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Misplaced Pages:Verifiability

Discussion moved to /WP:V RFC. Timestamp changed to future until the discussion is over. Alexandria (talk) 20:17, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

• Well, this move was made just after I made a comment that I intended to be on ANI. I hope, at least, that those who are paying attention will continue to watch the new page. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:58, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Closing the RfC at WP:V (a preemptive request)

OK... we are now at 30 days (remember, October had 31 days)... we don't have to close yet, but we could close today if we want to. I could close it myself (as the initiator of the RfC), except that I have certainly been heavily involved (far more than Sarek was) and I don't want give anyone (on either side of the debate) grounds to object to the closure when it happens and cause more unneeded drama. Given the tensions and general bad faith that has permeated the discussion recently, I think we need the closer to be someone who not only is neutral, but also has the appearance of neutrality. That means someone who has not commented at all. So... I thought I would ask...who is going to close it? I would like to announce who it will be, so we don't get a drama fest of closures and unclosures and counter closures when it happens. Blueboar (talk) 01:57, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

• Looks messy! 115.64.182.73 (talk) 00:35, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
• You need 3 closers to reach an agreed outcome to avoid further drama. Not me.. :-) Spartaz 07:34, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

  Valid idea... although I don't think anyone involved would insist on 3 closers. The point is, a) the closer(s) should be someone who has not yet commented, b) have the clout that comes with admin status so the decision (what ever it may be) is accepted, and c) we need to inform those who have commented who the closer(s) will be (along with a polite request that those involved not add to the drama by closing it themselves). So... could we get some volunteers please. Blueboar (talk) 12:59, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

  I assume you didn't read ANI recently, as we have an ANI subpage devoted to this now. Over there at least 3 admins have volunteered to close it: User:HJ Mitchell, User:Newyorkbrad and User:Black Kite. I personally think a triumvirate closure, like recently on the China RFC is a good idea, but I will leave it to the admins in question to work this out amongst themselfs. I am curious where you got the idea that the an iniator of an RFC should close it? The iniator is by definition heavily involved, so that is always a bad idea. Yoenit (talk) 15:41, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Yoenit. That is all I needed to know (I too am happy to leave the rest up to the admins in question). I got the idea that an initiator could close from reading the instructions at WP:RFC. Perhaps I have misunderstood. Doesn't really matter since I was not planning on doing so in any case. Blueboar (talk) 15:53, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Safe to archive?

Is the discussion (for now) at WP:V over with? It's hard to parse it at the moment. Alexandria (chew out) 16:25, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Not over... just temporarily on hold as we wait for a triumvirate of admins to officialy close the the RfC. Their determination this will determine the direction further discussions will take (for example, will we be using the current text as a base line for further discussions and edits, or will we using the proposed text as a base line?) Blueboar (talk) 13:38, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Recent events as of 8 December

Unfortunately, of the three uninvolved admins who volunteered to close this big RfC (HJ Mitchell, Black Kite and Newyorkbrad), one is known to have been unavailable and one has not made a single edit in almost a week. That leaves only HJ Mitchell. In discussions that spread over WT:V#It doesn't take this long to determine consensus, User talk:Newyorkbrad#WP:V, User talk:Cla68#WP:V RfC, User talk:HJ Mitchell#WP:V and possibly further locations, it appears that HJ Mitchell got the impression that it is OK for him to co-opt Cla68, resulting in a committee of 4 edits with 2 actually available. Cla68 accordingly created a "deliberation page" in his user space.

In my opinion this is highly inappropriate, even though the initial reactions were agreement by two editors (Nuujinn, Blueboar) and no protest. Cla68 is not an admin (not really necessary, but his failed RfA sheds some light on whether this is the right kind of person for the job), is not completely uninvolved as he voted in an earlier RfC about the same policy sentence (again not completely necessary), and whether he is in good standing depends on whether someone under an active Arbcom sanction qualifies for that. More importantly, the ARBCC topic ban was for, among other things:

• battlefield conduct – disqualifies him from determining consensus in a way that will contribute to a peaceful and lasting resolution
• inappropriate use of sources – disqualifies him from determining consensus on the first sentence of WP:V.

In order to give the immediate negative feedback that people need if they are to learn anything from their mistakes, I nominated the "deliberation page" for deletion. See WP:Miscellany for deletion/User:Cla68/Deliberation page. Hans Adler 13:40, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Closed now

It's closed now (one has to look at the talk archives to find it), and I think it's time to move on. I want to publicly say "thank you" to Regents Park, Worm that turned, and HJ Mitchell for doing the hard work of evaluating the discussion and explaining their reasoning so carefully. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:42, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Except after all this time and arguing, there's no "not truth" in the intro... because of a bunch of childish edit-warring. Bravo. Restore it back to before the edit-warring took place, please, now that the page is fully-protected. Doc talk 17:28, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

then no, despite what you say it's not finished. If there's childish edit warring and WP:WRONG VERSION calls, it's no where near "done", unless I can get some verification of it being closed the way it is. Alexandria (chew out) 20:14, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Hj regentspark and I closed it as no consensus. An editor tried an new approach which resulted in the edit war and there wrong version. There need to be a discussion with a proper new proposal, but instead there seems to be a lot of bickering at the momentWorm · (talk) 21:42, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

User Novaseminary reported for obsessive battling and disruptive behavior

This is the first time that I have ever reported anybody anywhere for anything in Misplaced Pages. Regarding this individual, after hundreds and hundreds of interactions and observations over approximately 2 years, there is no more “assuming”, there is “knowing”. I am going to describe the general situation for context, and then describe a specific small situation where I have decided to finally take a small stand and request a small action.

User Noviseminary chronically exhibits obsessive battling behavior with other editors. Also, certainly in my case, this includes following to other articles where I've edited do this at those in response/retaliation for standing my ground at another article. This is mostly focused on the individuals rather than actual content disputes. The pattern is to go after the targeted individual and do very aggressive deletion, tagging, and very aggressive editing strongly and directly focused on the work of the individual. And, if someone stands their ground with them they follow them to other articles where the victim has edited and start similar activities.

Due to their extreme cleverness:

• wiki-saavy in general
• misusing (and, to newbies, misrepresenting) policies/guidelines (rather than violating them) to conduct warfare
• often a small overused/ misused shred of legitimacy in many of the battling edits
• continuously rapidly erasing (not archiving) their talk page so that it would take hours for someone to see their history there
• knowing how to sound wikipedian and pretending to be (sound) reasonable when doing this
• mixing in legitimate housekeeping type edits with the obsessive battling edits and pointing to those to refute complaints

it would take me 20 hours (including hundreds of diffs) to fully communicate what this individual has been doing, hence I'm only noting this for context in a "IMO" framework, and then asking for and supporting a remedy on a particular situation as taking a small stand on a big problem. Most of this is conducted against newbies, I was also a newbie when it started. This chased many of them out of Wikipeda but I survived.

In my case, it started about 2 years ago with a brief head butting at the Carrie Newcomer article, my first interaction with them, where I ended up leaving it as they preferred: and branched out as they followed me to article after article from there. ALL of my subsequent conflicts with this individual have been at articles which they subsequently followed me to, and each “following” was generally preceded by (and in response/retaliation to) me standing my ground with them at another article

These sections of the talk page at the Machine vision article provide a tiny but very typical/representative glimpse:

• Talk:Machine vision#I reverted deletion of 3/4 of the article
• Talk:Machine vision#Processing methods section
• Talk:Machine vision#Please discuss on talk page before removing large amounts of material
• Talk:Machine vision#Proposed plan to expand / improve
• Talk:Machine vision#Phoenix
• Talk:Machine vision#Removal of direct interface section

Another very representative slice can be seen at the small talk page and edit summaries of the Feast of the Hunters' Moon article.

I leave my talk page as an “open book”, I don’t delete anything except broadcast type items, and I only archive two types of things, one of them a special archive for this individual due to the length and nastiness of those items. This can be viewed at User_talk:North8000/Archive_N

I have not followed them to any articles. The only time that I’ve ended up at one of their articles was about 2 times (only) when one of their many fights showed up on a notice board that I watch and then I made only low key moderator type comments.

In response to recent renewed clashes at the Machine vision and Feast of the Hunters' Moon articles they followed me to an article (Weld monitoring, testing and analysis) where I have been doing some rescue type work.

The rescue work article started out at an article called Signature image processing. (SIP) I originally brought up the idea of deleting this predecessor article. My concern was that that it was overly narrow and focused on one company's particular method of doing weld monitoring and testing, and that the generic-technical-sounding title was not such, it is a term only for that particular company’s product, and that it had a somewhat promotional tone. Other editors disagreed, making good points saying that it was a heavily sourced article on a legit topic. During ensuing conversations, it became clear that none of the editors had a coi. Over a three month period it was decided to redirect/expand this article into a broader, uncovered topic which is Weld monitoring, testing and analysis where the subject of the previous article became merely a section in the new article. I sort of "warned" ahead of time that the other sections would temporarily be stubs, hopefully temporarily as other editors built it over time. I researched other articles, especially the Welding article to make sure that this topic was uncovered. Also it was clear that real coverage of Signature image processing at Welding which is a top level article on a even much broader topic would be ungainly/undue. Recently I rechecked with the 3 other editors (also see their talk pages on this)....100% agreed and I made the move. As anticipated the new sections were stubs. I posted a note at the talk page of the Welding (which, structurally, this is basically a sub-article of) article about this article and solicited editors. I did some work and the intended to leave the article (for development by others) until Novaseminary assaulted it.

Then Novaseminary followed me to the article in immediate retaliation for me standing my ground with them at the Feast of the Hunters' Moon and Machine vision and did the following:

• First they proded the article (and tag bombed it, I’ve left all of the other tags in place) saying that it did not meet notability and that the SIP section was “seems not much more than a vehicle to promote the academic whose photo appears below and whose work is the only work profiled here.” I removed the prod tag, saying that the subject has EXTENSIVE coverage in sources, plus referring them to the extensive talk page discussion which led to this.

• Second So then they put a notability tag on the article. To be doubly safe I put more material & sources in. I responded and removed the tag.

• Third So then they nominated the article for deletion. (Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Weld monitoring, testing and analysis) As of this writing it is still open, but I think that it became obvious to Novasemianry that the deletion is wp:snow prompting them to take the next actions.

• Fourth So then (with the AFD still open) they gutted the article and undid the whole consensused rework by moving the SIP material back out into a separate article, undoing the redirect. I reverted this

• Fifth So then(with the AFD still open) they edited the redirect back into a competing article which duplicated the SIP material. Mind you, this competing article is the same content and topic which they originally said "seems not much more than a vehicle to promote the academic whose photo appears below and whose work is the only work profiled here” I reverted this

The articles for deletion page is very informative on this Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Weld monitoring, testing and analysis

Again, regarding this individual, after hundreds and hundreds of interactions and observations over approx 2 years, there is no longer a matter of “assuming”, it is a matter of “knowing”

I have decided to, on behalf of Misplaced Pages and their other current and future victims to invest the time to take this small stand on a big problem. I am not asking for action on the larger problems because I have not spent the 20 hours it would take to fully communicate and support what I have said that this individual has been doing. I ask that the proportionally microscopic but important measure be taken of blocking Novaseminary from editing the Signature image processing and Weld monitoring, testing and analysis articles for one week or one month and warning them to, after that, obtain consensus before doing such aggressive, controversial major changes on these. It is important this bigger problem of abuse of editors with clever so-far impunity be confronted, even to this very small extent. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 00:37, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

I am very sorry to say that I have observed the same sort of things with Novaseminary. The response to newbies has been particularly disturbing. This edit is a good example of what I have seen. The Strict Baptists article had been subject to vandalism in the past, and Novaseminary might have thought the newbie editor was the vandal. But Novaseminary's actions were also based on a dubious interpretation of WP:IMAGE, and worst of all, there was very little explanation or encouragement on the article's talk page, the offending user's talk page, or even in the edit summaries. Perhaps a mentorship would be appropriate. StAnselm (talk) 01:23, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

• There is a colossal amount of history to read through here, but my initial impression is that Novaseminary is a valuable contributor with a deep understanding of wikipedia, but who can be prickly and difficult to deal with. He also seems to have problems working collaboratively, and struggles when not getting "his own way". More seriously, a quick look at the deletion discussion presented by North above reveals what looks like an attempt by Novaseminary to subvert the result when he realised the discussion wasn't going his way. That said, he does a lot of good work and is valuable to the project; perhaps mentorship would be of benefit? Basalisk ⁄_berate 01:51, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

  I'm pretty confident that I know this individual the best of anybody in wikipedia. This is a people-chemistry-with-editors driven situation; content battles are the trigger and the result of this, but these battles are not driven by the usual clash of ideologies or content agendas as most other Misplaced Pages battles are. And they do have a very nasty streak in one area that I have not discussed. I am also guessing that a small action might have a substantial impact with this individual, but some type of mentoring would be better. North8000 (talk) 02:13, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

North and I obviously have a history. I prefer to focus on content, however, so I will briefly address the recent content episode North mentioned.

• I think Weld monitoring, testing and analysis is not itself a notable topic (as such), though it may contain many notable topics. It seemed to me to be several concepts strung together. I sent it to AfD here. This article had been created when North moved it from Signature image processing, leaving behind a redirect. I do think Signature image processing does meet N on its own (if barely), so I spun it off in its recent edited form from Weld monitoring, testing and analysis at Signature image processing. I then edited Weld monitoring, testing and analysis using summary style, adding a link to the main article (Signature image processing) and adding a source I took from the amin article so the new summary was sourced. This also had the effect of bringing the Weld monitoring, testing and analysis into proportion among the topics. Anyway, if North thinks Signature image processing fails WP:N, the way to delete it or enforce an alternative to deletion is through AfD. He should not continue re-redirecting and removing talk where I explained myself. Regardless, none of my edits to either article have been disruptive, nor is the AfD (even when North went personal at the AfD immediately).
• Unfortunately, I am personally being called into question here. To that end I would note the following:

• StAnselm, himself sometimes prickly to work with, sometimes great to work with, was blocked a few weeks ago after I reported him at WP:AN3. There is also a minor disagreement between us that is the subject of an RfC (here) that is not going his way.
• And North and my real history turned sour at Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Traveler's Dream where an article he created was deleted after I put it up for discussion. He went so far afterwards as to create a section on his talk age for my posts, User talk:North8000/Archive N (where there is no nastiness on my part). I would summarize our main philosophical disagreement as being that I feel strongly that material should not be added until sourceable (preferably sourced) and North is fine with more personal knowledge and synthesis in the hope (honestly held, I believe, but wrong, I believe) that this will elad to better articles. The is exemplified on one of the examples North gave above, here. But it needn't get personal.

So if I hurt North's or StAnselm's feelings, I wish I hadn't and I am sorry. But disagreements about content, however strongly held our positions may be, should not get personal. For any part I had in turning them that way, I am also sorry. I hope you all are, too. I have done my best to avoid them both as of late, but that is not always going to happen. I'd say we all get back to editing constructively.

