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Tendentious discussion at Talk:Speed of light

A bunch of us are (at the least, I am) getting rather annoyed by one editor who makes a series of bizarre claims such as that the speed of light is not defined as 299 792 458 m/s, that the speed of light ceased to be meaningful after the 1983 definition of the BIPM as being exactly 299 792 458 m/s, that the speed of light defined by the BIPM is not the "actual" speed of light but rather some "unrelated" conversion factor between lenghts and time, and so on. For scale, the long talk page you'll see is the result of 9 days of these discussion, which are now simply repetitions of old ones (which are now archived, even if they are 2-3 weeks old at best). This is related, although different, to the recent topic ban of User:David Tombe. Looking for advice (wheter admin action is necessary, I'll leave up to the admins to decide). Headbomb {_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 16:11, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Sometimes things around here travel at the Speed of Smell. Anyway, WP:Consensus is key - and article content disputes are rarely actionable 'round here. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 10:50, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Having encountered him on these pages a few days ago, you certainly have my sympathy. Jehochman told him that he was from that Talk page back on 19 August, so if he continued to edit it after that date he should be sanctioned per WP:ARBPS -- unless a later discussion on that page reversed Jehochman's ruling. (I stopped following the matter a couple of days ago, so I don't know what the situation is with him currently -- beyond the fact he is contributing under borrowed time.) -- llywrch (talk) 19:01, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

I think the complaint concerns Brews ohare (talk · contribs), who seems to be continuing User:David_Tombe's fringe arguments and has made close to a 1000 edits on the talk page over the last 45 days. Abecedare (talk) 03:31, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Abecedare Your assessment of the situation is incorrect. I have pushed absolutely no fringe viewpoints unless you consider NIST BIPM and J Wheeler as radical. In serious discussions like this one, it behooves you to get your facts straight. Brews ohare (talk) 13:57, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Shortly after posting the above, I had a look at the actual discussion, in disbelief that David Thombe would so brazenly ignore that ban -- only to find what Abecedare described: David Thombe had not posted to the thread since Jehochman's page ban, & Headbomb had confused Brews ohare with him. (Or else he knows something about the two that none of the rest of us do; if so, I suggest he share it for the rest of us to evaluate -- or admit his mistake.) On the other hand, these accusations below of a "lynch mob" orchestrated by a Misplaced Pages cabal reminds me of the first corollary to Extreme Unction's first law. -- llywrch (talk) 05:14, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

llywrch: Veiled implications that a sloppy editor's confusion between D Tombe and myself indicates some subtle connection does not reflect well upon you. As for assessing whether there is in fact a lynch mob at work, or at least a bunch of editors that refuse to follow the rules of normal WP discourse, these matters are not settled by cute aphorisms or Aesop's fables, but by looking at the facts. I do not believe a lynch mob is normally considered to be a conspiracy (a feeding frenzy is more like it), so Extreme Unction's first law is not pertinent here. Brews ohare (talk) 13:57, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

So how would you explain his confusion while assuming good faith? If it was a mistake, he should have apologized before now. As for my link above, it was simply a gentle way to let you know that just because a large group of people are opposed to your view, it does not mean there is a lynch mob, either metaphorically or physically. But we are growing weary of your repeated insinuations of its existence. -- llywrch (talk) 20:05, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

The issue here is your behavior, not someone else's. And, call it a lynch mob, or a gang, or a gaggle, or a crowd, there are a bunch of hectoring, haranguing editors that are impolite, make denigrating sneers, and who do not try to address the issues at all. Whether they are in cahoots, or feed off of each other's horrible behavior, the result is the same: no attempt to deal with substantive issues, just more harangue. Brews ohare (talk) 22:42, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

A proposed lead to speed of light by User:Abtract found here is technically correct and yet conveys all that other editors wish to say. However, under the leadership of Martin Hogbin no attempt is being made to discuss this proposal, but instead Martin Hogbin is calling for a lynch mob to railroad his own incorrect wording into the article. Numerous explanations and reputable sources challenging Martin's wording have been presented and quoted on Talk:Speed of light, and Martin and his colleagues simply refuse to deal with them. Headbomb should have a better understanding than he indicates following a recent (brief) technical exchange with me at Talk:Speed of light concerning a different subsection.

The point for Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents is not this argument over content, but that there is no argument over content. I have repeatedly tried to get some consideration for my opinion that the present wording is contrary to published experts, and provided sources, and no discussion of sources takes place. What happens is hectoring and attempt to impose majority rule (majority of editors, that is). My repeated attempts to get consideration of sourced opinion is being steamrollered by a lynch mob that cannot deal with it. What is needed is enforcement of WP protocol to address published sources, and to avoid repeated hectoring as a method to squelch ideas.

Discussion of the lead proposed by User:Abtract found here should be mandated. The excitement of mob rule should be squelched. Brews ohare (talk) 14:54, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Once again, here we see a malicious allegation in an attempt to get another player sent off the field. Until a few weeks ago, I didn't even know what Brews was arguing about. So I decided to investigate the matter. The first hint I got that Brews was right and that Martin Hogbin was wrong, came when Brews was eager to explain his position to me, whereas Martin refused to discuss the matter with me. Martin clearly didn't want to reveal his agenda. It took a while for me to work out the subtlety of the argument, but I eventually realized that Brews is absolutely right. The 1983 definition of the metre has had a significant impact on physics, and that needs to be elaborated on in the speed of light article. Brews is not pushing any fringe theories. Rather, those who are trying to prevent Brews from clarifying a very delicate point, are actually engaged in trying to hide the history of the subject. It's time that the editors who bring these malicious allegations to AN/I are themselves subjected to closer scrutiny. David Tombe (talk) 19:28, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

This seems to be another attempt to create an imposed consensus by eliminating the dissent. That isnt what a consensus is about. Frankly, I never would have thought to examine the speed of light article except for the fact that the lynch mob seems to think it is in danger of being overthrown. Then after seeing what they are protecting, I understand the need to squelch any dissention. It is a gigantic mess. So, instead of looking for new people to behead, I suggest that you fellows take a close look at yourselves and get busy fixing the article that at present is a morass of confusion.72.64.63.243 (talk) 21:52, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

You guys are such experts, let me ask you this: If I were driving my car at the speed of light, and turned on the headlights, would anything happen? Baseball Bugs carrots 14:11, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Baseball Bugs: With the lights on, you might see the error of your ways?? Brews ohare (talk) 16:01, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Aha, so you don't know the answer. I thunk so. :) Baseball Bugs carrots 19:58, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

We can only take action against Brews, if we first have a consensus on the talk page that the discussion on the revant issues are closed and that any further discussions would be reverted on the talk page. If Brews were to start a new discussion that is very similar then we could revert that. If he were to revert that change or keep kicking off new discussions that we would ahve to revert again and again, then we could come here and raise this issue.

But the current situation on the talk page is not like that at all. In fact, other editors are still starting discussions on related issues, see e.g. here Count Iblis (talk) 14:16, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

This is not an issue about content, but behavior. After being admonished a couple weeks ago by an uninvolved admin for "a blatant violation" of WP:OWN, Brews ohare has increased his level of tendentious editing and incivility, plus created a content fork of the article outside of consensus or prior discussion. As for myself, who has contributed minimally to the article or discussion page, his opinion is that I am disqualified to contribute to the page. My response to this personal attack is here, as I saw no need to add to the toxic environment at the article talk page. Tim Shuba (talk) 16:45, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Tim Shuba's claims that "Brews ohare has increased his level of tendentious editing and incivility" is unsupported, and his frivolous attitude is well described in his own words, quoted here. Brews ohare (talk) 17:23, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

The only people that come running to AN/I to get their opponents blocked from a debate on the talk pages are those who are not confident about their own arguments. It is gross cowardice to try and win an argument by getting the opponents blocked on the basis of empty allegations such as 'incivilities', 'disruption', and of course the all time favourite 'assumption of bad faith'. This thread is yet another case of it. Unfortunately a precedent has already been set that demonstrates that this shameful tactic can be successful. Tim Shuba has now entered the debate, and he has already demonstrated that he knows very little about the topic in question. His major contribution so far has been to delete a paragraph in the history section which deals which the convergence of the directly measured speed of light with the speed of light as determined indirectly from the measured values of the electric and magnetic constants. This was perhaps the most significant fact in the entire article, because it dealt with how James Clerk-Maxwell concluded that light is an electromagnetic wave. That is easily the most important historical landmark in the history of the speed of light, and it has now been deleted by Tim Shuba who is posturing as a poor innocent victim who has only contributed minimally to the article. David Tombe (talk) 19:44, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

• I have upgraded David Tombe's page ban to a topic ban covering anything related to the speed of light article. If there is any further gaming of the rules, disruption, or advocacy of theories about the 1983 redefinition of the meter, blocks should follow. Jehochman 06:53, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Despite my lack of sympathy for David Tombe, I'd like to point out that this is misdirected. Except for his posts here & on user talk pages he hasn't been contributing to anything related to the speed of light -- & there only because because he can't defend himself unless he mentions it was for his edits to his topics -- for his last 100 edits. Except for a few edits to luminiferous aether, they've all been to articles on Canadian currency. He has been staying away from the topic. And as for editting user talk pages, unless he's been posting to them after being told not to, I can't see how that's become an issue. -- llywrch (talk) 20:05, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

• • • Jehochman should be censured for this unwarranted act of a topic ban on D Tombe which has absolutely no justification whatsoever. Brews ohare (talk) 21:15, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
      • I don't know if my opinion on this matters. I pointed out here that an editor was violating an ArbCom ruling, & was brushed off with the same reasoning that would allow David Tombe to make these edits on Talk pages. Maybe my ability to reason is defective, maybe I need more sleep, or maybe Misplaced Pages policy is enforced more rigorously for some than for others. -- llywrch (talk) 23:48, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Brews ohare

• Brews ohare (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Speed of light (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Talk:Speed of light (edit | article | history | links | watch | logs)

There are suggestions above that Brews ohare has engaged in tendentious editing at Talk:Speed of light. Can anybody present a selection of diffs to substantiate that claim? Brews ohare, why is your editing any different from David Tombe's? Why would you expect different treatment if you commence editing in the same style? Jehochman 06:53, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Jehochman, You clearly haven't investigated this issue at all. David Tombe (talk) 10:13, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't doubt that Brews ohare is in good faith, that he (like Tombe) believes that what he is saying is correct. However, he keeps repeating the same argument over and over on Talk:Speed of light, and it is getting beyond tiresome to keep dealing with him, although I just made another attempt here. I count 16 talk page edits by Brews on 31 August (UTC) which isn't over yet, 32 on 30 August, and 25 on 29 August. He edited the talk page 578 times in all of August, which puts him in first place by a comfortable margin (Martin Hogbin is in second place with 225). Scanning the Talk page, with all the back and forth, would give you a better idea of the character of his participation than diffs; I added the talk page info as the third item under this section's heading. —Finell (Talk) 18:31, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

I warned Brews ohare about his behaviour here: responses can be seen in this talk page section. Physchim62 (talk) 20:00, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

I am surprised you wish to advertise your attachment to me of sentences you have fabricated all by yourself. Very sloppy, at best, actionable at worst. Brews ohare (talk) 21:03, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

His comment about your username was uncalled for. -- llywrch (talk) 20:09, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, right. Fabrication of fake evidence is more acceptable. Brews ohare (talk) 21:03, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

I wonder why I am singled out as "keeps repeating the same argument over and over", instead of those that respond over and over (in effect, not their exact words) "We don't have to agree with sources Wheeler; Jespersen;Sydenham; we don't have to support OUR views; we are RIGHT."? I have written a carefully sourced presentation of my views in the subsection of speed of light - Speed of light by definition - which has not been accused of being "crackpot science" or "fringe viewpoint" (and various other complimentary terms) even though it proposes exactly the same viewpoint contested. This group of editors out for blood is interested only in getting a particular wording for the lead, come what may, whatever its merits. I have explained sufficiently to them that their proposed lead is poorly conceived, and very readily understood to contradict the subsection Speed of light by definition. These editors don't care about that.

As far as I am concerned, these editors are free to mangle the introduction as they wish. I will not address this subject on my own initiative any longer. If I am asked about it however, I will state why I don't like it. That is not "pollution of the Talk page" (another complimentary term), it is just being polite. Brews ohare (talk) 20:58, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Well Brews' is quite welcome to take a voluntary wikibreak from Speed of light whenever he/she likes.

I hardly need to look through thousands of contributions: after all, Brews has made more than 500 contributions to Talk:Speed of light in the last month . It is sufficiant to look at the arguments that he/she makes at each occasion. The proposed lead is not in contradiction with the section on "Speed of light by definition"; Jesperson is in favour of fixing measurement units to fundamental physical phenomena, just after the passage that Brews decides to quote; "This group of editors out for blood is interested only in getting a particular wording for the lead" is hardly the case, given the length and depth of the discussions.

Brews' editing statistics alone support the case of contentious editing; anyone who wishes to look further (brave as they would be) need only look at the pages to which this editor has attached his/her attention. Physchim62 (talk) 21:40, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

And thank you so much Physchim62 for your apologies regarding fabrication of evidence. Your theory that statistics can demonstrate contentious editing is pure nonsense, and your reading of Jespersen is illiterate. Brews ohare (talk) 22:04, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Erm, 583 edits by Brews to Talk:Speed of light during the months of August 2009… 428 edits by Brews to Talk:Speed of light 15–31 July 2009… It's interesting that I have to go back from 15 July to June 10 to find Brews' previous comment (the last of 37 comments he/she made on the page in just over two days). Anyone else wishing to contribute to these pages must read through tens if not hundreds of kilobytes of Brews' comments (often very repetitive, but you can't know until you've read them) before then can hope to add to the discussion. This manner of editing is obviously not constructive, it is simply spamming, the Misplaced Pages equivalent of a filibuster.

I said that I found the gap before 15 July in Brews' comments quite interesting: what happend on 14 July? This complaint was raised at WP:AN/I, concerning a separate article but similar behaviour (I quote: "The talk page sometimes sees 100 edits in a day, from only three or four users!") and also concerning Brews ohare. The gain for the editors at Talk:Centrifugal force seems to have been the loss for those interested in Talk:Speed of light!

I think it is time to call time on Brews' disruptive editing. If it can't be done here, I shall take the matter to a forum where it can be done, and I shall not be so indulgent as to limit my request to articles related to the speed of light. Physchim62 (talk) 23:14, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps you'd care to present a little more than the number of edits as evidence of my causing trouble? Please don't invent them. Brews ohare (talk) 00:08, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

The number of edits *are* evidence of causing trouble ... not automatically actionable, but the article talk page is clearly being subjected to unusually high activity from a small set of users. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 03:28, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

So I should not correct grammatical errors, punctuation or add second thoughts to a response because that increases my count? I should limit myself to one edit a day, and respond to all and sundry in a listed sequence within one edit. That would fix things, eh? OK, if that works for you. Brews ohare (talk) 03:53, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

More comments from Headbomb

Ilywrch: First, I did not confuse Brews Ohare and David Tombe, as you claimed. In fact, I specifically mentioned that this was not the same case, see my words: "This is related, although different, to the recent topic ban of User:David Tombe". Please don't put words in my mouth. If you hadn't, a lot less drama would have ensued. I came here looking for advice, not heads to be chopped.
Brews/David: I am not a "Example text", nor a "Example text" and do mind WP:NPA. I'll leave it at that. Headbomb {_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 21:11, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Then mention the person you are complaining about, not who that person behaves like. Your sloppy writing caused any Wikidrama here, & if didn't understand what you wrote you need to accept at least part of the responsibility for that. And I only responded after it appeared that no one else would offer advice -- so kindly turn down the attitude when my only motivation was trying to help. -- llywrch (talk) 23:16, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

I didn't mentioned Brews because I wanted a neutral look at what was going on. I take no responsibility for people reading something else than what I actually wrote. There's no need for personnal attacks, so please refrain from making them. Headbomb {_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 01:36, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Headbomb - Perhaps you will take responsibility for removal of sourced material composed at some labor by me without any related comment on the Talk page, and only the uncivil one-line edit summary "This does not belong here, or anywhere, for what matters." ?? Is that how things are best done? Brews ohare (talk) 03:26, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes. The material is simply there to push your POV that a wavelength-based definition of a meter is superior than the fixed value definition. Stating that this does not belong in the speed of light, or anywhere for what matter, hardly consists of incivility. Headbomb {_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 16:56, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Headbomb: I do not have and never have expressed the POV that a wavelength-based definition of a meter is superior to the fixed value definition. Please re-read my remarks. What was said was the the pre-1983 definition was an example of a definition that allowed the measurement of the physical speed of light because the metre was based upon wavelength. The 1983 definition allows more accurate length comparisons, but makes the speed of light an exact conversion factor beyond reach of measurement. Your interpretation of my statements is a non sequitor of the first rank; please learn to distinguish between what is said and what you want to believe. You create the impression of deliberate distortion to enable wild accusations.

That out of the way, I propose that you apologize for removal of sourced material composed at some labor by me without any related comment on the Talk page, and making the uncivil one-line edit summary "This does not belong here, or anywhere, for what matters." ?? Brews ohare (talk) 18:05, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Headbomb, If you wanted a neutral look to your complaint, then why did you drag my name into it when I haven't edited the speed of light article since 12th August? David Tombe (talk) 11:41, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Edit war

• Speed of light (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

It has degenerated into a full blown edit war over the Speed of light article again. This article and its talk page are an object lesson in how not to Misplaced Pages. —Finell (Talk) 01:58, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

There is no edit war: there is a simple hijacking of the page by an unruly mob that does not use the Talk page, removes sourced material without comment, makes nasty pejorative comments to get the temperature up, and insists upon a narrow stance contrary to sources. Very professional, very understandable, if you are a hit man. I hope this example is useful in getting WP to adopt a process with appointed editors that can eject those that behave this way. Brews ohare (talk) 03:20, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm not just referring to you, Brews. The Talk page is very much in use, but not in productive use. The same people who are arguing about everything on the Talk page are reverting each other's article edits and substituting their own singular visions without any semblance of consensus at to many issues. That is what I understand to be an edit war. No one has hijacked the page any more than anyone else; it's a free-for-all. One issue on which there is broad consensus, though, is that your contributions to the article and the Talk page are misinformed and are not supported by the sources that you cite over and over, and that your behavior is tendentious. —Finell (Talk) 04:40, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Finell, The blame for this mess lies squarely at the feet of administrator Jehochman. Administrator Jehochman likes to voice his opposition to 'gaming the system'. But he has gamed the system himself in this case, by imposing sanctions on only one side in the dispute. That has given encouragement to the other side, and hence we are seeing bold warnings coming from the likes of Physchim62. This biased action from administrator Jehochman, which I understand was carried out arbitrarily against the wikipedia rules, has given the likes of Physchim62 an unwarranted sense of righteousness which makes him assume that everybody is going to believe that his side in the dispute is correct, without any doubt about it whatsoever. An impartial administrator attempting to end this edit war would either have dished out sanctions equally on both sides of the dispute, or else protected the page from editing until things cooled down. David Tombe (talk) 11:49, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

I will look into the edit war. It would help if editors on both sides posted diffs as evidence. David Tombe, you are violating your topic ban when you comment on a dispute about speed of light. Next time you do so, you will be blocked. Attacking the administrator who sanctions you is a common tactic, one we understand how to deal with. Please understand that I'm not a robot. There's an actual person behind the screen name. Imaging that you're sitting at a coffee table with the person when you post and try to speak as you would in that situation. It will help you get along better. Jehochman 12:35, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

I may not always agree with what has done Jehochman (see above for an example), but I will support him on this point: you never get positive results by attacking an Administrator. Instead, you will end up like a player who argues with the ref: thrown out of the game. -- llywrch (talk) 20:13, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

That may be in fact what happens; but one hopes that justice can be seen to happen, that decisions are balanced, that appeals are possible, and that decisions will be supported by even handed argument and evidence. Brews ohare (talk) 20:39, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Proposed solution

I also posted this on the wikiproject physics talk page:

"I think it would be helpful to discuss this with Brews again (he asked me to get involved on my talk page a few days ago, but I was too busy then), but this time with one new rule: Citing from sources is not allowed. So, we have to discuss from first principles and explain everything when challenged from first principles. This removes the freedom to interpret what some source says in some arbitrary way. Because most contributors are experts in physics, this can work. If someone is not an expert and makes mistakes he/she will be disqualified more easily (precisely because you can't hide behind sources)."

So, this means that we can see some very lengthy discussons with Brews again, hopefully more productive this time. Count Iblis (talk) 20:43, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

I have placed an argument at User:Brews ohare/Speed of light (Example). It does have sources, but I believe they can be ignored for the purposes of this discussion, because all that is needed is velocity = distance/time. The key sources are to the original definitions from the BIPM and NIST. If there is a sourced point that requires some first-principles support, that certainly can be looked at. That discussion page can be used to present comments. Brews ohare (talk) 21:44, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Why don't you submit speed of light to WP:FARWP:FAC and get feedback from uninvolved editors how to improve the article? That might be a good path forward. Jehochman 04:17, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Oh for crying out loud, how many times to these two have to wind up causing massive WP:TLDR situations all over physics article talk pages and ANI? I can't believe these two are here again, and no doubt will once again jam up this page with so much blah blah blahing that they will once again succeed in paralyzing the conversation. Please guys, don't reply to me as I won't be checking back here and don't want you all over my talk page again, I just thought that needed saying. Beeblebrox (talk) 07:20, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Dear Jehochman: Speed of light in no longer an FA, so it is not eligible for WP:FAR. Furthermore, WP:PEER usually doesn't work well with technical science articles. And regardless of what any outside review concludes, Brews would continue his harangue that everyone else is wrong, or doesn't understand the issues, or is following the party line of the cabal of mainstream physics.

So, to all of you, what is the solution for dealing with someone like Brews ohare (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), who continues to push his WP:FRINGE POV, though he denies that characterization; who filibusters at Talk:Speed of light, with 506 edits to that talk page since 1 August,; who repeats the same argument again and again, despite near-unanimous consensus that his point is fallacious and that the sources he cites do not support his position; who harangues other editors who disagree with him on their talk pages—including mine at User talk:Dicklyon (under several headings; Brews started 6 discussion topics on Dick's talk page); who refuses to listen to reason and will not respond directly to others' arguments or questions, except by repeating his own thesis; and who will not desist despite overwhelming consensus against his position, which he dismisses on the ground that nobody else understands or has the "courage" to speak out against mainstream physics. And Speed of light is a replay of Brews's and Tombe's performance at Centrifugal force. Count Iblis's proposal to have even more "very lengthy discussions with Brews again" is, in my opinion, π radians from the correct direction. Isn't more than enough enough? Isn't a topic ban in order, as it was for Tombe? —Finell (Talk) 12:21, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Finell is beating his own drum, which is that Brews ohare is a nut case. That is his thesis, and any relation to WP speed of light is just to serve as fodder for his crusade. He picked up this banner from a few other editors and made himself drummer boy. He has never pointed out specifically any wording or argument that I have used to justify claims that I express a fringe point of view. What I have done is try to get sources and argument to replace ideés fixe and found that no amount of sources or arguments can succeed. It doesn't help that Finell continually picks things to argue about that either have not been said or say something different than he thinks they do. Brews ohare (talk)

Well had someone explained the problem above as directly & succinctly as you just did, Finell, maybe Brews ohare would have been topic banned by now. (I'm just a lowly Admin, so I don't know if I have the power to do it & since I'm involved it might be best if I don't try.) Until someone who has that power & is uninvolved comes along & topic bans him, tell him to stay off of your Talk page. I think you have the right to limit your exposure to an editor who is behaving in that manner -- as does any Wikipedian in good standing. -- llywrch (talk) 18:52, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Direct and succinct, perhaps, but largely fabrication. Brews ohare (talk) 20:10, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

My 2c: I am a completely uninvolved editor w.r.t. the page and Physics wikiproject, but did happen to take a look at the discussion at Talk:Speed of light a few days back. In my opinion, Finell's description of the situation is exactly correct. The problem, is not that Brew's take on the speed of light is incorrect, rather it is a idiosyncratic reading (none of the sources he cites, actually support his position) and he is insisting that it be given (undue) weight in the article, including the lede sentence. Here is the gist of the problem as I see it:

Consider an editor insisting that we need to replace all uses of the term velocity on physics pages by "speed in a given direction" - the replacement wouldn't be wrong, just undesirable, non-standard and, ahem, plain crazy. Analogously, Brew has argued ad nauseam that c = 299 792 458 m/s is not the real speed of light in SI units, it is just the "SI conversion factor" and that this viewpoint should underly the writing of the Speed of light article. Again unjustified, non-standard, and plain crazy.

