violation. Thank you. --195.56.91.23 02:23, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Just to give some context, a banned user (User:VinceB) has very recently used IPs of the same range (195.56.) and we had to remove his vandalism from articles and personal attacks from talk pages before CheckUser proved that those IPs were sockpuppets. I guess those recent problems, coupled with the fact that 195.56.91.23 had not been active since November and the only IPs from the same range belonged to VinceB, are largely responsible for User:Juro's speedy hands. Unfortunately, a request for CheckUser, the only method available to decide this case, has just been declined. Since there is no proof 195.56.91.23 is a sockpuppet of a banned user, I suggest someone informs Juro about the declined request for CheckUser and asks him no to assume sockpuppetry in this case. Tankred 15:02, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

The context is as follows: 195.56...is 1000% Vince B. It is impossible that an alleged newbie (which the IP claims) simultaneously:

• uses the IP of exactly the banned user in question and,
• knows that he has to talk exactly to user Tankred when dealing with user Juro
• immediately knows how to check whether an IP was banned - I have never claimed the this IP was banned, that what his claim (sic!!), - or even know what a ban is
• immediately knows how to turn to this noticeboard and what to say here
• does not simply create a user account * immediately refer to the use of "WP:xy" in one of his first article summaries, while this is not done even by most long-term users
• immediately decides to stalk and basically revert the last edits of a user (user Juro), who is in no conflict with any user whatsoever but user VinceB
• is from Hungary and "interested" in Hungary-related articles, but by a "coincidence" he decides to edit the section etymology in the article Slavic language while having obviously absolutely no idea in that field (just like in any other - iow. like Vince B), and "by coincidence" this section was previously edited by user Juro
• uses exactly the same type of language, style and non-sensical sentences like user Vince B (just look at VinceB's comments before he was banned, the same like above)
• there are currently maybe only 2/3 users from Hungary active in this wikipedia, the last one is always VinceB under different names

Finally, note that Vince B explicitely said one weeak ago that know he is happy to be able to edit as an IP, which "makes him independent" to edit how ever he likes. And this IP is this "independet" user...In sum, if any banned user can come and claim that he is just another person using the IP of a banned user even if the situation is as clear as in this case, then I really wonder why a ban exists at all. Juro 15:35, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

To be more clear: Since the result of checkuser was that this IS the IP range and behaviour of user Vince B and "please request admin action", I am hereby requesting admin action, what ever that may mean. Juro 15:45, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I've created a username since. I'de like to comment for the above, that user:Juro called me "Vince B" . It was not hard to research him, User:VinceB and that dispute, they had. Tankred placed a test template on my IP talkpage , I simply replied to that, and complained about Juro's behave, what I also sent to Juro. (in fact first to Juro, asking him to cool down . I have experiments on other wikis, so I'm pretty well aware of wiki policies, and how to-s, however I'm not intrested in such hated ethnic debates, so if this is the standard level and style of discussion, I thank you for the experiment, and I draw my conclusions from this. For the other evidents, like I'm from Hungary, and that accusatory, tendentious style above, I do not want to comment, they speak for themselves :) All in all I feel myself offended and attacked, immediately as started editing something, Juro "owns". --Norman84 16:33, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I just want to note again, to cut short this hated debate, User:Juro started against me, that Juro got 6 blocks for personal attacks and revert warring before (3-3), just the actions, he's doing right now. He got an additional +1 ban for ban evasing, and an indefinite (!!) ban for sockpuppetry, maintaining 10 (!) different sockpuppets. User:Juro block log. I do not see, why indefinite ban was lifted for this user, since his block log shows, that he's doing this almost a year (June 2006) now, and did not changed. --Norman84 16:43, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

What you have written is almost an exact copy of what VinceB said at least 5x each time he was discussed before or after a ban; the only thing everybody has to do is to look at those discussions. I have explained above why you definitely, with a probability of 100%, ARE Vince B and you do not even bother to try to change your behaviour and language ("hatred" etc.) to hide it, you just hope that nobody else knows you here, so you can lie and lie and lie. So, instead of leaving the wikipedia, stopping lying and vandalizing, you - just like always - blame someone from the group Juro - Tankred - Pannonian; you usually prefer me, because I usually do not have the time and find it ridiculous to react (just like now) and you even managed to have me banned that way without me even noticing that there was a discussion about me...Simply because no admin cares here....I would like to point out that what we are discussing here is the fact that a banned user (Vince B) continues his retaliatory actions and continues to lie about his identity. And now he has also created a sockpuppet, namely Norman84. This is outright sockpuppetry. I wait for a reaction by an admin.

Let just say that this "new user" know too much about user Juro and about Misplaced Pages policy. His own words: "an additional +1 ban for ban evasing, and an indefinite (!!) ban for sockpuppetry". There is no way that this could be written by new user, so it is definitely a sockpuppet of somebody, most likely of VinceB. PANONIAN (talk) 18:22, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but I can't find any evidence that 195.56.91.23/Norman84 claims to be a new user. There are many IP editors who find their ways around Misplaced Pages. That does not automatically make them a sockpuppet. --Edokter (Talk) 21:17, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

No evidence? Eh? What about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/Special:Contributions/Norman84 He registered his nickname on 21 April 2007. So, he can only be either new user either sockpuppet of another "old" user. And if he is not new user, why he do not use his old nickname? What he have to hide? PANONIAN (talk) 10:56, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

First of all, this is a very interesting situation. It is intersting to know, that should I be banned, the only thing I have to do is to wait one week, use the same IP and just claim that that's not me anymore and nothing happens (don't you see a problem with that??). I can even start to edit the same set of articles, say the same things in discussions (like here), and even say explicitely in edit summaries, that I am going to edit under my IP - when I do that everybody will be fine, right? And not only that, instead of stopping vandalizing, I could even do more: I could try to have banned those, who know that I am a banned user, because they have had to do with me for years...Because that is exactly what Vince B alias Arpad and HunTomy and all the other names has done here. Secondly, as for "new": see e.g. what he has written on my talk page (I have deleted it) or on the talk page of Tankred. Thirdly, after his last contribution above, he can claim whatever he wants, that's Vince B word by word (just look at his defences or attacks during the last months, always the same text). Fourthly, if he was not VinceB (which is definitely not the case) and not a new user, what would he be then?? Someone who happens to have the same IP as a recently banned user, immediately knows whom he "hates" (to use his own vocabulary), immediately starts to stalk the last edits of that person ("just for fun"?) and someone who knows more about bans, wikipedia policies, relations between some editors than me (and I have been here for years now), but nevertheless this Mr. Someone has remained unperceived over the last months and only now suddenly "left the darkness" to do the same things like VinceB??? What other proofs do you need, you will not get fingerprints or a court decision for this. Juro 01:22, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I can tell it's Vince. He sounds exactly the same, right down to the same minor grammar mistakes he habitually made. :) (No offence meant on that, Vince, English is a tricky language and I'm amazed anyone who isn't a native speaker can ever learn it.) Vince, I'm serious, just give it up. You have done nothing but drive a wedge between the Slovakian and Hungarian Wikipedians, and I'm sick of it. Our problems stemmed not from any fanatical anti-Hungarian, fascist-nationalist efforts on the part of the Slovaks, rather from your belligerence, obsessive confrontations with Tankred, and general refusal to ever calm down. Unless you can learn to be mature and civilized, do not post here again under any IP address or sockpuppet account. K. Lásztocska 02:07, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I see, this is a deep debate. For Juro: you just did that. :) I've read your block log, where all of what I wrote down, are in it, and even there's a link to your checkuser case, where I counted 10 sockpuppets, you used. I've clicked on one, and it was in the Category:Misplaced Pages sockpuppets of Juro. That category has a subcategory, named Category:Suspected Misplaced Pages sockpuppets of Juro wich contains User:TemporaryQWE. Clicking on it's log list, from it's block log, it is easy to find out why was it blocked, and who used it . It took a total of 2 minutes to find out all of these. If someone else did it before me, and reported, it does not mean, that I'm the same person, nor the fact, that I making :) grammar mistakes, or being from Hungary, but that it is a real problem, not a debate between two users. I am sorry, but by this, practically/virtually every non-english user, who edits anything related to Hungary, can be accused with this. Checking User:VinceB's comments, I'm pretty sure, he would explicitly say that I am he, as from the links I found, and given above, and that checkuser case, where my IP was listed, seems. I haven't found any similarites between us. Not in page edit histories, not in topics, not in grammar mistakes, maybe just some misthis on kebyorad :). I edit (want to edit) Budapest ang Hungary-geo realted things, since I'm intrested in that topic. I know only minor things about Johnny Weismuller or Occupation of Vojvodina, 1941-1944 . I do not know, who's PANONIAN or K. Lásztocska, who recently joined, (nor Tankred or Juro) but seemingly you all have some tensions with Hungarian users.

I just reported a user, whom I found a disruptive editor with a long block list and a lot of sockpuppets, and who recently attacked me, destroying my work, initiating a revert war, and placed personal attacks against me in edit summaries. I hope, we all agree in that this is unacceptable.

I am sorry, but I have a debate only with Juro, so I will only reply to him (her?) from now on, despite that I'm getting attacked by more and more users, as time goes on. The counter is now at 4. I quit this debate now, if Juro wants to discuss, there's my talkpage, or this section here. Please accept this. --Norman84 12:27, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

PS: Back to Earth: I'm not aware about how much should a comment be supported by difflinks in english wikipedia, but on others, it is a must, no matter what the comment claims. If I can count well :) my 15 difflinks are "against" tons of emotions, and lurking suspicions, and a link, wich shows my contribution history. I am sorry, but I do not see, what that link proves. I see. I'm new only to enwiki, not to Misplaced Pages itself. ;) Sorry, but I do not want to argue with such lines as "What he have to hide" (grammar mistake! hmm... :) ), since it speaks for itself :)--Norman84 12:41, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Can Juro or PANONIAN show evidence of their claims that Norman84 (& his IP) and VinceB are the same user, e.g. similar edits made to the same articles and talk pages? It's hard to follow your arguments otherwise.

Also, I cannot see why Juro was immediately removing (legitimate-looking) comments from the talk pages; assuming good faith and linking to the result of the previous dispute would've made much more sense in my opinion. -- intgr 13:58, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

"Evidence" is listed above in my first comment (have you ever seen a "new" user immediately saying and doing things like this one?), the fact that he still has the same IP, the fact that VinceB explicitely said that he will do this, because as an IP he is "independent", the checkuser, and every word VinceB says above (compare that with last discussions with him when he was blocked, there are many of them, I do not remember all the places where they are) and in every word he has written in his edits and edit summaries (we all have been reading his mess for months, me for years, now), the fact that the chance that, given that there are 2/3 Hungarian editors in this wikipedia, we have a new one with exactly the same IP range, the same interest, the same users preferred to discuss with, the same language, the same style and a perfect knowledge of wikipedia's banning policies etc... is 0.00000000000000000000000001. He does not edit EXACTLY the same articles he edited during the last month and under his last name VinceB, of course, that would be too evident. No banned user claiming he is not himself would do that - if you want this kind of "evidence", you create a perfect precedence for all future banned users (as I have outlined above)...But still this is only a theoretical debate, because we all, VinceB, Juro, Tankred, Pannonian, Latocska (and everybody who knows him) know he is VinceB just by looking at what and how he writes. The fact that he writes "ten pages" of text (like always), in which he simply lies, does not change that....As for my ban (his favorite way to divert attention from the fact that the actual topic is he and HIS sockpuppetry), it is laughable that he mentions precisely this, because yes after years with this wikipedia, it was exactly him who forced me to create 2/3 sockpuppets (not all of the alleged sockpuppets, actually IPs, was me) in December or so, because he started to stalk me and deliberatly change my edits, and I wanted to avoid this, because I simply have other things to do in real life and cannot explain for each single edit of VinceB to an admin that the only purpose of the edit was to drive someone crazy or write some ethnic propaganda....And no admin could and can understand this, unless he has watched all his sockpuppets over the years, which of course nobody does... And do not want me, VinceB, to quote here what you have written on a talk page in the Slovak wikipedia...Juro 23:46, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

""Evidence" is listed above in my first comment"

That is not evidence, that is speculation.