Novaseminary (talk) 04:30, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

The AFD at Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Traveler's Dream is another place which Novaseminary followed me to and exhibited this behavior. If I were spending the 20 hours preparing the overall presentation, that would certainly be in there. Not as tidy of an illustration due to its hugeness and the fact that the other 1/2 of the material is no longer available to view (extensive relevant talk page content lost with the userfication) but a read through the AFD shows the same obsessive battling behavior. Gutting the article and removing references and notability-related information simultaneously with nominating it for AFD based on notability, and they probably spent at least dozens of hours to attack it and every detail in it from every possible angle. North8000 (talk) 08:37, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

It is further instructive of the cleverness of this individual to note what I already said that the special ARCHIVE was due to a combination of me never deleting and seldom archiving editor conversations from my talk page and wanting to get theirs off of my main talk page. After explaining this they described it as "so far afterwards as to create a section on his talk age for my posts". And they implied cause-effect by "afterwards" whereas it actually happened 10 months later. North8000 (talk) 08:43, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

The described "philosophical disagreement" does not exist. I 100% agree with Novseminary's description ("I feel strongly that material should not be added until sourceable (preferably sourced)") of "their side" of the non-existent philosophical disagreement. North8000 (talk) 11:42, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

A minor but very clarity-creating example that this is person-focused battling rather than about such differences is when, as the first edit to the article in three months, with this edit ] I added an additional "medium quality" reference to the article. It was from a national website on events, not such a high quality wp:rs to be assault proof, but I added it only as a second source supporting a statement that was already in there. Within a day Novaseminary showed up and began battling to eliminate the new source, with no challenge of the statement which it supported. In short, they battled to reduce the sourcing on a statement because it was one of their targeted victims (me) who added the source. North8000 (talk) 12:02, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Further to my previous comment, it is instructive and illustrative to note that in order to continue the "come after me" process at the weld monitoring article Novaseminary in essence did a complete reversal of their position on the SIP material. When the way to "come after me" was to attack the overall article, they in essence criticized the SIP material as unworthy of even being a section in the article. When that failed, in order to continue to aggressively go after my work they took the material that they essentially said wasn't even worthy of a section in the article and instead made an entire article out of it. This dramatically illustrates that it was about coming after me via aggressive and obsessive targeting of my work rather than anything else. North8000 (talk) 08:37, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Given the depth of material here, would a RFC/U not be a better venue? --Blackmane (talk) 15:33, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

{small|Someone screwed up somewhere and my comment was moved somewhere else. --Blackmane (talk) 09:49, 12 December 2011 (UTC)}}

What I strongly request

1. The creepiest, nastiest and most concerning me-focused stuff from this individual I can't and didn't talk about here and received partial help on from oversight on. As a remedy, a complete ban against this individual doing or writing anything even remotely raising privacy concerns regarding myself, including anything that involves or is focused on or based on even guesses/imaginations about my RW identity.* As an aside, by my initiative and choice, I gave an oversighter my RW identity in relation to this.
2. A warning to generally dial back their targeting me and my work for aggressive activity at articles that they followed me to.* North8000 (talk) 16:52, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

*These could have wording that does not presume a determination of past behavior. Like a preface "Whether or not such has occurred, do not......" North8000 (talk) 10:57, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

What I suggest

1. A 1 week block at those two articles, and a warning to go to talk and get a consensus before making any major controversial changes there after that.
2. Some type of mentoring or at least mentoring-lite regarding this type of behavior. North8000 (talk) 16:52, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

I never violated any policy at those articles and only made a handful of edits at them anyway (and left North's version after he started to edit war, and haven't even edited there recently). There is no ”incident” to discuss here. And I would suggest that North be warned to not make personal attacks as he has from the first AfD at which we crossed paths (Traveller's Dream). At least that would be based on policy. But North, instead, why don't we just get back to editing constructively instead of wasting time here so you can win a point? Novaseminary (talk) 14:48, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, there are the usual mis-characterizations, several in one paragraph, but a change there is not expected or essential at this point The items under "what I suggest" are more for the good of Misplaced Pages and I don't have any pressing personal concern to have them implemented. With resolution of the other items, I would let others judge (and would be comfortable with any decision) without pursuing or discussing them further here.

But the items under "what I strongly request" are of great importance to me. If you would truly agree to those things, then from my standpoint, I would be ready to move on. It would be OK to word them differently in a way that does not imply any conclusions about past behavior such as: #1 Completely avoid doing or writing anything even remotely raising privacy concerns regarding myself, including anything that involves or is focused on or based on even guesses/imaginations about my RW identity. #2 Not exhibit any pattern of aggressive edits, tags and other activities that is focused on me or my work, particularly where you follow(ed) me to an article. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 15:39, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

In response to your requests, I have noted that you have claimed on more than one ocassion to work in an industry and have edited that article. You made one of the statements on the article's talk. Me asking you to confirm no COI, when you are editing an article to add unsourced mentions of particular products and services, is not a ”privacy violation.” Neither is me asking you to confirm (which you did) that you were not inappropriately citing yourself when you do add sources. This is not the place to ask for warnings about things you are unwilling to talk about. And as for targeting you, I always focus on content (except here and user talk pages). The number of articles we overlap on is tiny compared to the number we have each edited (ever or recently). You ad hominem attacks on me personally, here and elseshere, is the only targeting going on. But again, this is not an appropriate forum to beat each other up. Novaseminary (talk) 16:15, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Those utilizing-COI fishing expeditions/attacks were not the worst of such problems, and I already gave my real world name to an oversighter and asked for a review of myself in those areas which you were using as an attack method. This was further double covered by when I said "And if you see any company-specific product or process promotion in either article specifically bring it up as such at the articles(s)." And it was triple covered on the Weld inspection article where I said many times that it is not my area of expertise or interest, that I was only doing short term rescue work there, planned to leave the article for good, and was forced to come back to it when you assaulted it. You still trying create an interrogation style conversation where it is beyond-baseless ludicrous for the welding article is beyond-disingenuous and illustrative of your clever-tactic obsessive battling which I say based on immense experience with you.

If you won't agree to the above things, even with the substitution of simply "not do" wording for "stop doing", wording, then we have more work to do here. North8000 (talk) 16:36, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Or, we could go 10 levels up and say lets genuinely be friendly and friends, which presumably would resolve everything. North8000 (talk) 21:28, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

North, I have tried to be friendly from our first interactions. Take a look at what I said early in that Novaseminary talk archive you created. Go back and read what I (not other eds who agreed with me) actually wrote at the Travellers' Dream AfD, and despite being called some pretty nasty things by you, DougT, and various folks you invited to that AfD from the outset. You have consistently said terrible, personal things about me.

I have not done so to you (and I am sorry if there are examples to the contrary), and at most questioned whether your bank of knowledge and experience and employment in certain fields could lead to less objectivity; this is an encyclopedia, afterall, not a technical forum. And only because I was concerned it might affect content. (I practice what I preach, never editing anything even remotely related to my day job.)

I've tried to stick to the content. Unfortunately, we have not always seen eye-to-eye there. There is no reason for the vitriol. Everytime you have tagged me as ”obsessed”, you have been equally interested or more, otherwise our disagreements would have withered on the vine. My only interest, and the places where we have had disagreements, have been where I (rightly or wrongly) thought text you added or reinserted was promotional, otherwise POV, or OR. I feel strongly about that (otherwise the value of WP goes downhill fast).

Anyway, I say bygones.

Novaseminary (talk) 21:50, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm trying to read between the lines in the best possible way, as possibly a partial response to my "10 levels up" idea rather than take and respond to all of that literally. But I really don't know what you are saying/think about my "10 levels up" idea. North8000 (talk) 01:03, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

North, feel free to keep making this sort of edit here to prevent this from being archived (though you might irritate folks), but unless somebody else weighs in in a way that necesitates a response, I'll let things lie here. Novaseminary (talk) 15:31, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Huh? That is silly on multiple levels. I accidentally used a different term in this most recent post, and then chose the better (newer) one when when reconciling them. Second, how would editing an old post in a section that has newer posts prevent archiving, and thirdly, archiving would be irrelevant here. It looks like there is no resolution of this in this exchange.North8000 (talk) 15:42, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Brought back - archived with not even partial resolution. Some even partial resolution/relief please. As indicated, at this point, this is not full presentation on the overall problem, but it should certainly be enough to receive the requested cautioning notes. A full interaction ban would also be fine. North8000 (talk) 12:32, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Update. The article was closed as keep. So now Novaseminary created yet another new article (Weld quality assurance) redirected it to the subject article, inserted the redirect title into the Welding article, and then used that insertion as a basis for removal of the link to the article. North8000 (talk) 12:56, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Suggest including Welding in a block and a ban on creating new welding-related articles.North8000 (talk) 13:02, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

North, I created that redirect (no new article) last week, and I think you would agree it is one of many appropriate redirects to your now kept article. At the main welding article I moved the link to your article from the see also to a more prominent position in the appropriate section as a ”main” article link. I would think you would be happy about this. I made the ”main” link point to the shorter redirect title (and might propose an article move to that title), but I am fine with your changing the main link to the article's current non-redirected title. What is the problem? Your reposting here is itself becoming disruptive, as has your recent behavior at WP:V and its talk (discussed below on this very notice board). My suggestion is for North to take a breather. Novaseminary (talk) 15:27, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

So now you resort to an ad hominem argument and changing the subject. North8000 (talk) 16:02, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't see anything even vaguely ad hominem in Novaseminary's post. All I see is a fairly reasonable explanation for Novaseminary's actions followed by a single comment stating that you may be getting too worked up over this, which is a conclusion that I also came to after reading your walls of text in this thread. As an earlier editor said, maybe you should try an RFC/U about this if you feel so strongly. Based on the lack of comments from other uninvolved editors and/or administrators, it seems unlikely that you are going to be successful in your desire to have a topic ban or block enacted. Chillllls (talk) 17:25, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

There is the complexity that, as I said from the from the start, I have not invested the 20 hours it would take to communicate what this individual has been doing to other editors. The large amount of time required being due to the listed reasons. However, there should be enough in this areas to give the partial relief of warning them not to do those two things listed under "what i strongly request". The things that you refer to are under the "what I suggest" and this report seems to have caused the severity of the behavior there at those particular articles to get reduced. And finally, that item below was not about me; I was just one of the few that responded there, and it was about my one edit to the text. North8000 (talk) 19:34, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I think it's pretty obvious from the lack of participation in this thread by others that there is not "enough in this areas to give the partial relief of warning them not to do those two things listed under 'what i strongly request.'" This is a complex issue of user behavior that you claim has been ongoing for 2 years and cannot be explained simply in a paragraph or two. This makes it an issue for RFC/U rather than AN/I. I have no horse in this race but I have a feeling that you're not going to get things accomplished in this venue and unarchiving this multiple times will not solve your problems. If there are indeed many other editors that have been the recipients of problematic behavior then you should have no trouble getting the RFC/U certified. Chillllls (talk) 21:58, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Continued flaming (in spite of warning)

Remember User:Timbouctou, this thread, and the resultant warning? It seems enough time has passed for the user, who has a history of personal attacks , to get back into his routine. I was having a discussion with a third party new user (who insisted that his YouTube video clip is a reliable source), completely without touching on Timbouctou in any way, but here is the latter on Talk:Coat of arms of Croatia: "As for DIREKTOR - he does that a lot. You can expect many ill-informed rants from him in the future. We've gotten used to it." .

I mean this is just beyond disruption. In the extensive context of his previous actions, I perceive this as calculated attack against me as a contributor and an attempt to slander and discredit me entirely - to remove me from the discussion altogether as a sort of malicious raving madman. Its a typical personal attack I've come to expect from the person: it could not have been more disruptive. A single post like this will a) completely destroy any chance of an amicable agreement, ruining the discussion perhaps beyond repair, and b) escalate into yet another pointless personal conflict, where Timbouctou vents his pent-up hatred. As KillerChihuahua recommended (Timbouctou and you), I've refrained from responding and am immediately brought the matter up here.

I will also just add that experience has taught me to expect Timbouctou will respond in his usual way: not by addressing his own actions in any way - but by actually continuing to attack me in this venue. He basically seems to think I am an altogether evil entity, and that I should to be treated in this manner by him. This, I believe, is the third report on the subject of his hostility towards me personally. --DIREKTOR 17:56, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

• I could list dozens of dramas DIREKTOR created over at Talk:Josif Runjanin, Talk:Zoran Milanović, Talk:Chetniks, Talk:Coat of arms of Croatia, Talk:Josip Broz Tito, Talk:Social Democratic Party of Croatia, Talk:Prime Minister of Croatia, Talk:Nikola Tesla, Talk:Independent State of Croatia, Talk:Tito street decision and the like - but I won't. And that's just what he has been doing in the last couple of months, after all the blocks and warning and chummy messages from admins he received. All of his endless rants consists of throwing fits over infoboxes, images, flags and succession boxes. He can't really dispute article content because he never added any.
• The man is a troll of epic proportions who does this regularly and his net contribution to this project is absolute zero. He constantly ignores consensus, he constantly pushes for edits that no other out of about a dozen Balkan editors support. He constantly harrasses everybody disagreeing with him, his personal attacks are dime a dozen, he edit-wars on a regular basis and his useful contributions are non-existent. In addition, his entire body of contribution is purely politically motivated. In fact the only reason he regularly files complaints here is because he has no friends elsewhere on Misplaced Pages. It is truly a travesty that the incompetence of admins frequenting this place, accompanied by what seems to be a endless tolerance for his wikilawyering, has allowed such a disruptive editor to hang around as long as he did. He never notifies relevant projects (because he knows no-one in their right mind would agree with his ideas) and restrains to simple trolling in talk pages (this recent thread is a fine example, Talk:Zoran Milanović offers two other fine examples, and so on, and so on, ad infinitum.)
• In this particular case, DIREKTOR is deleting sourced information simply because he happens not to like it. The "third party" in User:Calapone. The "discussion" he refers to consists of this rant of his. The YouTube video in question is not "his", it is archive footage from the Croatian Radiotelevision. In addition, this has been discussed earlier by User:Calapone and User:Joy here and the usage of the clip was agreed. That is, until DIREKTOR came along and decided he didn't like it. Ask him for a source - he will not provide one. Tell him to notify relevant projects - he won't do it. But he sure as hell will run over here asap and launch rants. Timbouctou (talk) 18:40, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

And there's an excellent example of what I mean. As I said above (and in previous threads), it is amazing that this user has in the past managed to get away with vicious slander and "character assassination", simply by posting more slander and character assassination when it is brought up - on the admins' noticeboard even. It is no surprise, therefore, to see him attempt that again. This person actually believes he should continue to attack other users that he judges have deserved that treatment from him. The fact that he was given his "only warning" does not seem to impress upon him in the least. I mean, imagine if you had someone following you around and attacking you with the above sort of utter nonsense at every turn, posting his offensive personal "evaluations" of your behavior, all intermingled with overt insults, condescending provocations, and name-calling (e.g. "troll" just above). This is nothing less than hounding. --DIREKTOR 21:34, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

P.S. in addition to the above, I've just been called a bully and a "psychopath" on the talkpage. --DIREKTOR 23:23, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

In a recent discussion on page Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Croatia#Information at the bottom, I think I was the target of ridicule on ethnicity of user User:Timbouctou when we talking about adding a minority language in articles about settlements in Croatia. "So the next step in the evolution of your thinking is that "all minority languages are historic languages"? Lol. Does that include Hebrew for Jews? Tell me so I can start filling in articles with toponyms in Yiddish and Hebrew. How about the Romani people?" ] is a quote that I belive is not appropriate. I would not want anyone hurt unduly, but I was really offended by that--MirkoS18 (talk) 23:51, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree that his comment at that point devolved into a rant, but you're still taking that quote out of a context - the key point here is that he's not ridiculing anything about minorities in articles in general, but in Misplaced Pages:Lead section, because that's the point of the whole debate. The implication to the contrary would have been avoided had he simply been more careful to say "lead sections" rather than "articles" in the offending sentence. --Joy (talk) 09:43, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

• Blocked I've blocked User:Timbouctou for personal attacks and harrassment. I was going to wait until User:KillerChihuahua took a look at this thread as they gave the final warning but it appears the personal attacks are continuing. I invite any admin to review the block and adjust/unblock if they feel it's neccessary or unjust.--v/r - TP 00:09, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

• • Comment I know we have this WP:INVOLVED policy that prevents me from acting, but this is really getting out of hand. Timbouctou was extreme in assessing DIREKTOR as a "psychopath" and that is certainly out of line by default, but I do believe his generally negative assessment is correct - DIREKTOR has been consistently disruptive for months now, and has in this instance bitten a newbie in an similarly distressing way - in his first revert, he said Calapone's edit was "pro-ustaše", IOW fascist. I think that was entirely inappropriate given existence of the discussion I had with the same user that clearly indicates a modicum of good faith on their part. I also take issue with the complete absence of policy-based discussion - the newbie provided a disputable source, but the dispute of this source needed to have been grounded in fact, not assertion and another unexplained revert (). If we expect everyone else to be nice and tolerate DIREKTOR's behavior, then he needs to have learned by now that he is not excused from following the same rules about civility, either. I'm not happy with this pattern - DIREKTOR is part of the problem here. --Joy (talk) 09:23, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