There is a bit more but hopefully you get the idea. IMO a topic ban or (at a minimum) restriction on talk page posts are long overdue. Abecedare (talk) 13:08, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Abecedare describes a content dispute, and characterizes it as "six of one, half-a-dozen of the other". That is not the case. The basic issue is one of explaining the implications brought about by introducing time-of-transit ratios rather than length ratios for determining lengths. Brews ohare (talk) 19:58, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I think so far my proposed soluton is working ok. On the physics project talk page we have had some excellent input. Unfortunately, I still didn't have too much time yesterday (I'll try to give my own input later today). What we need are more first principles arguments like the one by BenRG, TimothyRias etc. see here.

What we do not need are comments like by Dicklyon saying that:

"Arguing from first principles has no place in wikipedia; we're about reliable sources. What's not OK is for Brews to push an interpretation that he has no source for; he has sources for bits and pieces of info, all of which is acceptable content, I think, but not for his idiosyncratic synthesis from those sources."

Because clearly that doesn't work. You don't get to the bottom of the conflict this way, as I explained here. Count Iblis (talk) 14:52, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

His comment was correct. We can't just throw out WP:V because it's "too hard". We're not all physicists and we shouldn't pretend to be. Evil saltine (talk) 12:57, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

No he was completely wrong. Also, most contributors on that page except he and a few others have studied physics. And it were these people who by arguing on the basis of sources alone caused the discussion to go on and on in circles for a very long time.

WP:V is important for sourcing the final agreed verion of the wiki article. Discussions omn the talk page should not (necessarily) be shot down on the basis of WP:V alone. You have to be able to argue based on the whole body of a physics theory to correctly get to the bottom of what a source really indends to say. Simple quotes can be taken out of context. In the particular case of this discussion, I asked Brews to forget about his source and present his arguments form first principles, so that I can at least get a chance of what he means.

Of course, he can look things up in his source, what I mean is that he cannot say that X is true, because source Y says so. Instead he has to say that X is true and then dexplain why by, perhaps looking up in source Y what the argument is. If Y cites Z, he has to go to Z and in this way reduce the argument to a trivial statment based on the basic theory. So, he has to present the full argument from A to Z on the talk page, right in front of the other editors some of whom are professors, Post-Docs, and Ph.D students. Count Iblis (talk) 14:23, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree that each source should be considered in context of the entire body of knowledge, as long as multiple sources may be used as part of that. I think Dicklyon was mainly responding to your statement "Citing from sources is not allowed." Evil saltine (talk) 14:41, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Count Iblis has a very good point here. Arguing from first principles can straighten things out. More than that, a reliance on sources to the degree that simple syllogisms are unacceptable, and exactly the same wording must be found in a source is ludicrous, but often practiced when blows begin. And add to that the fact that many topics exist where the same exact wording is used with technically different definitions: then a source vs. source exchange gets nowhere.

So far as I can see the main problem with Count Iblis suggestion is that it works only among parties that are interested in getting to the bottom of things. The far more common experience is ego-tripping in which one or several editors want to score points, and will go to any lengths to do so, or form a WP:TAG TEAM. One symptom of these behaviors is the use of pejoratives to describe the opposite views (without any attempt to identify the criticized text, but only broad generalities, mostly incorrect, about what was said) and also vilification of the opposing editors, all known symptoms of WP:PUSH. For some reason this type of cat-calling is so much fun it attracts other editors like flies to dung, and soon they are all enjoying repeating each other, buzzing about, outdoing each other in extravagant invective.

Possibly a stricter enforcement of sticking to the discussion and not using cat-calling could ameliorate this problem. Brews ohare (talk) 20:21, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

"Arguing from first prinicples" is an extraordinarily bad idea. In addition to being an essentially endless time sink (the filibustering mentioned much earlier in this discussion), it almost invariably leads to prohibited synthesis. Article contents, language, and arguments should reflect what reliable sources say on subject, not some wikipedian's argument from first principles. This is essentially Archimedes Plutonium redux. Quale (talk) 05:56, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

You misunderstand. "Arguing from first prinicples" is vital on the talk pages to remove WP:SYNTH and WP:OR from the articles themselves. --Michael C. Price 06:07, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

No, it isn't. Arguing from first principles on talk pages leads to talk pages like Talk:Speed of light. This isn't helpful for improving articles. Quale (talk) 15:58, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes it is, the speed of light talk page proves my point. There was almost no discussion at all based on first principles there. What happened was that both sides were arguing from sources or other authorities (e.g. 1983 definition of speed of light). That caused the discussion to go round in circles for a very long time. Count Iblis (talk) 18:11, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

There was very little discussion of sources. Most of it was just the editors' own reasoning. Evil saltine (talk) 01:14, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

That discussion never went beyond the basic dispute: 1983 definition of the metre that fixes the speed of light and then Brews counters with a reasoning taken form a source. It was never a discussion based on fundamental physics. The discussions there went nowhere.

Doing away with sources will actually restrict how you can argue, because you can only base whatever you say on the laws of physics. That's what we did on the wikiproject physics talk page and within two days or so, the issue has been cleared up at least I now understand what Brews point really is. It doesn't mean that I agree with Brews, or he agrees with me, but I now know that the core of the dispute is metaphysical in nature and closely related to dispute between the three authors of this paper.

So, we could write a paragraph in the article based on that article about the dispute on whether or not the speed of light is really a fundamental constant and within that paragraph there is some room to discuss the issue raised by Brews. Count Iblis (talk) 01:36, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Editors confused about the issue could read the lead for the featured article from a few years ago, which seems to be nice and clear: "The speed of light in a vacuum is exactly equal to 299,792,458 metres per second (approximately 186,282 miles per second). This exact speed is a definition, not a measurement, as the metre is defined in terms of the speed of light and not vice versa." - the current article talks about a fundamental physical constant. Thus the term is ambiguous - is it talking about the real measured speed of light or is it talking about the defined speed of light? Note that because a metre is also a defined unit (and uses how far light travels in a unit of time for that definition) that it is not possible to measure the speed of light in those units. This seems really clear to me, and I have no idea why other editors don't get it. Having said that, Brews needs to STOP, then formulate an idiots guide to why circular definitions don't work for measuring each other, then limit themself to a few edits per day to the talk page. And just not bother responding to people who are not helpful. NotAnIP83:149:66:11 (talk) 00:51, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

NotAnIP83:149:66:11: Thanks. Very sane advice. I wasn't aware of the earlier version, which, as you say, seems very clear and sensible. Brews ohare (talk) 04:38, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

"discuss from first principles"

I have a long experience with Brews and his attempts to "discuss from first principles". Yes, I am trained in physics and understand this stuff, though I'm not a physics expert per se. But Brews's logical reasoning from good starting points has in several cases in the past led to downright errors and to some strange idiosyncratic views. This is what we seek to avoid by WP:V. I thought that Count Iblis's suggestion to argue without sources was quite absurd in light of WP:V; and it would not settle anything, since even people with good smart logic can see things different ways. I have no objection to including all points of view on the topic in the article, if they are verifiable in sources. But Brews make up his own point of view, and does a lot of WP:SYNTH, and that's why he needs to be throttled. Dicklyon (talk) 16:38, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm, how can WP:SYNTH even be an issue if you (temporarily) do away with sources on the talk page and discuss from first principles? If you say that you caught Brews on an occasion when he did this and made a deduction that didn't follow from the agreed first principles, then this actually shows that what I'm saying was working. Anyway, I have seen many examples in wiki science articles were discussing from first principles did setlte disputes.

This lead me to write WP:ESCA. It is also based on the fact that many thermodynamics articles were flawed for many years. There was a lack of discussions on the talk page and certainly no vicious disputes). I'm sure that many students have read the flawed versions and have learned some flawed things (unlearning something that is flawed often takes more effort than learing the correct thing). Count Iblis (talk) 14:07, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Topic ban of Brews ohare

Above, Finell said,

Brews ohare (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), who continues to push his WP:FRINGE POV, though he denies that characterization; who filibusters at Talk:Speed of light, with 506 edits to that talk page since 1 August,; who repeats the same argument again and again, despite near-unanimous consensus that his point is fallacious and that the sources he cites do not support his position; who harangues other editors who disagree with him on their talk pages—including mine at User talk:Dicklyon (under several headings; Brews started 6 discussion topics on Dick's talk page); who refuses to listen to reason and will not respond directly to others' arguments or questions, except by repeating his own thesis; and who will not desist despite overwhelming consensus against his position, which he dismisses on the ground that nobody else understands or has the "courage" to speak out against mainstream physics. And Speed of light is a replay of Brews's and Tombe's performance at Centrifugal force. Count Iblis's proposal to have even more "very lengthy discussions with Brews again" is, in my opinion, π radians from the correct direction. Isn't more than enough enough? Isn't a topic ban in order, as it was for Tombe?

I am going to place a topic ban on Brews ohare from speed of light. This appears to be the consensus. Implementation of this ban will be delayed for a short while so that editors have a chance to comment here. Jehochman 01:57, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

• Support the article / topic ban. This can be mediated going forwards if party cooperates, but direct involvement has failed. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 02:29, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose; Brews' position can not be fairly characterized as a fringe POV. Clearly there are people here that agree with him. Are we going to ban him because the talk page is getting cluttered? That's what archiving is for. Evil saltine (talk) 03:10, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
  • Talk page disruption is a very valid reason for a topic ban. It is possible for an editor or group of editors to post so voluminously that nobody else can conduct a discussion or achieve a consensus. Which people here agree with him? Your opinion is important yo me. In order to gauge it properly, can you specify how familiar you are with this situation? Jehochman 03:14, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
    • User:NotAnIP83:149:66:11 for one; User:David Tombe listed a few others. I have been keeping up on the debate on Talk:Speed of light. Evil saltine (talk) 03:28, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
      • Okay, as I told David Tombe on my talk page, I'm going to wait until tomorrow and see if Count Iblis' attempt at resolution is successful before considering any further action. Obviously if the parties can agree to get along, then that's the best result. Jehochman 03:42, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose; The problem is solved, in the sense that after some discussions with Brews on the wikiproject physics talk page, I have found a way to write what Brews wanted to write, but then in an acceptable way in the article (see my comments above for more details). Now, Brews presumably won't be 100% happy with that, but it is a precise sourced way of expressing his point. So, let's give this a chance. Count Iblis (talk) 03:18, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
  • I am willing to give this a chance as long as nobody else objects strongly to dropping the matter. Jehochman 03:19, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
    • Strong objection Unfortunately, attempts by several editors to appease Brews or reach some kind of compromise only result in a reduction in the quality and accuracy of the article for no real benefit. The prime example of this is that a couple of editors have suggested that we do not mention at the start of the lead that the speed of light has an exact value when expressed in SI units. This is a fact that, as editors of an encyclopedia, we have a duty mention, as is done on Britannica and was done in this article when it was an FA. Other compromises have also been suggested, such as giving an approximate value at the start then giving the exact value later, but all these suggestions have nothing whatsoever with writing a good quality article, they have only the purpose of appeasing one rogue editor. Martin Hogbin (talk) 09:53, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I am OK with Count Iblis attempting this. Brews ohare (talk) 04:33, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

• Support topic ban involving the topic of the speed of light anywhere on Misplaced Pages, except, with the specific advance consent of particular users, for user talk pages or other pages in user space of those consenting users. The small participation here in not representative of the overwhelming consensus (although not unanimity), as a glance at the article's talk page reveals. This is not just a recent problem: Brews has been at this for most of 2009. Further, individual users don't decide what WP:FRINGE is; that is a matter of policy to be decided based on what reliable sources have published. A topic ban is consistent with Count Iblis's proposed solution. If Count Iblis wants to discuss Brews's points with him and to bring to the article or talk page what Count Iblis is willing to stand behind, with the support of reliable sources, he may do that despite a topic ban on Brews. However, Brews's persistent, long term, tendentious behavior both on the talk page and in editing the article and on users' talk pages is sufficient to require a topic ban to end the months of drama. I " strongly to dropping the matter". —Finell (Talk) 06:50, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose - ohare is verbose and can be rude in the way he challenges some editors but the rudeness arises out of frustration that others do not understand or agree with his point ... however, he does have a point (I won't go into it here because this is not the place to discuss content). Ohare is an enthusiastic, good-faith editor who uses sources ... isn't that what wp needs? The main reason this has dragged on is that Hogbin and others express their disagreement in a somewhat demeaning and challenging way (crackpot physics etc) but continue to respond. If ohare is so wrong, why on earth do they not ignore his talk page expositions (and they are a tad repetitive) or respond with something short like "This is against consensus" reverting his edits when they are wrong ... or maybe building on his edits when they are only somewhat wrong. Ohare could, of course, help himself if he changed his editing style so that he used the preview button more and didn't repeat himself as much and, above all, stuck to content rather than personalities. My suggestion is that a completely independent admin offers to mentor ohare but please not a topic ban, it may be that topic banning Tombe was a mistake, do not repeat it here. Ohare has a lot to offer; learn to live with his idiosyncracies and wp will be the better. Abtract (talk) 08:10, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

• Support This is the first time that I have voted for the ban of an editor on WP but in this case I see no alternative. Contrary to Abtract's suggestion above and as the record will show, I have spent nearly a year discussing this issue and a related one with Brews and have even set up a page in my user space for this purpose. The real problem is not just Brews' persistent edits (just look at the history of the page) but the effect that it has on other editors. New editors who come to the page naturally want to help and promote the spirit of compromise, this is how WP works, but in this case it just starts the repeat of a old discussion and, worse still, a flurry of misguided attempts to compromise in the article itself. Martin Hogbin (talk) 10:13, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Problem solved

As I explained above, the discussions with Brews on the wikiproject physics talk page have more or less solved the problem. I'm not sure why Jehochman chooses to quote an out of date posting where my proposal to start discussions was criticized when a few days later it did have results. Also the so-called "consensus" includes the opinion of non-experts who were responsible for the mess on the speed of light talk page in the first place. Count Iblis (talk) 02:30, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I have not placed the topic ban yet. If the editor and the other interested parties all agree that matters are resolved, then obviously the ban would not be needed. Can the relevant parties confirm what Count Iblis says here? Jehochman 03:02, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I support the topic ban. Brews is sill adding his 'explanations' and 'clarifications' to the article all based on his personal opinions on the subject. Attempts at compromise do nothing but reduce the quality of the article. See my comments on this same topic above. Martin Hogbin (talk) 09:58, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I will vote neither to support nor oppose a topic ban, but the problem is very far from solved. Just to give a hint of the tendentious editing and incivility of Brews ohare, here are a few diffs. This is a small subset, and the quotes don't even get into the extreme ownership issues in the article & article talk page that have been ongoing for months now.

• "probably four or five editors who cannot tie their shoes steamrollering a flatly incorrect statement into the intro."
• "There is no consideration for sources, logic or whatever: you just have to round up a lynch mob and away it goes."
• "simply subject to sneers from the civilized persons pretending to be editors."
• "dealing with completely intransigent editors suffering from both idée fixe and groupthink, and no concept of sources."
• "It's probably tendentious of me, but I attribute this to a lack of desire to really engage the issues (and the brain) and instead a preference for adrenalin and artful put-down."
• "A number of them are incapable of thought, and the rest are uninterested"
• "It is a really disgusting display of mob rule. The only reason to remove it is vendetta, I am afraid."
• "It was a bit of an eye-opener to find that some cannot understand plain English, and that some want only to attack me personally, nevermind the topic."

Combined with the complete lack of respect for others in this project as shown above, Brews ohare's editing practices on talk pages are awful. He seems unable or unwilling to use the preview button much at all, adding to the problems. Also, he far too often buries the content and signature of another editor, as is evident here, here, and here. Whether he simply doesn't know that obscuring others' comments in this manner is extremely rude or he just doesn't care, I have no idea. Certainly in the case of the last diff, it might have made it harder for a reader of this board to notice and check the diff where I claimed a personal attack.

Then there is the beauty on the article talk page that I undid here where Brews ohare moved my comment to be sandwiched between two of his, given the thoroughly dishonest impression that I was responding to him. The fact of the matter is not only did I not, but the last thing I intended to do was directly respond to this out-of-control tendentious editor. Tim Shuba (talk) 06:08, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Mr Shuba, I think this is a lynchmob. I have seen a number of uncivil remarks and in fact most of the remarks made in opposition to Mr brews Ohare seemed to me to be mean and nasty, yet you are going to ban him. In my view he is the victim. This is in my opinion why wikipedia is a waste of time and users will never get a good experience here. You dont apply your own rules to yourselves but to people you want to be rid of because they seek to improve wikipedia instead of keeping it as mediocre as possible. You guys call people cranks and other nasty names, and nothing is done about those people. So I simply think wikipedia and the entire process is a fraud. When you ban editors it only demonstrates why wikipedia is failed enterprise.72.64.33.139 (talk) 12:09, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

The comments linked by Tim Shuba are from particular individual's Talk pages, not from Speed of light, and were expressions of my frustration experienced at Speed of light in trying to seek counsel from these individuals. They were not on the Speed of light because they were pertinent to my difficulties, not to that article. If Tim Shuba wishes to troll for insults, that is his business. I do not see why conversation between editors about the state of things should be subject to article Talk page guidelines.

On the other hand Tim Shuba's reversion of comments by me on Speed of light are a clear violation of article Talk page rules of engagement.

Numerous violations of WP policy in the form of refusal to address content, personal attacks, reversions without comment, etc. have been tolerated by User:Jehochman in the case of Finell, Shuba, Hogbin & others on Speed of light. I have not done that. Why single me out for administrative action?

The claim is made that I make too many edits on the Talk page. All or almost all of these are response to comments. They are not more numerous than the comments responded to. A simple count of my contributions exceeds that number only because I have edited my responses to fix typos or reword things more carefully. Without those corrections, I have only as many contributions as response to others dictated.

What should be done to fix matters at Speed of light is to enforce the WP requirements that discussion should implement WP:NPA and discussions should address content specifically (not in vague philosophical generalities), not address contributors' personalities WP:Talk. Brews ohare (talk) 13:45, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Why a topic ban is a bad idea

I planned to write this as a comment above, but my text was a bit large and I needed to make it even larger to prevent it from being confusing. It is more of a general argument about when topic bans would be appropriate and why in this case it isn't. For argument's sake, I assume in my argument that Brews is wrong about the text he wants to edit in. My argument does not depend on the actual dispute itself, simply on the way it has been handled.

So, let's then analyze what really is going on. You have, say, 6 regular editors and one of them is the "odd one out", in this case Brews, who has a different view, uses the talk page a lot to put his view forward. Then, given that this is the typical situation in so many other wiki articles (typically not physics or math articles, but go to any article on some political subject, and you'll see what I'm talking about), I don't see how the 5 would have to make such huge concessions to the text as Martin claims above. The truth is that there are disputes between the 5 as well and Brews actually does have some limited support for his views (e.g. User Abstract supports Brews on some points and Dicklyon does not agree with Martin on everything). This makes it impossible for the 5 to make a stand against Brews. But it is Brews who gets blamed for the mess on the talk page by the editors who are tired of the discussions.

I think a topic ban is only appropriate when the 5 would indeed agree on some text for the article and be able to stick to it and Brews were to constantly revert that text. Or, in case of talk page disruptions, the 5 should first agree by consensus that discussions on certain topics are not productive and will be reverted. This is what the editors on the Global Warming page have done. Occasionally some regular skeptic raises a topic (but usually it is an anon) which is reverted. If Brews were to edit the talk page against the clear consensus, then the first time that happens his edits could be reverted, the second time an Admin could be contacted to give him a warning, the third time he could be brought here and then a topic ban could be discussed.

Thing is that Brews' discussions on the talk page were, as of yesterday, tolerated. Thus there are no reasonable grounds for some of the involved editors to come here and demand a topic ban. If we go down this road, then that would make it more difficult to be involved in topics where the roles are reversed. Can I behave like Brews on the Homeopathy page, which is edited primarily by people who believe in Homeopathy and who reject the validity of scientific arguments that show that Homeopathy is nonsense?

If I never engage in personal attacks, but simply very patiently start to argue my point over and over again, each time trying to find another source, another scientific argument, but to all the others my arguments seems to be the same every time (because I essentially argue for the same position and then, if you are tired about me starting to argue my favorite topic, you won't take notice of a slight change), will I be topic banned too when a few of my opponents come here to complain about me? Count Iblis (talk) 13:54, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Count Iblis: Your final paragraph is a completely accurate description. Thank you. The answer to your question about your being banned is: yes, absolutely. There has been no even-handed administration of justice here at all. There has been no examination of the validity for complaints either, just counts. D Tombe was banned in exactly the same way that I will ultimately be banned, and shortly afterward, no doubt, Abstract. There is a pattern here. Brews ohare (talk) 14:04, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Is this about the "c₀ as defined in m/s is a tautology" that is current on the talk page? I think that Brews ohare is splitting hairs in a way that may be inappropriate in some social settings, but seems to be quite appropriate and apropos for an encyclopedia. ;-)

Perhaps this is only the tail end of a longer conversation that I'm missing?

As a relevant side note: I see that Brews ohare has submitted a large number figures in related fields; and those figures appear to have been employed and accepted by consensus; so I think that Brews ohare is likely to know what (s)he is talking about. --Kim Bruning (talk) 12:25, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Request for arbitration

I think this dispute is more than we can handle here. There are signs of behavioral issues that will preclude resolution by mediation. I'm hereby lifting my topic ban on David Tombe, and requesting that the parties seek arbitration. We need a panel of esteemed editors to review the matter fully and decide what needs to be done. Jehochman 14:26, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes please. Martin Hogbin (talk) 16:23, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Part of the problem is that Brews is not alone in being the cause of trouble. Same with David Tombe. I've argued before that the two of them should be blocked or topic banned, when they were fighting each other in the centrifugal force articles. Now they're relatively aligned, and Martin Hogbin takes the other end of the field. None of them work toward compromise or consensus, and they torpedo every effort to settle on a way fairly incorporate all points of view. At speed of light, I think you'd have to topic ban the three of them to get that article to start to re-converge. An arbitration would have to include all of us, and would be a long painful mess, but it's probably what we need. Dicklyon (talk) 16:30, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Jackbooted Thug

On July 12, 2007 User:MatthewSMaynard made Jackbooted Thug, and made it a redirect to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, diff. Thanks to the alertness of User:IvoShandor, I was made aware of this and have changed it to a redirect to Thug for now. I checked the 3 most recent months for hits on this title. The most were 27 in June 2009, while July and August had only 11 and 12 hits each.

My initial thought was just to delete the page altogether, but I thought I would wait and ask here for consensus. It does not get a lot of hits, but it does get some, so perhaps it should stay as a (protected?) redirect.