"compare that with last discussions with him when he was blocked, there are many of them, I do not remember all the places where they are"

This is exactly what I am requesting; no admin wishes to go deep into edit histories while having a vague clue of what he is looking for. Given how long you claim to be dealing with this, I wouldn't expect it to take you 5 minutes to dig up a few examples of similarity. If you have already presented evidence like this in earlier cases, please link to that. -- intgr 00:32, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

It is an IP of a banned user and his typical behavior. I am sorry, it seems I have misunderstood this result of CheckUser first. So, I have to ask any admin reading this to block User:Norman84 as a new sockpuppet of a banned user. And to VinceB: please, do not return to Misplaced Pages. All your sockpuppets have been blocked so far and we will not tolerate any of your edits. Tankred 02:21, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Daniel Brandt reblocked

Recently, as most of you know, particularly if you have seen the hub-bub about it, I unblocked Daniel Brandt as part of a discussion around his appeal of his block. In his appeal, on his website dated April 11, he explained that the main reason he wanted his editing privileges restored was to be able to comment on the talk page of the article about him. This and other indicators of good faith on his part let me to grant that portion of his appeal while continuing a discussion of the other parts.

I still think he is acting in good faith, but for reasons that I do not understand, he now claims that my unblock of him was "the wrong decision." Ok. Well, then why appeal? Hopefully he can explain it to me, but in the meantime as a further gesture of goodwill, I am following his wishes again and reblocking him.--Jimbo Wales 12:41, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

This is getting sillier.Geni 13:28, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the idea of Brandt "acting in good faith" is the silliest thing I've heard in ages. Iamnotmyself 16:22, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I dunno, Misplaced Pages is an excellent spectator sport and a great use of my Saturday afternoon. 86.145.105.149 13:39, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. I'm so annoyed I'm off to play 3 hours of tennis, I want to sit here following the drama unfold. Beats the hell out of the Super Bowl, never mind the Heineken Cup. Jimbo, with all due respect I'm not sure this was what Brandt was getting at in that email. He stated that, ultimately, he doesn't care about being blocked or unblocked. As long as his bio is up, he wants, however, to be able to comment on the talk page. His fundamental wish, however, is not to be unblocked: he wants his bio gone. He recognises that his state of blockedness doesn't really matter: he just wants the bio to disappear. I think that's what he was getting at in that email, not that he wanted to be reblocked! Moreschi 13:53, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Brandt has never had a problem in making his wishes known to editors editing our article about him, as a review of the history of its talk page shows. Even his comments at WR have been used as clues to improve the article on him. We encourage him to continue commenting at WR and/or on the talk page as an IP# to help improve the article's compliance with WP:BLP - in particlular removing or rewording privacy issue items or poorly sourced items. Comments he makes that are removed are still in history and are read and considered. WAS 4.250 14:13, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

For what it's worth, he didn't do any harm during the brief time he could edit. I also couldn't find the request to re-block him in his contributions on the Wiki. Was it in an email? --AnonEMouse 13:44, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

He emailed Fred Bauder, and, per Brandt's request, Fred posted it on the mailing list. Moreschi 13:45, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Brandt has an ongoing legal threat against the foundation which is sufficient grounds to block all by iteself. Note that the point of blocking due to legal threats is to avoid introducing bias (POV) based on threats. "Make the article the way I want it or I will sue" is the problem. We do want input that helps us make our articles better. We don't want to give ammo to people with a conflict of interest to interfere with our mission of a free neutral encyclopedia. Balance is key. WAS 4.250 14:21, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

It is good that Daniel's desires came to match the communities, as the communities desire for Daniel to remain blocked did not seem to be enough. _InBC 13:55, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

It's my guess (with no information beyond the email in question) that he meant that the "wrong decision" was not deleting the article, rather than the unblock. OTOH, it might make sense for him to clarify this issue. JavaTenor 16:30, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Those trying to remove his comments from the bio talk page have less fuel, if any, than before, so progress is being made, SqueakBox 02:40, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

WP:BAN

A message was left on my talk page saying I was "banned" from editing certain articles..

1. Looking at WP:BAN, only the Misplaced Pages community, the Arbitration Committee, Jimbo Wales or the Wikimedia Foundation can issue bans and not individual admins.
2. I cannot see why adding a flag image to a template would result in a ban- various other users have been adding the flag images back to templates were a certain group of users are defying consensus and deleting them. I have also provided reliable sources on various pages to support the fact that the Ulster Banner is the unoffical flag of Northern Ireland.
3. The allegations about sockpuppets are false- no checkuser request has been filed, and there is no evidence that the anon user was me. Astrotrain 16:41, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

• Banning editor notified here. Navou 16:52, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

• You may also wish to list this ban for review at WP:CN. I would recommend reviewing the ban the editor placed, and not the actual editor himself, this might help keep the discussion focused on the "ban" rather than both the ban and the editor who "placed" it. I am using the term ban loosely in this context. Regards, Navou 16:54, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

• • But is it even a "ban"?- the policy page does not state that admins can ban editors. And looking at the banning policy, content disputes that are not unique to me as an editor are not grounds. He is clearly biased against supporting a particular group of editors- he ignored a racist taunt made by one of his friends that I reported, while blocking me for merely stating my opinion that a particular editor was "inexperienced". Astrotrain 19:49, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
    • No, unless you have been sanctioned by arbcom or in some other fashion, individual admins cannot impose bans. But unless I'm missing something, the edits you have made do look rather tenuous and you should note that editing from an IP address does not excuse you from 3RR. In short, you may not have been "legally" been banned from those templates, but I would strongly suggest that you make sure that your edits reflect a consensus, rather than your point of view. --BigDT (416) 20:22, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

A previous case of a "soft ban" being implemented by an admin, NicholasTurnbull was on certain editors regarding Peter Townshend. This was discussed on AN/I. The discussion continued on CN. An alternative is a standard block, but where the problem is localised, this seems a better solution, as it allows the editor to work in areas where the particular problem does not occur. Astrotrain has made many productive edits elsewhere, but has proved unfortunately incapable of collaboration over Irish-related articles. My notice on his talk page is here: Tyrenius 05:57, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me that an influencing factor may have been the suggestion that Astrotrain allegedly sought to evade 3RR by using an IP address. I think the "partial ban" should be lifted until that issue is confirmed or denied by a checkuser. I have lodged aa request. - Kittybrewster (talk) 08:52, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

That was merely something in addition to Astrotrain's continuing lack of required behaviour for a collegiate editing environment.Tyrenius 02:31, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

• Comment Tyrenius, imposed this ban on User:Astrotrain after I requested him to look into both Astrotrain and User:84.68.93.126 who where stalking and reverting my edits, I had ask Astrotrain to stop his stalking here and warned him that I would report him for vandalism, it was after this that a new editor User:84.68.93.126 with no edit history began doing the same thing as can be seen here, neither Astrotrain nor User:84.68.93.126 made any attempt to discuss their reverts in the talkpages of these articles, dispite being ask to do so. This is not the First time I have had problem with Astrotrain in this aspect, and he was banned prior to this for similar behaviour and attacks on me other editors. I should add that after Tyrenius posted his ban notice to both editors, User:84.68.93.126 stopped making any edits after that, and hasn't posted since.--padraig3uk 14:02, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

• The only edits I made were to add flag images to templates- this is not vandalism. In any case, it has been confirmed that Tyrenius's "ban" is invalid and he has no authority to do this- so his "ban" will be ignored. Astrotrain 11:02, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Where has this been confirmed, I see no confirmation of that here.--padraig3uk 11:16, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Global search and replace and edit warring by User:TingMing

TingMing (talk · contribs) is enforcing his own naming convention and edit-warring across dozens of Taiwan-related articles. I suggest an admin have a word with him. --Ideogram 21:01, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I am alarmed by Ideogram's random warring. For the Chen Shui-bian article, it is uncontested and TRUE that Chen is the President of the Republic of China. Nonetheless, Ideogram continues to revert it to Taiwan and makes errornoneous judgements. Ideogram has no good faith after I tried to reach out to him. TingMing 21:04, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

You just don't get it. If someone reverts you, you don't keep reverting. You take it to the talk page and discuss. Any massive change across dozens of pages needs to be discussed with as many as people as possible to reach consensus. You don't get to decide policy all by yourself. Your edits will not last long, you are wasting your time. --Ideogram 21:15, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I have already discussed and written notes before. You just dont get it. You have serious issues TingMing 21:24, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I have also wondered aloud to separate editor 'who' this person resembles. They do seem to be ignoring prior discussions (though I am not acquainted well-enough by far myself with status quo). I'd like to second the concerns about mass-renaming/editing of Taiwan<-->ROC. I will look to see what discussions they have participated in. Shenme 21:27, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

The only substantial discussion TingMing has participated in is at Talk:Guantian, Tainan#Chen Shui-bian is the President of the Republic of China. It's mostly insults (at least I think "Tai Ke" is an insult). --Ideogram 22:44, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

(Tai Ke is not an insult at all. You have no idea what it means. That is Chinese and not English. Even user Jerrypp772000 said that Tai Ke is not an insult) TingMing 00:01, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

You really are a liar. According to my Taiwanese sources, Tai Ke is a term for a stereotypical native Taiwanese, complete with slippers and munching on betelnuts. Although the term has been rehabilitated recently, anyone using it in a political context certainly means it as an insult. --Ideogram 13:21, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

He has many similarities to Heqong (talk · contribs) but that account is too old for checkuser. --Ideogram 21:33, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

And let me further qualify my concern. Anytime I see names changing back and forth between two or three versions I have to wonder at the utility of those actions. Repetition only makes me wonder more. Picking one particular (simple) article at random I see the same back and forth by six different editors since the article was created (five since November 2006). I see references to Naming conventions (Chinese) and wonder why something as simple as

Taiwan Province of the Republic of China     vs.     Taiwan

can't be decided. I'm afraid to dig into this, and no wonder. Shenme 21:56, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

We've never had a large discussion establishing consensus for policy on this. The current system is hard to understand, and many people have different understandings of it, with the result that usage is ad-hoc and decided by who last edited it. I have been trying for months to establish consensus behind a standard at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject China/Naming Conventions but a large number of participants just want to leave the mess alone. You would certainly be welcome to participate in that discussion, maybe we can get it going again. --Ideogram 22:03, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Dispute resolution. Navou 21:47, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I am very familiar with all the DR options. I'm not going to RFC or CSN, and this is too early for ArbCom. Which leaves this. --Ideogram 21:52, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Out of the blue, Ideogram comes out and destroys all productive edits that I am making. I didn't see him come out when Jerrypp772000 mass renamed all Republic of China articles with Taiwan. I am not eliminating Taiwan. I am actually following the Misplaced Pages Chinese Naming Conventions set forth on Misplaced Pages. Its people like Ideogram who are arrogant and ignorant to the system that Misplaced Pages fails. For example, Chen Shui-bian is the President of the Republic of China. It was a vandal who changed it otherwise. I tried to help by reverting it to the original, yet Ideogram persists in reverting my edits..thereby hurting the Misplaced Pages system. He is only doing it to annoy me. How random. TingMing 00:01, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Now this guy is edit-warring with me on my own talk page. --Ideogram 00:38, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Ideogram has persisted in deleting my comments on his talk page. The comments reveal Ideogram's motives and personality. He has persisted to remove that for fear that other users and admins will see it. TingMing 02:17, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