• Let's not mix issues here. There are two seperate issues: 1) Direktor is (alledged) to be biting newbies; this can be delt with by an uninvolved editor discussing it with him or a WP:RFC/U if so desired. 2) Timbouctou and Direktor simply don't get along. That's the simplest way to put it. Direktor has chosen to refrain from getting involved with Timbouctou and the opposite has not been true. Timbouctou was making personal attacks on Direktor even after this ANI thread was opened and after KillerChihuahua's warning was pointed out. Separate issues need to be delt with separately. Personally, I'm just annoyed at the whole situation from both of them, but I acknowledge that Direktor has at least tried to avoid anymore conflict while Timbouctou has apparently engaged with phasers set to kill. I had intended to just watch this thread and wait for KillerChihuahua to arriver and deal with it, but she isnt around and it appeared the personal attacks were continuing. I left a note on her talk page that I have no opposition if she wishes to change or remove the block; why don't you also leave a note for her?--v/r - TP 16:25, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Disruptive behavior isn't demonstrated only through explicit insults on talk pages. If it were only that easy... --Joy (talk) 19:10, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I should probably explain further. These are not two separate issues - Timbouctou insulted DIREKTOR likely because he observed the same kind of pattern we have seen before. DIREKTOR exhibits a bit of a WP:OWN problem on certain articles, doesn't have any problem with reverting stuff on the spot without WP:AGF, and discussions with him regarding even the relatively inconsequential things have been known to devolve into a Usenet-style back-and-forth where he sticks to a flawed argument and perpetuates a controversy despite numerous concessions to his POV and overwhelming policy-based opposition from even various benevolent editors. Granted, Timbouctou likes to rant, too, but that does nothing to excuse DIREKTOR. If some of these discussions had been about topics that were more generally known and more interesting to the English-speaking audience, I'm pretty sure some of his views would be more likely to be dismissed as fringe and further discussion about them deemed unproductive. In other words - if you're so easy on the blocking trigger for WP:CIVIL for one of them, you shouldn't have a problem with blocking the other for violations of both WP:CIVIL and WP:DISRUPTIVE. It wouldn't be the first time, either - previously, DIREKTOR's behavior had frustrated Fainities so much that the latter instituted a wide topic ban on him. This was later overturned for procedural reasons, but it looks to me DIREKTOR's pushing the same envelope all over again. --Joy (talk) 11:23, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Reedy Bot

I've tried to stop this from making any more edits, but the big red button is only accesible by admin. The bot is tagging for AFT v5, but is also moving stub tags from the bottom of the article to above the categories. See Reedy's talkpage for the ones I've spotted. Thanks. Lugnuts (talk) 19:46, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Oh the drama. For some reason, it's Pywikipediabot making those edits and moving it. I noticed AWB was doing similar things at the start, so I made that stop and go away. Let's see Reedy (talk) 20:07, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Oh the drama indeed. Now go and fix it. Lugnuts (talk) 20:15, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Still happening. Someone block this fool and quick. Lugnuts (talk) 20:35, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I didn't expect it to have fixed itself. Strange that, huh? Reedy (talk) 20:58, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Bot blocked, as it was still doing it - oddly, though, not every time, but only when there is a {{DEFAULTSORT}} tag, it appears. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 20:39, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

That's overkill, there is no policy reason for this, it's just based on a MOS list of the sequence we put things and appears to be for no more reason than to keep it separate. Before, after, why do we care. I was in the middle of researching this and had already concluded no block was required. The bot handler is a trusted user and developer and is aware of the issue. I support immediate unblocking.--Doug. 20:53, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Ref: WP:IDEALSTUB and WP:FOOTERS--Doug. 20:57, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

It's 2 different bots to get the job done quicker. One is AWB, which is working from the bottom of the list, the other is Pywikipedia bot that is working from the top. What I can't fathom, is why the bot has been blocked due to what is a stylistic complaint, it is not, in any way breaking articles, making them display differently. Unfortunately, it's not my fault that I'm having to do this in such a rush (it's for a WMF project with a deadline), so not so tested code has to be used. The problem itself is presumably when pywiki is grabbing the base data, it's stripping it all down, adding the category, and rebuilding in the wrong order. Reedy (talk) 20:58, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Either way it shouldn't be doing it. The code should always be fully tested regardless although there isn't much harm here bots can do a lot of damage if not tested fully. The WMF should know this as much as anyone. Edinburgh Wanderer 21:02, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Running untested code against a live project? That's pretty shoddy software engineering. Gerardw (talk) 21:05, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Pywikipediabots category.py is very well tested code, but seemingly, per The Bushranger, we've got an edge case "but only when there is a {{DEFAULTSORT}} tag, it appears." Reedy (talk) 21:07, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Another issue, see here - the {{link GA}} which belongs after the stubs and before the interlanguage links is being moved in between the DEFAULTSORT and the categories. I have also noticed that in some cases a blank line is being inserted between DEFAULTSORT and the categories, as here. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:58, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

OK, not that's not in the MOS, there is no reference to where these belong. Redrose64, where does that placement come from? But it suggests that the bot is simply ordering all templates above all cats. Since AWB and PWB were both do it, and they are entirely different frameworks, this appears to be a problem coming from outside the bots.--Doug. 22:06, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

The {{link GA}}/{{link FA}} is rarely added manually, but is typically added by one or another of the many bots which maintain the interlanguage links. Bots usually place them immediately before the ILLs, with no gap, as described at H:ILL#Syntax, I guess because it makes them easier for such bots to find at a later date when update is required (e.g. changing {{link GA}} into {{link FA}}). Since Reedy Bot is moving these and stubs to just after the DEFAULTSORT, that tells me not only that is it not aware that certain templates have special rules, but that it also believes {{DEFAULTSORT:}} to be a template. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:16, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

This does not seem consistent with the instructions at {{link FA}} but then I couldn't quite figure out what the documentation intended. In any case, there is apparently a related bug known since 2008 on this issue: SourceForge Pywikipediabot Bug Tracker. Only related as it is using interwiki.py and we're talking about category.py.--Doug. 12:36, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

The reference to the instructions in the documentation was to {{link GA}} I have not reviewed the documentation for {{link FA}}, which seems much more detailed.--Doug. 12:40, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I've not got the time to test/debug/fix Pywikipedia. I can however more vouch for AWB's functionality and operations - As it has been starting at the bottom, the edits are separate. I've got just under 4,200 titles left to tag for this run. If I just run AWB to finish the job, could I have the bot unblocked please? Some cleanup might be needed to fix some of the changes, but as it's more style, it's hardly something that needs doing with major priority. Thanks Reedy (talk) 21:54, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

"I've not got the time to test/debug/fix Pywikipedia." Then you shouldn't be trusted to run a bot fullstop. Lugnuts (talk) 07:51, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

 Administrator note - The blocking admin has been inactive since posting the block over 1.5 hours ago (20:40:39).--Doug. 22:25, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Reedy has said he'll run only the AWB one that's has none of the problems that have been raised here. I have hence unblocked. Cheers, Snowolf 22:43, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

User:MindstorM

MindStorM (talk · contribs) has been repeatedly making unsourced POV edits to a few articles, often with an air of ownership. In some cases, this has got close to edit warring too., , , , , , , , , , The user has been warned a number of times - for edit warring, vandalism, removing sourced content, and POV pushing, yet has continued. , , , , , , , , , , , . MindstorM has generally not engaged in any discussion; when he has, he has not seemed to take any notice of the advice and warnings given by others, accusing Misplaced Pages of being leftist/Marxist and refused to co-operate with other editors at all., . ItsZippy 21:10, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm surprised they haven't already been blocked given the consistency of the edit-warring and POV pushing. I'd support at the very least a temporary block, followed by an indef if they come back with the same agenda. OhNoitsJamie 21:43, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree. The continued problems suggest that these problems are likely to continue. I would support a temporary block to prevent him from causing any more trouble; hopefully that will also improve his behaviour; if he returns and continues to cause a problem, then I would support an indef block, as you say. ItsZippy 22:10, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

After reviewing this, I'm blocking for 48 hours; if problems continue afterward, an indef is more than warranted. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 23:12, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response. I shall keep watching events; hopefully, this should help improve the situation. If not, I'll bring the problem here again. ItsZippy 20:48, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Optometrist/ ophthalmic optician

User:Jshan826 is persistently removing reference to ophthalmic opticians, supported by the following sources, from the Optometry article.

• Optometrist/ophthalmic optician NHS Careers (retrieved 14 December 2011)

• Internal Caseworker Guidance Home Office (retrieved 14 December 2011)

The user has logged out to avoid 3RR. Chrisieboy (talk)

Barnstarbob Exerting Article Ownership and Edit Warring on Chevrolet Vega, Again

{User:Barnstarbob blocked Basalisk ⁄_berate 00:11, 15 December 2011 (UTC) Unhatting to add some stuff. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 15:28, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Despite having been blocked in May for similar behavior, Barstarbob is once again exerting ownership and engaging in edit warring at Chevrolet Vega.

diff1 diff2 diff3 diff4 diff5 diff6

The diffs listed above are not, in each case, a simple reverting battle. I have listed them to show both the edit warring and the article ownership tendencies exhibited by Barnstarbob recently.

Also, he refuses to use the "Preview" button or to post his edits in cohesive groups. Instead, he makes many, many of small edits in rapid succession. At times, these small, rapid edits have numbered in the hundreds. This makes it VERY difficult for other editors to sort through his edits and understand the changes he has made on an edit-by-edit basis. Unfortunately, some editors have been known to throw up their hands and perform mass reverts instead of spending the hours it would take to go through Barnstarbob's edits one at a time.

It seems that all editors believe that Barnstarbob is editing in good faith, and that he has impressive knowledge of the subject matter. It saddens me greatly to bring this matter to this venue, but I feel that Barnstarbob is, once again, "out of control" and his edits must be limited by any means necessary. Thanks very much. Ebikeguy (talk) 23:56, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

A sysop blocked Barnstarbob as I was writing this report, so the problem now seems moot. How should I handle it? Thanks. Ebikeguy (talk) 00:01, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

This has been going on since 2009. Barnstarbob is formerly known as Vegavairbob (talk · contribs), and under the two nicks he's been blocked between four and seven times (depending on whether you count the time a block was extended for block evasion, twice, as three blocks or one). Each block has been for his behavior on or related to Chevrolet Vega. Clearly the point is not getting across here; is there a reason he's still only being given a week's block and not, at the very least, a topic ban? A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 15:28, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

After the profanities left on his talk page, I've extended the block to 1 month and revoked talk page access. Toddst1 (talk) 02:52, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

MarcusBritish and Sheodred

Urgent RfC regarding SOPA arising out of a talk page discussion, may require a complex "closure"

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

The RfC has been closed, so nothing to do here. We now have WP:SOPA initiative, so WT:SOPA initiative seems the best venue for further discussion.  Chzz  ►  13:31, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Administrators may wish to know about the village pump proposal to Turn wikipedia off for 24 hours from the next 00:01 PST, ie, Thursday, ie, Tomorrow (for some users). In particular administrator assistance may be required in closing this, and (if the closure is that consensus was in favour) in implementing it. Fifelfoo (talk) 01:02, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Wehwalt made the excellent point in relation to this RfC and proper closing practice: "It's past midnight in the UK. Generally, in societies where people's rights are valued, sneaking things through in the middle of the night is disfavored. While their access, of course, would not be blocked, for certain they might have something to say about the politicization of this website. As might those Americans and Canadians who only edit during the day." I can only second Wehwalt's suggestion regarding too early closure of an RfC of this kind. Fifelfoo (talk) 01:17, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I will add of my own accord that if this happens, there will be recriminations from the part of the community which is disenfranchised by this. Consensus is not about votes, it is about argument. Many people are likely to be upset that such a momentous decision was taken and they had no part in it. And yet no reason for urgency has been shown.--Wehwalt (talk) 01:20, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Exceedingly poorly thought out RfC has been closed. Swarm 02:15, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Instead of leaving it open until those European users wake up and can get to it? Ian.thomson (talk) 02:17, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Trouble with that is it is always midnight someplace. Protonk (talk) 03:35, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I hope earnestly that this kind of world timezone based procedural temperance is displayed more often in future on this board. Fifelfoo (talk) 04:28, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

There is a project page for determining consensus on who/what/where/when/why/how if we ever get to that point. (Which incidentally has the opinions of WMF legal counsel regarding this bill). Maybe DON'T PANIC would be a better click through soft blank... Crazynas 10:13, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, and that seems the best place to carry on any further discussion, so I'm closing this ANI thread.  Chzz  ►  13:31, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

MoMK again. (This thread needs more attention by uninvolved admins. Please read, do your research and decide yourself. Thanks.)

This page was and is contentious and only a few editors and admins were willing to watch over it and is by now abandoned again. It would be nice to get an admin overlooking the page in general and especially go over the last few days (including the talkpage) where user:Overagainst made repeatedly edits despite missing consensus and opposition to most of their edits. Like other editors (including admins) I'm getting tired of this and don't want to engage in further reverts as there doesn't seem to be any intention by that OP to discuss points made in editsummaries and on talk and it might just look like I'm just editwarring against this user.

Appreciated for someone to take the time to look into this and possible stay put for a while after having found some insight in the issues involved.

Thank you, TMCk (talk) 01:33, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Will notify user shortly.TMCk (talk) 01:33, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

• More: My personal assesment about this editor is that after first vehemently opposing Follian's book on bases of a review he than changes his mind after they're getting access to the book and since then is trying to implement everything written in it into the article based on what they personaly think is of due weight, including random quotes that where not reported by the media. If we would apply his rational for inclusion we would end up with a quotefarm not seen before with their simple rationale that if it's in the book it must be due weight (also they're just cherry-picking).TMCk (talk) 02:02, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

• ...and it sure would be great and of service if someone already familiar with the past of the article could comment.TMCk (talk) 02:31, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

• Unanswered threads to issues with this article have in in the past (few years) led to even more problems and drastic measures in part regarding drastic sanctions and added to the contentiousness already present. I hope that this time it will be handled before such happens again.TMCk (talk) 03:36, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Involved editor here. I think Overagainst is bombarding the article with controversial edits and trying to overwhelm the talk process. The result is a slow edit war and the article is worse for it. Having seen this play out over weeks and weeks, I regretfully suggest administrator involvement. Brmull (talk) 08:07, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Protection is worth considering. This article has been fully protected for as long as one month in the past. A new period of full protection would still allow necessary changes to be put in through {{editprotect}}. That mechanism requires that admins only make changes which have editor consensus. Note that Overagainst has made 27 edits since December 9. Six of them were obvious reverts. This volume of editing, if it continued, would strain the ability of regular editors to keep up. At Talk:Murder of Meredith Kercher I do not notice *anyone* supporting Overagainst's edits. EdJohnston (talk) 16:58, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

BTW, there were 7 reversions (not counting those made in a row of course) and 8 by now.TMCk (talk) 23:26, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I was considering article protection in the first place but since the problem on that page comes down to one single editor I don't think this is the way to go, the reason I posted here on ANI and not at Misplaced Pages:Requests for page protection. I think some strong advise to the by now still ignorant editor in question and some edit restrictions for the OP in regards to the article itself (at least for a while) are maybe the only way to prevent further disruption as we already have seen there in the past--- so many times.TMCk (talk) 23:14, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, the editor is at it again with the same behaviour while ignoring this ANI thread discussing him.TMCk (talk) 19:57, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

• Oh here we go. I haven't been watching this article for a while, but it does seem that, once again, there is an editor attempting to shoehorn a point-of-view in there without discussing in any meaningful or reasonable manner on the relevant talk page. More eyes please. pablo 21:58, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Overagainst (talk · contribs) was notified of this ANI but has continued to edit at MoMK without making any response here. Since the people who gave their opinions above don't favor protection, how about a one-week block. It could be lifted if the editor will agree to wait for consensus before making any further changes. This article has caused a lot of trouble in the past and a hands-off strategy by admins would not be wise. EdJohnston (talk) 23:37, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I personally don't think a one week block would be of service in the long run and would rather see a restriction on them to only be able to post on the talk page but prevented from editing the article for a month or a time to be determined by the community. That might force them to read and learn about consensus, BRD and that WP is a work of collaboration in between editors. Problems with their editing were pointed out to them before and as recently here on their talkpage.
TMCk (talk) 00:33, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

• I just added to the section title in hope we won't end up were we did before as this is still preventable.TMCk (talk) 02:01, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

• Maybe time for a straw poll:
  The following remedies are a possibility:

1. Take no action at all.

2. Implement a one week block as proposed by EdJohnston.

3. Implement a edit restriction on the OP for one month (or determent by the community) for the editor in question to be restricted to edits only to the talk page.