I am also wondering what sort of actions beyond a warning (if any) should be taken with regards to User:MatthewSMaynard. After I post this I intend to leave a note on his talk page directing him here. A quick check of his recent contributions shows he is not very active. I have not gone through all of his contributions to look for more nonsense like this, or his talk page history to see if he has received warnings.

Your thoughts? Ruhrfisch _><>° 13:20, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

The user ID was created almost exactly 4 years ago. The "jackbooted thug" redirect was created in summer of 2007, as you noted, so a warning about it seems a tad late. The user has had a grand total of 2 edits in 2009, so either he's mostly editing under a different user, or is just an occasional drive-by. He's obviously a gun lover, which his latest edit indicates, and hence I don't think it's a compromised account. But it bears watching. A warning at this point would be a more generic warning to watch out for POV-pushing. Baseball Bugs carrots 13:36, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like a valid redirect using a valid search term. In the firearms community, the BATFE is almost exclusively referred to as a group of jackbooted thugs. This is a notable term as its use in a fundraising letter from the NRA caused President George H.W. Bush to resign his membership in that organization. Why does the redirect so trouble you? L0b0t (talk) 13:32, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

It's a POV-pushing term. Can you demonstrate that its origin and sole usage is by the NRA? Baseball Bugs carrots 13:36, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

(ec w/ Bugs) There's likely an article to be had on this. Meanwhile, if sources can be found to support the redirect and the article itself notes the term, it can stay. Gwen Gale (talk) 13:37, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Just checked and neither the word "jackboot" nor the word "thug" appears in the current version of the ATF article. Ruhrfisch _><>° 13:40, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

To put the jackboot on the other foot, how about if we create a redirect for Redneck gun-freak to National Rifle Association? Baseball Bugs carrots 13:41, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Likewise, if the sources are to be had, which is to say, if the term has become widely noted as popular jargon for members of the NRA (or whatever), it can be done. Gwen Gale (talk) 13:45, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I understand the point of the "Neutrality of redirects" section at WP:REDIRECT, but at some point there is a line drawn between non-neutral terms to direct users to article and outright pejorative attacks. "Jackbooted thugs" doesn't seem to be specific enough to any one group or movement, it is more commonly used to refer to any group, government, organization, etc...perceived as heavy-handed or oppressive. Tarc (talk) 14:03, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Sources would at least need to show that such a term was widely used/noted in published coverage of the topic to which it was redirected, such as Dittohead. Gwen Gale (talk) 14:26, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

(ec)Bugs, your redirect sounds fine too except for the obvious fact that most NRA members are not southern or even English farmers in Southern Africa (redneck comes to us from rooinek, a Boer slur against the English) Having several friends & family members who are FFL holders, I can assure you that the BATFE (esp. in the 70s-80s) acted like stormtroopers, showing up at one's house in the wee small hours, handcuffing license holders to chairs while agents conducted inventories of license holder's firearms. This situation got so bad that Reagan made a campaign promise to do away with the BATFE (he broke his word). Then in 1995 (IIRCC), Wayne LaPierre sent out a letter in which he referred to BATFE agents as "Jackbooted government thugs." Now, as far as I an tell, the term jackbooted thugs has been used since (at least) the 1960s to refer to oppressive appendages of officialdom so the term itself could use a discrete article or at the very least a mention in BATFE, Thug, Jackboot, etc. Cheers. L0b0t (talk) 14:10, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

The incident is actually already covered at Jackboot so I will change the redirect to point to that article. L0b0t (talk) 14:24, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

To redirect such an obviously biased and inflammatory term to a government agency is nakedly obvious POV-pushing. Some of us consider the NRA itself to be the "jackbooted thugs", but that's another story. Baseball Bugs carrots 15:47, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps we could balance things out out redirecting Floyd R. Turbo to the NRA. PhGustaf (talk) 16:13, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Freakin' A, Bubba. I was also thinking maybe we should redirect "Treason" to "Confederate States of America". Baseball Bugs carrots 16:24, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I was going to redirect Open Dates in October to Wrigley Field. --Smashville 18:26, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

If it is fair and proper to create helpful redirects to perpetuate rhetorical hyperbole, there are a number of helpful lists out there: List of ethnic group names used as insults, List of ethnic slurs by ethnicity, List of religious slurs, etc. The subject redirect may be entertaining in some sense, but really, should WP be selling woof tickets? Steveozone (talk) 22:09, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Man. I was all like, "what the hell is a woof ticket?" when damned if woof ticket isn't a blue link. Obviously there are gaps in my education. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 23:53, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Aye, thar be some gems out there. If you didn't know it, but get it having read it (before writing it), ain't Misplaced Pages grand? Steveozone (talk) 03:30, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

This whole episode is pretty silly. A quick Google News Archive search will show the RS references to the term from 1995, even if the memories of many here may not extend back that far. L0b0t's quite correct: it was a notable incident that should be covered somewhere, although covering it in Jackboot, as opposed to the NRA and/or ATF articles seems counterintuitive. Jclemens (talk) 05:31, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Can I just point out for those who are not members of the US gun/anti-gun lobbies - jackbooted thugs in most of Europe is/was a term used to describe German soldiers/the German army in both world wars (jackboots being worn by the German army in both WWs, and thugs relating to such behaviours as the shooting of Edith Cavell, which didn't go down too well). This is the reason the term 'jackbooted' is offensive in the first place. Elen of the Roads (talk) 20:03, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely. I'd say only in the US will 'jackbooted thugs' make people think of the NRA/ATF whatever. Dougweller (talk) 20:40, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

The redirect to Jackboot seems absolutely the right one to me, and the article, as well as discussing the article of footwear, should (as it does) cover the social and cultural references which have gathered around it. Elen of the Roads (talk) 21:57, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, I find it hard to believe that anyone would defend the original redirect when it is such obvious POV pushing, nice work on this one everyone.--IvoShandor (talk) 04:04, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Persian Empire

I am echoing what Georgewilliamherbert has said and laying the ground rules. Once the protection for the page ends on September 11, any person that restores the article or replaces the redirect will be blocked at increasing increments as is standard practice for edit warring until such time that a clear consensus has emerged. Any editor who disputes these ground rules please feel free to get the blocking policy changed. If you cannot get the hint after the page being protected three times and cannot come to an agreement and cannot be mature enough to simply leave the article be, then its clear that protection is not helping. Start working together. Thank you.

Seddσn 01:13, 5 September 2009}}

This is a blanking of a Top priority and High priority article with a personal attack in it. If you look through the history, a group of five editors, Alefbe, Kurdo777, Dbachmann, Folantin, and Fullstop, have been pushing for a removal of the Persian Empire page in various ways.

The first time this was undone was by Wizardman. This was reverted by Folantin, claiming that there was consensus. The page, before her revert, reveals Dbachmann at 14:05, 15 August 2009 stating that the page should merely be renamed, R'n'B at 09:26, 21 August 2009 saying that "rather, there is a historical succession of different states within the same (or similar) territory and culture that have a clear relationship to each other" and arguing for the page to be met with a better summary style but kept. Then there is BritishWatcher at 14:33, 21 August 2009 saying that the page should not be blanked.

It is clear from the talk page that there was no consensus at the time. Afterward, myself and others, including Shoemaker's Holiday, NuclearWarfare, Xashaiar, Warrior4321, Dekimasu, etc (at least 8 in total) stating that the page should not be turned into a disambiguation page or a redirect. There have only been five editors claiming that it should be, and they are constantly edit warring and fighting against consensus. Folantin, Fullstop, and Dbachmann have a very long history of interacting and working together to push the same views on multiple pages as you can see here and on their talk pages. Alefbe has a long history of pushing his POV at various Iranian related sites and Kurdo777 is a Kurdish POV pusher with an anti-Iranian agenda that has been criticized for using sock puppets and violating our policies on content many times before. It seems clear that these users would rather edit war and attack others in order to push their POV than actually deal with consensus. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:08, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

ANI is not about content dispute. Alefbe (talk) 16:14, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Nonetheless, Ottava's claims are clear examples of Ad hominem and should be addressed according to the Misplaced Pages policy (this is the only part of the dispute which is relevant to the admins). Alefbe (talk) 16:17, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Ottava is just trolling and should be sanctioned. He has no interest in Iranian history whatsoever. He's just there to disrupt because he has a grudge against me over his failed RfA (this can be documented with evidence). The one feature members of the "cabal" he is alleging have in common is that they have all spent a lot of time contributing to articles on the history of Iran. The same cannot be said about some of Ottava's "supporters". It's time for a ban on OR for his constant violations of WP:POINT.--Folantin (talk) 16:21, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but did you honestly suggest that you have the right to WP:OWN a page and tag team simply because you work in an area a lot? Furthermore, you edit warred to promote this POV on a lot of pages I am involved in. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:26, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

No, Ottava, you have a grudge against me. That's the only reason you are there. Articles are generally best edited by those with some knowledge of the subject. You have demonstrated a woeful grasp of the most basic facts of Iranian history. --Folantin (talk) 16:31, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

WP:OWN applies to groups of editors just as much as it does individuals -- even people who in your view have a "woeful grasp of the most basic facts of Iranian history" are allowed to edit there by default. Ottava and others have the same right to edit such pages as you. — neuro 16:34, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I didn't realise stalking was allowed now. --Folantin (talk) 16:38, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

This is a page that I have seriously edited for a long time. As can be seen, Folantin came onto the page at 15:45, 21 August 2009 and altered the title away from "Persian Empire" on a link with an edit summary (→1730s: sp. per Misplaced Pages article. Persia=Iran). It was reverted after Wizardman restored the Persian Empire page back to what it was. She reverted again with an attack on my understanding of 18th century history. As you can see, there is no "stalking" going on. However, Folantin does have a history of going to pages I edit and disrupting. This can be seen at Ludovico Ariosto. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:42, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I'd been editing articles relating to Ariosto long before you turned up, e.g. --Folantin (talk) 16:48, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Funny how you never showed active interest until after I was expanding the page. Making one little change is far different than attacking someone who was fixing the page. Hell, you never showed any actual active interest on that page besides some of the most minor changes. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:57, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I have provided more than enough sources on the talk page verifying my statements there, and if Arbitrators or anyone else in high status would like to query me on my academic background and possible post-graduate classes I may have taken in the area of the topic to verify that it is not just some "random" subject for me or something I don't know about, they can feel free to email me. Most Arbitrators should already know my personal information, but I can forward more information verifying this in particular. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:39, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

No you haven't, because there's no way the following statements (a brief sample of your gaffes) can be justified: "The Persian Empire was the series of dynasties following 600 AD." Again: "The "Persian Empire" refers to a series of dynasties between 600 AD until the Ottoman Conquest. No more, no less." And when did the "Ottoman conquest" occur? In 1800 AD apparently: "Furthermore, as I stated above, the Persian Empire was the 30 or so dynasties between 600 AD and 1800 AD." --Folantin (talk) 16:45, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I provided many sources verifying my claims. But ANI is not about content, it is about actions and edit warring. Please stay on topic instead of trying to derail this like you did with any discussion on the Persian Empire talk page. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:57, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Constant page blanking and edit warring is not a content dispute. It is a major policy violation. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:24, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

all there is to say about this is that Ottava is trolling the page (and now forum-shopping about it), but is about to hit 3RR, which is why we have 3RR, so the problem is going to take care of itself. Nothing to see here. --dab (𒁳) 17:05, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

• Why would redirecting the article Persian Empire to an article on the "first" Persian Empire make sense? And secondly, why was the edit summary "reverting unproductive edit from unproductive editor" used? ChildofMidnight (talk) 17:06, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Clear evidence of Ottava's trolling. When I pointed out the use of "Persian Empire" in the current version of Encylopaedia Britannica, he stated, "Britannica is not a reliable source. It is a tertiary source. We use secondary sources." . A few days later he started a section discussing how he was going to use the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica as a source. So the up-to-date Britannica and Encyclopaedia Iranica (dismissed by Ottava as "not a reliable source") are irrelevant, but a 100-year-old work is worthy of consideration? Ottava doesn't actually care what he says. He just wants to create drama and get his way no matter how much time he wastes.--Folantin (talk) 17:09, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

• The 1911 source was used to point out a pre-modern source. There is a major difference from using an old source to show how the term used to be used extended back into history and a modern source in order to claim how the source -only- should be used. Furthermore, why do you keep trying to dodge from the edit warring aspect and the lack of consensus for your version while edit warring to keep it in? Ottava Rima (talk) 17:13, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Evidence of OR's grudge against me. Significantly his very first edit to Talk:Persian Empire was to accuse me of "disruption" (even though I've edited at least a dozen articles on Iranian history) and call for me to be banned : "However, that is what happens when you have such people that are here only to cause disruptions. A block should probably allow for people who actually care about Misplaced Pages to put a page in place". This is clear violation of WP:TALK, yet it is a threat Ottava will repeat many, many other times in the course of the debate. (of course, he's made worse threats during the course of the same debate, some of which have ended up on ANI ). --Folantin (talk) 17:33, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Since when do we not consider the reversion of an Arbitrator in good standing, Wizardman, as disruptive when he makes it clear that there was no justification for a large scale blanking of a page on the talk page? Folantin, it is clear that your behavior was highly inappropriate and no amount of deflections or the rest can hide from that. You edit warred a vandalistic act against an Arbitrator in good standing without even having the decency to try and talk about it first. That is highly inappropriate conduct. Ottava Rima (talk) 17:44, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Do you actually understand Misplaced Pages? Arbitrators have no more authority over content than anyone else. Wizardman was not there as part of ArbCom, he was there as a private editor. He made no contribution to the discussion on the talk page before he reverted me. I asked him to do so because the article was undergoing an overhaul . I haven't edited the page itself in two weeks so your constant demands to have me "banned for edit-warring" are simply evidence of your harrassment of me. --Folantin (talk) 17:53, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

The point is this - you can bash me all you want, but you have no grounds to claim that Wizardman was acting inappropriately. As such, you have no argument to justify your actions. Ottava Rima (talk) 18:04, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Ottava -- would you please listen to me if I make a suggestion? -- When you encounter someone who disagrees with you on something, large or small, content-related or policy-related or anything else, would you please strive to treat the editor with whom you disagree with dignity, respect, and decency, in accordance with the Golden Rule and, I believe, our policies? I see you shrilly calling for various people in the last couple weeks to be banned, and in one case you threatened to call someone's school because you'd "discovered the new Essjay" -- please, please, please dial it back before something bad happens? Do you really want other people to treat you that way? Thank you, Antandrus (talk) 18:09, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Antandrus, you are not a neutral party, so please don't pretend to be one. Your characterization as things like "shrilly" do poorly for you, as they don't represent anything close to the truth. And "threatened to call", that is a fine way of completely misrepresenting a situation. What I want is for people like you to stop violating our rules, making false accusations, and making up things simply to defend a friend. It is 100% obvious that the five listed were edit warring in a blanking of a top priority page. Your ignoring of that is telling. You and Folantin and anyone else can try and hide from the issue, but it is blatant to any objective observer. Ottava Rima (talk) 18:28, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

What's blatantly obvious is that you are prepared to disrupt Misplaced Pages in the pursuit of your own grudges. It's obvious it's personal. Here are a selection of your comments about me: "You are a troll and you should have been banned long ago." . "Folantin, I am going to call you a liar" . Bizarre accusations that I am a Georgian show you are desperate to smear me with anything that comes to hand --Folantin (talk) 18:36, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

If that is true, are you saying that Wizardman is now under my payroll and that the page was originally created just to spite you, and that his revert was to do the same too? Once again, you are trying to hide from the fact that you are a disrupted user that edit warred on that page and that you have a history of doing that to articles at the fringe noticeboard and elsewhere. If anyone needs proof to see how badly Folantin tries to manipulate things, check the claim that I said that Folantin was a Georgia ("accusations that I am a Georgian") with the link. I never said anything about their ethnicity. Ottava Rima (talk) 18:46, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

(We will return to The Young and the Relentless after this commercial break)

Geez...no kidding...I honestly don't even know where to begin here. Help! --Smashville 19:14, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

How about blocking Ottava Rima for a short period of time for personal attacks and disruptive editing? --Akhilleus (talk) 19:43, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I would support this based on the other events of the last 24 hours, alongside this. Jeni 19:46, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Give it a rest, Jeni. Tan | 39 19:48, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I am perfectly entitled to state my opinion. And I have expressed it in a reasonable and civil manner. Are you trying to censor me? Jeni 19:51, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

No, I am not trying to censor you. Perhaps censure you for jumping in to a discussion that you weren't involved in and waving your "I support a ban!" flag about an editor with who you clearly have a grudge. It's possible to be technically civil but ultimately disruptive. Tan | 39 20:01, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Please don't suggest I have a grudge without providing evidence to back it up. Its only reasonable I notice this discussion, after all, ANI is still on my watchlist from the previous Ottava thread. This just hammers home the need for action. Jeni 20:04, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Akhilleus has a long history of tag teaming with Folantin, which can be seen at Talk:Ludovico Ariosto. Ottava Rima (talk) 20:15, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

And the smears keep coming. --Folantin (talk) 20:17, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Are you claiming that he did not edit that page? Are you claiming that you two have not worked on many topics together? That you two haven't spent a lot of time at the fringe noticeboard together? Ottava Rima (talk) 20:22, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

How utterly predictable. Indeed, some of Folantin's interests overlap with mine, and we've edited some of the same pages (I bet you could count the number of overlapping _articles_ on your fingers, though). Exactly how does this prevent me from forming an opinion that Ottava Rima is a tendentious editor whose personal attacks are irritating and block-worthy? --Akhilleus (talk) 00:19, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Some? You sure do have an odd definition of the word. It doesn't take much to see that glancing at most of those pages show a lot of constant backing each other up, answering for the other, etc. You aren't a neutral editor in any kind of capacity but quite the opposite. Ottava Rima (talk) 00:33, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Here is definitely a good one to see how neutral you are to the users here. Or this one, another fine meat puppeting. Or this, surprising how so many of the same names keep appearing. Another. I can go on. There are many wonderful ones and this hasn't even touched the noticeboards that have a lot of reinforcement. Ottava Rima (talk) 00:38, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I think it's awesome that statements like "you aren't a neutral editor in any kind of capacity but quite the opposite" and unsupported accusations of meatpuppetry aren't covered by WP:NPA. --Akhilleus (talk) 00:50, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

"and unsupported accusations" I'm sorry, but those links are clearly visible for everyone to see. That means that you are lying or you failed to see what you were responding to. Either way, your comments are inappropriate and make you look very poor especially when the links show that you have acted highly inappropriately for a very long time. Ottava Rima (talk) 01:02, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Ah, and now an accusation that I'm a liar. Thanks for maintaining the elevated tone of discourse around here. Pray tell, what highly inappropriate behavior are those links supposed to show, exactly?

Also, if you're going to accuse me of failing to see what I was responding to, you might want to note that I said "I bet you could count the number of overlapping _articles_ on your fingers". Now, your little "wikistalk" page might show that Folantin and I have more _articles_ in common than I thought, but I don't see how our editing of Athena, Cadmus, Orpheus, and Corinth is problematic. I'm sure you'll come up with something, though!

And I repeat, even if I share editing interests with Folantin and Dbachmann, how does that prevent me from coming to my own independent opinion that you're a tendentious editor who engages in unjustified personal attacks? --Akhilleus (talk) 01:12, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

The point

The matter has been ignored: 1. the Persian Empire page is still blanked as a redirect against consensus. 2. this has been edit warred back in against consensus. 3. the page was protected many times because of this edit warring removal of the page. The five users listed above are intent on edit warring to their version no matter what and not discussing how to actually improve the page. The page is a top priority and high priority page, and overwhelming consensus is that an encyclopedia article is needed on the term. WP:VAND makes it clear that blanking is the large removal of content from an article without discussion and going against our policies. This fits and these individuals are edit warring in a vandalistic action. This must be addressed by admin. I would recommend either blocks or probation against people blanking the page under threat of a block if they do. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:19, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

No the matter is your appalling behaviour once again. Since ANI is the chocolate teapot of Misplaced Pages noticeboards, I imagine this will end up being marked "resolved" with no action taken against you because you seem to have carte blanche to behave however you like. ("The page is a top priority and high priority page." Um ,it's been marked for clean-up and unverified claims since March. You only saw it as a "priority" once you noticed me editing there). --Folantin (talk) 19:28, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

So, I made you, Dbachmann, and Alefbe edit war and blank a page against both consensus and our policies? Ottava Rima (talk) 19:30, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I went ahead and undid it, a sourced article of a well known empire shouldn't be redirected. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. (Uninvolved editor who just noticed this) --Rockstone (talk) 19:56, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

You really should have read the arguments on the talk page before you did that. The whole page is simply a content fork of History of Iran. Far from being "well sourced", it contains multiple errors. --Folantin (talk) 19:58, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Folantin's claim that this is a content fork or copy of the History of Iran page has been pointed out as 100% wrong, since it covers material from History of Afghanistan and many, many other pages that the History of Iran page does not. Ottava Rima (talk) 20:08, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

@Rockstone35: ANI is not the right place for discussing the content of pages. For that, you should go to their talk page and read arguments of others and then elaborate your justification there (before doing any drastic edit in that page). Alefbe (talk) 20:09, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

It should be noted that Alefbe just edit warred on the page again. Ottava Rima (talk) 20:15, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Conflation of two issues

There are two issues we need to seperate here, because the matter is getting confused...