That's the funniest thing you've said so far. Add it one more time and you get blocked. --Ideogram 02:21, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

(ec) I haven't been following this conversation, but I'd like to note that there is currently no consensus that removing warnings or other forms of communication is governed by anything other than an editor's opinion. That said, editors are encouraged to archive and not simply delete comments, but it is Ideogram's choice what he or she would like to do. But those who repeatedly post comments that are removed are liable to be blocked as violating the WP:3RR rule. Make sure that you do not violate it, TingMing. --Iamunknown 02:23, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

This Taiwan VS China thign comes up at least once a month. It's ridiculous, because we won't solve it easily, if ever. Some editors are Pro-China, and insist on seeing Taiwan as China, while Pro-Taiwan editors insist on seeing Taiwan as its' own entity. This is a political fight on a much bigger scale than Misplaced Pages, and I doubt it can be solved. ThuranX 05:31, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm hoping that if we can get a large enough consensus behind a standard we will have enough patrollers to rapidly quash any potential edit-warriors. --Ideogram 09:28, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

The Pro-People's Republic of China editors and the Pro-Taiwan independence editors are pushing their own POV to the ire of Wikipedians. They have a baseless argument. Because the current de facto status of the situation is that the Republic of China continues to exist since 1912 and it currently controls Taiwan as a province. There is still a Taiwan Province government in Taiwan. There is no stressing the identity of China or Taiwan. This is mainly an issue about facts. Some pro-Taiwan independence users are continually erasing all signs of Republic of China, but that is the CURRENT FACT. They need to accept that facts of the situation and stop disrupting Misplaced Pages. TingMing 22:45, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Fact is relative. Some people in the world consider the existence of the Republic of China fact. Others don't. --Iamunknown 22:50, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't know why his relationships with Nationalist, who is still currently blocked for another 1 month, is never mentioned here (or at least I didn't see it). There is a history of RFCU on TingMing/Nationalist which identifies him to be a possible sockpuppet. I have grown to getting tired of this pointless struggle he has been wrestling on, as he continues to revert, edit war, unilaterally pagemove, assume bad faith/personally attack, and etc. on articles and other editors while he has been warned for way too many times.

A simple removal of his comment on a user talk page (most likely insults/attacks) will get that person in trouble of being a radical politician for Taiwan independence. Some logic. Think about it.

If you're reading this, TingMing, I would like to readdress all the reasons for reverting your global changes in Misplaced Pages:

• The Political NPOV part in Naming Conventions you have been using all along has already been plastered with not one but two content-disputed tags. However justified your arguments are, they are no more than politically correct since you are only promoting one argument while others (many others) repelling yours with another.

• As Ideogram stated somewhere in Misplaced Pages articles I can't find it right away, there is NO consensus for this issue. With your pointless edit wars against other editors does NOT help improving Misplaced Pages in any way, but instead deteriorate it. Your intake of others' opinion is extremely harder than most of us thought, and that will not help to reach any consensus whatsoever. Quoting Ideogram: "If someone reverts you, you don't keep reverting. You take it to the talk page and discuss. Any massive change across dozens of pages needs to be discussed with as many as people as possible to reach consensus. You don't get to decide policy all by yourself." And as you claimed to have "discussed", what you did only offered your own standpoints and basically told everyone to follow it or else. You have even ignored several arguments raised against you.

Also, a consensus is not a proposal that will completely satisfy you, and it will cost you disapprovals in some parts to satisfy opinions of others. If you keep on your political accusations on anyone that goes against your edits (and virtually everyone in this case), counter-reverts to protect your edits and refusal to listen to other people's inputs, nothing and I repeat NOTHING will reach to an end.

And Nationalism in editing is a form of POV, Not fact, as you suggest it to be. Not to mention that you're not even getting any strong support for your standpoint. Vic₂₂₆ 02:30, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

User:Vwt NPOV

Is there where we report POV violations? User:Vwt seems to be creating a bunch of stubs about some financial company that was investigated. They were deleted, but he's adding them back. Should he be blocked?

Vwt comments: contributions are edits/additions to, or creation of, a wide array of articles are Misplaced Pages:Neutral point of view and are across a spectrum of topics in Misplaced Pages. These contributions entries are not just a bunch of stubs about just one topic or entity. Why are you presuming Vwt is a he. The contributions are well considered, researched, complete initial articles with citation reference verified, change annotation comment descriptions, and in answered in Talk. All of these entries and/or edits are open for welcomed improvements, of course. None entries are intended as perfect, but wholesale, whole-cloth deletion is unwarranted, as is blockage.

These contributions consistently reference independent verifiable credible source publications, such as the New York Times and Dow Jones News’ published the Wall Street Journal which have widely recognized credibility (by most opinions, with some dissenters). These reliable publications in turn reference their fact sources. When verifiable, Vwt provides links to reliable online versions of the publications are provided into the article, and as reference links. These referenced links, in some cases, even link further in turn directly to source documents, usually from public records such as US judicial court findings of fact or other public documents. Links to government or established credible corporate websites are also provided when appropriate.

Some sensitive topics such as Censorship by Google are obviously difficult for Misplaced Pages editors to verify online through Google or any other electronic online search tools. A physical print version of the actual published newspaper should be compared with the internet news search result (they do not always match). For example, the print front page cover of the Wall Street Journal March 6th 2007, headlines, news text, and photographic images (which are correctly copyright source attributed in print by the newspaper), can be compared with electronic Google News “search results”.

This front page Wall Street Newspaper article text, headline text, and cover photo images are not found by Google News. Front covers of news publications (text and images) are included in articles as Front Covers and Front Cover Images, are included as public fair use and used in compliance with referenced citations according to Misplaced Pages:Image use policy (derived from obvious newsstand public view reasons). We have come to expect an accurate uncensored neutral point of view factual information from internet search of news & facts, without censorship, algorithmic error, or copyright law misinterpretations or misapplication. These objective examples demonstrate in this contrary – there is censoring of US Publications news and images, just as Google demonstrably censors China news and images -- see history on Censorship by Google. Some editors may consider this "missing news" to be original research but Citing sources: Google News (missing) and the Wall Street Journal (Print and online, news and images evident) are credible verifiable objective credible sources. Misplaced Pages should reference this US Censorship by Google in the article that already similarly references absence of controversial China images and news in Censorship by Google along with similar observations in other countries. (Vwt Comments) — Vwt (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

The SPA tag above isn't really necessary. It is obvious that it is a single purpose account. WP:SPA outlines that a SPA isn't against policy, per se. It just depends on how the SPA is used. IrishGuy 00:21, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Corey Clark

Hi. I've been having trouble over the past two months with User:Liaishard, who continuously inserts non-NPOV material into the article. Right now, she she insists on changing a passage so that a point of view taken by Clark reads as a fact. Specifically, in the passage detailing how the producers of American Idol told Clark and his fellow contestants to select one of two attorneys for representation that the producers presented to them within two days or be dismissed from the show, the wording indicates that Clark and his fellow contestants felt this was a conflict of interest. Liaishard keeps changing this passage from "felt" to "knew". Liaishard insists that it's a fact, not an opinion, that it does not require a legal conclusion, and that because it's from Clark's book and his own words, that it's a "direct quote". I've tried to explain to her a direct quote is a word-for-word reproduction of someone's words with quotation marks, and that the passage "Clark felt" or "Clark knew" is a third-person paraphrase, but she refuses to listen, insisting that no, it's a first-person direct quote. Wen I try to correct her on this terminology on the article's Talk Page (as I have done numerous times over the past month or two), she disagrees, but without explaining why my assertion is wrong. She also continues to insert a dead link that she herself previously removed for that reason. User:Geniac, who I've asked for help numerous times, intervenes only sporadically, as he is probably very busy. User:Seraphimblade, who has also tried to help out, has a banner on his page that he is currently away. This has been going on for months now, and I would appreciate some decisive action with Liaishard, who neither understand nor cares about the site's policies. Nightscream 23:50, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Have you considered asking for a third opinion? If more then 2 editors are involved I would suggest that you go through dispute resolution, try the mediation cabal. —— Eagle101 00:49, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, Geniac suggested Third Opinion some time ago, and when I requested this, Seraphimblade intervened on one or two minor points, but he did not stick around. One of the problems is that Liaishard will say at one point that ok, the article reads well now, and imply that she is satisfied that Clark's side of the story is represented, but then will go and change and insert something else, igniting an entirely new edit conflict all over again, using the same fallacious arguments, and Seraphimblade did not stick around to help on these. I've essentially been battling to keep the article neutral and well-written by myself, and I'm not an admin or anything. Nightscream 18:58, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Try Dispute resolution. Corvus cornix 20:34, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Nekohakase (talk · contribs)

While I work to delete/unlink this user's various inappropriate PD images, can somebody that is less annoyed serve them a tactful warning? Circeus 00:09, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Nevermind that. I need to clear the source of several images anyway. THey need to be watched, though. They seem to assume scanning an image makes them the "creator", so I wouldn't trust the "I made/took it!" claims.Circeus 00:18, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I've seen quite a bit of that, actually. Would it be too condescending of us to add something like "scanning somebody else's image does not make it yours" to the Special:Upload page? — CharlotteWebb 05:57, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Probably not, but I suspect nothing short of the suggested changes at Commons will really help, and even that will still let copyvios in. Circeus 15:42, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Blocks for meatpuppetry and sockpuppetry

I'm submitting to my fellows a report regarding a group of editors acting as meatpuppets of the banned editor Hkelkar. The core evidence for this is e-mails exchanged between these individuals — Hkelkar is intimately involved in discussing Misplaced Pages issues and affairs, offering advice and instructions to the others. There is no doubt that these editors are colluding with Hkelkar and editing for his purposes as proxies. The group was targeting Dbachmann (whom they consider to be anti-Hindu) and maligning other editors such as Bhadani. However, I will not display the contents of the e-mails here unless the community deems it necessary.

• Bakasuprman, Dangerous-Boy and Sbhushan have been blocked indefinitely for meatpuppetry and scheming with Hkelkar. Bakasuprman and Dangerous-Boy have been regularly violating WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA for some time, while strenously defending a pro-Hkelkar point of view on Misplaced Pages articles. They has also behaved disruptively against editors they considers to be biased against Hinduism and India. Complaints about Bakasuprman's behavior have been lodged both on Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Hkelkar and Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/India-Pakistan.

• Scheibenzahl has been blocked indefinitely for being a sockpuppet of Anupamsr, who in turn has been blocked indefinitely for sockpuppetry and participating in scheming with Hkelkar, Bakasuprman and Sbhushan. He has used his sockpuppet to participate in various WP:AFD debates and editing issues on the same range of articles as Bakasuprman and Sbhushan.