4. Other?

Drafted by TMCk (talk) 02:18, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

User:24.163.38.235 has resumed his Wikihounding after agreeing to an interaction ban

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

24.163.38.235 (talk · contribs) is again following me to an articles, reverting my edits, and then edit warring over them after agreeing to an interaction ban as 174.99.127.20 (talk · contribs) on December 7, in this thread. Yworo (talk) 02:35, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

To anyone except Yworo, I corrected an inaccuracy in one article. I am not following anyone around. I am entitled to make any article more accurate on any article in which I have an interest, and I have long had an interest in the Charlize Theron. I have not interacted directly with Yworo; Yworo has attempted to interact with me, but I have not messaged him. Once again, Yworo seems to think the rules apply to everyone except him. He can edit articles with no restrictions, and apparently feels I am not entitled to the same. And once again, he creates his own policies: there is no "ban" of any sort issued by an admin on what articles I edit. 24.163.38.235 (talk) 02:41, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Somebody needs to explain to the IP that an interaction ban means that he does not get to revert my edits. My edit follows the Manual of Style on the matter. Its edit does not. It is also edit warring with me over my improvements to articles, which is Wikihounding. Yworo (talk) 02:45, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

As always, Yworo has his own interpretation of what is allowed and what is not, and he continues to try to force his self-created policies on others. In the past, Yowo has claimed that I must register to edit, that I am not allowed to remove inappropriate sock warnings on my talk page, and that I am not allowed to issue a legitimate warning to him because of a policy violation. And in all cases Yworo has been wrong. No one -- I repeat -- NO ONE has ordered me not to change an inaccuracy on any article, whether Yworo or any of the tens of thousands of other editors might edit that article. NO ONE. I can edit any article I wish, as long as I don't vandalize, and especially if the edit I make changes an inaccuracy. 24.163.38.235 (talk) 02:51, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Once again, I am in a position where I will not pander to Yworo's strained and false reports. I am finished here. If anyone besides Yworo wishes to discuss this or any other matter with me, feel free to message me. Thanks. 24.163.38.235 (talk) 02:53, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

The last time this came up, Yworo acted in good faith. He's clearly frustrated by you, but he agreed back in that thread to end all interaction with you if you would do the same. This made things a lot easier for everyone. Following him around and reverting his edits, even just the one time, is not in keeping with this agreement. Look, you don't need to follow Yworo around nannying him, there are other editors who can contest his edits if they're inappropriate. I really suggest you drop this issue and move on. It'll help you to follow the simple rule of "if Yworo's editing here, best to head in the other direction". I'm not telling you that you have to do this, only that it'll help you if you do. Also, for the record, you're not permitted to remove SPI-related banners from your user/talk page, regardless of whether or not you think they're appropriate. See WP:REMOVE. Basalisk ⁄_berate 03:05, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment. I see no evidence that Yworo has combed through edit histories to determine whether I have edited that or any other article, nor do I think he should have to do that. He can edit any article he wishes, as can I, if our edits are reasonable and respect WP:BRD and the consensus process. My edit to the article was perfectly reasonable, and I even set up a discussion on the talk page for any editor to agree or disagree with me. I did not message Yworo about this issue, as that indeed would have been a violation of my agreement not to interact directly with him. That agreement does not mean that I must leave inaccuracies in an article in which I have long had an interest (I realize you are not claiming that; I just want to make my point.) And sorry to disagree Basalisk, but any editor can remove a sock banner if it is not in reference to a confirmed sockpuppet, especially if it is described as "an unknown banned user." 24.163.38.235 (talk) 03:11, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

For a full record of IPs harassment of me, see . For a full record of IPs disruptive history, see .

For a partial (and by no means complete) summary of Yworo's false accusations, creation of his own policies, incivility to IPs and new users, and an assortment of other inappropriate behaviors, see WP:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive730#Repeated wikihounding by User:174.99.127.20. 24.163.38.235 (talk) 03:04, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

This is a content dispute about whether the South African-born actress Charlize Theron should still be labeled just "South African" as she became a US citizen 4 years ago. Also, I'm not seeing where there was an interaction ban, but maybe I overlooked something. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 03:03, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

There was no interaction "ban" of sorts, just an agreement from Yworo that he'd stop interacting with the IP if they'd return the favour. Basalisk ⁄_berate 03:05, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

IP has repeatedly followed me to article and reverted my edits. I opened this thread about it. He agreed voluntarily to stop in this edit. As the original complaint was about being followed both to articles and being reverted as well as butting into conversation which did not concern it, it is not being upfront about the issue. I've been a regular editor of Charlize Theron for over a year. It is trying to provoke me. Same thing its been doing for months. South African was, if I recall, the outcome of previous discussion and consensus, but I'm not going to go look for it now. This IP has a history of doing this, not only to myself, but to other editors. It purposely takes advantage of dynamic IPs to avoid scrutiny, and has been doing so for years. Yworo (talk) 03:08, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Once again, Yworo tries to force his own interpretation of things. Not interacting doesn't mean not editing articles. And Yworo has no idea of how many times I've edited that or any article, but that is beside the point, as I am entitled to edit any article, as is he. For a brief summary of Yworo following me around, see the link I provide above. and speaking of "history of doing this", looks at Yworo's long history of incivility to IPs and new users. Now, as I said, I am out of here as I will not pander to Yworo's irrational demands. Others feel free to contact me. Thanks. 24.163.38.235 (talk) 03:16, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Looks like the definition of Wikihounding to me:

Wikihounding is the singling out of one or more editors, and joining discussions on multiple pages or topics they may edit or multiple debates where they contribute, in order to repeatedly confront or inhibit their work. This is with an apparent aim of creating irritation, annoyance or distress to the other editor. Wikihounding usually involves following the target from place to place on Misplaced Pages.

Many users track other users' edits, although usually for collegial or administrative purposes. This should always be done carefully, and with good cause, to avoid raising the suspicion that an editor's contributions are being followed to cause them distress, or out of revenge for a perceived slight. Correct use of an editor's history includes (but is not limited to) fixing unambiguous errors or violations of Misplaced Pages policy, or correcting related problems on multiple articles. In fact, such practices are recommended both for Recent changes patrol and WikiProject Spam. The contribution logs can be used in the dispute resolution process to gather evidence to be presented in requests for comment, mediation, WP:ANI, and arbitration cases.

The important component of wikihounding is disruption to another user's own enjoyment of editing, or to the project generally, for no overriding reason. If "following another user around" is accompanied by tendentiousness, personal attacks, or other disruptive behavior, it may become a very serious matter and could result in blocks and other editing restrictions.

My edit was not an "unambiguous error", nor did it need to be corrected. User also clearly indicates in comments in this thread and elsewhere that he holds a grudge over a perceived slight. This is Wikihounding. Yworo (talk) 03:33, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Regardless, I don't see how you can call Theron unqualified "South African" now that she's American. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 04:48, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

It's what WP:MOSBIO says to do, credit the nationality which they held when they first became notable. Hitchcock is listed as British, he became notable before becoming an American citizen. There are many other examples of this usage throughout Misplaced Pages. Yworo (talk) 04:51, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

And there are many counter-examples. Good sense has to come into the picture here. Alistair Cooke, for example, is listed as British/American, and that's close to how it should be (it really should be British-born American). That MOSBIO is a guideline, not a bright-line rule. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 04:54, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Alfred Hitchcock is listed as British, he became notable before becoming an American citizen. There are many other examples of this usage throughout Misplaced Pages. Isaac Asimov is listed as American, he became notable after moving to the US. Many other subjects who moved and were repatriated as children are listed as the nationality which they acquired. Cary Grant achieved notability before becoming an American citizen and is described as English. The idea behind WP:MOSBIO was to give credit only to the country in which they achieved notability in the lead sentence, with other details to follow in the second sentence, infobox, and/or early life section. I've been repeatedly involved in these sorts of discussions and have reviewed the WP:MOSBIO talk page archives to verify that this is the intent of WP:MOSBIO. Specifically, the discussion indicated that xxx-born yyy was a construction to be avoided. This was agreed by consensus at this thread and the language "Previous nationalities and/or the country of birth should not be mentioned in the opening sentence unless they are relevant to the subject's notability." was added at that time specifically to avoid this construction. Yworo (talk) 04:51, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Regarding Hitchcock, "In 1956 he became an American citizen, while remaining a British subject. Hence the "Sir". And I see someone tinkered with the Cary Grant article again. It used to say British-born, which is much more accurate. Meanwhile, is Theron still a South African "subject"? ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 05:30, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

There is nothing so foolishly contentious at Misplaced Pages as the disputes over what nationality or ethnicity best describes individuals. People are motile, and have complicated and diverse backgrounds and affiliations; very few people today are villagers whose ancestors have stayed put with the same political and religious loyalties since time immemorial, and even in the Pleistocene, humans and protohumans formed roving bands. So the only thing we can do is ascribe to people all affiliations that have in good faith been made to them, giving the specifics, and not caring about which single one word to use as a summary. Not everything can be properly reduced to one word summaries--when necessary, we must abandon the attempt to use single words and use multiples. And anyone who would fight about it--right or wrong-- I see as possibly looking for trouble, as much as those who would fight about the proper form of dashes. DGG ( talk ) 05:17, 15 December 2011 (UTC) .

"South African-born American" is simply bad writing. "... is a South African actress ... who (later) became an American citizen (in such-and-such year)" is more accurate. Vandals repeatedly change "South African-born American" to "African-American" to shorten the misconstruction. The same happens at other articles, "Russian-born American" gets changed to "Russian-American", etc, which is less accurate. Yworo (talk) 05:25, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

The point DGG makes is valid: Why are you edit-warring over such trivia? ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 05:28, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

The real question is, why is 24.163.38.235 (talk · contribs)? I have a good faith belief that that's what's intended by WP:MOSBIO. Maybe I'm wrong and stand corrected, but it's not been an issue at the article for a long time, IP came and made an issue of it where there was none previously. Yworo (talk) 05:30, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

That's because she's not South African any more. She's been American for the last 4 years. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 05:31, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

It's been discussed on the Talk:Charlize Theron multiple times, the consensus has been to follow the intent of WP:MOSBIO, which say to use the nationality the subject held at the time they became notable. Consensus agreed that this meant what it said. WP:MOSBIO does not say to use the current citizenship. Never has. Yworo (talk) 05:33, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Regardless of general consensus, in this specific case it's not correct. She's not notable for being South African-born, she's notable for being an actress. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 05:36, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

To quote WP:MOSBIO "this will mean the country of which the person is a citizen or national, or was a citizen when the person became notable". The intent of this phrasing is clear from the discussion at Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style/Biographies. It is my understanding that when the wording of a policy or guideline is ambiguous, one should check the discussion that resulted in that wording. The discussion shows that it was intended to attribute the nationality at time of achieving notability. American is wrong, naturalization does not require giving up of previous citizenships. She is still a South African citizen, even if she is also an American citizen. Yworo (talk) 05:43, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Actually, the Oath of Allegiance does, explicitly, require anyone taking it to "renounce and abjure" other citizenship, so if Theron is a citizen of the US, she is not a citizen of South Africa. Some other nations do not require the same for citizenship, so someone can become a citizen of another country while retaining US citizenship, but they have to be an American first. Horologium (talk) 17:27, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Nowhere in the Theron article does it say she retained her South African citizenship. In any case, Yworo seems to be returning to the article talk page, which is where this all belonged anyway, so an admin should box this up. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 05:52, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Yworo...

...continues to edit-war, and has broken the 3-revert rule by messing around with the lead 4 times in the space of a few hours, in contradiction to other editors. An admin may wish to take some appropriate action. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 06:00, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Baseball Bugs misrepresents an attempt at a new compromise as edit-warring. It was not a revert, nor was it intended as such, it was intended to be a clearer presentation of the facts including all the facts in a new, untried phrasing. Yworo (talk) 06:06, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

You need to get consensus on the talk page rather than trying to impose your self-styled "compromise". ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 06:13, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Show me where the person who recently changed "South African actress" to "South African-born American actress" got consensus before making that change. Oh, you can't, because they didn't even bring it up on the talk page first. Yworo (talk) 06:47, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for living down to my expectations, as usual. If you think edit-warring over such trivia is perfectly fine, then so be it. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 12:03, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Edit warring over trivia is merely pointless. Where the edit warring is due to one party being goaded, either by an anon editor with a long history of the same or by bored ANI watchers keen to involve themselves in whatever drama seems hottest at the moment, it may be worth overlooking for the sake of getting to the root of the problem. Nevertheless, Yworo's apparently decided to pack it in, so I suppose that's another dispute you've involved yourself in that's led to a productive editor retiring. Aren't you supposed to be in the "Misplaced Pages is dying" brigade? Small wonder. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 12:35, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

So he won this stupid little battle and then "retired"? Don't count on it. As to the "Misplaced Pages is dying" stuff, the fact that the likes of you got to be an admin is good evidence for it. Your general demeanor would have kept you from being elected the normal way, so I'm guessing you won it as a prize in a Crackerjack box. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 13:39, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

According to Yworo himself, he retired because of an "abusive IP editor", not because of Baseball.--Bbb23 (talk) 01:24, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes. He's also maintaining a page of apparently different occurrences of the same user behind various IP's. It's close to being an "attack page", but that could be a judgment call, as it could also be used for building a solid case. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 07:53, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Said "solid case" is the whole point of this ANI discussion. Or at least should have been. Given that said editor seems to be editing from at least two locations, both of which use dynamic IPs, not sure that there's a solution better than whack-a-mole, but if Yworo wants to ping me in future the next time a likely IP turns up out of the blue to pick a fight with him on a random page I'll block. As for the Charlize Theron thing, it looks as if there's unlikely to be any change in consensus either there or for some big realignment of MOSBIO, so that's not really something ANI need concern itself with any further. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 10:04, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Tol'ja: And you gotta love the maturity, eloquence and originality expressed in his comment. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 21:12, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Yworo's "retirement" lasted a grand total of 14 hours. That may be a new record. Irolnire (talk) 23:23, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Maybe he only retired to the bedroom, to take a nap. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 01:01, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Potential temporary blocking of User:Katastrophic

In the process of reviewing the article Misplaced Pages talk:Articles for creation/Handmade Reviews, I noticed that almost all of User:Katastrophic's edits have been to create this article and to add links to said review blog onto various pages. While I am trying to assume good faith, the edits seem to have been done more in the tone of self promotion than because the edits added to the page. Many of her edits were reverted by other uses as spam and I've removed the other edits that were self-promotional in nature. I also want to note that the user is also the creator and webmistress of the blog. There is a clear case of a conflict of interest going on here.Tokyogirl79 (talk) 10:19, 15 December 2011 (UTC)tokyogirl79

• We don't typically block for having WP:COI. If they're being disruptively so, then yes. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 13:15, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

The previous edits were months ago. I don't think any action at all is appropriate, right now; a warning regarding spamming now, for things added in September, isn't a good idea. The user is using AFC, so that's fine. IF the user adds spam-links in the future, it would be appropriate to use {{uw-spam1}}, 2, 3, 4 and/or block. But right now, I cannot see any action that is appropriate.  Chzz  ►  13:23, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

New Canadian education project

Apologies if this is the wrong venue, please feel free to migrate this somewhere more appropriate if necessary, or tell me to do so.