1. Should the article "Persian Empire" be redirected to the Acheaminid Empire, or should the old article which discusses all various empires which have occupied the area of modern Iran be there instead.
2. Has Ottava Rima engaged in personal attacks and incivility

I posit that the main problem here is that, from what I can tell by looking at the talk pages, and most importantly per WP:PRESERVE, there does not appear to be a compelling consensus for replacing the old content with a redirect, and without preserving the old content in another article. If the Persian Empire title SHOULD be a redirect, then something needs to be decided with how to handle the content that was removed in making it a redirect. Thus, the gist of Ottava Rima's objection is compelling; the redirect does appear to be a problem. AND YET, I find that Ottava Rima's behavior here is a major problem; in that this user is clearly engaging in unaccepatable personal attacks in trying to defend their position. Calling other editors names like "POV pusher" is unacceptable. In conclusion, the article should probably not be a redirect, thus I agree with Ottava Rima, and yet I find his behavior to be reprehensible in the way that the issue has been handled. --Jayron32 19:52, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

The content is available elsewhere at History of Iran, Achaemenid Empire etc. etc. --Folantin (talk) 20:01, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I kinda see that. Let me change my proposal then; the Persian Empire should probably redirect to History of Iran, since THAT article is the one that covers all of the various states that have been known to history as "Persia". I think the major concern, since WP:PRESERVE does not seem to be as big of a problem as I thought, is the singling out of a single Iranian empire to be the target of the "Persian Empire" redirect. Why not just redirect the article which describes ALL empires in the area of Modern Iran, and let the reader figure out which "empire" they want. Now that I see that most of the content WAS redundant, I can see where a redirect would be a good idea, but the target appears to be a problem. --Jayron32 20:07, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

As pointed out above, the Persian Empire deals with the History of Afghanistan and other pages and cannot be redirected to the History of Iran nor is the content the same. Folantin's claiming of this over and over has been proven as incorrect. Ottava Rima (talk) 20:13, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

"n that this user is clearly engaging in unaccepatable personal attacks" NPA says that a personal attack is only one that does not focus on action. POV pushing by definition is an action. POV pushing is -exactly- what happened, as edit warring and blanking of pages based on a POV that is not accepted by consensus is POV pushing. Jayron, please read WP:NPA. Ottava Rima (talk) 20:12, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

NPA states clearly to comment on the content, not the person. If you feel that the content that they propose violates WP:NPOV, then state "This content violates NPOV and should not be the way it is". When you call someone a name, then you cross the line, regardless of what that name is. You will stop calling people names, which is a clear violation of WP:NPA. You can raise problems without resorting to name calling. --Jayron32 20:52, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Jayron, commenting on the person would be calling them ugly or stupid. Saying they are pushing a POV is describing an -action-, not a physical attribute. And calling someone a name? Please, there is no way you can stretch that one, as there is even a major essay about calling something exactly what it is when they are violating a rule. I think you need to refresh on your policy understanding. Ottava Rima (talk) 21:14, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Wiki-lawyering and policy wonkery. Your smears (e.g. the ludicrous allegations about my membership of Project:Georgia) are clear evidence you came to that page as part of a personal vendetta. --Folantin (talk) 21:17, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

(Reply to Ottava). Essays, even popular ones, have no bearing on the application of policy. NPA, which is policy, clearly states "These examples are not exhaustive. Insulting or disparaging an editor is a personal attack regardless of the manner in which it is done. When in doubt, comment on the article's content without referring to its contributor at all." (bolding mine). Saying User:X is a <BLANK> is never acceptable, regardless of what <BLANK> is. Just because you do not want your actions to be personal attacks does not mean they are not. Insofar as refering to other editors as "POV-pushers" will only escalate conflict, and serves no purpose except to disparge the people who hold a different opinion from you, this action is not good. Repeatedly claiming over-and-over that such behavior is perfectly OK does not make it so. --Jayron32 21:23, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Jayron, did I say essays had weight? I did not. So why would you mention such a thing? It is quite simply that NPA makes it 100% clear that it does not deal with what you claim it does. NPA requires an attack on their -non- Misplaced Pages self. Characterizing -any- on Wiki action is not a personal attack. To claim otherwise is so absurd that if you honestly believed the above to be true, I would ask you to risk your admin status by putting yourself up for recall and state that you believe the above to be what NPA stands for. You will be opposed so fast and removed from admin status that Misplaced Pages would probably be better to have one less admin with such a poor grasp of the policy. Ottava Rima (talk) 21:43, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I was getting ready to do it, but looks like Tan got to it first...the page has been protected while we settle this here. --Smashville 20:24, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Proposed: Topic ban

The page is protected again. I propose a topic ban for the editors involved in the edit-warring and most contentious elements of the discussion, for a period of one month, enforced by block if necessary. These editors are Folantin, Ottava Rima, Alefbe and Dbachmann. The pages effected are Persian Empire and Talk:Persian Empire. Unfortunately, there has been little if any progress during this extended dispute. It has been personalized to an extent that resolution is unlikely to occur with the current cast of involved editors. Nathan 20:27, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Check the history again. There is a clear difference between my reverts and the constant tag teaming destruction of those. Furthermore, I had the vast majority of consensus behind me, and WP:VAND includes a nice section on -blanking- which says that reducing the page is vandalism. Check the Edit war page to see that reverting vandalism is not edit warring. Ottava Rima (talk) 20:35, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

By the way, Nathan, my revert is the same as yours, as you said: "(Reverted to revision 310386236 by John Kenney; This version has the most support; please don't remove 90% of the text of an article without advance consensus. (TW))" So, if you want to lump me in with a topic ban, you would have to lump yourself in. Ottava Rima (talk) 20:43, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I have presented arguments based on my knowledge of Iranian history on the talk page with sources. I have made major contributions to most of the articles on the Safavid shahs of Iran. I have not edited the article for two weeks. Why shouldn't I be allowed to contribute to the encyclopaedia on a topic I know about and on which Ottava has demonstrated his complete incompetence? Alefbe and Dbachmann have also edited many Iranian pages. I find your suggestion a ridiculous application of the fallacy of middle ground and I don't regard you as a neutral party to this case since you have been in e-mail contact with Ottava. --Folantin (talk) 20:36, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

@Nathan: You and Dbachman have both reverted that page once. The difference is that Dbachman has been previously invloved in Iran-related pages and you haven't. Also, Dbachman has elaborated his proposal in the the talk page and has justified it (but you hadn't elaborated your justification before reverting that page). So, how do you justify your proposal? Alefbe (talk) 20:37, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I've received one e-mail from both sides of the debate, and sent one short e-mail in response (not to Ottava). I have participated in the discussion, if not (in my opinion) as a party to the dispute. I don't propose the topic ban merely to prevent edit-warring - that can be accomplished by protection. The purpose of the topic ban is to separate the people for whom discussion has consistently been heated and personalized. I'm not arguing that all parties are equally culpable, making a claim on personal knowledge of the subject or determining whose expertise in this area is superior. The idea is to allow the article to be discussed and improved without inflamed and personal debate, not to punish any editor for any specific infraction. Nathan 20:51, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

If you are talking about personal attacks, they should be addressed according to the Misplaced Pages policy and those who have committed that should be warned or blocked for that. Your topic ban proposal doesn't solve anything in that regard. The thing is that by looking at your proposal, it's obvious that you have listed those who have participated extensively in its talk page and you have forgotten that among those who participate in edit war, those who have elaborated their reasoning are more justified. So, among Dbachman, you, Durova, Rockstone35 and others who ahve participated in reverting the page, drastic edits of someone like Dbachman is much more justified than edits like and . Alefbe (talk) 21:04, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

The "personalisation" began with Ottava Rima, as has been clearly demonstrated. That, coupled with his extreme incompetence in Iranian history, should have been enough of a clue to admins. But, as we saw with the lack of action regarding the John Kenney incident arising from the same page, Ottava has carte blanche' to behave as he likes round here. --Folantin (talk) 21:11, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Such a topic ban is moot anyway, as the page is fully protected for a week, if these issues continue beyond that week, then perhaps its a better time to look at it. Jeni 20:42, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's not moot, as the proposal extends to the talk page, which isn't protected (and is putatively the primary way of resolving the conflict). Tan | 39 20:43, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, considering the context of the discussion and the history of the debate, banning Nathan himself (from that topic) is much more justified than banning Dbachman. Alefbe (talk) 20:47, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

In which case the protection is a better option than the topic ban, as it allows these users to try to discuss the way forward! Jeni 20:49, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you there. I was merely saying that proposed topic ban isn't "moot", as it would make a significant difference in the situation. Tan | 39 20:50, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Here is the history so people can see who did what, when, and what fell under our policies as appropriate or not:

• 16:43, 20 August 2009 Alefbe Deletes page.
• 16:02, 21 August 2009 Wizardman Restores page.
• 16:03, 21 August 2009 Folantin Deletes page.
• 20:17, 21 August 2009 Ottava Rima Restores page.
• 20:52, 21 August 2009 Alefbe Deletes page.
• 13:42, 23 August 2009 Ottava Rima Restores page after getting consensus against the removal of text.
• 15:29, 23 August 2009 Fullstop Deletes page.
• 16:06, 23 August 2009 NuclearWarfare Restores page as no consensus for deleting.
• 17:37, 23 August 2009 Alefbe Deletes page.
• 23:04, 23 August 2009 Ottava Rima Restores page as no consensus for deleting.
• 23:12, 23 August 2009 King of Hearts Protects page.
• 07:53, 27 August 2009 Alefbe Deletes page when it comes out of protection saying "The old crappy version is so full of misinformation that cannot be useful in any sense"
• 15:36, 27 August 2009 Ottava Rima Restores page saying "subjectivity is not a justification to commit vandalism by blanking the page"
• 18:37, 27 August 2009 Kurdo777 Deletes page and claims "cleaning up a poorly written page, is not vandalism"
• 19:22, 27 August 2009 Nathan Restores page as no consensus for deleting.
• 19:25, 27 August 2009 Alefbe Deletes page.
• 19:44, 27 August 2009 Durova Restores page as no consensus for deleting.
• 21:06, 27 August 2009 NuclearWarfare Protects page.
• 14:40, 4 September 2009 Alefbe Deletes page as it comes out of protection.
• 14:43, 4 September 2009 Ottava Rima Restores page as no consensus for deleting.
• 15:32, 4 September 2009 Dbachmann Deletes page with a personal attack as reason.
• 19:55, 4 September 2009 Rockstone35 Restores page as no consensus for deleting.
• 19:59, 4 September 2009 Alefbe Deletes page claiming that uninvolved users have no right to restore the page.

- Ottava Rima (talk) 20:57, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

None of this even exceeds 3RR. None of this addresses the problems with the content/duplication of content discussed at length on the talk page. --Folantin (talk) 21:14, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Edit warring is not three RR. Per the page: "Edit warring is the confrontational, combative, non-productive use of editing and reverting to try to win, manipulate, or stall a discussion, or coerce a given stance on a page without regard to collaborative approaches." Consensus was for keeping the page and not blanking it. The actions in destroying the consensus determine version over and over was edit warring and an act of vandalism per WP:VAND. Ottava Rima (talk) 21:22, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

The problem with the article is that the editors have formed "grudges" agaisnt each other. Even when a editor makes a valid suggestion, it will be shunned down one way or another by them, because they want only their suggestion to win. Warrior4321 21:47, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

• A useful alternative to a topic ban might be a voluntary editing and discussion moratorium from the same editors; eliminates the element that seems punitive, but accomplishes the same goal of allowing the content discussion to continue unimpeded with personal disputes. An agreement like that could conclude this thread and provide some respite for these editors, if nothing else. Nathan 21:49, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Or how about we impose normal consensus based restrictions in which people don't remove wholesale content from a page after 9 people have said that such actions would be inappropriate? In any normal situation, Alefbe would have been blocked multiple times along with Folantin for even daring to blank the page in such a manner. Ottava Rima (talk) 21:53, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Nathan, would you stop trying to make these "it's six of one and half a dozen of the other" proposals? I don't trust your judgement. ANI could have stopped this problem by cracking down on Ottava Rima after the disgraceful John Kenney incident. It chose to do nothing about him. Again. The debate was over before I and others even had a chance to take part in it . --Folantin (talk) 21:57, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I've proposed two methods that both have a chance at solving the dispute over the article; neither allow one side to "win" the dispute, because that isn't the point. If you believe that there is a superior alternative, then post it with your evidence and rationale. I think you'll agree that its unlikely that anything will be resolved through talkpage discussion if the participants stay the same, so unless you prefer that state of events some change is necessary. Nathan 22:54, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Because there was nothing even though you keep trying to claim their is. It is just one more event in a pattern of things you've been making up. You do realize that it is against the rules to do such, right? Ottava Rima (talk) 21:59, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

As an uninvolved admin - I see a bunch of bad behavior, on all sides. None of you have anything to be proud of here. If this is not otherwise resolved and the edit warring on the article continues next week when the current full protection expires, I for one will willingly disruption, edit war, or personal attack block any or all of you as required to end it. None of you are currently showing the type of collaborative attitude required to actually work on a consensus solution moving forwards.

I Support the proposed one-month topic ban. At this point, if you cannot participate constructively, don't participate at all. Find another topic for the next month if you can't be civil and collaborative. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 23:35, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

One month topic ban against whom? and based on what? Alefbe (talk) 00:14, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Please see this subsection's first paragraph. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 00:17, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I've seen that. Please see my comments after that. In particular, if you are talking about edit war, how do you justify a ban against Dbachman (while his involvement in edit war is not more than Nathan himself or users who have not elaborated their justification for their revert, such as Durova and Rockstone35). Also, if you are talking about personal attacks, how do you justify a ban against me? Alefbe (talk) 00:30, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I am not asserting that each of you has committed all of those offenses. I am, however, asserting that all of you are behaving unconstructively, and I support the proposed topic ban. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 00:58, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

You support banning me from participating in that discussion. You should present a justification for that. You haven't presented any example of personal attacks or disruptive behavior on my part. Other than personal attacks and disruptive behaviour in talk page, what can justify banning a user from participating in a discussion? Alefbe (talk) 08:17, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't think this proposal is justified. The involved editors are not equally at fault, so this proposal is not equitable for them; nor is it going to result in the best outcome for the article its readers. --Akhilleus (talk) 00:33, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I thought we were supposed to be encyclopaedia. Punishing editors with long histories of working on Iranian history topics for, er, editing an article on Iranian history really sends out a good message. --Folantin (talk) 07:16, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Laying the ground rules

I am echoing what Georgewilliamherbert has said and laying the ground rules. Once the protection for the page ends on September 11, any person that restores the article or replaces the redirect will be blocked at increasing increments as is standard practice for edit warring until such time that a clear consensus has emerged. Any editor who disputes these ground rules please feel free to get the blocking policy changed. If you cannot get the hint after the page being protected three times and cannot come to an agreement and cannot be mature enough to simply leave the article be, then its clear that protection is not helping. Start working together. Thank you.

Seddσn | 01:13, 5 September 2009

I don't agree with this unilateral statement. Presumably, the proposal above was a proposal--something that we're supposed to discuss, and come to some sort of consensus about. I don't think the discussion has come to a consensus yet. --Akhilleus (talk) 01:20, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I dont think month long topic bans are going to work here if three weeks of protection doesnt. Seddσn | 01:54, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

The way we have for preventing changes is page protection. In this case it is not a general content dispute, but a dispute over one particular change--the redirect. Saying that after pp ends that someone will be blocked for changing back to the other version edit--the only edit in question--is extending the protection indefinitely. I can understand people get frustrated over this, but Seddon's proposal goes beyond what an admin should do. This discussion does highlight the major gap in Misplaced Pages procedure--our lack of a good binding way of resolving conflict disputes. Nor do I agree with the attempt to foreclose an agreed settlement by archiving the page. The discussion is not over, and I have removed the archive tags.I think placing them was premature. If anyone wants to claim otherwise, we can have a discussion on that, but I think the lack of resolution is remarkably obvious. DGG ( talk ) 02:06, 5 September 2009 (UTC) .

This is not permanent - Seddon put it as until such time that a clear consensus has emerged which I support. If all the parties involved can agree on a mutually acceptable compromise way forwards then the issue is done and over with. If they cannot, the communities patience for this reaching ANI over and over again is reaching or at the limits of "nice doggie" and the stick is coming out... Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 02:12, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I'll respect the reversion of the close and ask for one other non-involved admins opinion. I would point out that my close statement with regards to the blocking was only enforceable until a clear consensus is formed. I do not believe ANI is the best place to form a consensus on content(for countless reasons) and the recent poll (as part of an rfc) started at the talk page should be the method to resolve this. I do not see this discussion here resolving anything at this time. We should allow the parties to use the 6 days to get somewhere.

I also agre completely with your statement that This discussion does highlight the major gap in Misplaced Pages procedure--our lack of a good binding way of resolving conflict disputes. This is a clear weakness in our dispute resolution process and "enforcing" consensus which is subject to change is difficult. That is something that we need to address.

Seddσn | 02:18, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Consensus take 2

Even though there was a clear consensus of 9 people saying not to turn the page into a redirect or a disambiguated page and only 5 people saying to turn it into one, this has been ignored by all of the administrators above. Seddon, DGG, and Georgewilliamherbert, for example, do not acknowledge this. As such, I have started it all over again. If admin are willing to ignore the clear consensus that comes out of this Straw Poll (as they seemed to want to ignore the one that came out of the before polling along with a connected RfC), then I have no other recourse than to scream and pull out my hair (or really cuss a lot and send angry emails). Ottava Rima (talk) 02:15, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

what you have, rather, is the opportunity to try to prepare a sound and irrefutable argument. DGG ( talk ) 02:23, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

It was sound and irrefutable. The case should have been open and closed with blocks against the five listed for constantly blanking a page against consensus. It seems that the admin corps really dropped the ball. Ottava Rima (talk) 02:27, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

The case has been reviewed. If I were to actively intervene and treat everyone with a content-blind behavior-centric response, you'd be blocked along with them. You are pushing too hard and behaving too disruptively Ottava. Please stop doing so. You are not innocent of wrongdoing in this. We're giving everyone a breather on the topic and article by full protecting, and an extended one by taking those of you most combative in the incident out of it for another month with the article ban (maybe). The alternative is behavioral blocks which you would find yourself on the receiving end, among others.

Misplaced Pages uses consensus and not majority vote because we do not want situations like this where a majority feel empowered to break rules and abuse the situation because there are more of you. Consensus is getting along with the people who disagree with you - and entirely the opposite of your behavior here. Consensus, civility, not making personal attacks, and not disrupting things when you don't immediately get your way are important.

ANI is not a hammer to beat down your opponents. If you begin to try to use it like a hammer, the things it hits will not be the ones you point at, necessarily. We are assuming that the full protection and proposed topic ban will get the message across to everyone and that an outbreak of reasonableness and civil discourse will ensue. If that is not what happens, the hammer will probably come down. Your thumb is currently under the hammer, along with others'. If you feel like squashing yourself, continue the way you have been going.

Community patience nearing end. Caution. Do not proceed further. Work it out. Assume good faith and move forwards, not backwards. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 06:15, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

There is -never- a push too hard against clear vandalism. There -was- clear consensus and it is obvious that they -don't- want to discuss it. Did you bother to actual read the discussion and see how every time there was a chance to correct the aspects of the page they instantly reverted back to edit warring and pushing for a redirect? Those are some of the oldest ploys around. ANI is a hammer to stop edit warring, vandalism, and the destruction of this encyclopedia. When Wizardman first reverted Alefbe, it should -never- have been reverted back by Folantin. None of the edit warring should have happened, and Wizardman or any of the other administrators should have handed out blocks from the very beginning against anyone even thinking about blanking that page. I am quite confident that if this went to ArbCom, there would be clear evidence that I had consensus for my actions and that the five listed above went out of their way to troll and vandalise the page simply because they could not stand that they did not "win". That is a severe abuse of our policies. Ottava Rima (talk) 13:33, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Once again, ANI fails. A clear case of stalking and nothing is done about it. Ottava's comments (e.g. "The 'Persian Empire' refers to a series of dynasties between 600 AD until the Ottoman Conquest. No more, no less") show he has no knowledge of even the most basic facts of the subject but is just there to troll. This isn't an encyclopaedia any more, it's a social networking site. --Folantin (talk) 07:26, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Folantin - Please see my comments to Ottava. These apply equally much to you. Either stop doing anything near each other, or work within the policy and community standards to cooperate, get along and treat each other with respect, etc. Continuing to fire salvos back and forth on ANI is not appropriate at this time unless you are seeking to be blocked for the weekend.

The combined lot of you have about exhausted my patience and I believe I speak for the community here (though others can refute and comment, of course). I am at this point fully prepared to end the sniping with blocks if the collective "you all" cannot act in an adult, responsible, constructive, and respectful manner. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 08:10, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I've tried avoiding this guy since his RFA in April. I've presented clear evidence of his stalking. This place is a joke. --Folantin (talk) 08:27, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Many, if not all, uninvolved administrators are now acutely and painfully aware of what everyone involved is doing. You have stated that you feel he's stalking. You do not need to say that again. You do not need to call him a troll, period, and should not have in the first place. Insulting Misplaced Pages as a whole ("This isn't an encyclopaedia any more, it's a social networking site.") and the administrator community ("This place is a joke.") in the process of continuing to push Ottava's buttons and visa versa is not a good long term Misplaced Pages survival strategy, either.

If you believe that any of your behavior here was a good thing, I suggest to you that your judgement is impaired by the stress of the situation, and that you may want to walk away for a bit and come back when you are feeling better about it and can work more constructively to avoid unnecessary conflict.

As I said several times above - this uninvolved administrator has seen about as many buttons pushed in this series of incidents as he is willing to tolerate without starting to block people. If you stand up and start pushing buttons after several explicit warnings along those lines - what exactly do you expect to happen next, and why are you doing that?

Perhaps this needs more uninvolved admin mediation on specific talk pages or some such. But what it does not need is any more disruptive incivility, personal attacks, insults, and assumptions of bad faith. Stop it. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 08:56, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

If you want to end the conversation here then the correct procedure is to mark this as "Resolved", not to threaten all and sundry with blocks on no rationale but your own patience. I suggest you do this. (ANI is not the "administrator community" as a whole. Most of the decent admins I know are disgusted at its ineffectiveness. With good reaon. Plus, I can say what I like about Misplaced Pages. I've been here long enough to know this place has been going down the sink over the past year or so. Misplaced Pages should be an encyclopaedia based on accurate content. Clearly, it isn't). Now you can mark this as "Resolved". --Folantin (talk) 09:11, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

(ec)Update: Whatever the case, I'm done here. I will be taking no further part in this ANI thread. (The failure of admins here to do anything about the attacks on the completely uninvolved User:Akhilleus is duly noted). --Folantin (talk) 13:39, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

A 9/5 ratio is much too marginal to be used as a consensus for a controversial decision. And ottava rima doesn't seem to have read up on WP:VANDAL: "edits/reverts over a content dispute are never vandalism, see WP:EW".·Maunus·ƛ· 13:37, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

64% support of the original page is not enough to keep it from becoming a redirect? Maunus, there is no possible way to make such a claim as that. You are either wrong, and you will strike, or you are just making things up. And blanking a page from 60k to a redirect is -not- a content dispute. It is a bulk removal of information. WP:VAND has a section on "blanking" which you need to read. Ottava Rima (talk) 14:58, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Redirecting is not blanking - and 64% is barely a majority, and by no means a consensus. I have participated in enough redirect discussions to know that even 10 to 2 is not necessarily a consensus. Consensus is based on arguments not numbers.·Maunus·ƛ· 15:02, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Blanking is the wholesale removal of text. To claim that redirecting a 60k page is not blanking is so absurd that words cannot describe it. To claim that 64% is a "bare majority", when people pass RfA with consensus on that is so unbelievably absurd that it takes all of AGF to assume that your comments above are not intended to be purely disruptive. There is -no- possible way for someone to make such claims honestly. There was no argument that could override the community's opinion there that the page had to stay. There is no way to claim there was. The fact that you would even attempt to suggest that there was and rationalize such inappropriate blanking is so awful that I will be sure to list you as a named party when this goes to RfAr just so ArbCom can analyze how absurd your comments are and hopefully keep you from ever having the power to enforce them. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:07, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I would like to note how my single comment above has prompted Ottava to hound me on my talk page and threaten to have me desysopped, merely for disagreeing with him, this clearly doesn't speak in his favour. I would second a topic ban in his case, if not a complete ban for disruption.·Maunus·ƛ· 15:53, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Disagreement? No, it is because you have stated comments that are 100% against our wikipedia policies and completely dangerous. You claim that we did not try to include them. Did you even read the talk page? There is no way to change their mind when they keep edit warring in a deletion of the page. That is 100% pure vandalism. Your lack of recognizing that would suggest that you are either unfit to be an admin or your account is compromised. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:05, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

• Lets make one thing clear - Jimbo Wales started this whole system in order to make an encyclopedia. It is our job as participants here to do whatever it takes to build and maintain an encyclopedia. Misplaced Pages is not some whore that we can use, abuse, and toss to the side. It is unacceptable for any member who is honestly here to build the encyclopedia to allow for a top priority page that deals with a notable term that has appeared in hundreds of thousands of sources and documents to simply just vanish because a tiny minority of people simply do not like the content of the page. Not only would such a thing violate just about every single one of our policies, it turns Misplaced Pages into an utter laughing stock. Admin at Misplaced Pages are obligated to stand up for Misplaced Pages's policies, and any admin not fighting to protect this encyclopedia does not deserve the term or the title. Any user who does not want to protect the content at Misplaced Pages is at the wrong place. As one of the most prolific content editors, I have put thousands of hours, thousands of my own dollars, and incredible effort into building this encyclopedia. There are many people just like me that want to make this something worth while. We accept Jimbo's desire to make Misplaced Pages great. We do our damnedest to ensure that these peoples are excellent. It is a shameful to see so many people just passively allow any tiny group of people free reign to destroy this place. This is not some obscure topic. This is not some tiny store, some obscure faculty member, some song no one heard of, or anything even close. This is one of the most important historic terms. I am sure that every single person here would probably have some page that if they saw an IP address turn it into a redirect because they claim "it sucks", they would revert it on the spot as vandalism. And yet no one, not one person, has had the guts to defend this Misplaced Pages by blocking five vandals that are dead set on destroying this place and making it known that Misplaced Pages is not a place for games, not a place to push some wacko POV, not some whore to be treated like shit. Ottava Rima (talk) 20:14, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Please take off the Spider-Man costume. Thank you. — The Hand That Feeds You: 22:49, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Agree! Singularity42 (talk) 04:04, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Polite suggestion

"It's not what you do. It's the way you do it." - Mae West

Take it from someone who's seen a lot of arbitration cases; this dispute is currently inching toward RFAR. If it goes there that will not be fun. To both sides of the current dispute: even if you're 100% right about the content issue (which of course you are), that won't weigh at arbitration. It'll be the slow edit warring and sniping that the case would examine. The case will waste weeks or months of your life, guaranteed, and you may end up sanctioned as a result of it. There are better ways to resolve the matter.