I know that this is a complicated issue, so I ask for my fellows to review my decisions. I will respect any criticism offered and any consensus decision to undo or modify the blocks as deemed appropriate. However, I would like to emphasize that permitting these editors to continue to edit Misplaced Pages defies the arbitration committee and the community's decision to ban Hkelkar. Rama's arrow (just a sexy boy) 02:15, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I'll note that CheckUser confirms that Scheibenzahl and Anupamsr are the same person. Dmcdevit·t 06:11, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Meanwhile, 3 more socks of Hkelkar were found and blocked. One of them was User:ThLinGan. ThLinGan was involved in an edit war with User:Faraz. Note how both Bakasuprman and Hkelkar together try and get the user blocked under 3RR by goading him. Calling someones edits ISIcruft is like saying OSAMAcruft in India. Baka knows this and has been warned hundreds of times not to do this. I have been suspecting these users of tag-team editing for a long time. I was waiting for my exams to get over before investigating their edits for a possible ArbCom case. If there is email evidence supporting Rama's claims, then I fully endorse the blocks. - Aksi_great (talk) 06:19, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Endorse Rama's actions, assuming the behind-scenes evidence is as compelling as he says. Looks like a pretty good call to me. There's no doubt Bakasuprman and Sbhushan have been disruptive elements for a long time. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:19, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I endorse Rama Arrow's actions. I helped him compile some of the email evidence and have seen much of it. I had suspected their meetings with Hkelkar for some time now ever ever since their behavious became more uncivil. Gizza 06:27, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't see a strong enough evidence against User:Bakasuprman to warrant such a massive ban. I propose to unblock him on the condition to temporarily restrict his participation solely to self-defense. ←Humus sapiens 09:31, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Bakasuprman was one of the most vocal Hkelkar supporters and I support his ban. It had reached the point where is Bakasuprman said something wasn't PoV or someone wasn't a Hkelkar sockpuppet, then you could immediately assume that it was PoV and they were a sockpuppet of Hkelkar. – Steel 12:48, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Full endorsement of Rama's actions. Another Indian admin has previously provided me also with evidence of a well organized recruition campaign in Hindu radical websites, made by what appears to be one of the three blocked editors. On my account, I have long noted the concerted and disruptive behaviour of the editors in question; I must also add that I've long suspected of a direct link between Bakasuprman and his socks, at least since his passionate defence defence of Hkelkar's sock User:Rumpelstiltskin223 after its indef blocking.--Aldux 15:03, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Note I have reset Scheibenzahl's block to 2 weeks (the user:Anupamsr account has been indef'd, as he doesn't want to use that one) - apart from his explanations and confession, from the e-mail evidence I know that he wasn't a malicious member of the group, and it is certainly possible that he was an accidental or unwilling member - the main schemers were Bakasuprman, Sbhushan and D-Boy. But Scheibenzhal must be blocked for a period for manipulating WP:SOCK and potentially acting as a meatpuppet. Rama's arrow (just a sexy boy) 15:14, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I have unblocked Scheibenzahl - Anupam had changed his identity for legitimate purposes. As a number of respectable admins have vouched for his integrity, I can also safely assert that he was not a willing member of the email ring. Rama's arrow (just a sexy boy) 20:50, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I will not comment on the specific users who were affected by this action, but I support in general terms talking very strong action to stop the organized activity by sock- and meat-puppets that is without question taking place. I have seen some of the evidence on public social networking web sites of active recruitment efforts for these things, and call upon all editors to reject these manipulations with one voice. At present the identification of these puppets is limited by the lack of any simple single place to post suspect activity reports. Would it be possible to have a "Sock Central" page where reports of all current activity specifically related to the Hinduism and India projects can be consolidated? Currently there are too many individual tracking systems going on. Buddhipriya 21:46, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure of the utility of such a page if it's devoted to sock detection. "Pages under potential attack" might be a better focus. That said, I think it's important to realize that such recruiting activity and the willing supply of volunteers will not stop. The basic reason has to do with the difference between verifiability and "truth". The recruiting efforts will complain that "the truth is under attack", and volunteers will step up -- be it noted, in good faith. The true socks will operate in the confusion sowed by these newbies' well-meaning efforts. (A "counter-offensive", on those public recruiting web-sites -- explaining only the verifiablity/truth difference and emphasizing NPOV -- might not be a bad idea too.) rudra 22:20, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Rudra, I think your idea of a "Pages under potential attack" is very good, sort of a community watchlist which all of us can monitor for current sock activity. I have noticed that as we pay more attention in one area, other pages begin to have problems, and some of the pages have very few editors who watch them regularly. Do other editors agree? If so, where could such a page be set up? Buddhipriya 05:22, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

In think Bakasuprman should be unblocked at least for the purposes of defending himself. Jayjg 00:07, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

It is possible for Bakasuprman to defend himself by posting an unblock template on his user-talk page. If he provides a convincing argument, we may weaken his block accordingly. Gizza 01:33, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Upon reflection, I have decided to shorten the blocks of Bakasuprman and Dangerous-Boy to 6 months. This is because an indefinite block is a community ban, which must be decided in a distinct discussion at WP:CN. Given that Hkelkar himself was not indefinitely blocked until he violated his ArbCom-ruled block 5-6 times, it is hardly fair to ban these two users. Also, Bakasuprman and Dangerous-Boy have made a number of valuable contributions, which must be respected. However, I don't think this applies for Sbhushan - upon arriving on Misplaced Pages, he immediately entered into a dispute with Dbachmann and wrote up a baseless ArbCom case. Rama's arrow (just a sexy boy) 01:44, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I think Bakasuprman should be given an opportunity to defend himself, especially regarding the emails he is accused of being a part of. Blocking him, bundling him with others and judging him is not democratic. The other accusations on him can be balanced by good deeds he has done.Dineshkannambadi 02:03, 23 April 2007 (UTC) Also, 6 month ban is a long time. Please consider reducing it.Dineshkannambadi 02:06, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Editing by proxy for a banned user is extremely serious - I am strongly opposed to reducing his block now, or unblocking him for "defense" - anything he has to say, he can say on his user talk page or in an unblock request. It was not his meatpuppetry alone that caused his 6-month block - it was also his history of edit-warring, confrontational behavior, POV-pushing, persistent incivility and personal attacks. Rama's arrow (just a sexy boy) 02:23, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I understand your concerns. However I am afraid a 6 month ban could be as good as a permanent ban. Many users may not have the interest to come back and make useful contributions, while our goal is to ensure just the opposite. IMO a gradual application of the ban is better.Dineshkannambadi 03:10, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

While I support Rama's actions on preventing meatpuppetry and sockpuppetry, I strongly believe the 6 month block on User:Bakasuprman is little too harsh. I for one, once (during Hkelkar's RFArb) had written about Baka's contentious editing and POV pushing. But certainly not in the recent past. His constructive contributions (with all those DYKs and collaborations) are much significant than the negative side of it. I do not certainly endorse any of his confrontational behavior or personal attacks. But for all these gross incivility, 6 month ban is just too harsh, especially when it is not of community consensus or of an ArbCom decision. I request to re-consider the block on Bakasupraman. As Dinesh suggested above, a gradual application of blocks is more appropriate for users who have significant constructive contributions for a very long time. Thanks - KNM 03:38, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

My recommendation is the same as what I would offer all users: uphold the harsh block, with the understanding that this can and should be reduced, perhaps to the point of an immediate unblock, upon admission of and repentance for the disputed behavior. The way we fail time and time again is by sending serious and committed, if problematic, editors away without any attempt to seek a mutual understanding. Who can be surprised when they return to sockpuppet? We should not compromise our principles, but reframe punitive measures, wherever possible, as demands to acknowledge and abide by these principles. If they don't do it, they will remain blocked - there is no point unblocking them at any time, six months, a year, etc. - if the do, there is no point keeping them blocked for any substantial amount of time.

Per Jayjg, I suggest that Bakasuprman be unblocked for the sole purpose of appearing on this noticeboard with his dignity intact, with the understanding that any other edits will lead to a ban, and that the community both expects and demands that he address the disputed behavior.

Bakasuprman, if these allegations are true, I invite you to appear here and confess. Repentance and petitions for amnesty are very rare in this ego-driven space. Many comments to this thread acknowledge a history of productive edits alongside some contentious ones, and, apart from this recent allegation, a pattern of improvement. You've been blocked for proxying for a banned user, not for your contribution history per se, and I would be very surprised if an admission of wrongdoing and an appeal for leniency - that is, to plead guilty (if you are, indeed, guilty) and throw yourself upon the mercy of the court - were met with anything other than compassion.

If they are not true, then contest them.Proabivouac 08:41, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

• Though I have seldom edited any of the 'Hindu' articles, I've followed both Baka and dab and their respective 'continuums' since the last several months. I am fully aware of the history of incivility and tendentious editing that has gone into those articles. I have had my run ins with both baka and dab. At the same time, I've worked in tandem with both of them on some other articles.
• As a dispassionate editor, the way I see it, Baka's problems have only been with a section of users involved in editing the 'Hindu' articles. Baka has certainly been incivil with many of them, but then, it is equally true that many of them have only been trolls and sockpuppets themselves or in other cases(as in the case of dab) been equally incivil with him. For example, while Baka's 'dabcruft' snap was unwarranted, so was dab's repeated insinuations of 'Hindutva trolls'. Everyone involved just gave as good as they got. A 'dabcruft' for example, and such other instances of incivility, has almost always been preceded by or met with an equally disruptive 'Hindu cabal' insinuation.
• I've seen Rama's Arrow, for example, pull up Baka for the 'dabcruft' thing while I didnt see him say a word to dab even as he admitted to Baka's himself that dab had been incivil too. Thats hardly befitting a 'no nonsense-fair-to-a-fault admin'. And btw, lest somebody misinterpret me, let me clarify that when I speak of Baka and dab.. I mean their entire 'continuums'... not just Baka and dab.
• Even in the recent Hindutva propaganda AfD all the "keep" votes were just about ad hominem 'hindutva cabal' banter. As Daniel was to later note, none of them even deemed it necessary or worse, even worth their time, to counter the very valid oppositions of the "delete" voters(Baka included). And once it got deleted, we saw a rudra and a Fowler waxing eloquent and pontificating on the deletion review and multiple user talk pages. And even there, it was simply wallowing in their own delusions and rank bad soapboxing. Seeing the case that the rudras and the fowlers made for undeleting the article and noting the almost unanimous community endorse of the delete, some of these users should have been hauled up for disruption if not for WP:POINT(for even taking it to DRV). Nothing of that sort happened.
• dab's move of the article in the middle of an AfD was infact, trolling if not serious disruption. I didnt see Rama's Arrow or any other admin(I am sure it was on the watchlists of every admin who's watching this) even so much as tell dab that his move was inappropriate; that he should at best, have requested a move from another admin. Nothing of that sort happened either.
• Even as I mince no words being critical of these users, let me assert that I have nothing personal against any of them. I have the highest regard for their contributions just as I do for Baka's. But then, there are cases where I disagree with them and I dont believe in sugar coating my words just to be in somebody's good books.
• Even as I read Jimbo speak(four years ago, admittedly) of sysopping 'semi willy nilly', we have admins making a case for him to do exactly that. I mean... if one admin can throw his weight around on an AfD of his own article and if the other admins just stand by and watch, that really doesnt make for a level playing field. Nor can it earn those admins any moral high ground to pontificate from. The admins cant just stand by and keep watching till it hits a crescendo and then pull up whoever loses the anger management game. Misplaced Pages is not about anger management. Certainly not. These are users that are trying hard(probably too hard) to build an encyclopedia and it is easy for one thing to lead to another and for the whole thing to degenerate into a free for all. This is where admins ought to move in and counsel both parties and if need be force a dispute resolution. All that we've had here is admins trying not to get their hands dirty and then pouncing on the first one they get 'incriminating evidence' about. Thats not fair.
• At the same time, to be fair to dab(in this case I speak only of dab), I do not think that he is acting in bad faith or that he is anti-hindu or anti-india or anything. It is just that he carries several misplaced stereotypes which he is convinced is NPOV. I can say similar things of Baka too. He is NOT acting in bad faith. The very crux of the problem as I see it is that both are not assuming good faith. Infact, they're assuming bad faith.
• Now, for all those of you who want to know what all this has to do with the socking and meating allegations, I can only ask you to stop acting so naive. Otherwise, you're going against the spirit of every policy and guideline out there.
• To wrap up, I submit that the 6 month ban is way too harsh. Like dinesh says, its as good as a permanent ban. I strongly urge the admins to reconsider the case and unblock him. I further suggest that both parties be banned from editing these contentious articles for a while. In any case, the very least that I demand is that they be unblocked atleast to argue their case. Sarvagnya 09:25, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

At the cost of being called naive, I have to ask you - what has all this got to do with meatpuppetry and making proxy edits for a banned user? Hkelkar was banned by the ArbCom, and we have got evidence that Bakaman and others were corresponding with Hkelkar and making edits on behalf of Hkelkar. The ArbCom has ruled that if two users are making the same edits then it does not matter who is making them. We can treat all users as the same person. If you have a problem with Dab, please open a RfC or an ArbCom case. But don't tell me that Bakaman's disputes with Dab led him to make proxy edits for Hkelkar. - Aksi_great (talk) 09:34, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I havent seen the evidence you have. But going by what little RA has said about it and from what you say, I assume that you have evidence to the effect -

• Baka corresponded with Hkelkar
• Baka made some edits in line with Hkelkar's POV.