Two article which have come up for AfD today (Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/The Liaison between Facebook and Newspapers‎ and Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Why Journalists Deserve Low Pay‎) are creations of the students of Misplaced Pages:Canada Education Program/Courses/The Newspaper in Canadian Society (Michael Valpy). Both are well sourced, but hopelessly OR and unencyclopedic, and clearly show a misunderstanding of the purpose of Misplaced Pages. Before this turns into another India Education Program, it might be a good idea for an admin to swoop in and ensure that the project doesn't damage the encyclopedia with a glut of essays; advising the course director would be a start, although I don't know what username he edits under. Yunshui 雲‍水 11:18, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Three articles. PaintedCarpet (talk) 11:25, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Some of the other articles/essays are also suspicious.Zlqchn (talk) 11:30, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Here's another: Young Canadian Voter Turnouts and Canadian Newspapers, currently PRODded. Yunshui 雲‍水 11:47, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Also up for deletion are: A Quick Look at the Daily, News Corporation and Postmedia and its Digital Reinvention. The list of articles here is almost exclusively populated with unencyclopedic undergraduate essays, almost all of which will come up for deletion (and almost certainly be deleted) in the next few days. Yunshui 雲‍水 11:53, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Adding that Comedic journalism was just prodded. I deprodded noting the existence of this discussion, could be userified.--Milowent • 19:17, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Notified the five users listed on that course page, and emailed User:Ldavis (WMF).  Chzz  ►  12:37, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Just a positive note: while reviewing CSD's earlier today, I found Comedic journalism, also part of the project. While it, too, had OR, it wasn't hopelessly flawed, and I was able to save it by just removing some relevant portions. I left a message on the student's page as well as the TA's page (who had contested the deletion). It may not be all bad, but the one's mentioned above certainly seem to be. It's hard to fault them, though, because papers of that type are not only acceptable, but, in fact, required at the college level. While I definitely agree that WAP articles deserve no special treatment (i.e., AfD/Prod as needed, trimming aggressively otherwise), I do think it can be worth trying to explain to the students and teachers how the definition of an "academic research paper" is almost certain to fall under Misplaced Pages's definition of original research. See, for example, the note I left to the student here. Qwyrxian (talk) 14:04, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

It does raise a question though. Since this is part of a proper Wikimedia project (as opposed to people just randomly getting together), why were they (apparantly) not informed about the difference between Misplaced Pages and Academic Research? Who's supposed to co-ordinate Misplaced Pages and these institutions? As far as I can tell, most if not all of these articles are created with the clear goal of doing a academic paper, not adding to an encyclopedia. As I said in one of the Afds, I suspect there may be a communication error somewhere in this. Having said that, I do agree with Qwyrxian, within this pile of original research, there is actually a lot of salvagable content (since academic research normally requires reliable sources too). Zlqchn (talk) 14:55, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi everyone. We're rapidly approaching the end of term here, so the students have decided to mainspace all their articles - ready or not. I would suggest, where possible, that the essay-like articles be (re)userfied rather than outright deleted, and that the students be informed what exactly is happening and why. Beyond that, treat them as usual. If any of them do end up being deleted outright, please let me know; I'll try to run interference in the meantime, but they've left things a bit late in the game to solve all their problems now, and I suspect many won't be very active on-wiki over the next few days. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:51, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

*grin* I see marking like this: Stayed in article space 10 marks. Was userfied: 5 marks. Was outright deleted: 0 marks. Followed WP:FIRSTARTICLE: 10 marks. Didn't follow it: 1-5 marks... (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 14:56, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Sigh. Okay, an update: I've gone through the list of articles and userfied, moved, organized, or otherwise edited where needed to make them somewhat appropriate. The only ones I haven't touched are those currently at AfD. I propose closing all AfDs of class articles as "userfy", and moving the essays back to user sandboxes for the remainder of the course, then deleting if the users go inactive (as many student-users do). There are also one or two MfDs open on student sandboxes; those should likely be kept, at least for now. Thoughts on this? If there are no objections, I plan to implement this in a few hours. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:47, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

This is a valid concept, as long as the articles are not violating any additional policies (such as WP:BLP - just an example, because I know they're not). I understand your challenge - this is an academic exercise, and when I studied post-grad journalism, we learned to "write for your target audience". We have doctors, researchers, and students who have a challenge making the change from academia to Misplaced Pages. I assumed that your students are being marked on their ability to make this change overall. It would of course be difficult for students to be marked on a deleted contribution :-) Of course, having a live article actually improved by a completely unknown editor would be a good thing/something to be happy about! (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 15:57, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Use AFC. Simple. All WIHE articles should be submitted via AFC. That would have avoided a massive proportion of the problems we've had (with PP, with India, and now with Canada). 'Coz the articles would have been politely 'declined' and they'd have been told why.  Chzz  ►  15:51, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Good idea for next time, but wouldn't AFC get a bit backlogged? This is actually one of the smaller classes; another U of T class (not one I'm assigned to, lucky for me) had over 1000 students. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:57, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I'd still like to know whether this is a systematic issue (e.g. they were simply not told what to do) or just individual behaiviour (e.g. this particular group just ignored it). (Because AFAIK this won't be the last group of students from this project)Zlqchn (talk) 15:58, 15 December 2011 (UTC) Answered on one of the Afds. And yes, I'd support userfying the articles instead of deleting them outright.Zlqchn (talk) 16:10, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

This is always the problem with conscript editors, their need to get their mark means that they will do what they need to do to get their mark and fuck wikipedia in the process. --Cameron Scott (talk) 16:14, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

As someone involved in this course perhaps i can shed some light on the process. First of all, thank you for your comments. I have found, as a first time user of wikipedia, all of this very enlightening. Some of you have been very helpful and i am amazed that people take the time to track down our students to explain the particularities of non-academic standards of writing. Others of you have not been as welcoming (and to be clear, most of our students are not determined to 'fuck wikipedia in the process' as one of you so helpfully put it). That said, some students face other (academic) pressures and will indeed choose not to engage with the larger wikipedia community. The character and rapidity of the response to our students' essays suggests many more who were interested but uncertain will not return. This is unfortunate because our course was a pilot project designed to highlight the possible benefits of linking academic coursework to the wikipedia community. We didn't have a lot of formal guidance - the course was not a course on wikipedia per se - and so let me apologize to those who are burdened with having to apply wiki-standards to our undergraduates' first attempts at writing here. Many of these standards (OR for example) are entirely new to us (indeed 'the academy' has traditionally taught undergraduates not to use wikipedia in their research at all) so our first attempts to 'userfy' were certainly well intentioned and not deserving of some of the flippant commentary that i have encountered so far. More useful than trigger-finger deletion of writing that doesn't meet your community standards would be a broader articulation of just what the differences are between academic writing and wikipedian writing. Given the wide range of commentary i have already encountered, even these formal standards remain contested, but if there is somewhere we could direct our students to look, i'd be very appreciative. I gather our course is not the first to provoke the ire of more established wikipedia users, but our involvement in this pilot project suggests a more formal and more technically explicit engagement would be helpful in future.James.p.McKee (talk) 16:51, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree that getting the academic circle to contribute to Misplaced Pages would be immensely helpful. As for the 'somewhere' you are looking for, have a look at WP:FIRST for general starter information. I suppose the big obstacles are the important but different (to academic writing) rules of Misplaced Pages, the most important one being no original research. Also, as Chzz suggested, if you or anyone else are ever in doubt, put it through the article for creation process to get other editors to review your article before creating it. For general Misplaced Pages help (wikimarkup, policy, etc), you can always ask at the help desk.Zlqchn (talk) 17:14, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I would point out that I think there is something fairly systematic with this particular class (perhaps the professor, or the classroom ambassador etc). For example, another ambassador project did not have nearly the type of problems this one did with article selection etc. Misplaced Pages:Ambassadors/Courses/BrunellFeministThought Gaijin42 (talk) 17:19, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Hmm...interesting. Maybe the organisers of this class should have a look at this. Zlqchn (talk) 17:34, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages content is not "non-academic" writing, ideally. But Misplaced Pages is primarily an encyclopedia, not an academic journal. You wouldn't open Encyclopedia Brittanica, for example, and find an article articulating a historical theory or hypothesis not covered by prior research. Instead, the encyclopedia reports on the current state of research and knowledge. E.g., I wrote an article on the lost sport of Plunge for distance based on existing historical sources; I did not include personal theories as to why the sport declined in popularity. Someone certainly could use that article and its cited sources to do just that, but that's original research that should be published in an appropriate source before it would be included in a tertiary source such as an encyclopedia.--Milowent • 17:28, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

It's pretty clear from some of the Afd comments that the professors setting these assignments are learning about Misplaced Pages along with their students. You wouldn't expect a professor of surgery to be learning about surgery along with their students, so why should these professors be any different? Don't teach the subject if you don't understand it. – ukexpat (talk) 17:47, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

GIven the course wasn't about using wikipedia, your comment isn't helpful to the discussion. The issue here is whether or not the material (in keeping with the pedanticism of your comment below - i won't use the term 'student essay') of the course is suited (or not) to Misplaced Pages. The hope of this pilot project was that it would be; we will be asking our students to do their very best to conform to your specific practices and policies here. However, your aggressive tone will go a long way to ensuring that new wikipedians such as myself will be much more reluctant to engage in future.James.p.McKee (talk) 20:37, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

(Ignoring the personal jibes) The course involved using Misplaced Pages as the relevant medium, so my comments are relevant. – ukexpat (talk) 20:55, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

• Greetings, I introduced myself to the discussion here... I'm one of the coordinators of the Canadian initiative. I recognize that there is frustration with the information dump and the fact that some of the new editors haven't been following some of the policies. I would like to echo the comments of User:James.p.McKee, the TA from the class in question, and call attention to the fact that the community has really come down hard on this class, and rather quickly. We are all concerned about the integrity of the encyclopedia. What seems unclear at this point is the extent to which the community is interested in welcoming new editors, and doing what needs to be done to ensure that new editors feel welcome. While I haven't seen it yet, I think some of the language is moving towards issues with WP:WP DNB. As I've said in my other post, to expect that new editors are going to join the team and not make mistakes is unrealistic and unfair. At this stage, the majority of the comments are constructive (and it should be clear at all times that I am very, very appreciative of your time and effort reviewing and commenting on the articles), and yes, if students are not returning to respond and fix their mistakes, we will all be frustrated. Hopefully students will return. I have warned the professor that if his students do not return, then they are leaving the decision to the community, which may decide to delete everything. We will see what happens. Anyhow, I thought that I would check in here to let you know that the folks coordinating the Canadian initiative are aware of the concerns and are trying to figure out how best to proceed. As User:James.p.McKee said above, this is an experiment. There will be more classes next semester, and hopefully we will have learned from our mistakes. Thank you again for your help and your understanding. Jaobar (talk) 19:51, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

You still do not seem to be grasping the basic point here. Misplaced Pages is not the place for your "students' essays" (to quote User:James.p.McKee above). "Fixing" essays may not be possible, and most of them that I have seen, should be deleted as original research. For example, I don't see how an article entitled "Why Journalists Deserve Low Pay" would ever be appropriate for Misplaced Pages. – ukexpat (talk) 20:09, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I think you mus-charactarize these articles as "mistakes". Poor citation format, a handful of WP:OR or WP:SYNTH statements. Those are mistakes. Wholesale misunderstanding as to the purpose of wikipedia, and the type of content to be added indicates a major failure - especially when this is not an individual student, but more than a few articles. Now, I do not blame the students. They likely did what they were told. There are plenty of possiblities. The information given to the class by wikipedia could have been unclear (although if this was the case,we would see the problem across other classes more). The information could have not been presented well (by the professors, or the in school ambassador), lack of oversight by the online ambassadors, etc. The main purpose of this discussion is not to bite the newcomers, but to find the problem, so that we don't go through this with every class. Going through that process may in fact bite the newcomers, but frankly the long term viability of the ambassador program, and the wiki itself outweigh that imo. Gaijin42 (talk) 20:18, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Okay, all of the XfDs have been closed as userfied except for Misplaced Pages:Articles_for_deletion/Postmedia_and_its_Digital_Reinvention, which has been tagged for rescue (by someone else), so I wasn't sure how to proceed. I'll keep an eye on it, and may yet userfy it at a later date. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:12, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

While I think a class project like this has a lot of potential to benefit Misplaced Pages, the obvious downfall in this case was the very poor choice of topics. Perhaps next time it would be best to seek feedback from editors about what topics might be good? For example, maybe asking for topic suggestions at WikiProject Canada would produce a list of possible topics from which the students can choose. Mlm42 (talk) 20:24, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

• User:Ukexpat I get what you're saying and I agree (in part). What seems to be the problem here is members of the community being uncomfortable with students moving material that isn't wikified to the mainspace. I was under the assumption that articles are works in progress. Articles that read like essays will be returned to user sandboxes to be fixed. Those that can be salvaged, will be. Other articles appear to be just fine, and actually may be nominated for DYK. What I am not fine with is this catastrophizing that's going on. A few students uploaded essays, ok, let's fix the problem and try to get students involved to help out. I have already started moving some of the articles back to sandboxes that are completely inappropriate at this point. I see that User:Nikkimaria has also been doing this. Jaobar (talk) 20:30, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

"What seems to be the problem here is members of the community being uncomfortable with students moving material that isn't wikified to the mainspace." This is not the problem at all. Its that the articles being challenged are basically student essays with hypotheses and original arguments, and not encyclopedia articles (or potential encyclopedia articles). Some of the entries are good, though. Aria Ballaria deserves an A for Upper Canada Guardian, for example. Some of the entries contain factual content that can be used if the original research is removed. This is not the first time a student project has gone a bit awry like this, and it won't be the last time. We'll all be ok. It can be frustrating to veteran editors to see such stuff going on. The days where every one sentence stub about a pokemon character was treated like a precious snowflake (if those days ever existed) are now gone. But myself and other editors DO appreciate the efforts of such projects and hope some of them stick around. You can learn how to be a writer unless you write; you can't learn to be a good wikipedia editor unless you edit.--Milowent • 20:46, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I think one of the reasons editors might be uncomfortable is regarding the motives of the students.. why are they editing? To improve the encyclopedia, or to get a good grade for their essay? Mlm42 (talk) 20:46, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Personally I don't care about that all. I would EXPECT they want a good grade and that is their primary goal, as it should be for a student. At least they don't have ideological axes to grind.--Milowent • 20:49, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough; in any case, I think the potential benefits in this situation outweigh the costs, since some of these students might end up staying. Mlm42 (talk) 21:27, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Note: participants here should take a look at the statement by the course professor. Nikkimaria (talk) 22:13, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I think the original note from the professor was posted HERE. Might be easier to engage in discussion on this page. Jaobar (talk) 23:57, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

As regional ambassador to Ontario for the grant-sponsored WP:Canada Education Program, I've been investigating the situation today along with User:Jaobar as I've learned about it. This scenario was caused by a failure to establish and maintain clear communication of expectations between the campus ambassador and the professor. Most participating classes write an encyclopedic article in place of a term paper, but it would appear there was a misunderstanding here, and a handful of students (at least; I'm only aware of three so far) published the term paper to Misplaced Pages. I won't say who's more to blame (I'm honestly not sure, but the campus ambassador has been matched up with multiple professors, so I'll probably find out soon enough). We'll definitely take this whole scenario into consideration when evaluating her at the end of this semester and when planning future activity with this professor. This has been a learning experience at least for me, that a lot can escape the radar when it's not under a microscope. In the coming semester, we'll definitely work to achieve better communication of expectations. My apologies for any inconvenience this has caused anyone. Bob the WikipediaN 03:24, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Improper warning by administrator Slakr

Potential / actual edit warring on WP:V

It is wholly unacceptable for editors to be changing / reverting a core WP:5P policy page. As can be seen here WP:Verifiability&curid=3961892&action=history editors are effectively edit warring over both content of the lead sentence and associated tags following the recent decision of no consensus to change the WP:V. I would be grateful for admins. to consider the most appropriate way to ensure that our core policy pages, upon which we reply when dealing with content issues with new editors (and old), are not subject to minute to minute change. Leaky Caldron 13:38, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I think that the wording change was an attempt at a masterstroke compromise to resolve the mess and save another year of grief. I reverted it back in once saying "Before we instantly revert it, Crazynas 's compromise version could save us another year of discussion. A quick masterstroke to resolve this?". I'm guessing that there won't be further actions to resolve it by editing the sentence. The "Under discussion tag" is another matter. This sentence has been and is under intense discussion. The recent large RFC was merely one particular proposal to resolve the matter. Some folks keep trying to take off the "under discussion" tag. North8000 (talk) 13:46, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Nothing wrong with Crazynas' compromise being a quick master stroke, but is there any reason you reverted it's removal against WP:BRD? I can see you're not happy with the result of the RfC, but neither edit warring nor a knee-jerk RfC (clearly designed to prove a point and ignoring years of implied consensus) are ways that you shouldn't progress. I suggest you take a break from V North8000, come back in a week or so. Worm · (talk) 14:42, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