1. Find a mediator, dig up sources, and pretend that the absolute euphemism on the other side of the dispute is a reasonable person. If you're right and they're really expletives deleted then they will show their colors and your own graceful reasonableness will reflect well on you. If they aren't quite so bad then maybe you'll actually reach agreement.
2. Walk away from the dispute. Let the article be wrong for a while. Most of the public does realize that Misplaced Pages is not a reliable source. Weeks or months from now, once tempers have settled down, it'll be easier to resolve things then. This is far less burdensome than squandering the same weeks or months on arbitration.

Sincerely, Durova 23:57, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

• • Endorse that... --Jayron32 23:13, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
  • Me too Heironymous Rowe (talk) 00:05, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

User:Jim Fitzgerald and copyright violations

User:Jim Fitzgerald has committed several copyright violations, and refuses to acknowledge any issue with his behavior, much less correct it.

• In one case, he basically copied an entire paragraph from a news story into two articles, with hardly any change of phrasing, passing it off as his own (not a quote or anything): , . Compare to source here.
• In another issue, he copied a block of text, again, basically verbatim, into a talk page, as his own text - not a quote, without credit - , compare to source here. I told him, in our discussion on that talk page, that this is wrong (), but he refused to listen.

I've warned him on his own talk page - , but he refuses to acknowledge any wrong-doing on his part. His talk page has another, unrelated, copyright violation warning (I haven't checked it). Please deal with this user. Maybe he'll listen to an administrator.

Thanks, okedem (talk) 15:06, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Hm, he doesn't understand image copyright either (not that I'm an expert, but he's uploaded screenshots - which can be used "for critical commentary and discussion of the film and its contents", and then put them in a gallery at Kin-dza-dza! with no attempt to discuss them. I'll also point him to Misplaced Pages:Close paraphrasing. Dougweller (talk) 15:24, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Hm "the Israeli Education Ministry's budget for special assistance to students from low socioeconomic backgrounds severely discriminates against Arabs." (my strike) does look rather too long a phrase to include. I'm sure I've read somewhere that six words is often treated as the notional limit on unacknowledged quotations.

Having said that, I'm hopeful that things will resolve themselves. When I raised am issue with Jim previously, he thought about my comments and then undid his original edit. Maybe the fact that you two are involved in a content dispute at the same article makes it more difficult. However, I would suggest explicitly indicating the problem phrases on the talk page.--Peter cohen (talk) 14:14, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

It's way worse than that. That entire edit is a particularly poor close paraphrasing of the source (see, for instance, "The Ministry published town-by-town data...", or "..institutionalized budgetary..."). And, of course, the entire paragraph he copied into a talk page, which wasn't even really paraphrased, but without any attribution etc. I saw zero willingness to cooperate, so I'm not hopeful. It would help to have someone discuss this with him, as he simply chose to attack me instead of listening. okedem (talk) 14:49, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Extremely Offensive Userboxes

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

I have recently come across the user page of User:Ctjf83. Two the the userboxes were considerably offensive. One had a red slash over the word "GOD" and said "this user doesn't believe any myths or superstitions." This is by no means the same thing as a userbox merely declaring that one is an atheist. This userbox was a direct attack on people who believe in God. I thought it had been decided that attacking other people based on their religious beliefs was not okay. The red slash over the word "GOD" implies advocacy of discrimination against people who believe in God. The association of belief in God as "myths" or "superstition" also advocates discrimination against those who believe in God. This is by no means any different than having userboxes attacking other people on the basis of race or ethnicity. Imagine if the userbox said the same thing, but the red slash was over the word "HOLOCAUST." That userbox would rightfully be deleted, and that is how offensive the one I am talking about is. There are regular atheist userboxes to choose from, but User:Ctjf83 chose one that deliberately attacks others and subtley advocates discrimination. User:Ctjf83 is guilty of the same offenses that resulted in the recent deletion of the user page of User:Raghuvir.tomar. There is no room for hate on Misplaced Pages. The other offensive userbox contained pornography. In the userbox describing how User:Ctjf83 "enjoys gay porn a lot," there are two actual images of pornography. Images that would otherwise be deemed pornographic may be acceptable on pages about sex and pornography, but User:Ctjf83's userboxes serve no purpose other than to display pornography. If I'm not mistaken, vandals have been blocked and/or banned for uploading pornography for no good reason. This is Misplaced Pages. Advocating hatred and discriminiation, and showing shock images and random pornography, belongs on Encyclopedia Dramatica. These two offensive userboxes should be deleted and an investigation needs to be started to see if there are any more userboxes advocating hate and discrimination or showing shock porn. Again, User:Ctjf83's two offensive userboxes belong on Encyclopedia Dramatica, not Misplaced Pages.--Quince Quincy (talk) 04:23, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Oh my. I hate to say that I disagree with you. The line through god is by no means offensive, it is just strong opinion. And the two images are not porn, they just show guys kissing. Calling it porn is connotative of calling it sex (which it isn't). And if you really don't like it, don't look. Basically, I fail to see how it is offensive. –túrian 04:31, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

And it is good to notify the party involved. –túrian 04:34, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

The userbox itself says that the images are porn. The other userbox, instead of saying that said user believes that God is myth and superstition, says that people who believe in God are superstitious and believers in myths. This is a subtle attack.--Quince Quincy (talk) 04:41, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

No, it says the user likes porn, not that they are porn. there's no way that would be classified pornography. The atheist userbox does not suggest an attack to me. I suggest you take the discussion to the user's talk page - there's really not a lot that admins can do about it, from my point of view. Tony Fox (arf!) 04:45, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

If you're going to go out of your way looking for "extremely offensive" userboxes, I think you could do better than a word with a diagonal line through it and a couple of pictures of men touching and kissing. --TS 04:46, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

You're over-reacting. Working in a collaborative environment requires that you learn to deal with opinions and attitudes that make you feel uncomfortable. Why don't you just avoid his User Page if it offends you so much? Crafty (talk) 04:47, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Agreed. And Quincy, you are straddling a thin fence of equivocation with that second sentence. Also, the pictures are a representation (since he seems to have not shown two guys having sex). This seems like a pointless argument. Just don't look at the "offensive" material. –túrian 04:50, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Agree with the above. Those userboxes are so far down on his page, it seems as if you'd almost have to be desperately seeking something to offend you to even notice. Dayewalker (talk) 04:52, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

• Nobody would have noticed the purportedly offensive userboxes, except that they were reported here on ANI. Jehochman 04:57, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Even though this is resolved, I'd like to point out that neither of these userboxes was created by me, and I'm not the only user to use both of these. CTJF83Talk 07:20, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Maybe that would have been porn in the year 1900, but not now. And if Quincy is a true believer, then he would also believe that God will be the one drawing the circle-slash over the user eventually, so why worry? :) Baseball Bugs carrots 08:31, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Wow, I am so far behind the curve it looks like a straight line. Quincy was indef'd as a sock. So he basically drew the circle-slash through himself. "Plaxico" strikes again! Baseball Bugs carrots 08:35, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I know this is marked resolved and the user has been banned; but, I'd like to point something out to the admins here. Especially considering the comment "Nobody would have noticed the purportedly offensive userboxes, except that they were reported here on ANI."

This particular "God" userbox has (I guess it's just been a coincidence I've stumbled across them recently) incited huge controversies / debates multiple times...; I can't find them again right now, as I have no idea where they were, but I'll try hard!  ;) A hint of it is at the location of the original User talk:Jeff dean/Userboxes/Atheist. In these discussions, numerous atheists commented that the userbox was offensive, though, nonetheless, there were those who defended it tooth and nail, seemingly missing the point. Perhaps it would show some wisdom on the part of the community if "we" admitted the seemingly self-apparent tautology: "if it inflames a whole bunch of people, it's inflammatory." Right here, there seems to be only one person on the "offended" side here, but not in the other venues (two, if you count my impersonal belief that it is offensive, and I'm not religious).

It would also be good for admins / contributors to note that responding with a statement which boils down to "It's not offensive" provides no logical support for it being "not offensive," but rather a subjective claim that you find it not offensive. This is an important logical point with regards to the nature of "offensiveness." If 50% of people in a debate say something is not offensive, and 50% say it is, then it is! A significant portion of subjects being "inflamed," regardless of the experience of the rest of the sample, makes something "inflammatory." Imagine we were dealing with a toxin here. Double blind study; two independent parties. 50% of the subjects it is tested on die. The other 50% aren't affected by it, and when asked if it's toxic they say "no." Well, guess what? It is! This is what makes comments such as the "You're over-reacting" above so logically offensive. Another tautology: If he was offended, he was offended: he is within his rights to bring it here and find out if it is considered in poor taste by a wider audience. Just as you wouldn't say to someone who is having an allergic reaction, "You're over-reacting" it is a rather poor place to say the same thing (unless they're really having an absolute kaniption and not explaining themselves clearly). My goal here wasn't to address this particular userbox, but the assumptions that surround such a debate. I just wanted to point this out to perhaps provide a different logical viewpoint to come from the next time you come across an issue like this.

Peace and Passion ☮ ("I'm listening....") 02:40, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

PS I'm off to try and find the links to the long debates on this userbox for anyone interested to see....

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

User:Leatherstocking at Lyndon LaRouche

I would appreciate administrative help with this. I'm posting this here rather than at AE as it may get more attention here, but I can move it if people think that page is more appropriate.

Leatherstocking (talk · contribs) is a supporter of Lyndon LaRouche. The article is in poor shape as a result of around 1200 edits over the years from LaRouche accounts. Will BeBack and I recently started trying to get it into shape. This involves removing material sourced only to LaRouche if it's unduly self-serving, and restoring or adding material from mainstream secondary sources. We're also tidying refs, fixing the writing, and generally trying to make the article more policy-compliant.

Leatherstocking is reverting my edits as I make them, ignoring the in-use tag. He has posted complaints about me on AN/AE, AN/3RR, the BLP noticeboard, and the NPOV noticeboard. He wants to retain or add material sourced only to LaRouche, and remove or reduce material sourced to, for example, The New York Times. One example of his reverting is this. It concerns the period where LaRouche moved from being a left-wing group to becoming, in the view of The New York Times, a far-right group with extensive commercial interests. Leatherstocking removed the names of the companies LaRouche was associated with. He removed the details of the training camps LaRouche members were being sent to.

I feel this is unacceptable editing that violates all the LaRouche ArbCom cases. SlimVirgin 05:50, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Too early in the morning for me to do anything but protect the page for 1 day while sort out what if anything is to be done about Leatherstocking and stop any more disruption meanwhile - my first reaction given his forumshopping is that action should be taken, but I'm not sure what. Dougweller (talk) 06:06, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. The problem is that Leatherstocking seems genuinely unable to understand the policies, or apply them to LaRouche. He wants LaRouche sources to be treated on a par with academics and mainstream high quality newspapers. He removes The New York Times information about LaRouche's commercial interests and anti-terrorist training camps, but restores that LaRouche was given the key to the city of a town in Mexico, and wants to go into great detail about some interviews with LaRouche in newspapers in China. SlimVirgin 06:16, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Why am I getting a feeling of deja vu here? Wasn't there another user recently that was doing the same thing? Baseball Bugs carrots 08:25, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I'd encourage everyone to closely examine the recent edit history of the article. SV wants to own the article. She and WBB are tag-team edit warring. See also here and note two things; a) Leatherstocking had the courtesy to supply links documenting the edit warring, while SV makes vague charges with one link, and b) anyone who isn't hostile to Lyndon LaRouche gets dumped on and ridiculed.

Finally, regarding the 'key to the city of a town in Mexico' and 'interviews with LaRouche in newspapers in China', we should all endeavor to counter systemic bias. Just because something happens outside the United States doesn't give SV the right to delete it. --ZincPlatedWasher (talk) 08:38, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

The above courageous redlink was created 12 minutes before filing this complaint, or 1 minute after I made my comment above. Baseball Bugs carrots 08:43, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Looks like an obvious sock account to me, it's now blocked. Dreadstar ☥ 08:49, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Specifically, a "leather" stocking??? :) Baseball Bugs carrots 08:51, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

D'oh!, I was trying not to go there! :) If any admins disagree, feel free to reverse the block. Dreadstar ☥ 09:04, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I've never edited a Larouche article in my life. You people are paranoid. --74.220.229.154 (talk) 09:09, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, at least not under that IP address, this being its first entry ever. :) Baseball Bugs carrots 09:15, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

P.S., your paranoia is now being discussed here. --74.220.229.154 (talk) 09:36, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

It's not paranoia, it's more like a puzzle or mystery to be solved. Kind of like a game. Which is also what it is to many socks - a game that abuses wikipedia. And the reason we are "so bad" at finding socks is because we give far more latitude to those sock game-players than we probably should. Baseball Bugs carrots 10:12, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Zincplatedwasher may not be Leatherstocking, but should we check? Yeah, maybe just another troll, but if it is a sock of Leatherstocking, that would simplify matters. Dougweller (talk) 10:55, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

You could check that IP address while you're at it. Baseball Bugs carrots 10:58, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) Checkuser is not magic pixie dust. That duly noted, regarding Zincplatedwasher and Leatherstocking: Unlikely . Vassyana (talk) 15:19, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

• First, I am not "a supporter of Lyndon LaRouche." This appears to be an attempt to initiate the WP:9STEPS. When I first began to edit here 2 years ago, I watched the POV wars at the LaRouche articles because I found them entertaining. Over time, I grew more annoyed by the tactics of the anti-LaRouche team than by those of the pro-LaRouche team, in part because the anti-LaRouche team seemed to have an unfair advantage (again, see WP:9STEPS.) However, until last month, it had been my practice never to actively edit a LaRouche-related article; I confined myself to adding tags, or reverting edits that I felt were in violation of policy. I only began to edit some "LaRouche" articles after engaging in mediation with Will Beback (Misplaced Pages:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2009-08-06/LaRouche movement.)

• Regarding the one diff that SV cites as an example of my alleged misbehavior, there is already a separate article for U.S. Labor Party, which would be the appropriate location for an extended summary of a newspaper article about that organization. However, even at that article, I don't believe that it is necessary to include every minor detail, such as how much the alleged training costs per day, in which states it allegedly took place, or that U.S. Labor Party members were employed at a company that allegedly printed high school newspapers. For readers who are interested in such minutiae, we have external links. SlimVirgin herself has deleted substantial amounts of well-sourced material, and she has dismissed objections by saying that the article is too long and she is "trimming" it. However, the "trimming" seems to be POV-based, and there seems to be some simultaneous "fattening" going on.

• SlimVirgin complains about being reverted. She has made over 140 edits to this article since August 28, and she has reverted virtually every edit made by other editors during this period. On top of that, she went so far as to revert the NPOV tag I posted, which as I understand it is a policy no-no. I would also like to point out that when I do revert, I include an accurate edit summary. SlimVirgin mixes her reverts in with other, more innocuous edits, and then disguises the process with a vague edit summary along the lines of "tidying." --Leatherstocking (talk) 17:28, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Topic ban

• Comment: Leatherstocking (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has indeed been quite disruptive on the topic of Lyndon LaRouche in a manner contrary to multiple site policies. (Examples: WP:BAN: Restoring banned editors, WP:EW: Blocked for edit warring on Views of Lyndon LaRouche, WP:FORUMSHOP: Forum shopping). Perhaps it is time to consider a topic ban of the account from related articles? Cirt (talk) 18:10, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I was unaware of the "forum shopping" rule, and I promise not to breach it in the future. I simply assumed that since I saw evidence of several policies being violated, I ought to report each type of violation at the relevant board. I won't make that mistake again. As far as being blocked (once) for edit warring, I believe that block was improper, and I said so here. And regarding the "restoring banned editors" charge, I have made my opinions known at Misplaced Pages talk:BAN#call for wording. I have no problem correcting any policy mistakes I have made. I still contend, however, that SlimVirgin is outrageously flouting numerous policies, and no one seems to raise an eyebrow. Does she have a free pass of some sort? --Leatherstocking (talk) 00:55, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

An excellent question. The answer, of course, is that no one has a free pass here. Theoretically, anyway. ++Lar: t/c 03:18, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

• Comment. Leatherstocking writes above that he first edited a LaRouche-related article last month. That's very far from the truth. His earliest edits in 2007 show an interest in LaRouche-related people. His 15th edit was to add a detail to Dennis King, LaRouche's biographer, someone the LaRouche movement regards as an enemy. By his third month—and he hadn't made many edits so this was early in his history—he had started posting in LaRouche's favor at Talk:Lyndon LaRouche. In October 2007, there's a complaint that he's altering bios of people opposed to LaRouche. His top-edited articles are all LaRouche-related, and his edits are invariably pro-LaRouche: removing critical material no matter how well-sourced, adding material from LaRouche publications, reverting, adding NPOV and other tags and reverting if anyone tries to remove them.

He has made 782 article or article-talk edits overall. Of these, 408 have been to the main LaRouche articles or their talk pages: Lyndon LaRouche, Views of Lyndon LaRouche, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Kenneth Kronberg, Dennis King, and Chip Berlet, and many of the rest to pages LaRouche is tangentially involved with. All or most of his edits (173) to project space have been about LaRouche (BLP noticeboard, AN/I, RS noticeboard etc), trying to prevent LaRouche accounts from being blocked, trying to have other editors of the articles sanctioned.

The main problem is that he seems not to understand NPOV. He appears to believe that material from e.g. The New York Times is on a par with material from LaRouche, and that the article must reflect LaRouche's views in the same proportion as it reflects everyone else's. He also believes that everything LaRouche says and does must be added to the article, the result of which was that it had turned into a vanity page and a platform. He fights to keep, "LaRouche flies to Moscow, is welcomed at the airport; LaRouche given the keys to Sao Paulo in an elaborate ceremony; LaRouche thanked in the Mexican parliament," invariably sourced to LaRouche himself, while removing or reducing material from mainstream newspapers about LaRouche's commercial interests, or violence against opponents, and so on.

It is going to be difficult to get the article in shape with Leatherstocking continuing this behavior. SlimVirgin 00:57, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I meant exactly what I said (not what SlimVirgin says I said.) My practice was to add nothing new, either positive or negative, to "LaRouche articles," but to tag or revert when I believed I saw policy violations. SlimVirgin says I made an edit Dennis King, which is correct, but the inference that it had something to do with LaRouche is incorrect. When I first came here, I knew more about Dennis King than I knew about LaRouche, because of my interest in the Youth International Party. King runs with that crowd, and the webmaster of King's website is A.J. Weberman (see my recent post on this board about Weberman.) SlimVirgin would have you believe that I am adding all sorts of pro-LaRouche material to the Lyndon LaRouche article; this, too, is incorrect. I am objecting to deletions of material that I think unbalances the article, combined with undue weight given to newly added material sourced to obscure critics. The "LaRouche articles" were battlefields for such a long time, and they finally stabilized in a form that I thought was an honest compromise between the two teams, and there was peace in the valley. Now I see SlimVirgin, with some assistance from Will Beback, on a major POV re-write campaign, and I think that it does a disservice to the project. --Leatherstocking (talk) 01:11, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

The articles had not stabilized. What happened is that people (except LaRouche editors) had largely given up on them, and the focus was only on how to stop them from getting even worse. What you call a "compromise" is, "On the one hand, The New York Times says this, on the other hand LaRouche says that," but that is not what NPOV means. And the people you are calling "obscure critics" (e.g. Antony Lerman) are mainstream writers with mainstream views of LaRouche, who write in scholarly journals. Lerman's view, which you have tried to remove, that LaRouche's ideology is too extreme and bizarre to characterize easily, is the majority view.

This is why I wrote above that you seem to have problems understanding our NPOV policy. The article must reflect majority and significant-minority views in rough proportion to their appearance in reliable sources. It must not allow the tiny-minority views of the LaRouche movement to dominate or be presented as on a par with the majority view. SlimVirgin 01:27, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Also, I want to make one thing clear about Lerman. Although he specializes in anti-Semitism, he is strongly opposed to defining that term so widely that it catches people who are simply anti-Zionists. He opposes the concept of "new antisemitism," and has been criticized by Jewish groups for so doing. So this is a very mainstream scholarly writer, not someone with extreme views in any sense. In addition, the view we're using him as a source for—that LaRouche's ideology is too bizarre to describe easily—is very much the majority view of LaRouche. Lerman is a good example of using a mainstream expert, whose article was published by a scholarly journal, to express the majority view, and adding the name only to make sure we had in-text attribution. Yet still you remove it. SlimVirgin 01:39, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

IP troll harrasing Israeli editors

86.157.70.95 (talk · contribs) has decided to question User:Ynhockey (an admin) and User:Jaakobou whether any of them took part in Operation Defensive Shield, "carried weapons in that geographical area, or have any family members, or close acquaintances, carried weapons in the area or trained to carry weapons potentially to be used in this area." IP's curiosity is based on, according to him, the potential conflict of interested in editing the article. In case the trollness isn't clear at first glance, IP hasn't asked any of the other editors inline with his POV is they were connected to the area. Suggest blocking for a week. Looks like some banned/blocked editor who found a new IP.--brewcrewer (yada, yada) 08:59, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure I've done exactly what I should do according to the Book of Rules, ask the individuals concerned whether they have a conflict of interest. If there are other editors who may have a conflict of interest, naturally they should be asked too. I am not a banned editor. 86.157.70.95 (talk) 09:07, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Your first edit was to WP:RSN, the second edit to WP:ANI,...........--brewcrewer (yada, yada) 09:13, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I went to RSN after seeing an entry in talk here http://en.wikipedia.org/Talk:Aftonbladet-Israel_controversy#Recent where there would seem to be simple bigotry against an Egyptian newspaper. That led to me to Operation Defensive Shield, where it was obvious that questions needed asking. Brewcrewer told me it was vandalism, I found that the Conflict of Interest policy instructs me to do exactly what I'd done, ie ask the individuals. I used to edit under my real identity until I lost my password - I don't think I'd ever been banned or blocked for anything. If I've done anything wrong, then please tell me how I should do it correctly. 86.157.70.95 (talk) 09:38, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

We've been having some odd behavior on said ODS article. Another IP (209.6.238.201 (talk · contribs)) reintroduced an old article version, which hasn't seen article daylight since 2007, 5 times and then asked a second editor (Tiamut) to edit war for them, which the second editor did despite being recently warned for just that type of behavior. Tiamut went on to remove long-standing content from the article with a, seemingly, mocking edit-summary. The IP continues, while this issue is being unattended, to revert and remove information about "nine terror attacks between March 2-5".