Now that could be incriminating only if you can establish that Baka carried out Hk's bidding. No arbcom can force two individuals not to meet outside wiki. Not only that, you would also have to establish that Baka would NOT have made those edits if Hkelkar had not asked him to. Knowing Baka's editing practices and also how closely their POVs match, I think its a given that Baka would make the edits he makes Hkelkar or not. That you 'caught' him corresponding with hkelkar outside wiki is not 'incriminating' enough. Sarvagnya 09:49, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Wikilawyering? - Aksi_great (talk) 09:56, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Lets keep the banter out. Please. Sarvagnya 10:21, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

No, Sarvagnya, Aksi is right. By himself, Baka was a tendentious, incivil and often disruptive editor. With the direct connection to Hkelkar, we simply have a Baka-Kelkar combine operating. A softer block will do nothing to drive home the seriousness of Baka's offenses - tell me frankly, how will we know he doesn't continue to contact Kelkar? We should be thankful for the evidence we have, but don't expect Baka to make the same mistake twice. Contrary to some views, a 6-month ban is the most pragmatic, given Hkelkar's 1-year ArbCom ban and perma-ban from the community. Ideological warriors must be handed a long-term blocks to make sure that if/upon their return, their minds have been given sufficient time to make peace with Misplaced Pages's norms and edit to build an encyclopedia. We know Baka and D-Boy are capable of that, so a 6-month ban is the most pragmatic and humane - remember, they have consorted with someone the ArbCom banned for 1 year. This is half of that, plus the benefit of "good behavior" parole (sorry for the police lingo). As for their "dignity" and "defense," those can be made on their talkpages - we cannot unblock people for that. If they have a case for their unblocking, that can be made with an unblock request. See the example of Scheibenzahl — he stated his "defense" and regained his "dignity." Rama's arrow (just a sexy boy) 12:08, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually we are in the zone where we look at blocking as a "punishment," when it is clearly not supposed to be. The overall goal of blocking these users is to protect the content of Misplaced Pages as well as other contributors. Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia, not an ideological battleground - we have no obligation to anyone who doesn't want to understand that. They must either understand that or leave - I can remember numerous times when I lectured Baka on civility and "encyclopedia-building." He contributed well to DYK, but editing by proxy for a banned troll is most serious an offense. Baka is no stranger to Misplaced Pages's policies - he was involved as a party in 2 ArbCom cases. As Aldux points out, Baka waged war whenever anyone discussed Hkelkar and his sockpuppetry or engaged in a content dispute with him. Rama's arrow (just a sexy boy) 12:13, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

ArmenianJoe (talk · contribs) banned

ArmenianJoe's contributions consist of almost entirely edit warring. He has several blocks, all of them for obsessive edit warring at Denial of the Armenian Genocide, Armenian Genocide, and related articles. His latest block three days ago was for a week, for immediately warring again at Denial of the Armenian Genocide as soon as his prior 48 hour block for the same thing ended. He then created the abusive sockpuppet account Israyel (talk · contribs) to, of course, edit war at Denial of the Armenian Genocide. I've blocked the sockpuppet and extended the block to indefinite. There is no reason to put up with a patently unproductive and unreasonable editor. Dmcdevit·t 05:00, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I can definitely endorse the block; my concern is with the use of the word "ban" here, as I would think we could only consider him banned if the ban were agreed upon by the community. Heimstern Läufer 05:10, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I think you've got it backwards. Admins have the discretion to impose indefinite blocks only when they think there is already agreement on the matter. I consider him banned because in my judgment that's the common-sense thing to do, and the community will not reverse the decision. If I am wrong about it being non-controversial, then I am wrong about him being banned. Dmcdevit·t 05:28, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

My limited understanding of the matter is that we've moved away from that practice toward more discussion of bans before they're considered enacted. But I dunno for sure. Anyway, doesn't make a difference for now, as I'm not challenging this. Heimstern Läufer 06:28, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

No, Heimstern is correct. While the old definition of a community ban is indeed that of an unchallenged indefinite block (passive community ban), the community has generally moved away from that definition to one coming out of a result of community discussion (active community ban). I made up the phrases in the parentheses, just to show contrast. The correct terminology in this case would be block. —physicq (c) 06:34, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

My understanding is that there are two types of community bans. One type is the ban that is meted out after discussion at WP:CN. The other is for more obvious cases where no discussion is required. As I have read somewhere, if any admin is unwilling to unblock an indefinitely blocked user, then it is considered to be a community ban too. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong. - Aksi_great (talk) 06:39, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

You are correct. However, nowadays only those that are discussed are considered bans, as those of the former definition may leave room for sockpuppetry. —physicq (c) 06:46, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Huh? That's completely wrong, and overly bureacratic for bureaucracy's sake. I don't know what you mean when you say "the former definition may leave room for sockpuppetry," banned users are banned users. There has been no change in how bans work, except in the minds of legalistic types. Dmcdevit·t 07:31, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not being over bureaucratic, and I never said that there was a change. I only said that the community has shifted, not that the old definition is now wrong. And I take offense at you calling me legalistic. —physicq (c) 20:01, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Dmcdevit is entirely correct here. We've been having problems with some people on the Community Noticeboard assuming to themselves the 'right' to decide on bans - it doesn't work that way and it never has. A community ban is when no-one will unblock, and has no connection to the Community Noticeboard endorsing, disendorsing or deciding they have a say in it. There are no lynchmob mechanisms on Misplaced Pages, and we're not installing this one quietly on the side. Just because a small group of people (and it is an insular group of regulars) have decided to write a process for their amusement does not obligate anyone else on Misplaced Pages to respect it in any way - David Gerard 09:40, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Yep. A ban is just an indefinite block that nobody will lift. Let's not get into instruction creep and please let's not act as if community consensus had anything to do with those nasty little lynching mobs that sometimes form on pages like Misplaced Pages:Community sanction noticeboard. --Tony Sidaway 13:23, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

You could rephrase that. Navou 19:21, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

WP:LYNCHMOBSrUS? --kingboyk 13:44, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Let me chime in and state I agree entirely with what Dmcdevit, Tony, and David have said regarding the distinction between a ban and a block. I don't see how WP:CN can claim any special weight; it is a random collection of users self-chosen at random without qualification. A community ban, as defined as a block that no administrator will lift, has infinitely greater weight and authority than the second coming of Quickpolls. Mackensen (talk) 19:16, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

(outdent) It seems different from quickpolls. The consensus gathered there appears to carry weight. Granted, the participants are not chosen arbitrators, however, it is a mechanism for consensus gathering working with WP:DE and WP:BAN. Regards, Navou 19:21, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm curious, who are the sockpuppets? It'd be good to tag them and start a category. --Iamunknown 06:43, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Why would we want to start a category? Putting the sockpuppeteer's name(s) in lights isn't a deterrent to sockpuppeting - quite the reverse.   REDVERS ↔ SЯEVDEЯ  09:35, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I never suggested that it would be a deterrant. Have you seen the Category:Misplaced Pages sock puppetry tree? Tis regular practise to put suspected and determined sockpuppets in categories for evidence. --Iamunknown 19:18, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Ccbond (talk · contribs)

User appears to be banned editor Harvardlaw (talk · contribs) who was given an indefinite block for removing AFD links and various other vandalism across Misplaced Pages. Can someone give this sock an indefinite block and delete David J. Silver as a vanity page. Thanks! --Bobblehead 06:50, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Having reverted some of his vandalism, I second the request. YechielMan 08:44, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

User:The pink panther

I would like the community to look at the userpage of User:The pink panther. The user has put up on zir userpage that zie is . I remember coming across a user earlier who was , and his userpage was modified and page history removed since it revealed age.

I'm afraid I can't remember the name of the previous user, but I'm sure I can find it and will post as soon as I can. I also mentioned this user to Daniel.Bryant and he suggested that the year old user might have revealed other personal information as well.

Perhaps it might be better in terms of privacy for User:The pink panther to not reveal zir age?

Best regards, xC | ☎ 10:32, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Note: With the statement "I also mentioned this user to Daniel.Bryant and he suggested that the year old user might have revealed other personal information as well", I was referring to the fact that I believe the -year-old (ie. the precedent in this case) may have been revealing further information, and that was the issue. The correspondance is here. It just read slightly ambiguously to me at first, so I thought I'd clear it up. Cheers, Daniel Bryant 10:37, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Well this post is broadcasting the user's age...He definitely doesn't know the implications of revealing his age, so I think a removal and maybe a oversight is in order... --Kz 10:42, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Age replaced with more...generic...statement :) Daniel Bryant 10:47, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I've put a note on the user's talk page and I'm waiting for a reply.... Meanwhile I suggest someone remove the various information just in case... --Kz 10:53, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes that's a sensible course of action - letting the user know the concerns and removing it as a precaution until they reply. Whilst there is no official policy pertaining to minors disclosing details (after this failed consensus), it always makes sense to err on the side of caution in these situations. Will (aka Wimt) 11:03, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

On the other hand, she reverted those changes made by the other editor. I think you get one free edit, as a courtesy, but if she wants to disclose her age, notwithstanding any possible consequences, then it is her right to do so. Calwatch 20:41, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... I was going through the user contribs. and I found this... --Kz 11:08, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

(ec) By the way, - I stayed a long way away from the debate over at that guideline/failed/policy/essay/whatever, and I intend to stay out of this, but further input about the aforementioned would be appreciated. Daniel Bryant 11:09, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Part of being unnaturally dim... but I have no idea what you just said... --Kz 11:13, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

There was a policy proposal or something about dealing with these kind of edits (ie. the death template). Daniel Bryant 11:18, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Right...I thought you meant the WP:KID thingy... I hope this won't escalate like last time. --Kz 11:22, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

On the Internet, under-13s are usually considered minors. She's 13. I don't see what's the problem.