The page has been protected for 3 days (after I requested it on RPP). That seems an appropriate action, at this time. So... can we avoid the discussion spilling out here again, and just close this thread?  Chzz  ►  15:37, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Regarding the reversion, I saw the initial immediate reversion as kneejerk and wanted to at least get the possibility considered as a possible quick solution without it itself getting plunged into a lengthy debate. That was my thinking. It was one revert of a revert, with the above edit summary which said "at least consider the possibility of leaving it in" Not exactly following BRD, (or my normal way) but, all things considered, not way out of line either. Regarding the tag, continuing trying to remove the "under discussion tag" for something that is clearly under discussion (to put it mildly) IS clearly edit warring. Regarding the new RFC, there is a lot of thought in that RFC, explained at the wp:v talk page (which I won't repeat here) but it is not as you describe. In short, viewed as an essential next step to then allow a discussion after that which would truly resolve it. On your last note, I've been thinking that trying to help in this area has gotten pretty deep into the "not fun" area for me. Its a matter of duty (with respect to the PROCESS, NOT the result) vs. the comfortable route of dialing back on this topic. I'm thinking of choosing the comfortable route. North8000 (talk) 15:59, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Why has VnT not been returned to the lead as mandated by the closing admins' ruling that Blueboar's proposal does not have consensus? Fully protecting the page at the current point, where VnT has been removed yet again, against the ruling of the closing admins, IMHO can be seen to be a deliberate act of extreme bad faith by one or more "sore losers". Roger (talk) 15:58, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Well spotted. It needs to be changed, asap. Leaky Caldron 16:01, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

The level of butthurt displayed by the victorious 33% who've now temporarily been scotched is, of course, hilarious, but I must admit that I've made a mistake there. When I reverted using the edit summary "last stable version", that was what I meant to do, but now I see that I accidentally restored a version that certainly is not the last stable one. That does need to be fixed.—S Marshall T/C 16:13, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Either way, the "under discussion" tag is certainly in the last stable version.North8000 (talk) 16:15, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

With all due respect to the huge amount of work you put into the whole process North8000, if the "under discussion" tag must stay in, WTF was the point of the whole Closure process? Roger (talk) 16:25, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

To determine whether or not to implement that proposal, and that proposal was an attempt to resolve the discussion. North8000 (talk) 16:44, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Some clarification is in order here... some people seem to think that the RFC was about whether any change should take place at the policy... that is not the case. The RFC was intended to see if a specific compromise proposal (one that had been worked out on a sub-page by editors with a wide range of opinions on the underlying issues) had broad community consensus. The answer to that is "no, it didn't" (although it came close). That is OK. It does not mean we stop discussion of the issues... it means we all go back to the beginning and try to work out a different compromise (one that will gain a clear consensus). If you read the closers' comments, it is clear that some form of change is called for... just not the specific change that was proposed. We all need to step back, accept that the concerns that are raised on both sides are legitimate (and stop ignoring what those on the "other side" say because we disagree with it). Editors on both sides of this debate need to be willing to step back from entrenched positions, and work towards achieving compromise and consensus rather than having their view "win". Blueboar (talk) 17:06, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

FYI, I have placed an edit request to restore it to the old revision . If there is a time to set aside the WP:WRONGVERSION argument, this is it IMO. Tarc (talk) 17:11, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

(nice EC, Tarc...'coz I was writing...)

Good grief. All these highly-experienced editors, and some still fail to understand the need to protect m:The Wrong Version, and the need for calm, collegiate discussion and consensus. And still persist in spreading discussions over many fora. Come on, folks; let's have a nice chat, in the appropriate place, and try and agree what we should do. Please. Thank you. With cherries on top.  Chzz  ►  17:16, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Restored last known consensus version

I have restored the last known consensus version of WP:V, as per WP:PREFER and the three admins' closure of the RFC. Reaper Eternal (talk) 21:50, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

User:46.174.24.10 problematic editing

First of all, this user needs their talk page access revoked, but also they used some rather racist edit summaries along the way prior to being blocked. Calabe1992 14:58, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Their only edit to their talkpage post-block was to remove the block notice/warnings, which you reverted. They've not abused the unblock process, nor indeed anything that appears to require removing access to their talkpage. Yes, they made racist comments - that's why their blocked, n'est ce pas? What else needs to be done? (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 15:04, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Reaper removed the edit summaries and blocked the talk page access. They re-added the comment to their talk page that they had been using in the edit summaries. All removed, so we're done. Calabe1992 15:18, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Pretty severe personal attacks

Enciclopediaenlinea (talk · contribs)

On Talk:Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, this user said to me: "..you are an ignorant, a liar...because you are a sick moroccan...go to the school to learning" diff. Tachfin (talk) 03:25, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Warned. If it happens again, I will block. 28bytes (talk) 04:18, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Personally, I think that's a little light and I would have blocked and revdeled the edit but since you have already acted I'll just leave the comment up here to see if there is a consensus to go further than you have. Spartaz 07:05, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

My thought was that since the account was new, he might not be familiar with the norms here, and a warning might be just as effective as a block. That said, I have no objections if anyone feels stronger action is warranted and acts accordingly. 28bytes (talk) 07:12, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

I was thinking the same things, both of them. It occurred to me that such namecalling is much more accepted in some parts of the world than in others (like this part). That doesn't make it alright, but it means that 28bytes's decision is fine with me. We'll see soon enough if we gave them rope or a second chance. Drmies (talk) 14:52, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Well I think this part is hilarious: "go to the school to learning".--v/r - TP 15:12, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

That's not a whole lot worse than what comes out of the school system here. Mind you, I'm getting ready to grade final papers; stay tuned for whoppers. Drmies (talk) 15:22, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

It was a perfect opportunity to use my good old User:Bwilkins/welcomecivil template (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 19:51, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Pulled this out of archive since the problem persists, see this diff --Tachfin (talk) 16:36, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Blocked for a week; if problems persist after that, we can escalate to indef. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 19:15, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Block review: Sheodred

I indef'd Sheodred (talk · contribs) and revoked talk page access for posting a defamatory, abusive rant directed toward MarcusBritish (talk · contribs) on his (Sheodred's) talk page, which I've rev-deleted. Revoking talk page access was a draconian step to take because it makes it more difficult for him to appeal my block or come to any kind of agreement or reconciliation. I'm also unhappy that I did this because it likely only makes his aggravation worse. At the same time, if this did not justify revoking talk page access, I don't know what would.

I would prefer that this block did not stand indefinitely, and would appreciate it if another admin feels that I went too far or that other more diplomatic options are available. Anyone who disagrees is welcome to shorten or remove it. Please review the block. causa sui (talk) 17:25, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm reading the rant. It looks like nothing much worse than the two have been slinging at each other (calling each other racists, nationalists, fools, etc.) for the last couple of days. I think Marcus' actions here still need review - he's equally to blame for the escalation through a fairly nasty battleground approach to raising issues with Sheodred. They've been goading and hounding each other in fairly equal measure for the last couple of days so I suppose it was always whoever was going to break first. --Errant 17:31, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

FWIW, the only reason I got involved was because Marcus tagged Sheodred's talk page as an attack page after he posted the rant, and checking that category is the first thing I do every time I log in. So while I don't think you took it this way, I'll say that this is in no way an endorsement of anything Marcus has done; my impression of the situation basically agrees with yours. causa sui (talk) 17:46, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Oh yeh totally :) I meant my above comment to fill you in on the rather idiotic background story. *sigh* I think Marcus needs a bit of a helping hand with his dispute resolution approach; I've tried a couple of times but am, frankly, fed up of being talked down to. Fancy having a go? (I'm probably AFK for most of the next two days as it is anyway). --Errant 17:54, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Has anyone considered the possibility that Sheodred is a sock - look at user page ("Here we go again...") and the fact that he was blocked within 2 weeks of registering, and indeffed within a month. GiantSnowman 17:58, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

• I actually bothered to read through the above argument between these two editors a few hours ago, and one thing caught my eye — they both support an interaction ban between each other. I came within inches of saving a comment under their proposal, but I backed out at the last second. My sentiments would have been as follows: "If neither of you want any interaction with each other, then don't interact with each other." Frankly, this is pure silliness. Master&Expert (Talk) 18:24, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

FYI he managed to go 7 hours after "supporting" that interaction ban before returning to stalking my legit contribs and complaining about them on talk pages under sections I created. I don't even have him on my watch list, nor have I ever for hat matter. Nearly every action I took the past few days was read and commented on, usually with a detrimental attempt to belittle me or wiki-lawyer a "motive" into his reason for commenting. How the hell do you maintain a self-imposed interaction ban when he can't even refrain from following my every move for 1 daylight day? Don't put all the eggs in one basket here. This is just a case of me having to wipe my feet after getting involved in his mess. Nothing else can be done that isn't punitive. You can't call the Allies bad just because they crossed paths with the Axis. Each side has it's reasons in a conflict, and I would like to see someone prove without shadow of a doubt that mine were not for a good cause, or that I has COI issues. I'm usually the first to admit when I'm at fault. In this case, I wouldn't dirty my keyboard by accepting the blame. Ma®©usBritish  18:44, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

• Sheodred was involved in what I consider to be nationalist edit warring on Irish versus British. I'm more aware of this issue than I would like to because I helped to negotiate Sheodred's original voluntary restriction: 'cease making edits regarding Irish nationality on any articles for one month.' He should have stopped adding 'Irish' to BLPs on December 1 per that agreement. See also the closure of the AN3 report on December 1. I haven't studied the exact reason for the continued uproar since then. MarcusBritish presented some evidence at Misplaced Pages:Ani#MarcusBritish and Sheodred but someone would have to check to see which diffs were later than December 1. Also MarcusBritish is not the most neutral source on this matter. If someone were to restore Sheodred's talk page access on 15 January I wouldn't object, provided he is not unblocked without a more sweeping restriction. I'd propose that he agree not to edit anywhere on Misplaced Pages on the subject of Irish or British nationality, even on talk pages. Any resumption of that editing pattern would lead to restoring the indefinite block. EdJohnston (talk) 18:52, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I posted the following yesterday (it's in the hatted section above):

Sheodred agreed to a self-imposed restriction on editing articles involving Irish nationality ]; however two of the very few mainspace edits they made involved an Irish surname and Irish clergyman . Nobody Ent (Gerardw) 02:41, 15 December 2011 (UTC) Nobody Ent (Gerardw) 19:38, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

• Sounds to me like the Topic Ban I proposed earlier which everyone ignored or argued with me over. No matter, I think he should be blanket banned from "nationality/ethnicity/heritage" entirely. He went from Irish edits to British edits during his last no-Irish-edits restriction. He could easily go to English or Scottish, any other nationality, and claim it's "not British" again. No loopholes, no leverage. Ma®©usBritish  18:58, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

• From what I can see, MarcusBritish needs to calm down a bit. Neither party's actions have been admirable in any sense of the word --In actu (Guerillero) | My Talk 20:24, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
• Any review of the material shows that there was massive provocation by MarcusBritish, posting laundry lists without any real review of the material and also reversing an admin's note of a warning on the Troubles page. Sheodred has agreed a voluntary restriction which s/eh has respected so it seems to me that this block is excessive, draconian and one sided. A simple request to delete the comments on the talk page would have been a better starting point.--Snowded 21:11, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

• You haven't reviewed the situation correctly if you think it started as some simple "comments on a talk page", because even I don't know what you're referring to there. So what exactly constitutes as a "real review" on Wiki, when that list took me several hours to compile discriminatingly; you only have to look at one page and click a few of the diffs to verify its accuracy, before bringing it into false disrepute. The restriction was not respected, it was circumvented and not unheld in spirit of its intent – several other editors have identified that.
• And again, for the last time, I have never in my entire wiki history (or life) intently read or edited any articles or biog relating to The Troubles: it does not interest me one iota. My name on that list was defamatory and I exercised WP:Libel to remove it and to save time getting it suppressed. It's common sense and normal reasoning that we don't identify/ban someone as a sex offender without proof, and you just as equally don't list them, on a public website, where I am not anonymous, as being involved in highly contentious (and potentially incriminating) topics, which people might take literally and use against them (even life threatening). The admin was wrong in his suppositions, the underlying comparison was wrong, the warning does not apply to me. Might as well try to warn me not to war-edit in 9/11-theory, holocaust-denial or far-right political party discussions: the fact that I never have or do prevails over such notices, as does upholding AGF in acknowledging that I don't. The admin was advised of my removing the entry, and has not taken the matter any further, and neither should anyone else – let sleeping dogs lie, and no one will have excuses to cast spurious remarks. My article contribs are in good standing; in developing mainspace Wiki, that's all that counts. Now: stick. Ma®©usBritish  22:17, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Your "list" just picked any edit that involved insertion of Irish or removal of British without any assessment as to whether the insertion or removal was supported by sources. Your contribution above more than illustrates the issue of provocative behaviour. You were advised of the restrictions on Troubles related issues and went OTT in respect of that advise, casting it as a libel. A very similar overreaction to the ones that provicted Sheodred. banning both of you for a period to calm the pair of you down would have made a lot of sense. Allowing you to rant, but banning the other party does not. --Snowded 23:53, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I "just" did nothing of the sort and that is a facetious accusation. The list includes every edit I could find from all of 2011. It was not selective, I think I only excluded one edit because I did not follow how he'd done it. Anyone who cross-refs the list with his contribs can collaborate this, so do shut up. And I didn't cast it as libel, it was defamatory and it is my right to say so, not yours to maintain victimisation. Seems you have a bone to pick. Take it elsewhere, because you too are becoming abrasive with your personal opinions. Ma®©usBritish  00:01, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

• Sheodred and I have been exchanging emails. Per our private conversation, I've shortened his block to 1 week and restored talk page access, pending further negotiation. causa sui (talk) 00:38, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Woofy FM

--GraemeL 19:26, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Obvious hoax. Amateur nonsense. In place since 2009. Well done, folks. ColouredSpots (talk) 19:18, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

...and deleted within 3 minutes of your post. There are lots and lots of articles, and we don't always notice problem ones. Thanks for pointing this one out. UltraExactZZ ~ Did 19:24, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I must say, the article kinda admitted it was a hoax; I'm not sure why it took so long to pick up on, but it's gone now. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 20:47, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Tenacious editing

Pursuant to the suggestions offered by administrators regarding the initial report that I filed two weeks ago, I am making out this new complaint concerning editor Verman1's continued habit of edit warring and tendentious POV pushing. Even after the consequences of such editing activity were made known to him, he has persisted to shoehorn controversial pieces of information, all the while insisting that they are valid and should not be removed. A perusal of the the history pages of Agdam Mosque, Daşkəsən, Gandzasar monastery, and Tsitsernavank Monastery demonstrate a clear tendency to relegate to a secondary position or remove entirely any mention of Armenia and the Armenian NKR republic (e.g., , , , ) in these articles. The addition of spellings, furthermore, also have had a spurious basis to them. While more even-handed editors have argued to mention the location of both entities, Verman1 has insisted on the validity of his edits and subsequent reverts, but even a glance at the talk pages of the respective articles show that he is unable to put forward convincing arguments that can even be remotely considered with any seriousness.--Marshal Bagramyan (talk) 20:48, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

It is fair to note that before making any edit or revert I made discussions and (still doing this ) in talk pages of corresponding articles. More than that, I invited my counterparts (like users MarshallBagramyan, User:Vacio and User:Yerevanci (for example please see my invitation message and answer of Yerevanci in here )) to discuss any dispute. Also, user MarshallBagramyan has persistently showed double standarts in this area of naming standarts, especially in pages Kars and Yerevan (relevant report is in here). Regarding the monastery namings, yes I added local language for the naming of these monasteries. Does anyone can say is it disruptive edit? On the contrary, I have been challenged many times from my counterparts to engage in edit-warring, but I did my best to avoid it, also sought help from experienced admins () and now I am being blamed on edit warring? I am sorry, but it is not serious. --Verman1 (talk) 07:15, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Controversial edit through full protection

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

The edit through protection was properly done and User:Swarm has done absolutely no wrong. Dreadstar ☥ 05:36, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I am not going to reopen this thread as it's clearly not going anywhere, but this closure was not appropriate in this form. And what does User:Swarm have to do with it anyway? Swarm closed WT:V#New RfC in a very appropriate manner. That's only peripherally related to my complaint here. Hans Adler 09:52, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

An RfC about "verifiability, not truth" has recently been closed about "verifiability, not truth" in the first sentence of WP:V. The proposal was a compromise wording to make it clear that this is not to be understood as endorsing lying in article space in those (rare) cases in which we as Wikipedians have direct knowledge that proves reliable sources wrong. (Example: Misplaced Pages libeled ex-arbitrator Sam Blacketer for several days, under his real name, while deletion or sanitation of the problematic article was held up with reference to this misunderstanding of policy.) It ended 1.85:1 for the clarification, but a committee of 3 admins found that there was no consensus. (Jimbo's comment on this is here.)