The original version edit-warred into the article by the IP, btw, was introduced by two banned troublesome editors. The two editors are seemingly mimicked by the two new IPs as both were (a) fighting for the same problematic version, as well as (b) both repeatedly asked "COI" queries in which they suggested I was some type of war criminal. One of them, PalestineRemembered, kept asking these "questions" -- e.g. We never discovered whether Jaakobou took part in the April 2002 killings in Jenin (generally thought to include "war-crimes") -- even after he was admitted under forced mentorship. Jaakobou 13:53, 6 September 2009 (UTC) +++clarify 12:55, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Could I also ask admins to take a look at the related ANI section on this subject which closed earlier by User:Sandstein? I feel as though there is an attempt obfuscate the issues here. Some editors are simply reverting text without discussion. Tiamut 14:08, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Jaak, the two editors that you think are banned are in fact neither banned from Misplaced Pages or currently under an ARBPIA topic ban. If that is your reason for opposing the edits you need to come up with a better one. nableezy - 15:55, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Disruption

(I apologize for the long post, but this is a six-month long problem and I just don't know how to explain the issue properly in less words.)
This whole matter is getting out of hand. I recently "dared" to enter a talkpage dispute with User:Imbris on Talk:Hey, Slavs , and now I'm a victim of stalking and disruptive behavior. After I initiated the discussion on Talk:Hey Slavs, I've been unable to work on anything. I've been followed around to an increasing number of articles yesterday (SR Croatia, Template:Infobox SFRY, Independent State of Croatia, Template:History of Croatia) and all my edits were reverted and I've been forced to start long ridiculous discussions over such nonsense as the color of a template. User:Imbris believes I am on some "sinister agenda", and perceives any edit of mine as "communist propaganda" (non-nationalists are often called "communists" in the Balkans), no matter how silly and meaningless.

The main focus of all this is the small and insignificant Hey, Slavs article, on which for almost six months continuously four or more users were trying their best to convince User:Imbris his new disputed edits are factually incorrect. RfCs were called, to no response, which prompted us to request informal mediation. User:Dottydotdot got involved and after a while recommended that Imbris' edits be mostly removed. However, he then proceeded to ignore the decisions of the informal mediation (and the opinions of virtually all other involved users) on the grounds that "not all other WP:DR steps were taken", and that this supposedly invalidates the mediation :P. Everything proceeded as usual until finally everyone else got bored and frustrated and more-or-less gave in to User:Imbris' demands. Now I plunged in again in the hopes of ending this once and for all. I got Wikihounded on everything else I do. I am completely unable to contribute, as all my edits are now "opposed" on the ground they are "communist".

It is important to understand that User:Imbris never, ever agrees to any proposal. If you prove him wrong on one point, he will cook-up another reason to oppose everything that's done. (On Talk:SR Croatia the issue was first WP:NAME, now its "fabrication of information" by use of WP:NAME). One is almost frightened of him ever "joining in" as you know it will not end for months, and you will be unable to do any work on the article. You literally have to be "careful not to cross him".

Long, long story short, we seriously need someone who can decide on this and enforce the decision on these articles. Its been bloody six months already :P. I also feel that the behavior of User:Imbris is deliberately disruptive, stalking, and highly detrimental to article quality. --DIREKTOR 09:10, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

• To at least prevent further pointless revert-warring on Hey, Slavs, I have fully protected the article - the 3rd time this has been necessary in recent months. This is clearly a deeper issue, though, and there is clear evidence of following edits here. (Edit): However, this is ridiculous - an edit war (in which both yourself and Imbris both broke 3RR) over the colour of an infobox? Oh, please. Black Kite 09:45, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Blocking doesn't really help - the damn article will have to be unblocked eventually. I think we need serious involvement on the part of one of you guys... --DIREKTOR 14:32, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, in regards to Template:Infobox SFRY, both red and blue look very nice. But I personally might have blue instead of red. Is anyone willing to argue that red is actually a better color for the template?--_{Sky Attacker} 10:11, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

And just in case anyone was thinking about changing the infobox to a different color, I think we can safely say that it won't look good in orange (and possibly not in yellow either).--_{Sky Attacker} 10:19, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I previewed the template with some colors and yellow looks worse. Green is not bad. You know, I did say to keep the infobox as blue earlier but purple looks actually pretty good for the infobox. Anyone agree?--_{Sky Attacker} 10:23, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure a black template would be great --Notedgrant (talk) 12:57, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't know, black is a bit too plain for me. I still say blue (like it is) or purple. But that could just be my opinion.--_{Sky Attacker} 04:22, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

In all seriousness, every time I see DIREKTOR's name pop up on pages I watch, there's usually someone there accusing him of being a communist. One new user went so far as to post on Jimbo's page complaining that DIREKTOR was using Misplaced Pages to spread communist propoganda. AniMate 13:53, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, except that I honestly am against communism. :P Fervently so. Not that I think "communism is not allowed on Misplaced Pages" as some of those guys seem to think, its just my position: I am not a communist. Like I said, in ex-Yugoslavia if you're not a nationalist you must be a communist (or a Serb, if you're Croatian :).

That stupid color dispute is the perfect example: its an infobox about a subdivision of a socialist state. The subdivision map is red, the flags are predominantly red, and the insignia is full of red stars and such (some subdivision flags are altogether red). So ten months ago I changed the color to socialist red (among other edits) - I was trying to improve the template, Now its "non-consensus communist propaganda". I also fixed up the black and gray on Template:Nazism sidebar and Template:Fascism sidebar - was that Nazi propaganda? I feel like I'm Flora and Imbris is Merryweather from the Sleeping Beauty... :) --DIREKTOR 14:40, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Btw AniMate, that post on Jimbo's page was by User:Formyopinion. Its an account created about a month ago. The new user's interests include: accusing me of communist POV-pushing on User talk:Jimbo Wales,... and that's about it :P . Its a sock of some guy I reported trying to get back at me - I get that all the time. The "people" accusing me of communist propaganda are likely one guy trying to get me banned :) --DIREKTOR 14:21, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I perhaps wasn't verbose enough in my post. I saw that post as part of the campaign of harassment you were describing, not as legitimate. My advice is to file a checkuser to see if these are connected. Hmmm, now I remember why I refuse to edit articles in this area again. Good times. AniMate 14:49, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

The problem is, I don't know how to proceed? Do I go through WP:DR every time I make an edit? It appears Imbris only "accepts" mediator conclusions if all previous steps of WP:DR are tried (no matter how silly it is to go get a 3O for a six-month long dispute with 5 involved Users). On Talk:Hey, Slavs#Serbo-Croatian version I proposed we both agree on mediation and adhere to the results regardless of what they may be. That was September 2nd. The proposal was completely ignored. I then asked the guy about that five more times during the past three days. I also posted the question on his talk , and I even posted a note in the talkpage topic below . Its pretty obvious he's deliberately ignoring the proposal, I can't imagine why.

Do we take all this to MEDCOM? At first I was reluctant since all this is so trivial, and it seems to me pretty obvious that Imbris is opposing all these Users out of little more than spite. After a while, though, I was desperate enough to suggest it, but Imbris then declared he "won't accept" MEDCOM mediation for some reason... --DIREKTOR 15:50, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I've left a note advocating mediation on his talk page. If he declines, I suggest you come back here with a series of diffs. The picture you painted in your first post is pretty broad, and specifics are needed for any type of action to be taken. AniMate 16:39, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Axmann8 returns

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

Axmann8 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

..or an unreasonable facsimile. Bevare! Bevare! Baseball Bugs carrots 10:40, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Good catch Baseball Bugs. I briefly remember this user.--_{Sky Attacker} 10:46, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Not too much of a "catch", as he's still on my watch list. I remember him all too well, as he was connected with the anti-Obama siege back in March or so. He was a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi, so you might imagine that he had some issues with maintaining a neutral point of view. Baseball Bugs carrots 10:54, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Does any action need to be taken here, doc? — neuro 11:03, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

He blanked out most of his page including unblock requests, so I reverted him. I was surprised to see that he was allowed to edit his talk page. Perhaps an admin who recalls this case could make a judgment as to whether he should be blocked from editing his talk page. Baseball Bugs carrots 11:12, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I hope he has returned to become productive. Max Antean (talk) 11:28, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Violating the rules, by blanking unblock requests, is not a good start in that direction. Amusingly enough, the unblock request is mis-stated as if saying reason "not" to unblock. Baseball Bugs carrots 12:14, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Wait, I thought Obama was a Nazi? Wouldn't a neo-Nazi be happy with him? Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 22:06, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, isn't that clever.

Axmann8 (a-x-m-a-n-n + 8 --> eight ---> ate)

Axm Annate
Max Antean

Checkuser time?

Tarc (talk) 12:18, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Screw checkuser time, DUCK time. — neuro 12:26, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Not necessarily. There were a number of impostor accounts that tried to impeach Axmann8 after he was blocked. In fact, I've got a hunch. Baseball Bugs carrots 12:38, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Not 100% sure what you mean, but eh. — neuro 16:12, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

The rest of the story: according to the checkuser, Max Antean is 95% certainly a sock of the banned User:Pioneercourthouse, who has been very active today. I feel it's safe to conclude that all of the impostors of Axmann8, and also of Caden and BQZip01 and probably others I'm not aware of, are all emanating from that user. I also feel fairly safe in saying there is no actual connection between Axmann8 and PCH, although it's odd they both turned up today. There is plenty more I could say here, but I've already defied WP:DENY too much. Baseball Bugs carrots 18:57, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Congrats to all involved. Jolly good show. Erector Euphonious (talk) 23:08, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Several questions come to mind, none of which are suitable for mixed company. Baseball Bugs carrots 23:32, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

User:Malke 2010

A while back, I blocked this editor for persistent disruptive editing. He was given a second chance by another admin, which is fair enough. However earlier today, in response to a note on my talkpage, I dropped a note onto this user's talkpage warning about various incivil postings he had been making - the diffs are on the conversation at User_talk:Malke_2010#Your_edits. The editor refuses to acknowledge that there is a problem, instead making vague accusations about the behaviour of other editors - though despite me asking a number of times for diffs, he has failed to provide them (instead pasting large amounts of text onto my talkpage which were largely irrelevant). Eventually I disengaged, seeing that the user was unable to accept that they were editing problematically. His replies to my disengagement were this and this, calling myself an the other editor "toxic turds".

Other admin eyes would be welcome, not necessarily to block but to make it very clear what the problem is - as I can only see this problem recurring otherwise. Black Kite 13:49, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, lets have another administrator look into this. Oh I certainly acknowledge that there is a problem. Black Kite is harassing me by threatening to block me because his friend Justafax has an obsession with getting me blocked from the Karl Rove page. Black Kite has an obvious bias against me and when he demanded I show him proof that Justafax was being harassing and uncivil towards me, I posted the evidence on Black Kite's talk page. He deleted it immediately. Justafax has gone to my talk page and retrieved material I deleted and then posted it on the Karl Rove discussion page. If I had done something like that, the outrage would be blinding. I don't want this Black Kite mediating any arguments or discussions regarding Justafax et al. They go to him directly, by the way. Obviously they are friends. The bias is offensive. It's a ganging up on me, and it's patently unfair. I'm sick of these ad hominem attacks. I want to see something said to them for a change. Thank you.Malke 2010 (talk) 14:02, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

And please, all the truly horrible things Justafax has said about me on the Karl Rove talk page has been conveniently archived, so you'll have to go back into the history and find it. He's called me a sock puppet, a joke, he's been dismissive, he acts (and I must say VsevolodKrolikov as well, act like I have no right to edit the Rove page. And please, no more applying the rules to me and not to them. Thanks.Malke 2010 (talk) 14:27, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Malke did not edit wikipedia following her block until today. She didn't attempt to edit a page or find a way of working with people. Instead among her first actions were calling user:Jusdafax "civility cancer" and a "sick individual" who should be "banned for life" and accusing me of being a sockpuppet, an accusation which she has since repeated, and another editor, who removed her abusive posts, a "vandal". Malke has been given ample opportunity to learn how to work co-operatively with others and consistently failed. I think Black Kite has been commendably patient given today's events.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 14:13, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

(1) To the best of my knowledge, I have never interacted with either Justafax or VsevolodKrolikov before today. (2) The reason I removed the wall of text from my talkpage is that it was merely a copy and paste of your talk page archive which provided no commentary to back up your complaints at all (not to mention that it screwed up the format of the page). I have four times asked for diffs showing Justafax's incivility, even if it was relevant to your own, which it isn't. (3) If I had "an obvious bias" against you, I would've blocked you for the "toxic turd" edit summary straight away. The fact I've brought it to here shows that I actually have an interest in this being resolved without this happening. Black Kite 14:21, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Oh please. . .If I had gone into your friend's talk page and retrieved something he'd deleted and then posted it on another talk page, your reaction would have been blinding. I think your tone and the words and dishonesty from you speak volumes about your agenda here. I am justifably angry that Justafax is continuing to attack me even when I've not been around. The real issue is Justafax, not me. You're just blowing smoke around to cover up for him.Malke 2010 (talk) 14:33, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I think the fact you are still attacking other editors (me, in this case, by calling me dishonest, though I could care less) with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, and the fact that you still appear to think that calling other editors "sick", "cancerous" and "turds" is someone else's problem, needs little further exposition. I'm not going to comment further, because there is little point attempting to refute accusations that are conjured out of fresh air, doing so only gives them a legitimacy when they have none. Black Kite 16:15, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

BTW: Justafax apparently has his own complaint page, he is that awful

There is a section regarding Justafax at the wikiquette board. Malke 2010 (talk) 14:47, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Malke 2010, if Justafax's editing is a problem here, then please provide diffs to justify your accusations. You don't expect us to just take your word for it do you? Even if you are correct, it does not justify your behaviour pointed out above. Please keep discussion civil and without personal attacks. ≈ Chamal  ¤ 15:27, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Ok, just to let the admins know, this section as of this edit is both unacceptable and dishonest. Malke 2010 took several edits and placed them together to make a sort of makeshift User RFC on Jusdafax and in doing so included statements that were made regarding Malke's behavior rather than Jusdafax's. I advocate a topic ban for Malke if he's going to engage in this kind of behavior. Soxwon (talk) 15:41, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm adding a userlinks template to allow this editor's contributions to be viewed:

• Malke 2010 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

When Malke's last block was lifted, this was presumably on the understanding of improved behavior. The above cited edit from September 6, "People like Justafax, a very sick individual, should be banned for life" does not represent improved behavior in my view. The present ANI discussion would be a good opportunity for Malke to express contrition or promise to behave better in the future. Instead, we see even more evidence of a WP:BATTLE mentality. I suggest an additional one-week block for disruptive editing. EdJohnston (talk) 16:16, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I've blocked for 72 hours. I have no objection whatsoever to that duration being adjusted as seems appropriate, either if there is some genuine sign that this contributor intends to work within policies & guidelines or if there is ongoing disruption on his or her talk. --Moonriddengirl 16:45, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Given Malke's recent comments I agree with this block. Evil saltine (talk) 16:47, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. ≈ Chamal  ¤ 16:52, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Malke has requested unblocking, with the message "Mea culpa, mea culpa. I'm truly sorry. I should not have done that and I do apologize to one and all. I won't do it again. Scouts honor. Thanks for the consideration." Evil saltine (talk) 04:40, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

User:Jspearmint

I have blocked User:Jspearmintfor creating at least three hoax articles which I have nommed for deletion, Letchworth Corset Riot, Garden City (album) and Sebastian Openshaw, and inserting text in other articles which I am still rooting out (I just got done with Spirella Building. This seems to be a sophisticated series of hoaxes that may require action from admins at Commons as well. However, as a first step, could someone check my work and either endorse my block or no? I fear that since I have made the noms, it could be argued I should not also have blocked. I feel, though, a block without warning was needed to avoid further subtle damage to the project.--Wehwalt (talk) 14:04, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Not unreasonable. If he requests unblock I would offer a {{2nd chance}}. Stifle (talk) 14:18, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't; I've already caught another of his usernames, User:Deliciouscakes, that had done the same thing earlier. --jpgordon 15:42, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

A bit concerned that we didn't unblock him, if he is really super cool like he says. Perhaps we should reduce it from indef to 200 years? And insist only that he serve as much of it as he can.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:15, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

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

The indef block seems especially well-deserved. When WP starts to fill up with fake information, our days are numbered. His deleted contributions show that he has been contributing hoax material since 2005. He seems to consider this amusing. EdJohnston (talk) 17:49, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

What's the real shame here is that if's working alone, that's he a really good writer and it's a shame he's wasting our time and his with this nonsense. --Cameron Scott (talk) 21:30, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree. I told him that.--Wehwalt (talk) 23:00, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

User:Domer48

I think I've tried hard enough to resolve this, but it seems that User:Domer48 is simply unwilling to address the issues I've raised with him. My most recent attempt (which summarises the issues) was met with this response. The background to this is here: Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive201#Question which led to an WP:RFC/U (Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Domer48), which failed due to lack of certification, though (as admins can see from the deleted page) not due to lack of concern on the part of others about Domer's behaviour. (And one user has since said he would have certified, but was away.)

At this point I'm not really sure what to do. I think the points I raised are not really negotiable as principles, and some of the reasons why I asked Domer to acknowledge them can be seen at Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive201#Question. But he seemingly refuses to do so, and even on the trivial point of indenting comments properly, seemed unwilling to engage (User talk history), even making an anti-correction here (removing a colon when he should be adding one) which looks rather like flipping me the finger - which prompted me to do the RFC.

So, now, I'd like one or more uninvolved admins to comment on this situation and on Domer's behaviour, and suggest what the hell to do. If the outcome of that is that it's all in my head and I should apologise, so be it. Rd232 16:07, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

OK, I'm not going to accept the premature archiving, because that way madness lies. An admin asks for a review of a sticky situation, a few people comment not terribly helpfully (two pretty disruptively), and that leads to the thread being archived as irredeemably unproductive? No. Alright, since apparently part of the reason there was no comment on the substance was that I only linked to it instead of putting it here (ANI is always big enough anyway, I was reluctant to do so), I'll paste a summary below, taken from the deleted RFC. This summary of the dispute was endorsed by 7 users. Rd232 01:43, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Details

Statement of the dispute I have no wish to go through the rigmarole of an RFC, but Domer's response here, and his response to my comment at Talk:Irish Volunteers suggests a determination to force a confrontation. I have come to this topic (PIRA and some related articles) with no prior engagement and little interest, and I have tried my best to move things forward, including sanctioning some problematic editors (one partly at the request of Domer!). It did not initially seem that Domer was a problematic editor, but as I've seen more of the topic, it's become evident that in some respects he is; although in view of a record of some useful contributions in what I've seen, and a very long history on Misplaced Pages (2 years, 13k edits), I'm very much hoping these issues can be resolved. Here are the problems I've observed. This is from a recent, limited period, and I can't comment on how long-term these issues might be.

Desired outcome Domer to

• follow community indenting practice (see guideline Misplaced Pages:Talk page#Indentation and clarifying essay Misplaced Pages:Indentation which is linked from Misplaced Pages:Talk_page_guidelines#Layout)
• acknowledge that comments on his user talk page which imply the need for a response or acknowledgement do normally merit a response of some kind, either on his talk page or on the poster's. Deletion of such comments without response (especially without edit summary) is permitted by WP:Blanking but will often be considered a violation of WP:civil.
• acknowledge that his user talk page is the primary way for editors to communicate messages specifically to him, and that asking people to stop using it is inappropriate
• acknowledge that deleting others' comments from article talk pages is highly unusual, and that where personal attacks on him might merit deletion, he should not delete them himself (rather ask the poster, reply to the post appropriately, let others remove the comments, or ask for help).
• acknowledge that he should not take offence at good faith suggestions, even if they involve criticisms of his actions
• acknowledge that citing policy generically is not a substitute for substantive content discussion, and that generic citation of policy discussion participants are aware of is unhelpful and can be considered aggressive. This contrasts with specifically quoting policy where it is necessary to clarify particular points, or raising policy participants seem to have forgotten or may be unaware of.
• acknowledge that when in content discussions people repeatedly raise questions they characterise as key to the issue, then dismissing, evading or ignoring those questions is not constructive.

Description

1. Not sufficiently engaging constructively in discussion on the basis of being open to changing his mind. This takes the form either (eg Talk:Irish Volunteers#First Volunteers meeting) of ignoring key points made (in this case, that the first meeting of a group can't precede the publication which inspired it - in an argument about dating the first meeting), whilst repeating variations of his point, making the whole thing rather circular; and when the position becomes untenable, retreating into sarcasm and tendentiousness. Or else bluntly refusing to engage (and declaring an editor "a troll") or else just not engaging substantively with the issue (Talk:Peter_Hart#Article_is_entirely_unbalanced; eg in that discussion)
2. Engaging in wikilawyering, citing policy that everyone is evidently aware of, to some extent in lieu of actually responding to points others make. Example: Or (citing WP:NPA in a very formal way without obvious reason .)
3. Responding to attempts to discuss his behaviour (not always perfect) by seeking to find equivalent faults in others (no doubt not always perfect either) - even when this is clearly unhelpful and hardly more successful than a distraction. Example: a reversion of his deletion of another's talk page comments led to this unedifying exchange about a previous exchange where he'd left me a comment on an article talk page, and I'd removed it as the substance was recorded elsewhere and it wasn't relevant to the article, and responded to his point on his user talk page. This had satisfied him at the time, but suddenly it became an issue!
4. Taking offence at nothing. For example a reminder to indent replies was deleted without reply or comment, but the fact of having reminded was used as part of this comment accusing me of "being very hypocritical" (because I'd remarked that his previous citation of sourcing policy was unnecessary). When I responded to the deletion without comment, he claimed "harassment"
5. Telling people not to contact him via his user talk page
6. Deleting others' talk page comments. Albeit the comment accused two editors (including Domer) of gaming the system, I considered deletion inappropriate and unconstructive, particularly by one of the editors in question. My reversion of the deletion (together with a "let's move on and AGF" reply) was met with this outburst.
7. Failing to indent talk page replies appropriately, as demonstrated by this thread - WP:AN#Question (one of many examples - it is a fairly consistent pattern, despite repeated reminders, eg ), and then by this anti-correction (removing a colon when he should be adding one) seemingly demonstrating every intent to continue in this way.

Well I guess that's it - and that's basically from a few days at just three article talk pages (Talk:Irish Volunteers, Talk:Peter Hart, Talk:Dunmanway Massacre) and his user talk page. I hope that at this point Domer can do some soul-searching and appreciate a certain need to be a bit more forgiving, a bit more open-minded in terms of being able to change his position in the face of evidence, less eager to seek fault in others and and generally more willing to be collaborative. See desired outcome above. Rd232 01:47, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

The RFC, however, failed due to lack of certification from a second user, which seems a combination of confusion over scope (see the deleted talk page of it) and an editor being away who would have certified. Afterwards, I tried again to engage Domer in acknowledging that there were things he could do better, to no avail . Since an editor refusing to acknowledge his faults - faults which are violations of various policies - isn't sufficient reason to ignore them, I wanted to bring the issue, for someone else to take a look at the situation and suggest a way forward. That might involve warning or sanctioning Domer. It might involve telling me I was wrong to pursue these issues, or that I was right but I should give up now anyway. Archiving the issue unresolved, without any comment on the substance, as happened earlier today, I cannot accept. Rd232 01:43, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

It appears that you're attempting to resolve a large number issues involving this user's interactions with other editors (including yourself). It also appears that there's a nontrivially-complicated background behind all these. Finally, it's not entirely clear what administrator action you're asking for us to take in your statement of desired outcomes. It strikes me that this is best suited to another forum; AN/I doesn't work well for extended discussion. If the RfC wasn't certified solely because a) it was originally drafted with poorly-defined scope and b) editors who should have participated were unavailable, is there any reason not to refile with a clear scope and in coordination with other certifying parties? Looking at the 'desired outcomes' you've specified, some need to have some additional explanation before I would be comfortable with endorsing them. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 02:10, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

OK, thanks, I'll take another crack at RFC as an outcome here (Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Domer48), though I would have preferred an outcome that allowed me to walk away. Would it be permissible to undelete the old RFC (better if someone else did it) and get it certified? Or at least to userfy it temporarily to save people re-typing their comments? There were a number of comments and it would seem a bit bureaucratic to insist that these comments have to be made de novo. Rd232 07:56, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Attempted outing?