Everyone reveals as much as they choose. I reveal virtually nothing but others seem to go nuts. Generally it is uncouth to edit someone's personal page for them, but that has been done twice now. She's been warned on her talk page. IF she reverts it again, then we should just let it go in my opinion. (She may also NOT be whatever she says she is, either, as it could be a red herring.) Calwatch 20:46, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that I don't think she knows the implications of having her age revealed. Since she reverted my edit, I suspect that she wants it revealed so if she reverts it back, I'll just let it be. --Kz 22:50, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

• call me stupid but i dont think that im going to be killed or raped if someone knows im 13.sorry if my death template scares you,but i think the world is screwed up and i would like to escape it before all we have done to it comes to bite us in the butt.y'know what i mean?i think that it is only a matter of time before humans ruin the earth and wipe humans off the earth.were going that direction with our heavy reliance on technology,our morals,our authority figures/who has power.The Pink Panther 00:42, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I'll get to the point, so do you want your age revealed on Misplaced Pages or not? --Kzrulzuall 01:59, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

i dont mind if my age is revealed.whats the big thing about my age anyway?i havent given away much,if anything,about where i live.so how would someone hurt me using just my age?the pink panther 02:25, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Well actually your ip address shows where you live.... --Kzrulzuall 02:30, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

damn page logged me out without me realising it.oh well i fixed it.The Pink Panther 02:35, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Inappropriate blog linked from the userpage User:Hammersfan

Hammersfan has a link from his userpage to what appears to be a blog written by him. One of the entries is as follows:

March 13
What a f*cking c*ck

http://en.wikipedia.org/User:Chriscf

This person is a fucking cock - a close minded tosser who I'd very much like to hurt by inserting a cricket bat into his rectum and twisting very slowly. Tosspot Welsh arsehole.

As such, I feel that the link from his userpage to this blog is not appropriate. I've raised this issue with the user (diff) but their only response was to delete my message from their talk page, as they did yesterday when I left a warning about their behaviour. I'd welcome the opinions of other editors with regards to this issue. Adambro 12:52, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I get an "XML Parsing Error" when I try to follow the blog link above; it seems my browser (Mozilla SeaMonkey) can't cope with its bogosity of serving the page with an XHTML MIME type but using an HTML 4.0 doctype on it. *Dan T.* 14:59, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Links to pro-pedophilia websites on userpage

Please direct all concerns regarding advocacy of pedophilia directly to arbcom-l at lists.wikimedia.org. This concerns regarding actions users or administrators have taken with respect to such advocacy. All such matters may be considered provisionally accepted by the committee, but are to be handled confidentially. Fred Bauder 12:52, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Annoymous user 63.231.59.4 removing content from pages

The IP 63.231.59.4 has been removing speedy deletion notices and some maintenance templates which I placed on several articles. I would report this user at AIV, but they're not currently active. He has no prior contributions before doing this, as you can see here. I've placed several warnings on his page, but am unsure about what to do next, and would like some input from an admin here. Cheers, -Panser Born- (talk) 15:26, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Watch for half an hour or so, and if they come back, go to AIV, I reckon. – Riana 15:30, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Alright, thanks for the advice. =) -Panser Born- (talk) 15:31, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Threatening Other Users

Someone want to give this guy the sternest kind of talking to? WilyD 15:44, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Interwiki help

I'm looking for some help from people here on another Wikimedia project I'm sysop on. I'm a sysop (the only one) at the Cornish Wiktionary], and I've been repeatedly deleting spambot and vandalism pages.

If anyone here could help me, that would be much appreciated. Just tag on the page, and I will delete it.

It is a fairly inactive wiki, I need all the help I can get. Thanks, --SunStar Net 16:13, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

It might be better to enlist help from the SWMT to help you out. // Sean William 18:44, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Someone posing as Jimbo Wales?

This fella, Princess Peach Toadsfool, left a message on my talk page, "Greetings, after a positive dialogue with Princess Peach Toadsfool, i hereby suggst that she should be promoted to an administrator. Will you please fix that? yours sincerely; --Jimbo Wales 18:09, 22 April 2007 (UTC)" Signed with Jimbo's signature.. Perhaps this should be handled by an admin?

GavinTing 16:17, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Indef-blocked by Drini. Was a vandal account. - Aksi_great (talk) 16:22, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Alright =)GavinTing 16:56, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Informationsdienst gegen Rechtsextremismus again and again severly vandalized

Need help there. Lemma was severally vandalized. A certain user:steschke was first politly asked not to delete informations that are well sourced. Please have a look on the disuccion too. Thanx in advance Pitohui 08:56, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Moved from WP:AN/3RR. Nishkid64 18:00, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Threatening Other Users

User:Tivedshambo over exercises personal judgement and abuse wiki rules

User:Tivedshambo vandalizes (deletes content of user:kosigrim's pages and logs

User:Tivedshambo writes threatening remarks!

11:25, 22 April 2007 PCT — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kosigrim (talk • contribs)

• Hi there. Can you provide some links to the edits you find offensive, please? - Alison 18:34, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I do not know how to recover deleted content

• This link may be pf some assistance when dealing with diffs. Navou 18:45, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Background to this user's complaint. I nominated Child surrealism for prod, as (IMO) it was not notable enough. I added the standard {{prodwarning}} to this user's talk page . Rather than waiting for the prod process, Kosigrim blanked the page, and amended the prod warning , calling me an egomaniac which I found offensive. I also found that Kosigrim referred to other users in this way, which I removed.

I left warnings on the talk page about WP:NPA , , which Kosigrim removed or amended , .

So to answer Kosigrim's accusations against me:

• I exercised personal judgement in nominating the article for prod. However it was Kosigrim who blanked the article.
• The content I removed from Kosigrim's pages was in line with WP:NPA
• I have made no threats against Kosigrim, other than the warning that continued violations of WP:NPA can lead to a user being blocked.

Hope this settles matters. – Tivedshambo (talk) 00:43, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Block needed for spammer 70.121.109.189

70.121.109.189 is adding a commcercial link, has had a full barrage of warnings, and continues. Please block posthaste. ThuranX 18:42, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Blocked for 31 hours. In the future, you can report linkspamming at WP:AIV. Picaroon 18:45, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

User:Klaksonn and Category:Wikipedians who support Hezbollah

Today I noticed that Klaksonn (talk • contribs) recreated Category:Wikipedians who support Hezbollah and Template:User_Hezbollah (as Template:User_Hezbollah 2) for the fourth time (since April 2) today which I speedily deleted again. I blocked him for a week, only to relent because I was concerned that I may have overreacted since he hasn't of yet re-added it to his userpage. However, his downright hostility towards me (for example: he has previously accused me of being racist and having double standards merely because I was Australian) and other editors as well as total disregard for policy has exhausted my patience. Now that he has threatened to have me de-opped, I hereby ask other administrators to review his behaviour and send him a strong message that we will not continue to tolerate such inflammatory displays on user pages or his incivility. --  Netsnipe  ►  19:25, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

You told him on the 2nd to take it to deletion review and not to recreate it. He did it anyway. He also seems quite incivil on the talk page. I don't feel you were in error anywhere on this one. IrishGuy 20:15, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Recreated category per "Likud Wikipedians", "Yisrael Beytenu Wikipedians", "Kadima Wikipedians" and so on.. _Sonn 20:28, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

By the way, I didn't recreate the category for the last time today, as you sadly claim. I recreated it weeks ago and no one seemed to have a problem with it. I bet you knew that. _Sonn 20:41, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Your rationale is irrelevant. WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS isn't a valid argument. You were asked to seek deletion review rather than constantly recreating. You chose to recreate anyway...while making personal attacks and calling Netsnipe a racist. IrishGuy 20:53, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think the above is a valid arguement. My rationale is very relevant. Other categories exist, I don't see why the one I created is inappropriate. _Sonn 21:05, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I also see you're making it personal by trying to get me blocked for 3RR, reverting edits to an article I created. Very low. _Sonn 21:09, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

He just broke the 3RR rule. As I have reverted him, someone else should block him. He was warned, he did it anyway. IrishGuy 21:07, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

How am I "making it personal"? I don't even know you. I read this report and looked at your edit history. IrishGuy 21:11, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

For the record, it is 5 reverts now. IrishGuy 21:13, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Reverts to an article I created. I have provided sources, one of which from an American governmental organization, saying IC is one of the finest educational insitutions in the world. I find it normal for this to provoke some jealousy. _Sonn 21:15, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

The Misplaced Pages:Three-revert rule applies to all articles, whether or not you created them. --Iamunknown 21:17, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

When one editor was about to break this rule, IrishGuy somehow intervened to get ME blocked for 3RR. _Sonn 21:19, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I blocked Klaksonn for thirty-six hours for edit-warring. Feel free to continue discussing the Hezbollah template matter, though. -- tariqabjotu 21:33, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

It has also been the case that Klaksonn has been incivil to me in the past, committing a breach of WP:NPA by calling me a racist, and telling me to "Buzz off", after I nominated the template he has recreated, for the first time. Myself, Netsnipe and Klaksonn were in quite a heated debare which resulted in Netsnipe blocking Klaksonn for 24 hours.In this case, and bearing in mind this user has previously been blocked for longer, and warned to behave himself when he came back (which he obviously has NO intention of doing, I would ask these previous blocks to be taken into consideration and for the present 36 hour block to be severely extended. I see no other way of keeping this user under control. Thor Malmjursson 01:10, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Not all of Kalksonn's contributions are inappropriate. I don't think they warrant an indefblock yet. --Iamunknown 01:25, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I am not asking for an indef, but surely his past incivility, bad manners, behaviour and downright disregard for rules and procedures should be enough to get him more than one and a half days "time out". Thor Malmjursson 02:00, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

So why exactly is this category not allowed? The Behnam 02:20, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

The initial reason the template and associated category were nominated (in the case of my nomination, for speedy (as devisive and inflammatory)) is that Hezbollah is generally viewed almost worldwide as a terrorist organisation involved in illegal activities. In my estimation, if someone were to create ], ], ] or ], they would all get the same treatment. The activity they support is illegal, and therefore could be devisive. Could also start a war with someone creating ]. In short, devisive, inflammatory and plain wrong. Misplaced Pages is not a battleground! Thor Malmjursson 02:48, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree, though it is a slippery slope in both directions. If expressing support for Hezbollah is not acceptable, what political opinion statements are next? Why not scrap all of them anyway? They don't serve the project, but they can negatively affect it. True? The Behnam 02:55, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

False debate on it's face. This stuff comes up almost exclusively in regard to a couple of contentious geo-political problems. No one complains ' He has the i'm a democrat' userbox, or the GOP userbox, or the Labour party box. No, people complain when someone's got a terrorist group, and then people scream outrage because they secretly support that terrorist group too, but are smart enough to not advertise it. When it's pointed out that blowign up 3 year olds is generally reviled, they scream 'then get rid of all userboxes, you're repressing my freedom'. No, we're going with widespread consensus that 99% of userboxes are fine, and 1% need to be examined and possibly removed. the "I support suicide bombers who blame everything on jews instead of their own lack of self-accountability" Userboxes should be removed and deleted. The 'I support a major party in the politics of my own nation' boxes are fine. No one's complaining about the 'This user is a member of Fatah' Userbox; it's a legit party. (Is there such a box?) ThuranX 03:01, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Fatah is a legit party!? 68.248.83.41 03:08, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, I'd say it is about as 'legit' as Hamas. Perhaps Hamas is more legitimate from the perspective of political legitimacy, considering the vote. Oh wait, does 'legit' mean acceptable to Israel & friends? I suppose that Fatah is legitimate under that assumption. The Behnam 03:22, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