Reaper Eternal protected the article on a version that did not have the words "not truth" in the first sentence. At a time when a new RfC was going on on the talk page as well as a contested edit comment, Reaper Eternal edited through the protection to restore the words "not truth". Reaper Eternal is apparently not planning to self-revert, see User talk:Reaper Eternal#Controversial edit through full protection. Can this be handled by consensus of admins, or do we need to bother Arbcom? Hans Adler 22:03, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Now you want to go to Arbcom with this? Really?! Good luck with that. Doc talk 22:06, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't want to go to Arbcom. But this incident has shown that the side that is relying on abuse of the long-term status quo isn't above manipulating the short-term status quo. That cannot be allowed. We don't want to end up like the US Congress, do we? Hans Adler 22:15, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

• FWIW I (as the editor that made the change in the first place). Support Reaper's revert, to the last stable version, although, I Contest the page being fully protected. Crazynas 22:16, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)To add some relevant detail, I requested action to handle the emerging edit warring on the policy page. Another editor raised it on the protection page and Reaper applied a 3 day full protection. Perhaps due to a misleading edit summary by one of those involved, Reaper protected a version which was not the long standing, stable version but a version that had been introduced during the edit war. Reaper has now corrected that situation when presented with the facts by me on his talk page. He has done nothing wrong. Leaky Caldron 22:19, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

BRD fails when dropping into a nest of hornets and then keeping it going. There was no need for that second reinstatement of the controversial edit. Doc talk 22:27, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Please get the facts straight Doc, that edit was the ONLY time I made that change (which does not qualify as a reinstatement or a revert). Crazynas 22:33, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

This was the "second try" in the sense of second attempt to find a wording. The first attempt was quite different. Hans Adler 22:35, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

"Not truth" removed. "Not truth" removed. The rest - filler ;> Doc talk 22:36, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

There is a clear majority for fixing the "not truth" problem, so there is nothing wrong with looking for a consensus version. Unless you are so happy with the status quo that you reject attempts at finding one. Hans Adler 22:40, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

The edit war was about the "under discussion" tag, and I was under the impression that it was being resolved -- although I may be wrong. Reaper Eternal relied on WP:PRESERVE, which says the following: "Since protecting the most current version sometimes rewards edit warring by establishing a contentious revision, administrators may also revert to an old version of the page predating the edit war if such a clear point exists." This rationale for using the stable version did not apply. Reaper Eternal's change had nothing to do with the tag. It only affected an essentially independent edit that was meant to stimulate discussion. Reaper Eternal's revert will have the effect of stifling the discussion. Hans Adler 22:29, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

• I agree with Leaky caldron, Reaper Eternal has done nothing wrong by restoring the long-standing version of a Policy. This is policy, and the Template:Nono proponents of the RFC shouldn't be allowed to game the system. Which brings up another issue, can an admin please close this faulty RFC that is merely attempting to do an end-run gaming of the system by attemping to redefine Misplaced Pages:Consensus and ignoring the results of the just-closed RFC which attempted to remove the very same wording as this one is attempting to do. Clearly an abuse of process with clear consensus to close it. Dreadstar ☥ 22:30, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

• Nobody "loses" a no-consensus discussion, Dreadstar. The main thing that's clear is that the community doesn't want the current version. It remains by default because we can't agree about what to replace it with, but let's not pretend that it can survive beyond the short term.—S Marshall T/C 22:37, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

• As one of the 279 'losers' I object to this misrepresentation by one of the 149 'winners' of the RfC. Hans Adler 22:31, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

(ec x many)This report is not well thought out. While WP:V is one of our five pillars, civility and consensus are equally important. There's no reason to suspend good faith or impugn the reputations of the admins who had a very difficult job to do. If the current consensus wasn't sufficient to change WP:V, work civility towards building a stronger one rather bandy about words like "abuse." (Additionally, a throwaway insult to particular nation's legislative body (US Congress) is hardly appropriate.) Nobody Ent (Gerardw) 22:34, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

• I used the best example of a non-functional parliament that I could think of. Not sure what's wrong with that except that it happens to be American and the US must only be mentioned in positive contexts. Hans Adler 22:38, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

• To be clear, I supported the change in the RfC. But when a proposal to change the wording ends in "no consensus", the next step is not to change the wording anyway, and if there's going to be edit warring over the wording, then protecting and restoring the stable version is a perfectly reasonable course of action. Agree with the above— I don't think Reaper's done anything wrong at all. Swarm 22:41, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
• Just to add that this is an out of process RFC that claims to be for the purpose of finding consensus to add material that was actually added and has been present since 2005. It's a faulty RFC to begin with and needs to be shut down now. Dreadstar ☥ 22:48, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

  What do you mean by "out of process"? That it didn't get prior approval from the RfC Registration Office? It's a legitimate RfC on simply removing the disruptive words "not truth", albeit phrased a bit pointy due to frustration over a bizarre "no consensus" finding. Hans Adler 22:58, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

• (edit conflict)From WP:PREFER, this makes the situation very clear "Since protecting the most current version sometimes rewards edit warring by establishing a contentious revision, administrators may also revert to an old version of the page predating the edit war if such a clear point exists." This is precisely what Reaper did. His earlier error was due to the misleading edit summary which S Marshall immediately conceded. There can be no doubt that the edit warring has accidentally achieved an advantage and the warring would have continued had the protection not been performed. Leaky Caldron 22:55, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

• Leaky Caldron left out a relevant sentence of the policy WP:PREFER that follows the sentence that he excerpted. Here they are together.

"Since protecting the most current version sometimes rewards edit warring by establishing a contentious revision, administrators may also revert to an old version of the page predating the edit war if such a clear point exists. Pages that are protected because of content disputes should not be edited except to make changes which are uncontroversial or for which there is clear consensus (see above)."

I think it comes down to whether or not the revert through protection has consensus. If Reaper Eternal had reverted before protecting the page it would have been OK. But after protecting the page, the revert of a protected page would have to have been either uncontentious or the revert through protection would have had to have had consensus. Mind you, consensus refers to the action of reverting through protection, not consensus for the old version. --Bob K31416 (talk) 23:07, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I left out the 2nd sentence because it has no relevance. It refers to a correctly protected page (WT:V wasn't now it is) not being edited during protection other than for non-controversial edits. Leaky Caldron 00:02, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Sorry. I wasn't able to follow that. Would you care to explain it more? --Bob K31416 (talk) 01:29, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

"Pages that are protected because of content disputes should not be edited..." obviously does not apply to reverting to a stable version of the article. Otherwise that would mean an admin can restore a stable version before they protect it, but not after, and there would be no logical basis for such a restriction whatsoever— it flat out wouldn't make sense. Swarm 01:44, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

• • This is ridiculous, Reaper Eternal is free of any blame. Stop wikilawyering and just plain out say you are pissed off with the way the RFC was closed. Note that there is also a significant amount of gloating going on from people who opposed the RFC. Yoenit (talk) 23:19, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I think you're making a mistake trying to read anyone's mind. --Bob K31416 (talk) 23:40, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Reaper doesn't look to be in the wrong here, but everyone edit warring on a core policy page prior to the protection ought to be trouted. Protonk (talk) 23:16, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I initiated an edit request to get the page reverted in the first place, as I thought it would be best all-around to return to a "verifiability not truth" version" as that has been there for ages. If people really want to try to change it, fine, but they need to be given a swift kick of common sense if they think that a "just do it" philosophy (), is going to be received very well following such a contentious RfC. Tarc (talk) 23:39, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Interesting... I Boldly did something, and I started a Discussion on it (in the spirit of BRD), , it was reverted with the summary keep "verifiability, not truth" (and no discussion on the talk page). A editor reverted that with the comment Before we instantly revert it, Crazynas's compromise version could save us another year of discussion. A quick masterstroke to resolve this?, with corresponding support on the talk page. Another user Undid revision 465994671 by North8000 (talk) No consensus to change (also with no comment on the talk page). I tried something different which appeared to be reverted Restoring stable version. This is fractious so every change should be discussed on talk first. but wasn't (I feel an honest mistake). A user filed a RFPP and the page was protected, I filed a request for unprotection which was declined. The protecting sysop realized what happened and reverted it to stability which I support (even though he was reverting my edit), and here we are. I would respecfully ask that editors consider the merits of the change rather then a knee-jerk response to status quo. I have yet to see an argument on how my changes altered the meaning of the page. (even the protecting sysop granted it was a change in wording, not meaning). Crazynas 00:27, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

As I said, you should have had a bit of common sense to realize that just going in and making this sort of change right on the heels of that clusterfuck of an RfC would be taken badly. If you have an idea for a change on one of the most important policy pages of the project, propose it on the talk page first. Tarc (talk) 01:04, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

It is unfortunate that our definitions of helpful differ. You do know that WP:V is not one of the five pillars right (Encyclopedic, Neutral, Free, Civil, and Needing Improvement are what I see)? If you have anything constructive to say regarding reaching a consensus I welcome it, however attacking my method of attempting to find a solution is not required. If you feel that no edits should be made to policy without prior discussion, I recommend asking for a WP:REDLOCK. I addressed (on the talk page) why limiting oneself to that talk page was a bad idea, and don't feel the need to address it again. Crazynas 04:33, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Again, common sense. You went for the bold edit, got smacked down, and now come complaining about it. Learn from it and move on. Tarc (talk) 04:35, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Articles_for_deletion/Global_warming_conspiracy_theory_(3rd_nomination)#Global_warming_conspiracy_theory

This whole thing is full of gross personal attacks against me. +LLEt's see some blocks and warnigns, because I'm getting a bit tired of being c0onstantly accused of things, harassed, and the like, without any admin action.

To review:

• Keep Bad faith nomination. 86.** has done no editing, no discussion, or any attempts of improving the article in question. He asserts that it is a WP:POV fork, but when examined, the content that he is referring to is not similar. When stating that the article is a BLP violation, he doesn't give examples, but instead asserts that because people are named, it must be a violation, no matter whether references support the namings. In fact it seems as if 86.**'s nominations is purely based upon WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Finally the hatted part is simply unacceptable, it ignores WP:AGF and casts aspersions at his fellow editors. It is not a particularly good article, it could do with a lot of improvement, which hopefully will ensue from this nomination. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 21:13, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
• Keep As Kim said: Bad faith nomination (etc.) 86** seems to be on a crusade to delete climate change articles, repeatedly initiating disruptive battles (such as these AfDs), accuses others of bad faith, and has been shown to be prone to misinterpretation and misstatement. He lacks credibility, his charges are tiresome and should be dismissed out of hand. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:21, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Well after that perhaps I should point to Misplaced Pages:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Global_warming_conspiracy_theory where a bunch of people as far as I can see think the mission of Misplaced Pages is to present the TRUTH and eliminate all erroneous ideas. I have presented my impression of their mission there. Dmcq (talk) 00:06, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

These aren't one offs, these are typical to the abuse that's been hurled at me constantly for the last two, three weeks, by these and a couple other people. I can't make any edit without gross personal attacks such as these being thrown at me. I'm getting really, really frickin' tired of it. Do something. Instead of doing what you do in other ANI posts, which is join in the damn harassment.

Take Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Claims_that_a_POV_tag_is_forumshopping, in which the user - who, ironically, has now forumshopped to another noticeboard his accusations that I supposedlyy forumshopped by adding a tag to the article (Misplaced Pages:WQA#Feedback_needed..._is_this_an_.28admittedly_minor.29_example_of_overtagging_or_forum_shopping.3F) is joined in harassing me by a couple of the users who I quoted attacks from above - and admins yell at me, who has, I'll remind you, been getting gross personal attacks for 2 weeks from this group - that I'm apparently beating a dead horse for complaining about 2 pages of gross accusations against me, based on imaginary policy.

Want some more examples of gross attacks? Fine. Give me 10 minutes, and I'll give yer a host. Just let me know. 86.** IP (talk) 22:40, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I can't find anything particular offensive in the two postings quoted above. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:56, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Maybe you should read WP:AGF and compare it with the words "Bad faith nomination". At least half the people have agreed with me in that AfD so far, and it was suggested it go to AfD by another user on WP:FTN. Or does WP:AGF not apply when it's me, just like WP:NPA, WP:HARASS, and everything else? 86.** IP (talk) 22:59, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Although I am sure I have made them as well in similar situations, the accusations of bad faith are not OK. I guess 86.** has a clear vision of what a proper encyclopedia looks like and is sending things to AfD in good faith. Since when do we try to clean up articles before AfD when we are sure they shouldn't exist in the first place? 86.**, I would recommend getting involved in a less contentious area first, for a week or so. That way you will learn a lot about the type of conflicts that we have here, often over trifles. It's not confined to controversial topics, and in fact your conflicts here have not at all been along the usual lines of pro-/anti-denial of climate change. These were conflicts between an unexperienced editor who is approaching everything in an unusual way, and the community trying to defend the way we usually deal with things. Hans Adler 23:06, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

The bad faith comment is in response to the text of the AfD, specifically the hatted text, the random throwing of assertions (POV-fork, BLP), as well as the fact that 86.** is also sufficiently knowledgeable about both the previous AfD's and policy, and thus WP:ATD.--Kim D. Petersen (talk) 23:35, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

• To 86.** I've never talked to you before or participated in anything you've been involved in so I think I am as neutral as they come. I've no care what you take from this, I'm not going to bother responding. This is my 30 seconds of caring. Have you consider that the number of times you've been here, how often you've had these issues, how many times these topics have WP:BOOMERANGED and the fact that it keeps happening to you that perhaps the problem doesn't lie with everyone else? Have you taken serious retrospective analysis of your behavior and editing pattern? Have you attempted to adjust your communication techniques to work better with others? I feel like you get into a disagreement, you throw around accusations, and then you run off here when accusations are thrown back at you. Do me a favor (I won't know if you do since I'm not going to pay any attention here), take a night off from Misplaced Pages (tonight preferrably) and just consider if there is anything you could've done that would've made a difference to a conversation. Write these things down. Then, next time you're in a dispute; you'll have a list of exactly how to handle it. Now, I'm not going to know if you did this or not; there really isnt a point in responding to me. I'm going to have faith that you'll do this, but if you don't then you will have no one to blame but yourself for ignoring this opportunity to improve. Good luck.--v/r - TP 23:15, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

86** keeps throwing out his "gross personal attack", but I am at a loss to see what that is. (Aside from a really thin-skinned sensitivity.) Perhaps he could offer a specific definition, but I am not hopeful. For anyone that is interested, check the AfD and see for yourself. Or just dip anywhere into Special:Contributions/86.**_IP. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:59, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I see two things going on here and hope you can have a look at both. One is the editing pattern of 86.** IP. I have some responsibility here. Before the contribs that you can see listed for the user account, there was a long series of edits to alternative medicine articles. These came through FTN and took the form of a call for attention to articles, which in fact did turn out to need attention. I drew his attention to MEDRS and after that he was as rigorous as are most people who have a science background and don't like to see fringe claims on the encyclopedia. I encouraged him to get an account. Later, when User: William M. Connolley said that he was "unlikely to be new", I asked him about that but didn't get a full disclosure. I think it is clear that he isn't a banned user , but a user returning after a gap. The only other possibility, and one that perhaps underlies the opposition coming from the regular climate change article editors, is that he is a Scibaby sock. Obviously that would be very serious and perhaps it is time now to have that investigated and cleared up.

The second thing going on is that some editors are trying to own the articles on climate change policy. This can be seen from the accusation of a cabal on the linked AfD page. Coming to an article from a noticeboard does not equal participation in a cabal. The three editors accused (me, User:AndytheGrump and User:Collect) are thick-skinned enough by now not to take this seriously. What does concern me is that editors could be put off participating in cleaning up fringe-related articles if they get a less than civil reaction as soon as they go near them.