This was raised at the fringe board. At User talk:Momusufan Xellas (talk · contribs) is accusing Paul H (talk · contribs) of being a fringe Atlantis researcher named Robert Sarmast. Now I know Paul H and can assure everyone he isn't Robert Sarmast. I know Sarmast's username (he explained who he was to me in an email, and did it in a way that makes me pretty sure he doesn't mind others knowing, but I'm not sure of the etiquette here), and he hasn't edited under that username for quite a while in any case. Xellas has been blocked before for edit warring on Location hypotheses of Atlantis. If I didn't know one of the editors I'd probably have blocked Xellas again for PAs and attempted outing, even though he's all wrong on that. Dougweller (talk) 16:22, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this to our attention Dougweller. Please be aware that with an incident like this, policy is to not confirm or deny the accuracy of the information, or mention the personal information that was given (only a diff is necessary). This is so we can effectively purge the personal information. I think Xellas was probably unaware of the policy regarding posting personal information, and it was purely speculative, so I'm going to give him just a stern warning if no one objects. What he did is grounds for a block, but I don't think that would help the situation (blocks are preventative, not punitive). Thanks again. Evil saltine (talk) 17:18, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

That did come out pretty patronizing, didn't it. Sorry about that, I forgot this is an admin board. Evil saltine (talk) 17:31, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Don't worry about it. Xellas has posted this in more than one place, and I don't and didn't think what I wrote would cause a problem for any innocent editors. He needs warning about the PAs as well as the outing issue. Dougweller (talk) 17:50, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Accusation of WP:OUTING violation

I'm being accused here of WP:OUTING. Any further questions? --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:44, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't think anyone is keen on taking administrator action, so perhaps this is a discussion for WP:VPM or WT:OUTING.  Skomorokh  19:58, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

thanks for not notifying me of this thread. i think this is a blatant case of outing. you posted a link to an outing site that lists a wikipedian's alleged real name and city/state. the site is a blatant attack page. i won't link it here but it can be found in the link listed by sarek. if any admin action should be taken, it should be that of an oversight. Theserialcomma (talk) 20:03, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

In the unlikely event that oversight is deemed necessary, be sure you get the two diffs TSC posted yesterday linking to the site in the course of complaining about me linking to the site. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 06:03, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

User:D climacus Rollback rights

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

D climacus (talk · message · contribs · global contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · user creation · block user · block log · count · total · logs · summary · email | lu · rfa · rfb · arb · rfc · lta · checkuser · spi · socks | rfar · rfc · rfcu · ssp | current rights · rights log (local) · rights log (global/meta) | rights · renames · blocks · protects · deletions · rollback · admin · logs | UHx · AfD · UtHx · UtE)

Earlier today User:Juliancolton removed my Rollback rights do to this edit I only did this "one" time, Since I been on here and I was warned only one time. The vast majority of my reverts were very good. The Administrator didn’t give me a chance. I think removing my Rollback rights without a chance is a little harsh. I would very much appreciate if someone could look over there reasoning for removing my rights and whether or not it was a fair. I'm not here to get the Administrator into trouble. Please know that I have nothing ageist the Administrator. I don’t care if I get the Rollback rights back. I just need clarification on User:Juliancolton action and if was appropriate.. --David 19:12, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Rollback is supposed to be primarily used to revert vandalism/nonsense edits, not to edit-war. HalfShadow 19:19, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. I think Julian was right. Using rollback in an editorial dispute is inappropriate; doing so in a dispute in which you are involved is patently improper. Tim Song (talk) 19:24, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Rollback is meant to be used in a situation where you come across an edit that shouldn't be there, not necessarily one you don't agree with. For those you use undo and explain the reason in the summary. You can always get rollback again later. Rollback's really supposed to be for vandalism. HalfShadow 19:31, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Admins will remove it at the drop of a hat, use WP:TW instead.--Otterathome (talk) 19:33, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

What is the big difference between the Rollback on Twinkle and the one people have to request Rollback rights for? whys one open for all to use yet the other you need to be given permission? BritishWatcher (talk) 19:39, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Because Rollback is more powerful and faster. I agree with Juliancolten's actions, even if it may have been a tad early. –túrian 19:44, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

IIRC, Rollback does some sort of database magic to reduce strain on the server (Random guess that sounds plausible: i would think by doing something like just pointing to the previous version in the back end instead of saving a whole new page). TW rollback, once again i imagine, just works like any other edit, and saves a whole new diff that reassembles to the previous page. --M 19:51, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Twinkle also automatically prompts you to add an edit summary, whereas rollback always does (Reverted edits by X to last version by Y) with no further comment. Thus, the concept of appropriate use of rollback (when an edit is pretty obvious vandalism) vs inappropriate (when it would be better to provide an edit summary explaining what you're doing and why). -- Soap /_{Contributions} 20:01, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Ahh thanks for explanations. Just out of interest does rollback appear on peoples watchlist / history page of an article or do you have to go to the diffs page like with twinkle? BritishWatcher (talk) 21:22, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Julian's action was quite correct. I meant to warn you a few days ago about another incident - here, where you repeatedly rolled back a completely correct edit using Huggle, and even reported him to AIV! You then again abused rollback to revert the user's entirely-appropriate querying of your actions . I'd have no problem about restoring your rollback at some point in the future, but you need to demonstrate that you're paying attention, and understand when things should be reverted without comment. ~ mazca 19:44, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

In his (partial) defense, that user's calling ClueBot a vandal did not...help. And he does have the right to remove messages from his user talk page. Tim Song (talk) 19:52, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

WP:USER editors may remove talk page messages at will.--David 19:58, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, indeed it does, but it's still very unfriendly to roll back a good-faith communication without comment - particularly when it was pointing something out that you should have paid attention to. I'm certainly not saying that there was a big problem individually with that one rollback, but put together with the prior rollbacks of the correct edits; and the content dispute Julian noted - I think it's accurate to state that you have not used rollback entirely appropriately at the moment. Nothing too awful, but certainly I agree that the removal was justified. ~ mazca 20:03, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

If you want more flexibility with it, apply to be an admin. I was in a revert war with one, with both of us misusing rollback. I lost rollback and they lost nothing.--Otterathome (talk) 20:05, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Did I handle the situation in a right way, After Juliancolton removed my Rollback rights.--David 20:07, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

You could have done as Julian suggested on your talk page, ie. reviewed WP:ROLLBACK and WP:VAND. Dean B (talk) 21:01, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I understand now. Thank you for all of your comments. --David 20:50, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

User:BatteryIncluded behaviour on Dark dune spots page

User:BatteryIncluded has proposed a merge of article Martian spiders under Dark dune spots (see Talk:Dark_dune_spots#Merger_proposal). I was practically the only editor who came out, and while thinking that covering the two subjects under a same article could have been a good idea, I opposed the merge under that name because the nom showed no scientific consensus of Martian spiders being the same thing of Dark dune spots, or a subset/subfeature of these features -see discussion. Incidents were as following, in order of concern:

1. Closed proposal and merged article, claiming consensus for his own motion even if no consensus was achieved : Discussion on talk page was ongoing however more or less normally, while he arbitrarely decided that discussion was closed with full support for his motion and proceeded with the merge, declaring that I agreed with his merge even if no such consensus was achieved on the subject and only two editors (the nom and me) were involved in the discussion.

1. Deleted comments by User:Cyclopia on talk page : After discovering that, I promptly removed the closed discussion template , asked for explanation and clarified my actions . As a result he deleted my previous comments insisting that "discussion was archived", in violation of WP:TPO.

1. A very minor incident was nom !voting on his own proposal reiterating arguments of nom. I found this misleading and confusing for other editors potentially interested in discussion, giving superficial impression of more support than really it is on nom proposal. I tried to reformat (without deleting or modifying any content) his comment to clarify discussion, but he reverted ; I didn't further revert but clarified my position. Discussion on this with nom can be found here.

In short, my personal impression has been that BatteryIncluded has basically ignored discussion and WP:CONSENSUS: while we all know of WP:BOLD, a merge between two established and well sourced articles is a risky and complex (and in this case controversial) action that would have warranted more discussion. He also misrepresented my views, claiming they supported his motion when it unambiguously was not so. He single-handedly declared a discussion closed while it was not, and, most concerningly, he decided to delete my comments while I asked for clarification and reasons. There is also a strong WP:SYNTHESIS problem on content, but probably this is not the right place to discuss. I ask admins to review the situation and advice/decide how to proceed. Thanks. --Cyclopia (talk) 19:32, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I am the only 'main editor' of both 'Dark dune spots' and 'Martian Spiders', which I found and developed both from one-liner stubs to full size, so I know the science reports, and since they shared the exact same references (which i provided) for both, I proposed a merge -not a rename- back in August 11. Cyclopia showed up several days later -in the negative- only after I voted against him on a survey to rename the article Planetary habitability, in a move that resembles stalking and vindictive behavior from his part, mostly because it is painfully obvious that he has not read and/or understand the referenced material and continually changed the point of his opposition: At the beguining of the discussion he denied there were scientific references suggesting that they are related phenomena: "If there is good scientific consensus on a phenomenon that describes them both where they can be merged, all good, but the current sources do not seem to indicate that."

When i pointed at the references, he produced a second excuse to not merge: What is unquestionable is that some scientists are treating them as possibly a manifestation of the same underlying phenomenon. This means that 1. Apparently there is no scientific consensus on that."

When I indicated to him that several publications stating the same hypothesis, is 'scientific consensus', he changed his objection for third time: he wanted to see a "review paper stating a general consensus that DDS and spiders are the same thing" , which of course, nobody would write as they are two separate components of the same geological system.

When I said that even one research paper stating their relationship would be enough for the merge, (WP:Truth) he objected again: No, as an author of peer-reviewed papers, I can guarantee you that one peer-reviewed paper is by all means not enough to warrant anything in most or all cases. You can find peer reviewed papers in support of practically everything: appearing in an academic journal does not mean it is the truth. , and also: "You linked a lot of articles which seem all to converge on the possibility of a relationship, but still very vaguely, nor there is any indication that these articles do represent the majority viewpoint."

It was at this point that I realized it was all about his POV and that he was not reading the papers I presented to him, or discussing the science in them, he has been making up objections as he went along, effectively disrupting a simple merge process that has a vast supporting material from high quality references to grant it. Cyclopia has been only expressing his POV, not the science in the articles. It was at this point that I decided to quote to him Misplaced Pages:Truth and remark that his POV can't compete against the references cited and proceeded with the merge (migrating data) as he has not been reasonable in making an effort to either read/understand or produce supporting material for his POV.

Then he invented yet another excuse to oppose the merge saying that he approved it but must be done only done under a different title. Again, my proposal was about a merge, not a rename, that can be done later if granted.

Regarding the article's name, sources indicate that Dark dune spots are small CO₂ geiser-like systems which are fed gas by the spiders' sub-surface channel network. How is the volcano WP article named: Volcano or "Conduit" How is the geyser article named? Geiser or "column"? They are not synonyms but components of the same system, and like the Dark dune spots, those articles are named as Volcano and Geiser -respectively, not by their underground channels.

Anyway, Cycolpia did agreed to the merger and asked me to choose the page name, he wrote: "That said, I think that a merge is a very good idea because there are indeed enough sources to justify treating the features in the same article. What I disagree with is merging within either of DDS or spiders. I would merge under an umbrella term: you look more entitled than me to suggest the right one. --Cyclopia" So I did the merger and chose the name most used in the scientific literature cited: Dark dune spots, as the fundamental objective in naming articles is to choose unambiguous titles that readers will most easily recognize, and because articles should be named in accordance with what the greatest number of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity.(wp:COMMONNAME) My revert he mentions is because he tried to undo the merge, despite he agreed to it and is now archived and redirected.

Having said that, I don't mind a move (rename) as "Dark dune spots and spider features on Mars" or "Spider and dark dune features on Mars" per (wp:COMMONNAME), and I object to the false name he invented and he is pushing for: 'Planum Australe albedo' features because 1) most readers do not know what albedo is or that Planum Australe is on Mars, 2) because his empirical take is not the name used in ANY news release or scientific publication on this geological formation. Lastly, I don't think there was a "controversy" in that discussion as he claims (maybe a 'debate') as the scientific literature I am referring to, and quoting in the article (& discussion) has been published and bears more weight than his POV. Cheers. BatteryIncluded (talk) 04:55, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

BatteryIncluded, I am not here to debate the merge itself. I am here to debate your behaviour in managing the merge: declaring closed a discussion that was not and deleting my comments on a talk page. If you want to debate the merge, do it on the article talk page. As for me "making up objections", my objection has always been one and only, you know perfectly well. --Cyclopia (talk) 09:44, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Trying to stop a merge on the basis of "I don't believe/understand the references", is not a valid reason. (WP:MM) The history of Cyclopia's excuses (unreasonable interferences) is archived for anybody's review. The only reason this landed on ANI is because Cyclopia is unable/unwilling to understand the references cited; in a nutshell: Spiders are under-ice channels that conduct dust and gas to the surface, upon eruption, the expelled dust and gravel accumulates on the surface creating a dark dune spot. I don't care if he won't read the references or if he is not a believer of the science models, as almost 40 high-quality scientific research papers (all with inline citations) disagree with his POV. The article has plenty very relevant references supporting the statements in the article, and that is that. As I write this, he is again in the DDS talk page challenging the verifiability of statements (e.g. spiders are gas channels that feed the geiser-like vent), when it has inline citations right next to it!

Cyclopia does not only deny the science, he does not read it before denying it! This is harrassment pure and simple, and it has to stop. I am asking now to please ban Cyclopia from editing the page Dark dune spots (and its talk page) or whatever other name it may been given in the future. Thank you. BatteryIncluded (talk) 13:36, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I have not engaged in acts of policy violation on the Dark dune spots talk page; you instead violated WP:TPO eliminating my own comments and misrepresenting my opinions. My edits to the Dark dune spots page were all minor and none of them challenged your editing. So your rationale for a page ban is really unclear. As for the content of the article and the science, please talk about that on the article talk page, not here. Here I am asking for opinion on your behaviour, not on the article content, which warrants an entirely different discussion on itself. --Cyclopia (talk) 13:47, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Sea Shepherd

At Sea Shepherd Conservation Society there is trouble with an anonymous user who disagrees with what has been a long-standing consensus: while there are notable accusations of "eco-terrorism" against the organisation, it is not NPOV to claim that it is eco-terrorist. In particular, the IP disagrees with the argument that due to the analogy Sea Shepherd/Eco-terrorism ≈ Psychoanalysis/Pseudoscience Category:Eco-terrorism (which would be misread as saying that Sea Shepherd is eco-terrorist, even though it might be applied on the basis that Sea Shepherd is important to the eco-terrorism debate in the same way that psychoanalysis is important to the pseudoscience debate).

I am not sure whether the long-standing consensus still exists, since two other editors (Mdlawmba and to some extent Cptnono) agree with the IP. But there is clearly no consensus to apply the category, either, and the IP is trying to push this change through. Since 11 August the category has been applied to the article 12 times by the anonymous editor and once by Mdlawmba. It has been removed 6 times by Tranquillity Base, 4 times by me, twice by Cptnono, and once by Craftyminion.

The anonymous editor (previously always as User:68.41.80.161, but today when for the first time doing a 3rd revert in 24 hours as User:69.213.86.67) has been leaving bogus warnings on editors' talk pages. For example when I removed the category and left a long explanation on the talk page, I got a warning not to "remove content" without explanation. The most recent incidents of this kind (both today) were a bogus vandalism warning against Tranquillity Base and a warning I received for an admittedly borderline comment on the Sea Shepherd talk page. The editor is aggressively whitewashing their two IP talk pages and even censored a comment of mine with the misleading edit summary "Removed comments about myself. Discuss the issues, not me plz." (I can understand that the anonymous editor doesn't want to be reminded of their edit warring to misrepresent a key source of the article, but surely it would have been enough to remove the last relative clause rather than the full paragraph.)

I would appreciate it if an experienced admin or two could watchlist this article. Hans Adler 19:41, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I blocked the second IP for disruptively editing the User talk:68.41.80.161 page. However pardon my confusion on the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society article, but if notable sources have called it an eco-terrorist group, then why not call a spade a spade? — Kralizec! (talk) 19:53, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

We are advised to tread lightly using such terms.  Skomorokh  20:05, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Since it's transparently the same user and the IP in question seems to be a static one, I disagree with the reason for the block. (Not with the block itself, though.)

Regarding your question (which is off-topic here, has been discussed on the article talk page and perhaps should be discussed at WP:NPOV/N as well): It's not NPOV to call a spade a spade based on cherry picked sources that do so, if other, equally good sources call it a club or a diamond. Perhaps you didn't understand my analogy, but the most important experts on "pseudoscience" generally call psychoanalysis a pseudoscience, and yet Arbcom found in WP:PSEUDOSCIENCE that we can't call it one. This is now policy in WP:PSCI. Both terms have similar demarcation problems. "Eco-terrorism" also has additional problems, since the term has transparently been coined to make "violence" against property sound more dangerous than it is and thus make extreme action against harmless idiots more acceptable to the general population. Since this is part of a general trend to make the definition of "terrorism" more and more inclusive it's hard to tell whether "eco-terrorism" is terrorism. Also note that our best source for the connection, an FBI person's report to the US Congress, does not say that they are eco-terrorist but only appears to imply it. I am sure that this is no accident, since the same 2002 source also implied that eco-terrorism is terrorism and it would have been strange that Paul Watson wasn't put on the No Fly List if both statements were true. Hans Adler 20:22, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Were that strictly the case, then I suspect that Category:Eco-terrorism would be an empty category. However I wonder what gets Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front added to the category, while Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is excluded. Certainly all three have been described as "terrorists" by Western governments. — Kralizec! (talk) 20:31, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Categories are intended as search tools, not as vehicles for making assertions, although they are frequently misused that way. The question is basically whether a reader of the article might be interested in locating other articles that have been associated with eco-terrorism. Looie496 (talk) 20:59, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Your question is easily answered by a quick look at the three articles. Sea Shepherd is a legal non-profit organisation incorporated in Washington. Earth Liberation Front is an illegal organisation; being suspected of membership in it seems to be a sure way to see the inside of a prison. "Animal Liberation Front" is a label used for a certain type of criminal activities. I am not sure where your confusion comes from. It seems the drama we are having here on Misplaced Pages is mostly related to a sympathetic programme about Sea Shepherd that currently runs on US television. Is there a similar programme glorifying the Earth Liberation Front or perhaps even Al Quaida? Hans Adler 22:00, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Actually I agree 100% with your final two sentences. It would seem to me that an organization could be legitimately added to Category:Eco-terrorism if any WP:RS reported that a government had declared the group to be "terrorist," regardless of if that government were the United States (Earth Liberation Front, Earth First!), United Kingdom (Justice Department), or Iceland and Japan (Sea Shepherd Conservation Society). — Kralizec! (talk) 22:43, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Definitely not. We only tag an organisation with a disparaging label when it is NPOV to do so. This is because a category inclusion can't be qualified with "according to the Japanese government" or "we don't mean they are eco-terrorists, just that they are sometimes mentioned in that context". So long as it isn't NPOV to call the previous US president a war criminal, it's not NPOV to call Sea Shepherd eco-terrorist. Hans Adler 11:00, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I think we have to stick with uncontroversial categories. If there was wide acceptence that what they did was terror (or a self catagorisation), but if we go based on what one or two people say, then we could just as equally put Japan or Iceland in the category based on Paul Watson's claims. To be honest the entire term smacks of meaningless news speak designed to dehumanise and trivialise a debate (and sell copies, of course), and while we should cover the term (it is wide spred) I'm not sure how much value we should be giving it. --Narson ~ Talk • 11:21, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

We've been forced to link PETA to the "terrorist" word in the lead, with in-text attribution, even though they're a charitable organization with an all-star cast of members such as Paul McCartney and Pamela Anderson. But if even one lone American senator or FBI official uses that word in connection with a group Wikipedians tend not to like—even though no other country in the world uses the term so lightly—then immediately the claim has to be added to the lead or the article to certain categories. I ended up having to write it into the lead myself at PETA, as I recall, just to make sure it was properly written and sourced, because people were constantly adding it. The attraction of these "boo-hurrah" terms (e.g. terrorist, pseudoscience), as philosophers calls them, represents one of the ongoing failures of how we apply NPOV. SlimVirgin 11:59, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

86.9.139.98

This account seems to exist only to edit the Lincoln disam page and quarrel with consensus Purplebackpack89 (talk) 19:49, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

So far the IP has only risen to the level of minor snarkiness, and I've left a "cease and desist" request on the talk page. I don't think any sort of formal warning is called for at this point. Looie496 (talk) 20:53, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

WP:RPP Backlog

There is a bit of a backlog at WP:RPP, if an admin or two could take a look it would be greatly appreciated. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 20:54, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up. It appears to be caught-up for the moment. — Kralizec! (talk) 22:26, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

WP:AIV Backlog

There is a bit of a backlog at WP:AIV, if an admin or two could take a look it would be greatly appreciated. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 21:40, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Caught up for the moment. — Kralizec! (talk) 22:07, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Problem edits on three different IP ranges

Lately I have been coming across edits from three separate ranges of IP addresses all performing the same edits. For the past several months, IPs from 32.178.0.0/16, 166.203.0.0/16, and 166.217.0.0/16, have been adding original research (either adding color names to where they were not before or referencing actual species where they were not before) to the articles that I edit. Semiprotecting all of the possible pages where these edits could take place seems out of the question and would require semiprotecting entire categories of articles. The individual seems to hop about to multiple IP addresses in a day (the first four I list have all been used in the past 24 hours), and does not respond to any talk page messages.

• 166.203.145.111 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 32.178.123.181 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 166.203.97.132 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 32.178.199.243 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 166.217.23.73 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 32.178.109.143 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 166.217.149.230 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 166.217.82.162 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 166.217.173.18 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 166.203.156.86 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 166.217.65.201 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 166.217.15.27 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 166.217.249.34 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 166.203.71.158 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 166.217.153.50 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 166.203.202.219 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 166.217.200.29 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• 32.178.214.209 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)

I have been putting the IPs on WP:AIV whenever I come across them having been recently used. The work put in to clean up after these vandals (I had made an edit notice for one of the articles) is relatively too large when blocks which may disenfranchise users of mobile hotspots/mobile phones/similar items.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 21:42, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Just one comment -- if this is a user (group?) on a range of dynamic IPs, isn't it a bit off to indefinitely block one? — neuro 21:54, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Just wanted to note that I removed three of these from AIV so that they could all be addressed in a more uniform fashion. — Kralizec! (talk) 22:10, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Shortened the block to 31 hours. Enigma 05:02, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I did not make that request to indefinitely block. I merely pointed out it was a long term vandal. It is definitely one user on a series of dynamic IP ranges.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 22:11, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

• 32.178.215.131 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)

This IP was just used not less than five minutes ago.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 00:50, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I keep finding more IPs in these ranges having performed the exact same edits going as far back as April. Surely with all of these, more narrow ranges can be found to be blocked.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 00:58, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Blocked that IP. I don't have experience performing rangeblocks, but I would think a rangeblock would be appropriate here. Enigma 05:02, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Asked Nishkid64 to drop by. Enigma 05:06, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

There's too much collateral damage. A narrow rangeblock would seem ineffective, since this person's IPs come from all over the /16 range. Nishkid64 _{(Make articles, not wikidrama)} 05:14, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Are we sure about the collateral damage aspect? He just seems to be assigned new IPs in these three ranges that have never been touched prior.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 05:17, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I'm sure. If you look at the IP contribs from that range, you'll see what I mean. Nishkid64 _{(Make articles, not wikidrama)} 05:32, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I didn't check any of the other edits on the ranges.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 05:34, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

What policy supports this?