More so than Hamas, which has lot more ties to terrorism than Fatah. Even Hamas is more legit than Hezbollah. Both have participated in free elections, both are starting to get major recognition as political parties, not terrorist groups. ThuranX 04:10, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

The user in question was obviously being hostile and as such should be properly dealt with. However, with regards to the larger matter at hand, I have to disagree with some of the users above. Hezbollah is in fact represented in the Lebanese Parliament and as such it does not seem entirely inappropriate for users to believe that category's or infoboxes should be created in "support" or stating their membership in this organization.--Jersey Devil 03:20, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Jersey Devil, in respect of Klaksonn's behaviour, Hostile is to Understatement, as "Minor tremor" is to the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906! Thor Malmjursson 03:35, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Question one: how do userboxes supporting even relatively non-controversial political parties benefit the encyclopedia?
Question two: how much time is spent arguing over what does or does not cross the line into the unacceptable?
Of course, I'm not arguing for "fair treatment" of this userbox (userboxes don't have rights) which should be deleted either way. But it's time to delete them all. Not userfy, but delete and remove. If some users leave Misplaced Pages as a result…great. Experience shows that these are often the very same editors who causes other problems in the pursuit of these same opinions; those who are not will accept the removal of contentious material with grace and an eye towards moving forward.
Misplaced Pages is not a forum for self-expression, national, political, religious or otherwise. When new editors visit another editor's userpage and see it filled with that editor's opinions, they got the wrong idea, and who can blame them? It's our collective responsibility for allowing it.Proabivouac 04:44, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Ban userboxes is your solution? Throw a hissy fit and get rid of userboxes. and then say 'well, anyone who goes wasn't worth keeping?' I think you'll find we'll lose hundreds of editors, who will see that as a major step towards thoroughly anonymizing their hobby. You will not just lose problem editors, you'll lose good editors who like that they can be themselves in their wikipedia presence while helping the project. Once Userboxes are gone, the next logical step will be the elimination of almost all text oon userpages, because someone will see identification of rival college enrollment as offensive, rival careers as belittling, and lists of on wiki accomplishments as elitist. We'll have to switch to numbered ID's, adn then we hit reducto ad nauseum. No one on this project (or nearly zero, there might be three or four odd ducks) wants to have a user number, and not name. Userboxes are fine in the vast majority, those supporting terrorist groups, pedophilia (also under discussion on AN/I), and other anti-social, often criminal behaviors need to go. This 'eliminate em all if I can't have my 'kill all the XYZ's' box is childish. ThuranX 11:39, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Regardless of the vitriol and insult throwing above, fact is that 1) userboxes are not the goal of the wikipedia project. 2) Editors are offended by userboxes saying that a user supports hezbollah, myself for one. I consider myself a moderate, and I consider myself to have an open mind in terms of userboxes. However, Hezbollah is on at least 6 country's designated terrorist organization lists. Hezbollah has a long and well-documented history of conducting terrorist acts. It is polemic, it is designed to incite and inflame, and it is offensive to me as Jewish editor, that someone would be allowed to have a userbox in support of a group that has advocated, quote: ""If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew." and "“if they (Jews) all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.”" ⇒ SWATJester 10:04, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, you know, you're discriminating againt, um, his culture.Proabivouac 11:29, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Block 218.206.201.189, please

Has been warned and reported, now vandalising userspace pages. Immediate block seems inevitable. Thanks. Kosebamse 19:22, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

IP blocked for 24 hours. In the future, you can report this kind of thing to WP:AIV for a faster response. Natalie 19:26, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Had done that already, but as the vandal was quite quick I thought another hint should be in order. Thanks for helping, Kosebamse 19:30, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

America's Next Top Model, Cycle 9

• America's Next Top Model, Cycle 9 (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Firstly, my apologies, as I am sure that there is a better place for me to report it – I just don't know where it is since it falls under multiple categories.

I came across this article when I saw it improperly nominated on the AfD page, possibly accidentally, since the original "nominator" also tagged it as not meeting web notability. I planned to just nominate it procedurally, but realized the page was clearly a hoax, as I don't believe it has even started filming yet, and Cycle 8 has not yet finished.

Since I nominated it properly, it has been edited 34 TIMES, the vast majority being IPs, the remainder probably being editors using tools to revert "vandalism" not realizing what they're doing. It has been blanked twice, both times being replaced by actual patent nonsense as opposed to a regular hoax, and the second time blanking the AFD tag (which I've replaced).

I'd like to see the page either protected... or more simply, speedy deleted under WP:CSD#G1. -- NORTH 20:10, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

!   The infobox says it will be first aired in September 2007? (brings up calendar) Yes, seems a speedy to me! (Have they started the article for "Found" yet?Shenme 20:55, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Sorry this is not Patent nonsense, and does not merit a speedy under G1, not in its current state. But it should be deleted by consensus shortly. DES 21:03, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

In its current state (just an infobox), no, it's not patent nonsense. It only contains information on when it will probably air, which should be deleted per not a crystal ball. This version, which has appeared a couple of times in the edit history, IMHO is patent nonsense. The original version is genuine hoax. Fortunately, all roads point to delete, so it's not a big deal, but in a slightly different situation, it would be impossible to have a valid AfD discussion. -- NORTH 21:35, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Sockpuppets User:MascotGuy

User:Pridejoy Guy is creating many accounts and is certainly a sockpuppet of the above. About 15 so far. (see account creation log) GDonato (talk) 21:09, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

He was blocked by Physicq210 earlier. IrishGuy 21:42, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Someone is bullying me

This user User:TyrusThomas4lyf is bullying me, keep calling me idiot (here) He seems to be there all the time. Whenever I make a change on the page, he reverted my edit and tells me not to mess up. Is there something wikipedia can do to make him stop? Chris 21:58, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I've put {{uw-npa2}} on his userpage because I found 2 nasty edits. It looks like a content dispute of some sort - I suggest both of you see WP:DR and follow the steps. x42bn6 Talk 22:07, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I will ignore him from now on.Chris 22:38, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

User:Pejman47

Please see and . This user has been making personal attacks and unwarranted accusations against me. Could someone please tell him to leave me alone? I don't want his behavior to escalate any further. Thank you. Atashparast 22:33, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

He reverted me again without discussion here , despite the fact that I left a comment on Talk:Pan-Iranism. Atashparast 22:40, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

He has again reverted me, for the 3rd time, without any discussion at all on Talk:Pan-Iranism. He has continued removing information, even when a major source has been added, and I have made clear my intentions to add more sources. His version has no sources whatsoever, thus it makes no sense for him to remove my information. This behavior is uncalled for and simply rude. Atashparast 23:05, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Calm down, You just reverted that article fifth time in two days. and just broke 3RR just after I warned you about it! And no one "leaves you alone" in Wikipeida, if you continue your POV pushing. Look at current messages from different users on your talk pages!--Pejman47 23:10, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

As far as I know, I have not broken any rules, but you have not only attacked me and made accusations against me, going so far as to attempt to have my user page deleted, but you have also consistently removed information that does not conform to your nationalistic point-of-view. You continued such behavior even after I added an academic source. You have furthermore avoided any discussion of your reversions on the discussion page. Your nationalistic behavior is simply unacceptable. Atashparast 23:27, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Aggressive e-mail from blocked user

For the record (since his talk page is protected, I have received an e-mail from blocked User:Dhimwit (Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2007 16:33:44 GMT):

"Do not simply revert changes in a dispute. When someone makes an edit you consider biased or inaccurate, improve the edit, rather than reverting it.

The first resort in resolving almost any conflict is to discuss the issue on a talk page.

Take the other person's perspective into account and try to reach a compromise. Assume that the other person is acting in good faith unless you have clear evidence to the contrary.

Both at this stage and throughout the dispute resolution process, talking to other parties is not simply a formality to be satisfied before moving on to the next forum. Failure to pursue discussion in good faith shows that you are trying to escalate the dispute instead of resolving it."

You broke the above REPEATEDLY and should be PUNISHED by being banned

Andy Mabbett 22:32, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Most of what he said is correct, except for maybe the last sentence. ~ UBeR 00:04, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

That's because it is a quote. Only the last sentence is his own words. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 05:22, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

User:Dhimwit originally sent me that e-mail after disagreeing with a week long block I gave him. In my e-mail he began it with this comment however "Because you are a power mad incompetent admin and were totally unwilling to enter into discussion at any stage, you have succeeded in your aim of pissing me off. I will now force you to read dissenting opinion that you hate so much." Is he spamming any other user's with this e-mail? --Jersey Devil 04:12, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Why not just killfile him? Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 05:22, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, only sent me that one e-mail though, don't know if he e-mailed any others aside from myself and the person who made this report. I would indefinitely block his account if there was consensus amongst fellow users to do so. He uses that account and this IP. --Jersey Devil 05:51, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I support it. ⇒ SWATJester 10:08, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Personal attack from User:COFS

Please take a look at this This user has attacked me (and been uncivil) because we have different editing points of view. Something needs to be done about this guy.--Fahrenheit451 23:14, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

He hasn't made an overt personal attack on that page; the worst thing I could find was "The moment you add unsourced statements I'll cut your head off (verbally)" . Certainly his attitude has been combative and unproductive, but I'm not sure what, if anything, to do about it. A first-level warning against personal attacks might be okay. YechielMan 01:42, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

There are a couple of NPA warnings on his talk page already, as well as warnings about legal threats and other problems. I think the user is due for a 3rd or 4th level warning by now. -Will Beback · † · 01:50, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Since I decided to ignore Fahrenheit451s personal attacks on me more than a week ago - instead of reacting to his very personal insinuations and provocations - editing is much better. Check it out. I wish he would stick to that as well. COFS 03:23, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I think this edit by Misou counts as a succicnt 3rd-level warning. -Will Beback · † · 08:04, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Ranjit Fernando Vandal/Stalker

A guy named crickettragic has for the last 24 to 48 hrs been vandalising this page non stop, adding rubbish in and providing a link to his Ranjit Fernando hate site. Due to his frustration at me constantly getting rid of his vandalism he has sent me numerous threatening messages on my talk page. This morning I woke up to find that my last 30 odd contributions in this place has been reverted by this user and was greeted with another message implying that he would keep doing so until I stopped reverting his Ranjit Fernando vandalism. What is the best way of dealing with this? I think for a start the page in question should be protected but due to this guy reverting so many of my posts he may have enough to qualify past semi protection. All the evidence is in this users history so if a mod could block this guy he or she would be doing me a big favour because I am not too keen on waking up every morning and seeing that 30 of my fair and genuine contributions have been tampered with. --12345ak 23:54, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I noticed that you gave Crickettragic a lot of user warning templates. Have you tried talking it out without templates? --Iamunknown 00:04, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