Another thing you need to know is that all editors involved in this are on the same side. We all understand and the mainstream scientific position on global warming and want to see it, reflected in the encyclopedia. The difference is, I think, that those of us coming from FTN have more confidence in the capacity of WP policies and procedures to keep fringe POV-pushing at bay, while the climate change regulars seem to have lost confidence in them. I don't mean to mischaracterise their position, but they should have an opportunity to say, for example, if they think FTN is malfunctioning. Itsmejudith (talk) 08:55, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Well you've seen my complaint about FTN at the end of Misplaced Pages:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Global_warming_conspiracy_theory. Plus I have indicated a problem I feel with FTN at Misplaced Pages:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#New_template: about {{Fringe theories}}. I shall quote my objection to the second as it is fairly succinct:

Oppose Well this has already been misused which is why I'm here. There is no injunction in Wipedia against fringe theories. Fringe theories is not a problem. Fringe theories are described under the POV policy specially because there are often neutral point of view weight problems. It may be reasonable to have a 'POV fringe' tag but using this as well as POV shows a misunderstanding and implies that fringe in itself is something wrong and should be removed. Dmcq (talk) 16:48, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I hope that makes my position clear. Dmcq (talk) 10:38, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Disruptive editing by an editor

To whom it may concern

I have encountered what I feel is disruptive editing by editor BlackCab, who reverts the page http://en.wikipedia.org/Jehovah%27s_Witnesses_beliefs back to material that is WP:NPOV and WP:OR as well as material that misrepresents the source material. I attempted to edit this page being a new user, without a proper understanding of exactly how to do that, I have to the best of my ability addressed their concerns regarding source material as you will note in the new edit, however, BlackCab also seems t have an issue with WP:COI due to his disdain and hostility towards Jehovah's Witnesses, as an examination of his user page can testify. This user continues to revert without prior discussion, though the changes made meet Misplaced Pages's standards with regards to content and source material as being stated from a point of view that is not defamatory, as is the material that BlackCab continues t revert to. Here is the page for reference http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Jehovah%27s_Witnesses_beliefs&oldid=466102127 and here is the edit that I made that BlackCab disruptively deletes http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Jehovah%27s_Witnesses_beliefs&oldid=466096785 thank you in advance for addressing this matter in a timely manner.Willietell (talk) 04:06, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

• FYI, you failed to notify the user you reported, which I have now done for you. Calabe1992 04:08, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I am not sure how to do the template so if you could please notify ...oh I see you have already done so....thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by Willietell (talk • contribs) 04:11, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

• Instructions at the top: You must notify any user who is the subject of a discussion. You may use {{subst:ANI-notice}} to do so. Calabe1992 04:13, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I looked at it and was trying to figure out how to do so when I decided to come back here and ask you to do it for me because I couldn't figure it out, thanks.Willietell (talk) 04:14, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Definitely some serious edit warring by both parties there that continued after KWW's protection was lifted. Toddst1 (talk) 04:24, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Heh, I think I was the one who had requested that protection. Go figure. Calabe1992 04:26, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

• Comment: Willietell, a new arrival at Misplaced Pages who has already been embroiled in a sockpuppet investigation, has railed several times against what he perceives as an anti-Jehovah's Witness conspiracy by a "club" of editors. His allegations are baseless. He has made a series of rather foolish changes under a range of IP addresses, each of which were reverted by several editors who are more familiar with the concept of collaboration and consensus than he is. He was repeatedly asked to discuss his changes, but never did. See Talk:Jehovah's Witnesses beliefs#This whole page should be deleted. I have reverted an edit he made at Jehovah's Witnesses beliefs and tactfully explained it at the talk page.

As my user page attests, I don't like that religion, of which I was once a member. But that fact no more disqualifies me from editing JW articles than does the fact that Willietell is a current member. We each have our strongly held views; what matters here is that our edits are fair, balanced, accurate and sufficiently sourced. Mine are; his are not. Ultimately it's the consensus that prevails; Willietell prefers to see only his own outlook represented. BlackCab (talk) 04:26, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

The WP:sockpuppet claim was false as there was no attempt at deception involved as I explained to them exactly what a friend of mine had done and they Jeffro77 proceeded to file a complaint having full knowledge the complaint was unjustified, which in and of itself, was an attempt at deception on their part, which nearly succeeded and in fact did temporarily.BlackCab's own words above are more than enough to confirm WP:COI and WP:NPOV, but if more proof is needed it is below.

"I have explained my rationale for reverting unsourced changes at the talk page. . User:Willietell, who has been the subject of a sockpuppet investigation (and dealt with pretty damned leniently, considering his past behavior) has so far endeavoured to have the entire page deleted without giving any better explanation than it was all lies. His AfD attempt was quickly headed off at the pass. I'll refrain from reverting this article again; I'm confident other editors will do that instead. Willitell is running a one-man crusade to have Jehovah's Witness-related articles read like cheery propaganda pieces. BlackCab (talk) 04:33, 16 December 2011 (UTC)"Willietell (talk) 05:05, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Additionally, you may note another attempt at deception above when BlackCab states "I have explained my rationale for reverting unsourced changes at the talk page.". clearly trying to make the ascertain that the edit I performed was not sourced, which is false, and to verify, all you need to do is look at the edit I submitted as proof of his attempted deception.Willietell (talk) 05:11, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I have responded to the last claim at the article talk page. BlackCab (talk) 06:46, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

More phone numbers

Yesterday I discovered an IP had added phone numbers at Puliangudi. They were rev-deleted, but they were re-added here, here, and here. Seems as though someone with variable 117 IPs has a bit of a COI. Calabe1992 04:49, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Semi-protected for a period of 1 month, after which the page will be automatically unprotected.. --Jayron32 04:51, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

We're done. Calabe1992 05:10, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Widespread chronic edit warring

I recently responded to an AN3 report; Intoronto1125 (talk · contribs) reported Cossde (talk · contribs) for edit warring at Burning of Jaffna library and Tamils Rehabilitation Organisation. Both had been suffering from severe edit warring on the parts of multiple users for the past several days. Given the many users who seemed to be involved and the fact that no one had even made an attempt at discussion, I didn't feel a block on Cossde alone was fair, and protected both pages for a week. Cossde seemed to be the most prolific edit warrior and also appears to have a history of edit warring, so I left them a warning. Cossde replied on my talk page in their own defense, but that's irrelevant; what deeply concerned me was the fact that they cited other examples of edit warring, revealing a series of widespread disputes that are all apparently being primarily dealt with with edit warring instead of discussion: other edit wars they cited were C. Nagalingam, K. P. Ratnam, Royal College (disambiguation), Chandre Dharma-wardana, Jaffna city and Raj Rajaratnam.

Cossde is involved in all of these incidents; other users who appear to be involved in one or more of these disputes are: Intoronto1125, Sudar123 (talk · contribs), Sodabottle (talk · contribs), HudsonBreeze (talk · contribs), Obi2canibe (talk · contribs), Tamilan101 (talk · contribs), Blackknight12 (talk · contribs), and Kanatonian (talk · contribs). Can I have some additional eyes on the situation so we can decide how to deal with this? Swarm 05:33, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I am only peripherally involved in this as i dont have any of the articles on my watchlist and have edited them only a couple of times. I got introduced this saga when i went to add an file in Rathika Sitsabaiesan and found cossde inserting a section that had been discussed in the talk page and declared undue/blp violation a few months before. I removed it and pointed him to the talk page and reverted him in a few more places where he appeared to be going against consensus. I havent gone back there - as these articles are not my area of interest. It is not true that "no one made an attempt at discussion". Raj Rajarathnam, Jaffna, Rathika Sitsabaiesan - all have talk page discussions where people are trying to arrive at consensus. AFAIK cossde has a strong POV, regularly ignores talk page discussions, inserts his version when talk page discussions are going on and also against established consensus. You can check the talk pages of the articles in question to see there are indeed discussions going on and people trying to arrive at mutually agreed wording/consensus. Cossde not only editwars with his account, but when reverted by multiple editors, logs out to edit war when he nears 3RR. I remember seeing the other editors named in opposite sides of disputes before - in most of the cases they have arrived at rough consensus without chronic editwarring. It is Cossde's behaviour that is causing the current scenario. --Sodabottle (talk) 06:49, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

For a person was only "only peripherally involved", Sodabottle seems to be aware of quite alot of things other than the actual contents in the Rathika Sitsabaiesan' talk page. For the record, my entries in talk pages such as that of Tamils Rehabilitation Organisation have gone un-joined by some of the listed users who have instead engaged in edit warring. Cossde (talk) 07:44, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I will ignore your snark - my edits speak for themselves. Yours show a pattern of edit warring and pov pushing. You repeatedly add content to articles even when they are specifically opposed by other editors. Misplaced Pages works by establishing consensus. The fact that you are being opposed by so many other editors should indicate what is the root of this issue - your refusal to abide by consensus. And the logged out editing to circumvent the 3RR clearly demonstrates that you know the rules and are trying to evade them.--Sodabottle (talk) 09:48, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Mass edits from IP 121.1.55.60

This IP is making numerous unsourced changes to demographic data in articles about American cities and isn't responding to talk page queries. I'm a bit leery about using rollback for this, I am on a slow connection, and there are a lot of edits to go through. Would someone please take a look? I'll notify them presently. Rivertorch (talk) 07:23, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

WP:BLP issue / User:Cincinatis

Cincinatis (talk · contribs) apparently thinks it's quite critical to identify various individuals has having a religion of "Jewish" in their infobox (over half his edits are devoted to inserting this), and has accused me of "censoring" this information when I've removed his insertions. This is despite the fact that

1. the infobox has very little other information in it,
2. the infobox instructions indicate the "religion" parameter should be used only if it the religion is relevant,
3. when he uses sources at all, they're often not even reliable (he insist that the statement should go in nevertheless, and he'll find a better source later)
4. the sources often don't even indicate religion ("Jewish" is also an ethnicity)
5. the Misplaced Pages articles themselves make no mention whatsoever about these individuals' religions,

This is all aside from the fact that "Jewish" isn't even a religion ("Judaism" is). Since I'm tired of fighting with editors with fewer than 50 edits who insist it is critical to identify people as Jews, and "censoring" if you don't, I've brought the issue here. Jayjg 08:52, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

(ec)Perhaps you could help him find more appropriate ways to include the material? I would also urge you to avoid casting the kinds of aspersions that you seem to do with "yellow badgers". Could you list the BLPs that you find problematic? Perhaps at WP:BLP/N. un☯mi 08:59, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I see that you have now removed the reference to "yellow badgers" which is commendable. However, I am somewhat confused why your immediate reaction to what seems as an attempt to discuss the matter is to come to the entirely wrong noticeboard? un☯mi 09:02, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I removed the reference before you even commented. But since my statement was pretty clear, and I'm at the entirely correct noticeboard for dealing with this kind of inappropriate behavior, I'm somewhat confused by your question. Jayjg 09:18, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and the articles in question are Charles Lane (journalist), Jennifer Rubin (journalist), Dick Morris, and Jonathan Chait. Jayjg 09:23, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Arguably you are not at the correct noticeboard when you take a user with 47 edits to ANI while he seems to be trying to discuss the matter with you - the least you could do is open the matter at either BLP/N or RSN, if you don't have the patience to spell out the problem and paths to positive resolution, then perhaps someone else at those boards would have. This seems very bitey to say the least, and the original form of your post ( even if you later changed it ) very much shows your state of mind in bringing it here. I would urge you to reconsider your choice in venue lest you suffer the consequences of WP:BOOMERANG. un☯mi 09:25, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

My statement has quite clearly spelled out the problem. Rather than focusing on one word that was changed almost immediately, please focus instead on the lengthy substance of the post. The issue here isn't reliable sourcing per se, or BLP per se, but exactly what I described above, disruptive behavior in general, and therefore belongs here. And rather than making rather empty threats, I urge you to contribute to other threads instead. Jayjg 09:43, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

You did change the original one here yes, but you are still drawing parallels between his actions and antisemitism on your own talkpage with this edit, something is very wrong when an admin in this way fails to apply AGF, casts aspersions, fails to make proper use of the dispute resolution process and markedly fails in making the exact issues clear - all this to deal with an editor of 47 edits who seemed fairly preoccupied with trying to make 'good edits' before getting stonewalled and sidetracked by you. un☯mi 09:56, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

EW

If an admin has a sec would you mind checking out this report at 3rr? This user is warring over a talk page actively, otherwise I would have just waited. Thanks. Nformation 09:07, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Note: I am not notifying the user since this report is not about them, just seeking admin help elsewhere. Nformation 09:08, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Topic ban proposal

Zenkai avoided a topic-ban last month by promising to stay away from Christianity/myth/creation. He's obviously unable to keep that promise. Revisit topic ban proposal. (will notify) Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 09:14, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

• NoteYou guys love to ban people who don't share your POV, eh? Zenkai251 (talk) 09:17, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
• Support User doesn't seem to understand how to interact on Misplaced Pages. Since they have once again engaged in disruptive behavior and cannot work with others, I support this topic ban. Note that I am mostly uninvolved with the exception of the above edit warring report, but I have spent the last 20 minutes going through the user's history to come to this conclusion Nformation 09:18, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
• Support User has a battleground mentality and refuse to interact in a positive manner. This user insists that their view is the only valid view and refuses to abide by our polices. I support a topic ban and an immediate 24 block.--Adam in MO Talk 09:20, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

User is now edit warring my talk page with a pointy 3RR notice in the middle of an EW report and an AN/I discussion! Nformation 09:21, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose You guys had absolutely no reason to revert my edits. They were all legitimate. The proposal I made on the Genesis discussion page was serious and in need of fixing. You guys need a ban. You can't just ban everyone who doesn't share your biased POV. Zenkai251 (talk) 09:24, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't care what your POV is. I don't care if you think Jesus inhabits a dog on the moons of Jupiter. We have all agreed to abide by certain behaviors and norms here and you refuse to operate inside those norms. If you don't want to play with us then pick up your ball and go home. Read and understand boldly edit, edit is reverted, discuss. That is how we operate --Adam in MO Talk 09:29, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

How can I discuss if you close my proposal discussion!? Zenkai251 (talk) 09:30, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Your POV is not neutral. Zenkai251 (talk) 09:31, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

You have no idea what it is. No one has a neutral point of view, but we can all be fair and edit articles so that they show the proper amount of weight given to a particular view.--Adam in MO Talk 09:32, 16 December 2011 (UTC)]]

• Oppose. User Zenkai has been the subject of what amounts to a campaign of harassment from other editors, and especially from Hrafn, whose language has been abusive and initimidatory (IMO of course). Let me say that, intellectually, I align with Hrafn, not Zenkai; but I find Hrafn's appraoch to this editor to be less than collegial and far from helpful. PiCo (talk) 09:33, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Go ahead and mentor Zenkai and guarantee this won't happen again. Vouch for him. If you do, I'll close this thread; if after that, this kind of stuff happens again, you'll be part of the next ANI-thread. Deal? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 09:37, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
    • Is this some kind of threat. You can't possibly hold someone accountable for another editors' actions.--Adam in MO Talk 09:40, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
      • Threat? No. I'm trying to find a solution. If I was convinced that somebody doesn't deserve a topic-ban, I'd take that deal. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 09:43, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
        • Telling me I'll be part of the next ANI thread sounds very like a threat to me, with an unspecified punishment attached. How can I possibly give any guarantees about Zenkai? Nevertheless, I'll undertake to try to instruct him in how Misplaced Pages works, if that helps. I think/fear we're in danger of crueling an editor who has seemed to me to have only good intentions.. PiCo (talk) 09:55, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

MarcusBritish

Could someone look at the edits of MarcusBritish (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) over at Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/The Troubles and see what, if any, administrative actions needs to be taken please. A notification about discretionary sanctions was added here by EdJohnston. That's a standard thing, simply to show that editors have been informed about discretionary sanctions. After MarcusBritish added a reply (which doesn't really go there anyway), he then removed himself, and after is was re-added by another editor removed it again with a summary of "Has been done under WP:Libel and posting admin informed FFS! Do NOT re-add: I will consider it harassment! (Note: 1RR page)". Then he self-reverted, saying "Send to Oversighter to remove this nonsense" and then decided to strike the notification again referring to WP:LIBEL.

The edit warring over a simple notification about discretionary sanctions and claims of harassment, libel and oversight appear to be very unsettling. 2 lines of K₃₀₃ 11:18, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

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