What policy supports that personal attacks made in long AFD debates are alright? I keep on getting told that constantly. If there is a policy for it, I want to see it. Joe Chill (talk) 22:06, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

There are none. Mythdon (talk • contribs) 22:14, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I guess the personal attack rules are twisted around many times by editors. Joe Chill (talk) 22:15, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Pointing to a specific incident of personal attacks, or a specific incident where someone told you that, would be helpful. WP:NPA applies everywhere, and while long AfD debates can get heated it's never acceptable to cross the line from arguing about content to attacking people personally. ~ mazca 22:18, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

True. Mythdon (talk • contribs) 22:19, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

The situations ended a while ago, so I don't think that it's necassary to bring it up. I was scared to take them to ANI (I did once and failed), because of the many editors saying that it was alright and getting mad at me for complaining about it. I had a nice discussion with Edison about it on his talk page, so you can look User talk:Edison if you want to see the incidents (Found my answer there after I posted this in ANI). Joe Chill (talk) 22:22, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Can somebody please mark this as resolved? Mythdon (talk • contribs) 05:25, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Problems with an unresponsive IP editor at List of Bakugan: New Vestroia episodes

For the last month or so, I've been having a problem with the IP editor 24.80.121.94 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) at List of Bakugan: New Vestroia episodes. Despite repeated warnings not to do so, the editor keeps adding summaries for unaired episode which cannot be verified. The editor has repeatedly failed to engage in any discussion (Talk:List of Bakugan: New Vestroia episodes#Episode summaries) and repeatedly removes an editorial note about not to add a summary for unaired episodes, sometimes doing so preemptively. What makes this situation more complicated is that the editor only edits about once a week when the episode list needs updating. If the editor could at least acknowledge the issue, then we would be able to work things out, but the editor has been completely unresponsive. --Farix (Talk) 22:51, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

User:Irbisgreif and File:Ohranger.jpg

• Irbisgreif (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• File:Ohranger.jpg (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

When I signed on earlier today, I had an image deletion notification on my talk page from Irbisgreif (talk · contribs) for the above listed image (a screencap I uploaded nearly 3 years ago) because the article it was placed on was changed because content was split off from the parent article into a new article. It was an issue with the fact that it has a Divx watermark on it. I clarified the image's tagging and removed the tag. He then tagged it as being used to illustrate the article, to which I worked on the article to improve its usage and removed the tag again. He then (mistakenly) tagged it as possibly unfree. At this point I lost my patience with dealing with him removed the tag, and made a less than calm statement on PUI.

Now, Irbisgreif has the file up for FFD (IFD, whatever), saying that "Fair-use images that are used to illustrate are not considered appropriate on Misplaced Pages. It does not identify or provide critical commentary on the station ID, program, or contents. It serves only as a picture of the characters." The article text and image caption text now are sufficient to provide enough critical commentary in both areas. I do not know why he has persisted in wrongly tagging this image for deletion a total of four times today, but I do not need him doing the same to whatever other similar images that I have uploaded in good faith and have provided enough critical context in the articles to comply with the non-free content policies.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 00:05, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Irbisgreif seems to have a history of unwarranted requests for deletion - see user talk:Irbisgreif#speedy deletion declined: Bharatiya Grameen Mahila Sangh. — Sebastian 08:42, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

User:Jeni and the Lincoln page

I had worked out a clear compromise on the Lincoln page between those who want to redirect Lincoln to Abraham Lincoln and those who barely want to mention Abraham Lincoln at all--mention Abraham Lincoln in the lead. At least one other editor signed on to this compromise, and provided ample justification as to why. Then Jeni and another editor come along and undo our compromise with just one little mention on the talk page that attacks us and accuses us of being America-centric. When I tried to enforce the compromise, Jeni started an edit war and accused me of not knowing POV and threatened to take me here Purplebackpack89 (talk) 02:47, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Had a feeling this user would do this when I let him know that I would bring him here if he continued his POV pushing edit war! This user is making edits without consensus and has been reverted many times by a selection of editors, yet he won't take the hint that he needs to generate consensus before making such controversial edits (You'd think the reverting may just be a hint!) For what its worth, I don't mind bowing to a consensus either way, even if I disagree with it, its just that there is currently no consensus for the changes he is making! Jeni 02:50, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Jeni. You have to allow for others to join in. Not make a quick one hour discussion and change. Continuing to revert only escalated the matter. Reach consensus and then change. –túrian 02:57, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Purplebackpack, I think the problem is that you had worked out what you wanted as the compromise......and one other editor agreed with you. That's not the same as consensus to support the compromise. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 02:58, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

When you've got both people and places with the same name, what's the normal protocol? Most if not all of the American cities called "Lincoln" were named for Abe Lincoln, so putting him afterward seems a bit out of sequence. The dilemma there is that presumably the British locations were named before Abe came along. Baseball Bugs carrots 03:01, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for agree with me, Bugs. For the record, the original compromise was between:

1. People who want Lincoln to redirect to Abraham Lincoln (several people)

1. People who want little or no mention of Abraham Lincoln (Jeni and a couple of unknown IPs)

The compromise was to mention Abraham Lincoln in the lead. I am merely managing it by reverting anybody who a)doesn't explain edits on talk page; b) vandalizes (which has happened at least once); or c) uses poor grammar (one editor left out commas). At least one of those reverts I made was vandalism or trolling, and none of them were discussed on the talk page. Also, remember that Abraham Lincoln is much more visited than any of the articles mentioned by a ridiculous margin Purplebackpack89 (talk) 03:03, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

This is a content dispute. The only part of it that is actionable here is the edit warring. What stands out for me is Purplebackpack89's 10 reverts in a few weeks, including 3 in 25 hours on 3 September, and 3 in less than two hours today. Hesperian 03:05, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

(ec)Can I remind Purplebackpack not to bring the ins and outs of the content dispute to ANI, this isn't the place. I have started a discussion on the Lincoln talk page for that. Jeni 03:06, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

(ec)Also note that another user has got involved with the edit war, continuing to edit against consensus. I am unwilling to revert anymore as I think that may take me past 3RR. Jeni 03:12, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I didn't "agree with" anybody, I asked what is the normal protocol for a page where both people and places have the same name? Or is there a protocol? Baseball Bugs carrots 03:07, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Reaching a agreement with extremely limited participation and then revert-warring to enforce the position is not consensus by any stretch of the imagination and reflects poorly on your judgement as an editor. Until you can demonstrate clear broad-based support for some alternative introductory lines, I suggest that the long-standing intro line remain in place (simply Lincoln may refer to: -- with no other elaboration). older ≠ wiser 03:11, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

(multi-ec)Purplebackpack should not have gotten sucked into an edit-war (note that Jeni is equally guilty), but is correct on the content issue: it's idiotic that the dominant link by a margin of over 10-1 is hidden inside a table deep down the page. It is arguable that policy says the proper solution is to redirect to Abraham Lincoln with a pointer to the disambig, but pointing to the dominant article in the lead is a reasonable compromise. Hiding the link that 90% of visitors want is taking paranoia to an extreme. Looie496 (talk) 03:12, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Again, this isn't the place to discuss the content dispute itself. Generate appropriate consensus on the talk page. Jeni 03:14, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

(more ECs than I can count) Seriously. This is no more than Argueing over the color of the bike shed. This is quite a WP:LAME issue to be worrying over. Its a disambiguation page. Insofar as Abraham Lincoln's name is on it, anyone looking for that article is one click away, and should have no trouble finding it. Otherwise, the level of concern on both sides devoted to this page is rediculously out of whack with the importance of said page to the encyclopedia. We could all use some tea, and to call the Mastodons back home and climb down from the Reichstag and take off our spiderman suits. --Jayron32 03:15, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Looking at the talk page, I see no consensus or even a "happy medium" as you mention, Purplebackpack89, to make this change. Even if there was, a "happy medium" does not allow you to make any change. Even then, the amount of reverting taken place should have told you that consensus is clearly not for or against it, which means you guys should have discussed about this more before putting on your battle dresses and heading for the undo button. ≈ Chamal  ¤ 03:17, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

(2Xec)This is more about the actions of the user, rather than the content itself, as I said, I have an opinion but I'll bow to the consensus, when reached. Also worth noting is that the user had the intention of edit warring from the start, per this diff. For that reason I'd propose a short sharp block. A mentality like that is completely unacceptable on Misplaced Pages in my opinion. Jeni 03:18, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

There's so much reverting going on, everyone is liable to be getting blocked pretty soon.

Then I can redo the page my way. >:) Baseball Bugs carrots 03:20, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I certainly had no intention of entering into an edit war, on my final revert I stated my next actions should it continue (which was bring it here). I merely reverted per the WP:BRD discuss cycle. If however, my edits are deemed to be inappropriate, I will take any sanctions made against me appropriately, but I feel I was acting appropriately in the circumstances. In retrospect, I perhaps should have bought this here one revert sooner, but we aren't perfect. Jeni 03:24, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I have protected the page for 12 hours. This is getting ridiculous, and since there are other editors involved in the reverting as well, I think this would be best to allow (more like force) discussion. ≈ Chamal  ¤ 03:27, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Now the user has started inappropriately WP:CANVASSing on WikiProjects. I have no issue with him letting WikiProjects now, but he should do in a neutrally worded manner, as I did while notifying WikiProject England. This user is seriously starting to become disruptive now. Jeni 03:33, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

"A few Brits are saying that...." If you agree, comment". That's pure gold. :-D The sheer clumsiness of it just beggars belief. Hesperian 03:35, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Jeni's is WP:CANVASS as well,because she notified an English one without notifying an American one. That's partisan audience. If she didn't like it, she could've counter-commented. And did somebody do something to my talk page? The archive is on the talk page, and the new points from the last few weeks are gone Purplebackpack89 (talk) 03:38, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

The difference is that it is not possible to tell from her post where she stands on the debate. She is asking for people to join the discussion, whereas you are asking people to come support your side of it. Hesperian 03:43, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

You forgot to mention this with my "canvass". Thus justifying it. I would now like to see this user blocked for continued disruptive editing. Jeni 03:41, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I see clumsiness rather than malice here. It may suffice for someone to point out to Purplebackpack89 that they are behaving like a complete goose. Hesperian 03:45, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm not so sure how much clumsiness is involved, as he refused to reword the posts when I bought him up about it. Jeni 03:51, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I said you could counter-comment. Besides, Hessy already fixed them.

Great. How long before this descends into "Soccer sucks!"... "No, American Football sucks"... "Cricket sucks!"... "No, Baseball sucks!" The last thing we need is ANOTHER pointless naming debate drawn along nationalistic lines... --Jayron32 03:47, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

It's called "Association football" you scoundrel! :-) Hesperian 03:50, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

If it weren't for us, you Brits would be living under the Third Reich ;-D Purplebackpack89 (talk) 04:04, 7 September 2009 (UTC) loves jokes

Maybe it'll create political tension between UK and US? Rubs hands together excitedly ≈ Chamal  ¤ 03:52, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Cricket is a fine sport - lots of scoring, continuous action (except for the tea breaks) and plenty of intrigue. Soccer is... well, soccer is watching a bunch of guys in shorts kicking a ball from one end of a large field to the other. Tiebreakers are great. They should skip the 90 minutes of kicking the ball from one end of the field to the other, and just go straight to the tiebreaker. Baseball Bugs carrots 04:21, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

It looks as if a successful compromise has been reached among the "warring" parties, on the Lincoln talk page. Baseball Bugs carrots 04:00, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

On another note, can somebody explain to me why all my talk page edits since August 20, when I last talked about Lincoln on my talk page, have been rolled back? They even tossed my archive Purplebackpack89 (talk) 04:01, 7 September 2009 (UTC) Purplebackpack89 (talk) 04:04, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

They're not rolled back, they're simply gone. Admin attention is needed here. Baseball Bugs carrots 04:11, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Admins, please hold off on unprotecting the page until a larger consensus has been reached - as per discussion on the page. I'm feeling like Abe's messenger boy here. Baseball Bugs carrots 04:08, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

That's what I thought. Purplebackpack89, there are no edits to your talk page after 20 August, as the history shows (unless they have been oversighted for some unknown reason) ≈ Chamal  ¤ 04:12, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Oh right...I got that page mixed up with a different one Purplebackpack89 (talk) 04:33, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Got a sockpuppet, huh? Hesperian 04:35, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like "Plaxico" is just around the corner. Baseball Bugs carrots 11:09, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Guitarherochristopher

This really isn't an incident, but Guitarherochristopher (talk · contribs) has a history of adding nonsense to articles and having it removed (see add & revert, add & revert). He's been warned o f t e n about this, but claims to not understand. Is there anything that can be done? Deserted Cities 03:42, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

• I don't know anything about those bands. Is there any evidence of edits which are actually nonsense and not just apparent confusion about genre or addition of redundant text (such as a sentence fragment about a song being unreleased when it is on an article titled unreleased songs by blah). Like this? Are those the correct tour dates? I'm not seeing disruption here. Protonk (talk) 06:11, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
  • I think this is just someone without a great grasp of English trying their best to improve an article (and failing), such as in this series of edits. Unfortunately, as mentioned above, that lack of language skills means they don't appear to understand when people try to communicate what they're doing wrong. Black Kite 06:17, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
    • The issue is, as Y2kcrazyjoker4 put it Chris is "utterly incapable of following directions or making a constructive edit". As I mentioned, he's been warned to stop adding stuff (generally genres but other stuff as well). The issue here is that Chris does not respond to most warnings on his talk page and doesn't discuss any changes he makes. But yes, some of it is absolute gibberish. Deserted Cities 06:26, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
    • Sidenote, someone should look over his userpage. There's some personal information on there which may not be a good idea. Deserted Cities 06:32, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
    • Ok. I just couldn't really pick out what the immediate problem was from the posting or a quick glance at the contributions. Protonk (talk) 06:39, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
      • I would just like to point out that all of this could have been solved long ago. The Laws of the Universe, clause 42 clearly states that "an individuals potential contribution in any field is inversely proportional to their expressed appreciation for Coldplay". The user has at least 6 userboxes expressing said sentiment. This rates about 8 on a scale of one to Gary Busey. --M 08:07, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
• Looks like the user is very young. He claims to be in the 8th grade in the US school system which, as far as I understand, means he's probably about 13 years old. That could account for his failure to understand what's going on as well as his poor grasp of written English. --bonadea contributions talk 13:20, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Need an Opinion

User:I am a jedi has created a "game" on his userpage. Found this while doing some Recent Changes partols. While it is on the user's userpage, games like this have been frowned upon in the past. Should this be nom'd for deletion or left be? - NeutralHomer • Talk • 06:09, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

NOM NOM NOM. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 06:18, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Tell 'em about the various free wikis out there. The game can be linked from the userpage. Grandmasterka 06:33, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Looks like you always die at the end. Good waste of time though. Deserted Cities 06:38, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Note left...now to OM NOM NOM the pages. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 06:39, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Pages NOM'd, user ain't happy about it. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 06:50, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Could you possibly consolidate them into one MfD? That'd make !voting and such a bit easier. Javért  |  06:57, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

To be honest, I don't know how....I don't do many XfDs. If you know how to consolidate them, please feel free. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 07:01, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Keep in mind this user was blocked for edit warring last year and apparently got himself embroiled in a dispute or two..then basically contributed a dozen edits in the next year and came back for this.--Crossmr (talk) 07:05, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Homer, tell you what. You get rid of all the discussion pages for the other xfds, and I'll help you list them all on one page. Just make sure not to delete the primary one.— Dædαlus 07:37, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I removed the bulk of the MfD noms leaving the main page. You can take it from there. I, of course, can't delete the other MfD pages outright, you will have to find an admin for that. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 07:41, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

There, fixed.— Dædαlus 08:04, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you :) - NeutralHomer • Talk • 08:06, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Racepacket at University of Miami and related articles

• Racepacket (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• University of Miami (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Last week Racepacket had removed a statement and a reference that stated that the University of Miami was commonly referred to as "The U", which was supported by the original link, citing a discussion on the talk page that had occured in April 2007. Another editor found the removal, undid it and added a new reference. Racepacket for the past two days has been editwarring over the exclusion of the words "The U", despite consensus being against him on the talk page of UM's article and at WT:UNI, where an ongoing discussion concerning the usage of the shorthand names continues for reasons I can't ascertain. He continues to assert that common names or short hand names or nicknames are slang and violate a precept of WP:NOT.

His disruption of this article (removing references, removing non-controversial common sense statements, filling an entire paragraph with {{fact}} tags) has moved onto other articles relating to the University of Miami (Miami Hurricanes and a {{notability}} tag on Iron Arrow Honor Society). The straw that broke the camel's back was when he removed the 3 references that supported what he was questioning and then a little over an hour later removed the statements entirely , including undoing many formatting changes I had made to make the article easier to read. This accompanied with his inability to work with myself, DroEsperanto, and other users who have been trying to make the article meet his strict sourcing requirements is getting tiring.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 07:20, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

• Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/The U and Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/The U (University of Miami) might be informative, here. Uncle G (talk) 10:45, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
• Uncle G, your reference is helpful. Obivously, User:Ryulong's claim is not true. I did accidently remove some changes when there was an update conflict which I immediately added back. The problem is that User:Ryulong has an emotional ownership in the article, as evidenced by his discussions on the talk pages. I am trying to get concensus while removing redundancies and reorganizing the article to conform to other university articles. I appologize for any inadvertant deletion, but I try to add stuff back as soon as I can examine the diffs that occured while I was editing and saving. When one gathers related sections of text that is scattered, one must edit the entire article and not just one section at a time. There are content disputes galore here. User:Ryulong (who is an undergradute student) has strong, but mistaken ideas about how the Graduate School of University of Miami and its Business School are organized. When I started fact checking the article, I found many comparative statements without any citations, such as the University was the largest employer in Dade County and that it was "the youngest" university to ever conduct a $1 billion fund raising drive. (The source said it was "one of the youngest....")

The problem with the deleted references is that they do not support the claim that the University of Miami is commonly referred to as "The U." The references are merely examples of websites where people are quoted as saying "The U" after laying down a context or antecedent. If there was a press report of a sociological study or a trademark strength survey documenting that people (beyond the campus) understand "The U" to refer uniquely to the University of Miami, I would support including the footnote in the article. The footnotes offered are either local, school specific, or not on point. We have had many inches of discussion on this where I have explained the concerns and I offered several compromises or alternative formulations. None of the cited works discuss or conclude that "The U" is in widespread use as a replacement for the University of Miami. (There is already enough confusion between Univeristy of Miami and Miami University.)

The reference to WP:NOT was explained earlier in full when I quoted from it that Misplaced Pages is not "Usage guides or slang and idiom guides." I think a little "Assume good faith" can go along way here. Thanks. Racepacket (talk) 12:54, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Go to http://www.miami.edu/index.php/about_us/achievements_and_traditions/traditions/ and scroll down to the the 6th boxed area, titled "The U". For that matter, use any of the other 657 g-hits on miami.edu or 89 g-news hits. If you still don't believe it, five minutes of watching the FSU-UM game tonight will show you that they are often referred to as "The U". --B (talk) 13:49, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Sedna10387

I'm getting tired of dealing with Sedna10387 (talk · contribs), who seems intent, despite all the good advice he's got from other editors, on introducing into WP inappropriate articles about various aspects and institutions of his hometown. His most recent creation is Pittsboro Businesses and Buildings, which I've nominated at AfD; but previous articles of his have been speedied, AfD'd, speedied after recreation, and deleted as copyvio. There's also the problem that he uploads numerous nonfree logos to place in his articles, which then have to be tagged for deletion after the articles themselves are deleted. I think the kid is editing in good faith; but he seems unwilling to comply with WP policies and procedures, and I think the time has come for a block until he agrees to so comply and shows an understanding of what he's agreeing to. (If anyone thinks he hasn't been sufficiently warned or that other editors have not made an effort to educate him, trawl through the history of his talk page, most of the messages on which he's blanked at various times.) Deor (talk) 13:41, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

And, once again, he's moved Pittsboro Businesses and Buildings back into his user space in an attempt to short-circuit the deletion discussion. (He did this before with Frank and Mary's Restaurant and Lounge.) He seems to think that if he can only store everything in his user space until no one's looking, he can slip it back into article space without addressing any of the material's deficiencies. I've undone the move (not sure whether that was the right thing to do, but I'm rapidly losing what little patience I had left). Deor (talk) 13:57, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Being stalked by a user

A while back, I gave a 3O on an article about International Baccalaureate, and since then, I've got swept up into the conversation. One editor, ObserverNY (talk · contribs), has been particularly tendentious in her edits, and it's gone on for months. Yesterday morning, I read about Van Jones in the news and went over to the article and corrected a problem in one of the sources. I didn't realize Observer was active on that page, so I was rather surprised to see a snarky welcome from her on the talk page there, and a less than civil comment on my talk page. I participated in the conversation over there for awhile until it turned into a forum, and then I went away. I just checked the talk page of another discussion I'm involved in, and Observer has shown up there, more or less admitting that she followed me over. Perhaps I'm being overly sensitive about this, but I'd rather not be stalked around. Can someone comment on this? — HelloAnnyong 14:11, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Dear ANI - please be advised that the editor HelloAnnyong is engaged in a "conspiracy" here: to have me banned. His/her sudden arrival at the TALK:Van Jones page subsequent to my posting that I was having no problem interacting with editors of extremely diverse POV on an extremely controversial article, was evidence to me of HelloAnnyong's WP:Stalking to bring back "evidence" to build users Candorwein and LaMome's ridiculous "case" against me. Sure I checked out HelloAnnyong's edit at Kitchen Nightmares. It appears another editor there, Roman88, is engaging in WP:Canvas, exactly what LaMome and Candorwein have done.

I don't believe in running to Wikimommy everytime somebody disagrees with me. Certain editors here simply have "control" issues. Or so it seems to me. ObserverNY (talk) 14:23, 7 September 2009 (UTC)ObserverNY

My first edit on the Van Jones article was 9/6; yours was 9/1. I promise you that my intention on getting involved in the Van Jones article was only because I had read about him in the news - not to try to get evidence. If you read the conversation on the other article you linked to, you'll see that I haven't added anything about the Van Jones article. Others may have, but I don't control what comments they leave. — HelloAnnyong 14:31, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Personal info posted

I have a concern that in the creation of Kristine kvalsnes, personal information (a phone number) was posted. I do not know if the information is legitimate, but I imagine it would be prudent to have this deleted from the archives just in case. -- Scjessey (talk) 14:36, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

It's been deleted now; if you feel it needs to go further, WP:OVERSIGHT is thataway. Ironholds (talk) 15:15, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

No idea, frankly - just wanted to give y'all a heads-up. -- Scjessey (talk) 15:19, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Sister Kitty Catalyst O.C.P., DJ Pusspuss, Benjamin Holman, and an editor who shall remain nameless

While I'm not sure WP:OUTING should be applied in cases that are completely obvious to all involved, perhaps someone would like to step in at Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Sister Kitty Catalyst O.C.P. to end the blanking of comments, etc. Thanks. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 15:11, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely. Comments have been rendered in good faith. Downright unsporting to have numerous Sysops reverting them. Crafty (talk) 15:14, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Crafty unreverted the comments again. Ikip (talk) 15:23, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

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