This is interesting.. since you were actually the one adding the hate sites, and he was removing them. Care to explain? --Kzrulzuall 00:13, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Are you sure he is the one putting in the link? Not to mention removing comments, editing comments to mislead people, reverting once, twice, reverting once at Ranjit Fernando, twice, three times, four times, five times, SIX times, once on an account that looks like a sockpuppet... I could go on and on and on here, but I think that you have violated WP:3RR and are harassing this other user. Striking because I think I and a few other users should learn to go back a little more in the history to get the true story. x42bn6 Talk 00:10, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Please, will you both stop accusing someone else of harassment and stalking. I personally think this incident report was a bit premature, but it appears that 12345ak thought it was the only way forward. Let's please try to sort this out, hear both sides and then try to resolve the dispute rather than escalate. (That means: be nice to all editors.) --Iamunknown 00:13, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Alright, I just wandered around. The misleading blog was added here, by an anon, 12345ak moved it (along with various BLP issues in later edits), Chanakaj reverted, 12345ak reverted back, Crickettragic reverted back as Chanakaj did, 12345ak reverted back, Crickettragic reverted back, and the rest is history, something like 10-20 more reversions. Then it spread to CVU and then they started reverting each other's edits at other cricketers: 12345ak starts the war. I think the first actual reversion by Crickettragic at another article was at 20:55. The rest is history. x42bn6 Talk 00:23, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Open and shut case... Exactly what x42bn6 said. Removing warnings on your talk page to remove the evidence won't help either. --Kzrulzuall 00:23, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Please, folks, cool down. 12345ak did not add the link, an IP added it. I think what might have happened after that was just blind revert war and a failure to communicate. Sound about right, 12345ak? --Iamunknown 00:24, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Agreed, but the edits above suggest 12345ak had an interest in the link - perhaps he was wrong to think that the link was proper (attack page?) - but the subsequent warring is horrible. x42bn6 Talk 00:25, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I dunno, but it goes back further () and, basically, the article has been subject to a lot of BLP-unapproved edits. The edit warring was bad but, hey, what are you going to do if you are new and someone reverts you and doesn't leave a comment? --Iamunknown 00:27, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm really confused because the history of the page seems to suggest that Kzrulzuall is right and the complainant is the one trying to get the link kept. JuJube 00:28, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, he was. But crickettragic (talk · contribs) happened to undo just about every other edit 12345ak made as well, which certainly didn't help. If you were a new editor and someone started reverting all of your edits, what would you do? I'm not sure 12345ak was acting maliciously, I think it might have just been a blind revert war out of frustration because of failure in communication. --Iamunknown 00:36, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

This link seems to enforce my point of view. Doubtful it was blind reversion.. --Kzrulzuall 00:30, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

And to stuff beans up my nose, the statistics here are actually correct so it is a good-faith edit but a bad-faith link along with BLP issues. So I think I can deduce that the link appeared to be put in my 12345ak so Crickettragic assumed it was a vandal, so there was no need to assume good faith, and then they edit warred all over Misplaced Pages. Kzrulzuall, it could well be a good-faith edit introducing good formatting and sectionising. The link's description was not changed. x42bn6 Talk 00:32, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I saw that diff, but I am inclined to (only because of WP:AGF) think that it was a good-faith edit by moving the link to the bottom links generally belong. --Iamunknown 00:36, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Maybe we should just wait till we get explanations from the two of them. --Iamunknown 00:37, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Agree with that... but it'll be a long wait since both of them seemed to have gone to sleep... --Kzrulzuall 00:41, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Hopefully I can clear this up for you guys. This bloke is a nasty troll and this complaint that he has posted was posted by myself hours ago in the Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Cricket. He has simply reversed the names in an attempt to cause trouble and confusion which by reading this thread he evidently has. Please look at my talk page and read the most recent comments he has left on it - "It seems that you have not learnt your lesson, you continue to vandalise the page of the great one (ranjit fernando). You are destroying the unique experience that is wikipedia. Blocking me for upholding the principles of wikipedia will do no good, as i will tell all my friends at uni to stalk all your future entries/vandalisms and revert them from university public computers if i/ranjit fernando article are blocked from editing."

Cheers, Crickettragic

12345ak has also frequently been undoing edits by Crickettragic on otherwise unrelated articles: purely to annoy him, it seems. A lot of minor edits, but frustrating none the less. For example: WP Cricket has started a de-stubbing project, which Crickettragic has been working on, and 12345ak decided to undo the following, as well as multiple others: . AllynJ 00:57, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

The user has been blocked by Alison. --Kzrulzuall 01:00, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Both have been blocked. And I really wish editors would stop overusing troll, vandal, etc. 12345ak reverted many of Crickettragic's edits, yes, but Crickettragic did the same and neither of them talked about it. Kind of seems like a failure on both sides to me. I think I'm off for at least a couple of hours: I'm exhausted --Iamunknown 01:02, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Ah yes, hadn't spotted he had been. However I think a temp ban seems too lenient, see this particularly malicious entry on his talk page, and this one where 12345ak freely admits that he's reverting EVERYTHING CT has done today simply because of CT's attempt to remove the vandalism. CT was breaching protocol but 12345ak is being purposely uncivil, malicious and vandalising in such a big way that I'm concerned about any future contributions from this user. AllynJ 01:09, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

You are welcome to go to WP:CN about it, but I think an indef block or a ban will be too much. Despite the edit warring and attacking comments, he is not a vandal only account. --Kzrulzuall 01:13, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

User:12345ak stated that User:Crickettragic has left "numerous threatening messages " on his talk page. I just reviewed Crickettragic's last 5,000 edits, and he has left zero edits on User:12345ak's talk page. I think we owe Crickettragic an apology and 12345ak an indef block for trolling and disruption. Rklawton 01:50, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Crickettragic's request for unblock is getting reviewed, which hopefully, will be lifted. As for 12345ak, I would support a longer block but iamunknown's reasoning is probably accurate. --Kzrulzuall 01:57, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Cricket tragic is a hard working editor who does a great deal of good work on the cricket pages of wikipedia. 12345ak is a vandal who's been destroying his work in a systematic manner out of what seems like spite. The first post in this discussion shows exactly what's going on here. 12345ak should be blocked before he starts doing even more damage and cricket tragic should be left free to continue his work unmolested. User 12345ak is simply lying about his role in this and he shouldn't get the benefit of the doubt in this case because there is no doubt about who's in the wrong. Nick mallory 02:34, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Well crickettragic has been unblocked so he can start editing again. --Kzrulzuall 03:05, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

• Hi. I just got here and missed all this dialog. A third party reported Ranjit Fernando on WP:RPP for full protection as a full-on edit war was in progress. I ended up blocking both editors for 3RR for 12 hours; they were both way over the limit and the blocks were applied to stop the mayhem. Since then, User:Crickettragic asked for unblock & given the circumstances and that there was no chance of the war starting up again, he was unblocked. This was some time ago. As for User: 12345ak, he's still under a 12-hour block for 3RR but note that someone else has marked at least three other accounts as possible socks and they have been indefblocked now. Given that, I would certainly endorse 12345ak receiving the same esp. given what's happened here - Alison 03:32, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

User:12345ak was sockpuppeting. I've reviewed his edits and extended his block to indefinite. Rationale left on his talk page. —Moondyne 03:42, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Sockpuppetry? He definitely deserved a indef. after that... Good research. --Kzrulzuall 04:15, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Seems he is back under a new alias, persistent young man. Lankanboy84 just made the same edit as 12345ak was doing. Either he is sockputteting again or it is someone else from the hatesite. Crickettragic 11:47, 23 April 2007

Blocked again :) - Alison 11:53, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Croton Gorge Park sockpuppetry

Several accounts were blocked related to editing of Croton Gorge Park following Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Croton Gorge Park. A CheckUser has turned up more accounts and confirmed already blocked accounts. Confirmed sockpuppets are:

• THB (talk · contribs)
• Keptarmed (talk · contribs)
• Rockshappy (talk · contribs)
• Goalporch (talk · contribs)
• Clearages (talk · contribs)
• Loose Every (talk · contribs)
• Moral Army (talk · contribs)
• Sleep month (talk · contribs)
• Itemsrange (talk · contribs)
• Movie Eager (talk · contribs)
• Stand Dealt (talk · contribs)
• Itemloans (talk · contribs)
• Solveeven (talk · contribs)
• Leastdays (talk · contribs)
• Enjoyclear (talk · contribs)
• Novelreach (talk · contribs)
• Delay Drew (talk · contribs)
• City value (talk · contribs)
• Learn Eggs (talk · contribs)

Administrator attention is requested. Dmcdevit·t 23:58, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I blocked all that weren't but THB. Are you sure with him?—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 02:23, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I've done a check as well and concur with Dmcdevit's findings. Mackensen (talk) 02:34, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I've blocked THB indefinitely—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 03:48, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Odd

User:CINEGroup has made two edits, removing sourced material from two actresses pages (both are underage so I have purposely withheld their names). When I went to this user's page, there was a message reading "This user has retired and is not returning" or something to that effect. Could someone take a look at this?

Ispy1981 01:27, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Nothing to see here. CINEGroup removed a youtube link from one, and a CRYSTALBALL Violation. Both edits are fine. ThuranX 02:41, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Ashkani

• Ashkani (talk · contribs)
• Misplaced Pages:Requests for checkuser/Case/Artaxiad#Artaxiad 4

As per checkuser case (linked above), I hereby request an "admin's judgment call" based on Ashkani's contribs. -- Cat 01:56, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I have indef blocked Ashkani. He is certainly a sockpuppet of an experienced Armenian User. He appears just after a number of Armenian and Azeris were banned or put on a paroles by Arbcom. Artaxid was caught sock puppeting previously. The checkuser is compatible with him been an Artaxid's sockpuppet. Small details (like the aircraft on the userpage indicate him been Artaxid). Even if there is a small probability Ashkani been a sock of somebody else he should be blocked anyway taking into account the recent Arbcom. Alex Bakharev 09:53, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Support block. He was creating copyvio articles too. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:08, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

User:Playboy rich

This user has repeatedly ignored my massages and has continued creating the pages Under Pressure (My Chemical Romance) or Under Pressure (The Used). User:Jamdav86 has advised me that the pages should stay redirects. – Zntrip 05:16, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

"user has repeatedly ignored my massages"... well that's one way to get his attention. Seriously, though, he's making contentious edits and has only ever made 3 talk page edits of any kind, and all of those were to blank his own talk page. That's textbook disruptive editing. I'll block him for a few days just to get his attention, and hopefully he'll start communicating with you. A Train 05:22, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I left a 'welcome' template there with an edit summary suggesting he read the links, and backed up your redirect edit with reverts. hope that helps. (not an admin, jsut a frequent flier of ANI air.) ThuranX 05:23, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Maybe you're being too overt with the "massages" ;) JuJube 05:41, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Ha ha, I'm not the only who noticed that. — MichaelLinnear 06:15, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Rachel Brown

I vaguely remember hearing that name before. I received a fourteen-page-long e-mail from one BlackTeller regarding alleged sockpuppetry by Rachel Brown, with the request that I post it on this board. Did anyone else receive something similar? Could anyone familiar with RB inform me if such a post would be useful here? >Radiant< 07:33, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

• Did the fourteen page email actually contain any evidence? - Mgm| 09:16, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
  • It establishes a pattern of similarity in editing style as well as xFD/RFA !voting habits, as well as a lack of overlap in editing times, of three accounts and one IP. I suppose that counts as tangential evidence. The link towards Rachel is somewhat tenuous. >Radiant< 09:47, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

User:Burk Hale

Burk Hale (talk · contribs) will simply not stop edit warring and pushing his extreme POV and original research (he continually argues that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which basically gave African-Americans and others the rights they have today) was the result of "subversive" action by the U.S. government. Also, there is a copyright concern with some of the text Burk Hale continues to add to this article. Burk Hale has been warned repeatedly on his talk page and on the talk pages of the relevant articles he has edited. Finally, consensus is clearly against Burk Hale's edits; several have opposed them and none has supported. Burk Hale clearly warrants a block for his continued, obvious disruption (I am involved in the dispute, thus I have not blocked him myself). · j e r s y k o talk · 12:49, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

1. Jimbo's comment on libel on userpages

• Misplaced Pages noticeboards
• Non-talk pages automatically signed by HagermanBot